by Jeremiah Allsman
Shelly
awoke from a dream. He body was a dripping mess of sweat and her heartbeat
echoed throughout the steel hull. She hit a switch at the edge of her bed
and the lights flashed a couple times before they stayed on. Her room was
a mess. There was dirty underwear and trash all over the floor. She sat
on the edge of her bed and stretched. Her long, tan, legs gently footed
themselves on the floor. She walked to her dresser, stepping over porn
magazines and the clothes of her last guest. She pulled some panties on
and then her tan jumpsuit, which covered her up to her neck. The sound
of the television flashing on and the high pitched whistle of the intercom
was overwhelming, but she had gotten used to it. It was the intergalactic
repair vessel M-4 Carlson that had drafted her only a year ago. She had
to leave the beautiful scene of working the streets that she had grown
accustomed and the realization of the city; the smells of marijuana smoke
and air pollution from the cold fusion of the automobiles had always left
her in poor health. She would let out a cough from time to time. She constructed
a cup of coffee from her china collection and the ground coffee beans that
she had bought from Oriental Mobaria, the new country located in the southern
tip of what used to be Russia. She sipped the coffee slowly, not to miss
a drop. A knock hit her door a couple of times.
"Open, please," she said.
It was Harry Mills, the new officer that had just taken charge of the securities
on board. He had jet black, messy hair, and wore black, plastic glasses,
which left him with a less than attractive look. "I'm kind of busy."
"I don't want your company,
private. I want you to position yourself at your post, immediately," he
said and then left her to her duties. She walked down a narrow hallway
to a ladder that reached up to a damaged K-grid to which she had to repair.
Her crew leader, Ensign Stark was already working on the problem. "Where
the fuck have you been?" she said. Shelly winked at her. "Don't give me
that shit Tobias, I had to hold the coil up and weld it by myself and then
go through the manual to find out which devator to use to keep the grid
closed." Shelly began gently planting wet kisses along Stark's ear. Stark
turned to kiss Shelly's lips and began pulling off her jumpsuit. Her sweaty
breasts gleamed as light reflected off them. Their jumpsuits were pulled
off each other and Shelly clenched her fist only to shove her hand inside
of Stark. Stark moaned as Shelly followed through with continuous motion.
There was a constant creaking noise from the side of the conduit and as
if the ship were a soda can, the side of the wall contracted and instantly
crushed the two women.
Mills climbed the ladder
that led to the conduit where the two lovers had been smashed. "Mary mother
of God. Stuck to the wall like flypaper," he said. The immense pressure
on the outside of the ship had sealed off the entryway above the ladder.
The only trace of the two women was liquid dripping from the side of the
wall.
"What could have caused
that? Did we hit a meteorite or something?" Captain Mueller asked.
"There's no residual sign
that we hit anything, sir. The hull merely contracted due to an unknown
reason." Mckown, the helm officer responded.
"Find out the reason. Our
mission stops until we find out what is happening to my ship, understood?"
"That could take weeks."
"I don't care if we're all
retired. Find it."
"Yes, sir." Captain Mueller
reached over to an intercom on the side of his chair. He hit a button.
"Chief Mills, This is Captain
Mueller. Follow me into my office, please." He walked into an elevator.
It was an oval shaped office with a wall of windows and a long oval shaped
desk toward the far end. Behind his desk, hung neatly was a painting of
Pearl Harbor after the Japanese attack just before World War II. Mueller
sat quietly at his desk listening to Jim Croce's Greatest Hits as he played
the classic Tetris on his small computer screen. Mills walked in. "I don't
think I've ever heard the significance of that painting, Mark." He said.
"My great, great, great
grandfather died during that attack."
"What position did he hold?"
"I don't know. I just know
that he died and that I was racist for every Jap in the world when my grand-daddy
told me."
"What did you want to see
me about?" Mueller's chair swung around so that his back was to Mills.
"I want to know why those
two women turned to goo today. I thought you might have some theories."
Mueller swung around to face Mills again and then lit a cigar. "Cigar?"
Mills' hand extended.
"Yes, please." Mueller tossed
a lighter to him. "Well?"
"Not a clue. What can cause
a ship to contract only in one spot? What's this hyperactive bitch made
of anyway?" Mills asked.
"The exterior is titanium
and the shit on the inside is some new kind of metal. Musilanium or some
shit. What were those girls doing in that conduit that might have made
it react like that?"
"What does Tobias do best?"
Mills had a keen smile on his face.
"No way. Stark was a lesbian?"
"I bet I can find a video
of what happened in that room, if I can cut through the side of the ship."
Captain Mueller put his feet up on his desk.
"Do it."
It was a bloody mess of
bodily fluids all mixed in a puddle on the ground and it was still dripping,
hitting Mills in the eye as he stood on the ladder and used a laser-saw
to cut through the Musilanium siding.
Mills walked into Mueller's
office, irritated. "No matter how high I turn the heat up, the bitch won't
cut!"
"Use an ax. I don't care
what you use, just cut through the damn thing. Make sure you're wearing
a air suit." Mueller said.
An ax blade pulsated against
the hull as Mills, wearing anti-gravity boots, stood on the ceiling and
sliced through the crumpled conduit. Ping! Crack! It was only one swing
later that the metal, which Mills had cut, contracted, nearly knocking
him into the wall. Startled, Mills crawled onto the ground level and disconnected
his boots. He opened the sliding steel door. The Musilanium rasped together
as the door touched the wall. As Mills left and the door shut, the entire
wall collapsed upon itself. At Ops, Mueller was sitting uncomfortably in
his chair as reports of bizarre Musilanium carnage dinned from his intercom.
In an empty hallway, a loose lab rat scurried across the floor, until the
floor lifted underneath it and rapidly smashed it into the ceiling. As
the ship began to engage into the obit of the sun, the Musilanium became
more reactive. The tiniest step or shuffle engaged the ship to wrinkle
like aluminum-foil. Ops was the dirtiest. As each crewman pushed a button,
the button pushed back, piercing the operator to the ceiling.
After a man moved, he didn't
move again, except to be smeared down the side of a wall. The ship became
an orbiting mass of steel and slaughter that eventually drifted into the
setting sun.
The End
Copyright 1998 Jeremiah Allsman
