the nightmare
Log Entry: Cycle 88, Sol -. Terrapin Station Corridor.
The simple errand. The final check. My feet touch the station’s grimy deck plating. I turn back to the airlock, and the seamless hull of the Lacuna is flowing shut. The bottom drops out of my stomach. I raise a hand. “Wait!”
The black hull becomes solid. The ship, Roberts, my safety from the fringe, my… is now a featureless void. It begins to drift away from the station, silent and unstoppable.
My personal comm crackles to life. A single, clear voice. A voice I’ve never heard, but I know instantly. It’s Roberts.
“Goodbye, Milo.”
The voice is articulate. Calculated. He could always speak. The shock hits me like a hull breach. I can’t breathe.
“You wanted a real story, Milo,” the voice continues, the words tearing me up from the inside. “You are the story now.” There’s a pause, and his voice returns, “Make it a good one.”
Then, Echo’s emotionless, but seemingly empathetic tone, a final, serene twist of the knife. “Pleasant dreams.”
The comm dead.
The Lacuna a speck. A dying star. Gone.
The corridor tilts. The bulkhead hits my back. Floor plates cold against my legs. My hands are fumbling for the notebook the proof the log it was all real I wrote it down it has to be real if I wrote it down the ink the pages the weight of it in my hands…
Gone.
It’s gone.
Ripped out. The whole section ripped out. Nothing left but the first few pages, old notes, a caricature of Vance, his face staring up at me. My hands. Are these my hands? Shaking so hard I can’t hold the pad, can’t focus on the page.
“Lost, or just sightseeing?”
Wilkins. The voice a gravelly. Pity in it. A hollow echoing sound.
“Roberts…” The name pains my throat. “He left me.”
“Roberts? Don’t know the name, friend.” He chuckles, “You look like you’ve had a rough go. Maybe you should find a quiet corner to sleep it off.” Empty eyes. No recognition. No help. A shrug. He drifts away. Gone too.
Just the corridor. The hum.
My hands. Thin, pale, clutching a book of doodles.
A writer’s hands?
I don’t know.