Backwash [Omori/Mouthwashing]

Kills 99.9% of Bacteria

Feline Express Long-Haul Space Freighter | Morir

Crew | 5

Planned Shipment Duration | 382 Days

Elapsed Transit Time | 147 Days

i hope this hurts.

0 days before the crash.

You sat in the cockpit, waiting for an opportunity. The end was nigh. After the news you had just heard, there was no point in going on, and having access to the cockpit meant you could take full advantage of that and take everyone down with you.

The poorly constructed ship didn't even have a proper AI autopilot on it, just the shitty kind used by planes back in the old days. Still technically an AI, but barely even functional, let alone having reasoning algorithms.

The "AI" spoke up, mirroring a report you remembered seeing a day or two ago. You were never the best with time. "An orbital body has been detected twenty-one astronomical units ahead of the vessel."

Your ears perked up at the sound of an angel's choir as the voice continued, "Please make a manual correction one point four degrees leftwards to avoid impact with unknown mass."

This was your opportunity. Not wanting to go too far and miss it entirely in the opposite direction, you decided to play it safe and steered the wheel thirty degrees right, disobeying the voice exactly, and not going too far off course. A steer of that amount should've amounted to approximately one point five degrees right.

The autopilot was quite displeased with this. "Extreme warning! Direct collision course with orbital body one point nine astronomical units away. Engaging autopilot to correct vessel. Advise crew to take up emergency positions. Four thousand credits docked from crew pay package for failure of navigational staff."

Obviously, you didn't care. You didn't plan on having anyone get paid for this. You wanted this crash to kill the entire crew. You opened the utility locker promptly and grabbed the emergency key they left lying around. No captain clearance necessary. It was there just in case the autopilot malfunctioned and decided to send them careening into a piece of space junk or a random asteroid.

After taking the key, you used it immediately. You were able to do so with such speed that by the time you could press the confirmation button, the autopilot hadn't moved off course more than one degree. Everything was in place. You were seconds away from having all of your problems disappear.

You decided to leave the cockpit, not wanting to be there to face the music when the crash occurred. It'd be best to die without flashing lights and warning sirens blaring.

Navigating the hall, something was immediately clear to you. This hallway was a bit longer than you remember it. And had more turns. In fact, if you didn't know any better, you'd say they were far too long.

Slowly, more and more posters covered the walls each depicting the same stupid cat. "Mewo, the fun-loving feline who everyone loves."

Each was labelled with stifling warnings about safety, sleep, and other scheduling for everyone to almost always disobey.

Especially the sleep one. How they expected anyone to work off of five hours of sleep was beyond you. You thanked the lord daily that there were no cameras to check aboard the Morir.

Not like it mattered much anymore. After wandering the endless halls for long enough, a statue of Mewo that you remembered from the break room was standing in the middle of the hall, blocking your path. You tried to squeeze past it, but it wouldn't budge and was too wide to effectively go around. You considered trying to climb over, but you remembered seeing other paths splitting off when you were wandering. You might as well try taking one of those.

You began to backtrack... or at least, you tried to. The path back was different, though still winding and unfamiliar like before. The pipes lining the walls began to bend and contort in seemingly impossible ways. They stopped and started at random, snaking along the walls like worms between the bricks in a wall.

Sparks flew off of the wiring on the wall, hitting your skin and making you hiss with pain. Steam began to leak from the pipes with a tight whistle.

Regardless, you kept trekking. Something kept pushing you forward. More and more posters lined the walls. Reminding you about how valuable company time is, how important your cargo getting to the destination safely is, how important it was to "get enough sleep," which was five hours according to management.

You began to grip your head anxiously as you kept walking, almost running now down the hall. The blaring sirens and flashing red lights started again, following you from the cockpit into the hallway, wherever the cockpit was now. You were in that maze for minutes now, no crash, and no cockpit.

You were begging for release. In fact, you even iterated that aloud. "Please, make it stop! Make it stop!" You commanded, but the alarms kept sounding off.

The loud foghorn-like blasting kept hurling wave after wave of agony to your ears until you heard a crumbling sort of sound as the ground began to shake, and you fell over. The alarms stopped, and a loud crash could be heard getting nearer and nearer through the halls. It sounded like the Morir finally hit its target.

A massive wake of water came rushing at you like a harpoon to a whale. It engulfed everything in the hallway, including you. Before everything went black, you saw him. Mewo. The statue floating past you as you lost consciousness.