Jumping the cable, Alton Newcombe [top 10 most read books in the world txt] 📗

to nothing. Not like hyperspace nothing, where you can see stars here and there, I mean we went into nothing... (audible sound unknown)
At first I thought the engines had just sort of died on us somehow, and that we had slipped the cable and that we were now drifting in the expanse between our galaxy and Andromeda, but after a few minutes of checking that all the systems were still 5 by 5 I started to worry…
(audible sound/sigh)
Well, from what I remember, the first few hours went by smoothly enough considering we had stepped out of…well out of anywhere. (audible sound/sigh) And we all noticed right away that everything on the ship; other than her equipment and censors, had stopped doing pretty much anything, and I mean anything, including us.
Ha!...We didn’t have to eat, sleep, shit, or shower; none of the thing’s nature intended us to do, and at first it was great. But after the third week or so, things started getting bad, really bad.
Row and Marks started talking to themselves constantly... They said that they heard voices...(audible sound/sigh) crazy shit…
In a crying fit one day, Poor Row pulled out two hands full of hair; nearly peeling the flesh off her scalp, so we had to strap her down and sedate her for a while so she couldn’t hurt herself anymore...which she didn’t, thankfully.
(audible sound unknown) Marks held up pretty well even after Row lost her shit and tried to scalp herself without so much as a knife to help her out. But me...shit, I almost followed the captain out into the nothing after hearing the shit that I heard in my head over and over again. (audible sound unknown)
The creaky hinges of a door closing...over and over again. That’s what I heard. Never opening, or even latching shut; only closing... over and over again. Ha!
By the third week of that shit I was fit to split with laughter, because I didn’t know what else to do. It was either laugh or cry, and I had seen what crying had done to Row, and I didn’t want any part of that shit. So one day while staring at the ceiling of my quarters I just started, you know... laughing. I swear, I laughed so hard that if I could have pissed myself in that place we were in, I would have. Ha!
Instead though; I passed out, right then and there, and I’m guessing I was out for a quite a while because when I came to, the sound in my head was gone, and it had been replaced by an even louder, more ominous one. (audible sound/sigh) the cabin pressure alarm.
Apparently when I finally came around to the sound of the alarms, it was midmorning of the next day, or at least that’s what the chronometer said when I checked it later. And there had been some kind of incident in the Mess Hall between the captain and something he was arguing with in his head; because he fired three shots from a plasma pistol through his imaginary friend that then went through the ship’s hull. (audible sound/sigh) After that, he went screaming like a loon through the halls of the ship while trying to tear his face off... screaming something about; God’s eyes… or maybe it was pot pies; I’m not sure which.
Anyway, while we were trying to find the captain in the maze of halls of that damn ship, he must have gotten it in his head to escape, because he climbed into the only escape pod we had, and jettisoned himself into oblivion...
We watched the escape pod as it slowly disappeared into the deep blackness of the nothing, but eventually over time the captain and his... I guess you could call it his episode; became a faded memory in time. (audible sound/sigh)
The days started stretching into weeks and eventually the weeks started turning into months. We all did our best to keep busy after the captain went AWOL, but sitting in nothingness day after day with nothing changing on the inside or out, except time according to the ship’s instruments of course; can drive a person insane. Ha! So, after what seemed like months of the same shit different day, something finally happened to the nothing...
It cracked, or quaked or something, I don’t know. But what I do know is; one minute it’s nothing as usual. Then, bang! The loudest sound I have ever heard followed by the mother of all shit storms was on top of us. The ship was tossed from its bulkhead to its floor, and in all the chaos I managed to hit my head on something and I was knocked out cold. When I came to, it looked like nothing in our situation had changed all that much, so I thought to myself. Well James, if that happens every once in a while, it’ll definitely break up the monotony here in purgatory. Ha! (audible sound/Docking)
Then, three hours later I notice that I’m actually hungry for the first time in months and that according to my sensors in telemetry there are stars off in the distance. (audible sound unknown)
Four hours after that bit of exciting news; the scalpers arrive, hook us in and start towing us home.
Now, after having a slimy bowl of re-hydrated rations, 22 hours of interrogations and the worst headache of my life, all thanks to my fine hosts, I think I’ve finally decided that it’s time to turn in my commission, go back home, and get back into the family business mining the Kyper belt like I did before setting out to join the Temspire Galactic Web. I’ll tell you this(audible sound unknown) working the mines may be dangerous and dirty,(audible shuffle) but at least there’s no crazy talk about pot pies...or maybe it was dog eyes, I’m not sure which. (audible sound/sigh) Log...Stop listening.


C :/( Computer analyses complete: Temspire Galactic Web/ S.C.A.L.P.R. Division: 6
C :/( audible sounds still unidentified: Temspire Galactic Web/ S.C.A.L.P.R.
Division: 6
C :/( end
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Text: Aton Newcombe
Images: Alton Newcombe
Editing: Alton Newcombe
Publication Date: 10-09-2012

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