The young cadet opened his eyes. He could not feel his hands, and when he tried to lift them, they did not respond. In fact, he did not know what he was trying to lift, as the only thing he could feel was a deep numbness throughout this body. He tried lifting his head, and suddenly, a thick male voice bursts out:
Aha!
The voice is imbued with a slight, asianic accent. Was it a Kusari pilot? No. The voice was not as curt, but the "Aha!" was enjoyed...
I see that you have awoken. How do you do?
Allow me to intoduce myself...but first, analyze that question that I just asked you. How do you do?
Simple...right?
So amazingly simple, that you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Does my didactic speech bore you, comrade?
How do you do, comrade?
You mostly do not know, and a seriously do not want to frighten you...but you are currently paralyzed. Courtesy of a special species of octopus.
Light growing dimmer?
Perhaps you are entering a tunnel. Do you see something bright at the end? Is that a nod? No? Yes?
Run! It's a train!
The voice chuckled.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
0400 Hours, Sirius Standard Time.
Location: ************
Smiling, the man rises from his original position. He is dressed in black, with a interesting suit buttoned all the way to his chin. One would be suprised if he were not sufflocating.
The man had light, but tanned skin weathered by nature. A barely noticeable scar across his cheek and his well-combed raven mane completed his features.
"Young man," said the man kindly to the cadet, "I made sure personally that you would not suffer."
The Cadet attempted to smile, but his expression seemed to convey constipation instead of cautious joy.
The man laughed at the cadet's attempts.
"Throw him into the Airlock," laughed the man happily. Another figure moved from behind him, seized the cadet by his feet, and dragged him into the airlock. He promptly shut the door, and the man walked over and tapped a small red button with his index finger.
He had not lied, the man thought to himself. The paralyzing agent wears off in four hours. Plenty of time for the radiation to eat the boy away. Plenty of time.
0800 Hours, SST
Location: **********
"It's a wonder we survived," said the man in black, tapping two fingers on his chest, while he unbuttoned a button on his suit with his thumb and the other 3.
The man who had dragged the boy out stared coldly, but reverently.
"Master," voiced the other man, "I think that...action...was unnecessary."
"It was," mused the man in black. "But Zhuang Li Zhi has a reputation to maintain."
"He could have had..." continued the other man, but he stopped himself.
"Family," finished Zhuang, the man in black, "He is in a better place."
"Master," said the other man, "but...you have read Pultolski's Thesis*..."
"Excuse me?" the other man was confused. "Belief in the afterlife is contradictory to Pultolski's theorem of a constant consiousness."
Zhuang laughed. "How does Pultolski know? His theorem is a theorem within a theorem."
"What Pultolski is trying to say is that without his own imagination, his theorem that the heaven does not exist cannot exist," continued Zhuang. "Pultolski's theorem has nothing to do with the afterlife. It is a statement...about the injustices and the faults of the Coalition way of life."
"What?!" burst out the other man.
Zhuang chuckled, "Calm yourself, Amer. All governments have faults, and the Coalition is most certainly a government."
The other man, Amer, stared in disbelief. His commanding officer...the great Zhuang Li Zhi had just criticized his own motherland. His reverie was broken by a crackle over the PA in the room.
"Zdravo!" rang the PA with a distinct crackle, "Captain, all systems are running vell! The deep scanners need some fiksing though!"
Zhuang reached over and depressed a button on his desk. "Yuri, you never should have been a mechanic."
"What??" crackled the voice over the other end.
Zhuang sighed. "Yuri, did you shield the transmitters before we followed the sleeper ships?"
For a brief moment, only the two men's breathing could be heard.
The PA sprang back to life again. "What?" cried the voice.
"Hold on," said Zhuang as he stood up, "I'll be back."
Amer, the other man, did not respond. He was only 23. At least, he thought he was 23. He was 23 when they engaged and followed the Hispania. Right before they had engaged hyperdrive, they had been briefed. "How many years was I in cryostasis?" Amer wondered. The captain, Zhuang, had been out before they had been for at least six months. So had Yuri Karpenko, the Engineer, Politik, and Mental health supervisor.
"Why had he been out last?" Amer asked himself. He stood up, and walked over to the Captain's desk. He lifted a small brass model of a Kiev-Class Crusier, and began to wipe the dust coated surface with his sleeve.
The brass, though stained, glistened in the flourscent lighting of the room.
To be continued........
-----------------------------------------------------------
*Pultolski's Thesis: Mikail Pultolski, a Russian physicist theorized that the afterlife could not exist due the gradual expansion of the universe, and the existence of multiple cultures and religions. As the universe is increasing to infinity, Pultolski theorized, the number of cultures and/or religions must increase. As an infinite number cannot be reached, thus, there cannot be an afterlife. Only few people claimed to completely and actually understand his thesis, but it was widely adopted as a antithesis to all forms of organized religion, althought Pultolski only theorized the lack of an afterlife, not deity.
