Prelude
The room didn’t have anything that was wrong with it, as far as she could see. There were random papers all over the coffee table and couch; documents of some sort. The wall paper was pealing and molding. A dusty television that dated back quite awhile sat in the corner across from the flower print couch and coffee table. The room was darkly lit and only a faint light came through the dark grey curtains. This is wrong. She thought. This isn’t right. But what was wrong with it?
The room seemed unfamiliar to her and yet she knew it. She got a strange nostalgic vibe from it. Something about the room frightened her, a sort of looming intimidation that pervaded ones mind. She wanted out of here, but she found herself immobilized.
There was sudden odd sound that caught her attention. It sounded like a loud heart beat but didn’t have the right rhythm. It was low and quite thunderous and almost hurt her ears.
No rational thought came to her, she was too frightened. She started to panic, her heart rate increased quite greatly and she began to shake. She wanted to run from here to some place safe, but where? It now seemed that the whole world had become all the more frightening and that she wouldn’t dare to venture out into it.
Streaks of red climbed up the walls from the carpet and soon the rotting wall paper was covered in dark red. The wall paper stripped its self off the wall and the carpet receded from the floor. Everything was now rusted and dirty and smelled of death and rot.
Everything abruptly turned white, there was no discernable walls, ceiling or any other shape or shadow. A stream of blood extended out away from her, it was probably three inches wide. The blood pooled at the end and continued to run in an unusually straight line. From where she was standing, it looked as if it was running up hill. She didn’t understand this; she knew it had significance, but what about it was so significant? And why did it seem so vaguely familiar?
Small lines branched out from the main stream, more branches stretched out from the first ones and so on. Soon it began to look some what like a tree. It continued to spread and then suddenly stopped and the only movement she could see was that at the very end of the main stream had narrowed down to a thin line with two smaller lines coming out from the sides and then stopped like the rest of the tree.
Her sight began to blur and the tree just became a red spot, but then disappeared altogether. A fuzzy silhouette of a person took its place. They looked to be a tall black pole with a hazy outline.
“Wake up,” A familiar voice said. “Wake up.” She felt like she was being shaken. Her eyes flipped open abruptly, fear gripped her. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was, but then she looked over and saw General Lachlan Spara staring at her with a little less than a friendly look on his face and she realized that she was aboard the USS Valkyrie. She looked at him like she’d never seen a human being before.
“I’d prefer it if my crew members didn’t fall asleep on the job,” He said almost angrily, then added a fake smile. She felt a slight bit of embarrassment and was partially glad that he didn’t realize who she was yet.
She looked at the screen of her console then looked back at the general. “Eh, sorry. I, uh, haven’t been getting much sleep lately.” She said wearily, she would have told him that she was technically his crew member and that she was the engineer who designed and built the ship, but that could be considered mouthing off and doing so to ones superiors wasn’t exactly terribly bright.
“I don’t find that a very good excuse, do you?” His tone quite far away from friendly now and it sounded like more of a scolding.
“No, sir. I didn’t have the intent of it sounding like an excuse, sir. I was stating the truth.” She said quietly.
“Well, excuse or not, I want you to go back to your cabin and get some rest.” He said. “Kelson! Take her place!”
“But-” She started but was cut off before she could finish.
“Go,” He ordered, pointing to the door that led out of the bridge of the ship.
She got up with out any further argument and left the bridge silently. The floor of the hall was lighted by blue-green lights just above the gravity stabilizing panels. It was one of her ideas for the ship and it turned out quite nicely. There were also lights above in the ceiling as well, but they weren’t the same blue-green as the floor.
The hallway expanded into a large room that had three hallways branching off from it. She kept straight to get to the transit center.
She passed bathrooms and storage compartments and several other types of doors and rooms. Crew members were scattered here and there, all minding their business and not asking her questions. One of the crew she passed was a friend of hers named Lula Rae Arna.
“Hey!” Lula excitedly.
“Hi, are you heading to the bridge?” She asked.
“Yeah, just got off break. What are you doing here? I thought this was your shift.” She asked.
“It is, but… I fell asleep and Spara dismissed me.”
“Oh, well, at least you get the rest of the day off, right?”
“Yeah, I just hope he doesn’t mark me down for this.” She said.
“Oh, he wont, he’s pretty cool. Well, I have to go. So Ill see you later!” Lula said then went on her way back down to the bridge. She stared down the hall and watch her disappear down the hall and then she went her separate way.
Well, this is the prelude to my new story; Null One. It lacks in the editation and revision department so its probably not that great and there are probably many a typo. Supposed to be quite enigmatic in the beginning then things start to reveal them selves as it goes along.
So, critisism? kudos? Hate it? Love it?
