Afterglow

Chapter II

I awoke to the soft hum of the station. The glow of the raging Emmy X-K25 filled the room with a calm, ambient glow. I rose from the stasis pod from which I spent my cold dreamless nights and walked over to the window.

My vision was filled with the seething sun, its light bathing me in the red glow now rendered rare in this decaying universe. Just behind the seemingly gigantic sun there lay something a little darker in nature...

Sagittarius A, the black hole that used to lie at the centre of the milky way  sat suspended behind Emmy X-K25 and when the space station faced it, it was the brightest thing in the infinite void some had taken to calling the "sky".

I turned around to survey my room.

It was a cramped, small place containing only a stasis pod, a window, a draw and a shower. I walked over to the shower and stood in the miniscule cubicle. Just as I was about to activate it the comm on the wall crackled into life.
"Miller?"

I quickly stepped over to the comm the cold, metal floor shuddering as I went. "Yes?" I replied, irratated at the disturbance. "I've just woken up..." I continued.

"It's commander Jankowicz here." The voice on the other end replied in a soft tone.

"Sorry sir, like I said-"

"Yes yes that is irrelevant lieutenant, when you are done, report to my quaters." He responded.

"Yes sir," I hastily replied.

The comm crackled once more before becoming silent.

..........

When the doors to commander Jankowicz's quaters opened, the first thing I noticed was that his normally strong unfaltering eyes were cast out of the window and staring at the cold void that was the rest of the universe. His face was weathered and his grey hair now linked upto his unkept beard.

His eyes turned towards me.

He stared at me for a moment. His eyes crawling across my face, trying comprehend my emotions.

"Miller, sit down." He spoke with a hollow, monotone voice.

His desk was approximately half a meter by three quaters of a meter with a chair on either side of the seventy five centimeters. I pulled out a chair and sat down.

"Lieutenant, what do you know of Utopia Station Alpha?"

I thought about it for a moment before replying. "It's a space station nearly identical to ours except it's orbiting a red dwarf nearly 100 light years away... Why do you ask?"

He leant forward. "Because yesterday, we recieved a transmisson from that station that has been travelling for about 100 years."

"What did it say?"

"This." He leant his chair back and pressed a button on his computer.

The voice that played out of the speakers sounded in his late forties with a gruff, coarse voice that sounded like it had just been subjected to a hefty dose of carbon dioxide. "This is captain William Strafer of Utopia Station Alpha. This is a message to the fellow Utopia stations out there... There is a flaw in the air recycling units that causes the carbon dioxide to not be filtered out... I'd probably say that every one on the station only has hours left... Signing off." The audio abruptly ended.

"Why did you bring me here sir?" I asked tenatively.

"Lieutenant Miller, did you know that this station began with only five hundred people on board? And now it has one thousand three hundred and eighty two? The air is recycled, the food is recycled, the water is recycled and when everyone first boarded this ship the food they ate had flavour the water they drunk wasn't somebodies piss that hadn't been recycled five billion times... You need to go to the station, see what we can use and tow it back for so we can adapt it for our systems."

"When are we going?"

"If you agree you'll set off in a week." He spoke before sighing. "The faster than light ships should help you get there in just under four years, thats if you use our fastest ship of course, and the time spent that close to a black hole will cause time offsets of upto 200 years depending on how long you spend there."

"Who will I be taking with me?"

"Take your pick, I'm going for the long term plan here."

"Requesting permission to take George Locklear, James Mayfare, Emma North and Ryan Johnson sir."

"Permission granted lieutenant."

I rose up to leave the room, the chair making a high pitch screeching noise as the metal rungs scraped across the floor. As I opened the door out the window Saggittarius A caught my eye. I temporarily put off leaving the room to look at this large sphere black that kept devouring and would keep doing so until everything within its unimaginably large web was consumed.

..........

After the meeting I returned to my cabin for the thirty seven minutes that remained until my work shift began.

I let the suns rays dance over my body as I lay next to the door, basking in its heat, thinking about the journey I had ahead of me. A beep sounded next to my ear. My hand reached up and pressed the intercom. "Who is it?" I spoke softly.

"Its me, Ilriana," the intercom crackled "I was wondering if you wanted to come down to the lounge later and talk?"

"Yeah yeah... Sure."

My hand fell down back onto the floor as the raging sun danced in a fiery inferno below me.

..........

"Are you sure you want to go? I have explained that you might never see your friends and family ever again."

"Yes you have..." spoke George Locklear his brown eyes staring at me as I explained the details to him. "Have you explained it to the rest of you choices?" His face was unmistakably pulled into a grimace.

"Yes I have and they all agreed."

He raised his eyebrows. "Even Ryan?"

"I think he just split up with his girlfriend or something."

George smiled. "Jesus christ... I'm glad we're in stasis for the trip..."

"So do I." I smiled back.

He opened the door to the mess hall and we both stepped through. "What are you getting today?" he asked me with a grin so wide that it covered the lower half of his face in it's entirity.

I grinned back at him. "What else but..." I started.

"SHIT?" we both finished and gave each other high fives. Several people in the hall stared at us with annoyed faces to which I replied with a middle fingered salute.

George patted me on the back. "Subtle... Very Subtle," he told me with the grin beginning to falter.

"What you doing tonight?" I asked him in a serious tone.

The red glow of Emmy suddenly filled the room. People stopped eating to stare at the sun for a second.

I could see a splinter of the black hole behind it, its innocent malevolence disguised by the raging sun it hid behind.

I walked forward in the qeue. Geirge also stared into space. "How long do you think we have left?" I asked him quietly.

It took him until we sat down with our bowls of tasteless sludge that he replied.

"I don't know..." his voice got caught in his throat "I don't think we can prevent it, so what's the point in worrying?"

I saw my other friend, Ildriana in the qeue and signalled her over.

When Ildriana sat down she decided to greet us with her characteristic greeting.

"Wassup fuckers,"

I smiled at her. "Why do you say that?" I asked her curiosly.

She furrowed her brow and looked at me questioningly. "Whats it to you fucker?" she asked in retaliation.

We both laughed and George looked uncomfortable.

He stood up. "I'm off, Miller, I've got some home brew if you want to come round later?" he asked me nonchalantely.

I smiled. "I'll think about it."

He walked out of the room.