EDIT: Of course, Pultolski's Thesis was directed at proponents of a literal, tangible heaven.
This is great! You really caught me on with the beginning, and you inputted lots of details. I might suggest you put quotes around the text so that we know who is speaking? Overall, great.
(BTW, I'm a fast reader, I didn't just skim the story.)
I am a long-absent Supreme Commander, Executive Commander, Grand Admiral, Fleet Admiral, and Captain in the mighty Hellfire Legion. I have returned, and am on an urgent mission from Drake Thastus to return the Legion to its former glory, and to claim the galaxy for its own. Only then will I be able to rest.
RP Story (Still deciding whether or not to finish)
My my, Devil Cat, what a great start to what had better be a great novella. If it isn't... I'll do absolutely nothing. Still! Let my admittedly empty threat scare and confuse you!
Of course, I'm not being serious about some of that. I loved that beginning. I was kidding about the threat being threatening. So the second part, about me having no consequence, was true. Understand?
Oh, and that theory that whose-his-name, Pultolski? Yes, his theory makes sense. I can't grasp it entirely, mind you, but it does seem to make sense to me. Oh well.
Wonderful start. Simply brilliant. Your writing style is great, and I only found one problem, which is that a theorem is something that can be proven (i.e. a geometric theorem, which can be proven either by postulates and corollaries): Pultolski had no theorem within a theorem within a theorem: he has theories. An annoying difference, and something that no one who hadn't recently reviewed vocabulary would catch. It doesn't detract, mind you, but I thought you may wish to know.
Oh, and a big problem...
THERE ISN'T ENOUGH! Give me more, blast you, give me MORE!
...
Anyways, good start, look forward to reading the rest. The names, of course, are the hallmarks of a great read. I wish you the best of luck in your endeavor!
Several "conceits", as we call em, that I enjoyed in there, Gato.
The first, starting out with a character who immediately turns out to have a very short life.
Usually the first character you meet is one of the last to leave the building. Provoked a neck-twist. Good!
Second, you seemed to be nesting "russian dolls" in several ways.
The "theorem within a theorem within a theorem" motif is reflected in the story itself: a story within, or attached to a story, based on a theorem. Were you conscious of this when you outlined the story?
Use of dialogue worked, except that I stumbled in one place as to who was actually speaking. I'm still not sure to be honest.
Quote:"Master," said the other man, "but...you have read Pultolski's Thesis*..."
"Excuse me?" the other man was confused. "Belief in the afterlife is contradictory to Pultolski's theorem of a constant consiousness."
Zhuang laughed. "How does Pultolski know? His theorem is a theorem within a theorem."
That's where I got lost. In other areas you identify or allude to the characters sufficiently.
And one "old-school" rule I try to use when quoting: If your character has gone on for more than one paragragh, drop the quotation mark at the end of the paragraphs, except for the last. it sort of indicates that the loudmouth has more to say... Conversely, seeing the quote at the end of a paragraph warns you that there's either narrative, or another character about to speak ahead.
"Govno," cursed Yuri Karpenko, the de facto engineer, through the flashlight he held in his mouth, "The fusing is all messed up."
Karpenko had received his degree in engineering from the University of Kiev, where he then went on to work for his uncle, a psychiatrist. The great reassignment was quite practical in many ways, and Yuri still remembered the day when he was asked: "What do you want to do, boy?" He did not want to be an engineer. It was never his line of work. In fact, Yuri Karpenko enjoyed the type of work where no work would be necessary. He adjusted his circular glasses.
Following this, he blunt sense of patriotism and his experience with the sciences of the mind led him to be instituted as the ship's politik, the chief political officer. Although he possessed no military ranking, Yuri would be amongst the first to go through destasis after they temporally long voyage. Thus, until the chief engineer, Mischa Porchevsky, was put through destatis, he would have to rely on his college degree to repair the ship as much as possible. However, this degree from a prominent institution was proving quite useless, as his efforts to repair a simple PA system had been futile, for what...the last 15 hours? Yuri raised his arm and checked his watch.
"Yuri."
Karpenko spun around, and dropped the flashlight he held between his teeth.
Zhuang strode over from the ladder he had descended. Of course, an elevator could have been put in place there, but it would have been an unnecessary addition, which in the Coalition's eyes, would have been a sinful addition. "Simplicity," uttered those memorable banners, "Is the key to operation and proliferation." Those words still rang in Zhuang's head as if there were one of those banners hovering right about the jittery Yuri Karpenko's head.
"The fuses are busted," said Karpenko, turning back to the box again.
"Do we have any spare ones?" asked Zhuang, moving closer.
