the skipping stone

Log Entry: Cycle 88, Sol 5. Deep Space.

Echo’s voice cut the silence. Calm. “Time to depart.”

The forward wall dissolves. Terrapin Station hangs there. Then gone. Just ceases.

Lurch. A gut-wrenching displacement. Nothing to do with acceleration. Not a jump. Yanked sideways. Through reality. My stomach does a slow roll. Another lurch. Different direction. Another. And another. My voice unsteady. “What is this?”

Blue lens swivels. “This is how we travel.” Flat. “Untraceable. The Wires cannot follow.”

Untraceable. Not hidden. Statistically impossible. Paranoid philosophy made real. My stomach heaves. Safety has a price.

The sphere’s blue lens swivels back to me. “Your physiological signs are anomalous.”

I manage a grunt.

“The Captain does not experience this phenomenon,” it continues, its voice perfectly flat. “We have not had a guest before. This reaction was not predicted.”

Another data point for the sphere.

Lurching stops. Sudden stillness. A relief. “A quiet place,” Echo announces. “To listen.”

Nausea subsides. I look at the wall. Not star charts. A display. Web of chaotic, shifting energies. Silent. Swirling. A galaxy of light. Notebook out. Sketching. Trying to find the pattern. Anything. Imposing order. A silent aurora, I write, the ghost of a nebula bleeding through the code. I whisper. “What is it?”

The wisp’s lens swivels from notebook to display. “The Captain is listening.” Expressionless. “To the voices.”

“Voices?” I ask, looking at the swirl

“The Wires, the colonies, the corps and the people.” Echo says. Devoid of praise. “They all have their own voices. He is charting a course through the noise.”

I reconsider my notes. The correction stings. I cross out my words. All of them. A final, angry slash of ink in the notebook. These sleepwalkers. Not just hiding. Navigating something else. Something I never knew existed.