Buttons #Project Constellations

A good day

I started the ship moving, and we headed out into the Oort cloud. I'm concentrating hard, as I'm the one piloting the damn ship, but even still, I have to have a little giggle to myself. Brianna said, 'Engage!' She was totally channeling Star Trek's Jean Luc Picard! So very awesome.

Turns out, the Oort cloud is damned easy to pilot through. Brianna shoulda given the job to John after all. Thankfully, we had an interesting stop ahead.

'Approaching our newly discovered dwarf planet,' I announce.

'Thank you Olive,' (I insisted I go by my first name), 'please match speeds. Report Mr. Cullar.' Cullar is our materials analyst, he studies the data we manage to collect and summarises it so we can understand what the stuff is we are passing by. 'Ms. President, this dwarf planet isn't at all like we anticipated.' Cullar reports. His voice is about an octave higher than usual. Glad it's not just me that happens to. 'Ma'am. The dwarf planet is releasing radiation from all areas of the spectrum. Its... glowing.'

'Bring it up on visual please.' Brianna ordered.

Up on the screen, a spinning perfect sphere appeared, glowing an angelic pure white. Beside me, Ned crossed himself. While I think that any religious gesture is idiotic superstitious nonsense, I could see why Ned felt the need. The glowing white sphere looked absolutely surreal, even I was struggling with an explanation that wasn't supernatural.

'What... is it?' The president asked, staring as awed and puzzled as the rest of us. 'No idea.' Culler breathed. 'Ma'am.'

The glowing sphere was getting brighter and brighter on the screen. 'Cullar, are you increasing brightness?'

'No ma'am, the... dwarf planet?... is brightening. If it releases much more radiation, we will have to distance ourselves or be exposed to dangerous levels.'

'Let's move out anyway.' Brianna muttered as she pressed her com toggle. 'President Benden to the fleet, please move away from the dwarf planet as quickly as you can.'

I reached towards my workstation, about to enter the new route when the screen brightened further. Glancing up, I saw a bright light move up from the planet and come flashing towards us.

'Watch out!' A voice cried. 'It's coming straight for us!'

Even as the cry finished, the light appeared on the bridge, directly in front of Brianna. She stood to confront it, and stopped, frozen in place. The light pulsed, and Brianna didn't move, she looked to be in a trance.

Whelp, never mind. There is an easy non-supernatural explanation for all of this. Aliens. Cool, I'd never thought I'd meet any aliens. I wonder if Brianna's having a chat or being brainwashed?

'Brianna!' John cried, jumping towards her, 'President Benden!'

John stopped short of reaching Brianna, the coward, and cringing, looked around, too afraid to act. 'Somebody do something!'

'Sure thing, boss.' I reply. I turn towards the glowing light floating on the bridge. 'Hi there. I'm Olive, it's nice to meet you.'

The floating light seems to get brighter on the side 'facing' me, and I feel a pleasant tingling sensation. I'm pretty sure it just said 'hi' back.

'What's your name? Do you have a name? Or a language to communicate the name, or something?' I ask, floundering on the etiquette of how to be polite to aliens.

The tingling sensation kinda lightly bubbles through me. That was definitely a giggle. The bright white light explodes into a complex pattern of many hues of lights. And yup, that is it's name. 'That's a very pretty looking name, thanks! Can I call you Kaleidoscope?' I bubble back.

The light sends a tingle I take for a yes then redirects it's attention back to Brianna, and the fun tingles it was sending through me dissipate. Good ol'Kaleidoscope sure would be a blast to spend more time with, bubbly tingles are awesome!

J-face is standing beside Brianna, screwing up his courage. I could tell, because to screw up his courage, he had to screw up his face first. When his face was so contorted I was afraid it would crawl right off, J-butt grabs Brianna and shakes her. 'Wake up!'

Brianna stays rigid, but turns her head to remain looking at the light. 'Stop it' J-idiot screams at the white light. Nothing changes, Brianna and Kaleidoscope stay focused on each other. 'Can't you see it's dangerous! Do something!' J-tool screams at us.

I can see he's pretty distressed, so I lower myself to actually saying his name, 'John, I did do something. We introduced ourselves, it's all good, man.'

'All good! All good the fourteen year old good-for-nothing punk says!' John is frothing at the mouth and shaking Brianna even harder. I'll totally own the punk part, but I take exception to being called 'good for nothing.' But even I have a filter when needed, and now was definitely a time to filter.

'We need to stop this thing!' John continues to froth, and grabs Brianna's hand, using it to unlock the clear plastic covering the big red button. Oh shit, I thought.

'Oh shit!' I cried!
'No! Stop!' The bridge crew had seemed suspended, observing the drama, and now that they saw the need to act, it was too late. To a man, the crew rushed towards John and Brianna, too slow. John pressed down on that big damn idiotic red button.

The entire bridge seemed to freeze. I stood silently, staring at John in disbelief. Really? Really? We would begin the end of humanity pressing the button to launch a nuke, and we were going to finish ourselves off the same way? We are a really stupid species, who cannot resist pushing buttons, and we might just deserve to go extinct.

'I've done it! I've saved us from the aliens!' J-ass screamed maniacally.

Mr. Cullar, trying to push up from the mad lunge he had been making in his attempt to stop J-maniac replied, 'We're too close, when the reactor ejects and hits the alien ship the resulting explosion will catch us all. The entire fleet will be destroyed. All of humanity.' Cullar gave up on trying to stand and thumped to the ground where he was. 'All human kind, gone.'

I glanced over at Ned, and we moved back to our cubbies together. Down, hidden under the privacy panel that separated our workstations, was a recess, and in that recess a unobtrusive flip-switch. Unflipped.

Breathing a giant sigh of relief, I move back down the bridge to stand next to John, Brianna and the pulsing light. Ned follows a few paces behind. 'Any of you fellows feel like maybe taking John down to the brig?' I enquire energetically.

'It doesn't matter anymore,' Cullar replied, 'Keeping John here, putting him in the brig, what does it matter?'

'Weeeellll,' I reply in a far too chipper manner. Have I mentioned I enjoy being obnoxious? 'It matters because there will be no nuclear explosion. Brianna installed a safety measure. A measure I'm not going to share for safety reasons. This safety measure requires one more step to be completed before our nuclear power core is launched. That step was not taken, ergo our power core stays where it is. You're welcome humanity, from Ned, President Benden and yours truely, Olive.' I bow to the crew as Ned tries to stifle his chuckles. Then Cullar cracks up, and the rest of the bridge is howling with laughter. Except Jack-face, who doesn't count, because he just tried to destroy humanity, and Brianna, who doesn't count because her mind was entirely elsewhere.

Two crew members grab Jack-ass by the arms and man-handle him off of the bridge. As they shuffle off, I turn towards the light. 'Mind letting us have our President back for a while? We could really use her here.'

The light pulsed in what looked like acceptance to me, and moved away from Brianna. She blinked her eyes, and moved quickly to look around. 'Ouch, why do my arms hurt? And how did you get up here Olive?'

'Ms President, ma'am,' I squeaked appallingly, 'Can Ned explain? I have a story about buttons to tell our new friend here.' I looked over at Kaleidoscope, and gestured it back to my cubby.

Bubbling tingling giggles ran through me, and we moved back together. I'm pretty sure this light alien is as young as I am in it's years.

Today was a good day. Saved humanity, got rid of my horrible boss, made a cool new friend...and said nineteen whole words to President Brianna!