Scenes From Space

Chapter Two: A Personnel Request

The sleep cycle ended with the four-four beeping of an alarm and a changing from blue safety lights to yellow simulated sunlight. I rubbed my eyes and sat up. I took a look around the room I now called home. I tried to cover up the cold metal as much as I could. There were framed star charts on the wall and a few indoor plants from various worlds. My sheets, blankets, and pillows were orange, salmon, yellow, and blue. I stood up and got water from the sink unit. I kept the unit on the sink setting, but it was a drawer type thing that could pull out to a shower or toilet. My favorite plant was called a Duieepent. It was kind of like a Hibiscus from Earth but with double-petals. It was bright orange with a red starburst center. I also had blue ivy-like vines tumbling down from a shelf with several knick-knacks that I'd picked up along my travels. After the plants were watered, I slipped into new, clean clothes. An all-black assemble that strongly resembled the day before but with sneakers instead of boots. They were Converse that I picked up on a swap-moon a while back. Earth goods were novelties in this section of the universe. The stuff Earthlings produced were hilarious backwater jokes and Earthlings themselves made for great science experiments and sex slaves...

Cold table, stabbing pain, black, red lights, glowing red eyes, needle,

I leaned my head against the door to my room and hummed I'm Not Okay by My Chemical Romance to myself. I took a deep breath. "I'm not okay and it's alright." Okay, I had to go face the day.

There was fresh tea sitting in the pot on the round table in the corner of the kitchen. If you could imagine an open-concept kitchen-dining but made of metal, that's what this room looked like. I never stopped missing coffee but apparently coffee was just an Earth thing and every single planet had an excess of tea. I poured myself a cup and settled into the bench across from Boo. She was braiding her hair. The strands changed from teal to sky blue in morning contentment and back to teal as she secured the braid with a ribbon.

"Morning," she said happily with a trill. I mumbled back a greeting and took a long drink. The tea this morning was eerily similar to chai.

"What tea are we having this cycle?" I asked. Everyone in this section of the universe had agreed to use cycles as a measurement of time. As far as I could tell, a cycle was about five hours. The ship's time was divided into four cycles. Two day and two night cycles. A sun-cycle was used on planets to describe the daily journey around each planet's sun.

"It's Spiced Geeninging from the Planet 'Ng. Grey's in a bit of mood this morning," Boo answered. I sighed internally. Greyeenung could go by Grey, but I couldn't go by Gwen.

"Why is Greyeenung in a mood, as you say?" Poku asked as he too sat at the table. His grey, shiny skin seemed to bled right into the metal around him. I had to focus on his yellow hair and re-focus out to get a good look at him. Poku watched me focus on him.

"You could turn on your other eye, Guinevere, that would be best to help you see," Poku said. I glared at him. I did not like the Waseatryn-tech eye. It looked exactly like my other eye. But if I turned it on and used it to see, it ran programming over the things I was looking at and zoomed in and out. It was dizzying.

The Captain and Greyeenung entered the mess in an argument. Grey had one set of arms crossed stubbornly over his chest and the other waved about with whatever point he was trying to make.

"We've been over this Grey!" Ben said. "You can't play with the new blaster. Guinevere was wrong to hide it her quarters but correct in that you are too big to use it."

"I can replace the trigger mechanism with one that will fit my fingers!" Greyeenung argued.

"Please don't mess with my rifle. It's a work of art and I just got the scope calibrated just right," I pleaded from the table.