Ok.

My test reader, G, is away for the weekend and being me I didn’t finish these until this morning and was unable to decide between them so you get two entries: one long, one short. Make sure you go all the way down as this is a long post.

The Lady
By Neil Beynon

I’d heard stories, tales whispered in giggling groups in school and then later the outlandish tales in bars. Everyone knew someone who knew someone but you never met one. It was always a one-way trip. Not many elected to go.

Many had no choice.

You’ve probably heard the stories. The myths. The radio broadcasts that the government pick up but keep suppressed. My favourite one, the one that kept me awake for weeks on end as a teenager, was that the noise between frequencies on the radio was the sound of the people who got lost on their way. All screaming in static, spread over the universe, everywhere all at once.

Load of silliness really. It is easy to get lost in there and although not everyone makes it I’m pretty sure that they aren’t scattered across the cosmos. It’s a place much like this one and I’m certain we’ve always been able to get to it. It’s just now we can control it.

The government are keeping the messages secret. Hi guys if you’re listening – well done, I hacked this up pretty good so you’d have to be a special flavour of geek to decipher it.

I’m not a criminal. I chose to go. I wanted to go. Our little bundle of rocks were too narrow, too crowded and so I settled into my seat on the shuttle, a little nervous that I was going to wind up as radio static, in spite of the safety video. I think it was meant to be reassuring.

I still don’t understand the use of the shuttle. You don’t need it. Not really.

I sat next to a lady called Jolene, she’d been caught under the three-strike rule, funny she didn’t look like an organ harvester but later in the flight I saw her smearing something on her lips. I recognised the smell from hospital. Jolene had a plan. We all had a plan.

It’s funny how things turn out.

The last time I saw Jolene she was hanging on the arm of a tall, blond haired gentleman in a purple frock coat as they walked towards an old stone mansion. I heard later, from one of the other inhabitants of that strange land that the blond gentleman had grown bored with her, he ate her with an apple compote.

A lesson to us all there but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The jump is a special moment. That’s what you think right? Jumping into hyperspace looks cool, no two ways about it. I saw a jump when I was nine, my dad’s reward for passing a maths test, though I’ve seen far cooler things since that remains the best, the ice-standard if you like.

The hyper-shuttle looks rather like a metallic hedgehog that has rolled into a ball as if the universe was just too much for it. I know how it feels. Pre-jump tendrils of energy leap and crackle over the spiked sphere, lancing from spire to spire, the moment of the actual jump energy shoots along all spectrums. You have to look at it through a special filter. If you don’t you fry your retinas and apparently your short-term memory.

For those on the vessel, I know now, it’s about as interesting as watching paint dry.

One moment you’re in space, Jupiter the nearest planet hanging in the black like a ball of rust, next moment you’re on grass. It’s not like the movies.

At first you feel cheated. I did. Now, not so much.

There was no greeting party, no sign of any others at all; we didn’t really understand what had happened. We thought we’d landed on another planet, that the navicomp had miscalculated and pop here we were on a rock in the middle of nowhere. A narrow escape and at least it had atmosphere.

We left the shuttle. Apparently we all do it.

It was a bit of a shitter when the shuttle disappeared leaving us marooned on the grass. We took it quite well; hyperspace does funny things to your emotions. The place seemed deserted and so we went our own ways to explore, Jolene stuck with me as did a few others. It seems I give of an air of authority others find reassuring, my Lady laughs when I tell her this.

It reminded me of stories my grandfather used to tell me about how the world had looked when he was a lad. Expanses of green so large I mocked him in disbelief. The world of my youth was so different: sand and chrome, rust and oil.

That we were not alone came as a shock. They were disinterested, they always are. The blond one liked Jolene but that ended badly. Me? The Lady took me; I was lucky.

The Lady had not taken a consort for centuries. She has shown me such sights but I have little time now for she’s coming and I must keep her interested in our travels or…well you know what happened to Jolene.

This is my message in a bottle. Pay attention hyperspace is everywhere and there are bridges back into our worlds. One day I think they will come back to stay.

It’s not like the stories here, they aren’t stupid or capricious, they’re far brighter than us and whilst the grass is greener the sky is a boiling seething pattern of light, white noise, static.

Like me they grow weary of it and long for the blue.

**********

Dear Sarah
By Neil Beynon

Dear Sarah

A funny thing happened to us today. We were on our way to Kessel; your mother was looking forward to getting some shopping done whilst I met with Mr Sloan.

Space-time stretched out below us, a shimmering lake of energy, it’s blue and it looks a lot like the ocean of Polynesia but made of light instead of water. I love to watch it during the jump; it relaxes me, takes my mind off the fact that only a few sheets of metal and glass hold our artificial bubble of space-time together.

A scientist once told me that if you had the right imaging equipment you could zoom in on space-time until you could see individual lives. Frozen like flies in amber and overlapping you could see that you never really move away from the people you meet, we’re all entwined.

There was something profoundly comforting and terrifying about that all at the same time. For of course death is an illusion in that model but then what about choice? I often think on it as I look at space-time.

Today I noticed something I hadn’t seen before. A hole. A small but distinct patch of black in the ever reaching sea of light. At first I thought it was my imagination but your mother noticed it as well. I told the flight attendant.

“There’s a hole,” I said.

“No there isn’t,” she answered.

“There is,” said your mother.

The attendant pursed her lips before going to speak to the captain. When she came back she invited us up to the flight cabin, as we walked I noticed the windows had been tinted so you could no longer see out.

Now we’ve landed they’re not letting us leave. I’m not sure when we’ll be home Sarah or if this will even reach you but we’re thinking of you. Please make sure the cat is fed and that you listen to Miss Haversham.

All our love,

Dad and Mum x