"Yes, but the fusing," muttered Karpenko, shaking his head, "The fusing is general, it is all..."
Finding that he did not know the right word to say, Karpenko waved his hands about.
"How long do we have to do without main power then?" asked Zhuang, now right next to the fusebox himself.
"At least 20 days," replied Karpenko without looking back, "Porchevsky cannot be awoken until exactly 20 days after all the officers have been awoken. That's exactly 20 days from today."
"Amer was the last of the officers," said Zhuang, moving away. He covered his face with a hand and sighed, "two-thirds of a month. We'd all freeze to death, Yuri."
Karpenko looked back into the box, then glanced over at the time-lock door where the others were kept, then looked up at Zhuang, and dropped the flashlight back into his hand. "They don't need to know that we have only been out for a few hours."
Amer had left the captain's office after he had finished pondering. He was the ship's Navigator. He had been the one who had plotted the coordinates to which the ship would head, and he, out of all the people that sat in front of state of the art computers in the Kremlin, got it right. Why? Amer asked himself. Why had he been the last?
He walked down the dimly lighted tunnel, instinctively ducking and lifting his foot to pass through the doorways that were installed every 10 meters. This was for both practical and security measures. In case of there was a sudden explosion that caused a hull breach, the doorways would automatically shut unless canceled by a command from the bridge. If there was, in the most dreadful occasion, however, a mutiny, the doors could be quickly closed to seal the traitors in.
Amer walked to the bridge, opened the door, looked in.
"Here, hold here," Zhuang pointed to one end of the crowbar as he and Karpenko attempted to pry open the time-locked door in which the rest of the crew was sealed.
Karpenko and Zhuang heaved, and the door seemed to give.
"Again!" said Zhuang.
The two heaved against the crowbar again, and the door inched open.
The lights in the bridge came on slowly. Flickering at first, then the lights came on completely. Amer smiled as he walked towards his post. He sat down in front of his controls, and grinned happily.
On the fouth shove, the door gave way, and a gust of cold air rushed out from the chamber, and Karpenko fell backwards. At the same time, the fusebox exploded.
"Mac na galla!" cried Karpenko clutching his face with both hands.
0900 Hours, Sirius Standard Time
Location: Freeport 5
"What the hell?" muttered Olsen Conners. He had worked on Freeport 5 for thirteen years, and he had never before seen anything like what he just saw. He immediately opened a direct channel to BioDome 2.
"Will!" cried Conners, "There is this anomaly out there that just released 50 gigajoules of energy, dude!"
"What?" scowled the other man, Will, "That's impossible."
Will strode away from the plants he was tending to, and walked towards the automated tram that would take him to the main module and Conners. Conners, Will knew from past experience, was apt to totally distort reality. Although Will believed that this was partially due to Conners's actual physical consumption of Synthetic Marajuana, Conners had not excuse for anything that he had pledged in the past. The autotram glided down the track smoothly, and Will glanced at his life's work, the FP5 Biodomes. He reached the man module, and after stepping off the tram, he climbed into an elevator. Conners had better not be high this time, he thought. Sure, as Zoners, they advocated such freedoms like free speech, free love, and the right to get high whenever you wanted, but Conners's important position as Comm director made it impossible for the man to participate in all these freedoms. Will stepped out, opened the door, and found a dead Olsen Conners lying atop his comm panel.
Karpenko would be alright, thought Zhuang, but it was Amer that he was worried about. Apparently, something had generated a huge amount of electric enegry outside the ship, and through a broken wire on the outside of the hull, the power was forced into the ship's wiring. The power caused an oversurge, destroying the fuses and Karpenko's glasses. But Amer had received 3rd degree burns on his entire right arm. Though Amer was actually quite nonchalant about it, since the burn destroyed most of his nerves in his right arm, it was a gruesome sight to behold. The muscles allowed Amer to move his ring finger and pinky were replaced by hardened, charred crisps of flesh, and the two fingers were rendered useless. Luckily for him, the wound had cauderized, and it would not develope anything serious, for now. With the ship's systems completely crippled, life support for the rest of the crew in stasis was failing quickly. The last thing Zhuang needed as a man with gangrene.
0930 Hours, Sirius Standard Time
Location: Freeport 5
"What the hell?" muttered Will the gardner, he reached quickly for a red button on the side of the wall. A siren shrieked all across Freeport 5, but no one could hear the shrieks of Will, the BioDome 2 Gardener.
I am a long-absent Supreme Commander, Executive Commander, Grand Admiral, Fleet Admiral, and Captain in the mighty Hellfire Legion. I have returned, and am on an urgent mission from Drake Thastus to return the Legion to its former glory, and to claim the galaxy for its own. Only then will I be able to rest.
RP Story (Still deciding whether or not to finish)
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