With the school year getting underway, my time to ponder and plan interesting things to post has dwindled substantially. So, each Wednesday, I'm probably going to post pieces of a story that wrote earlier this year. (I'll try to post random thoughts & comments on Sunday, still, for those of you who don't care about the story.) I will be the first to admit that I did not necessarily write this story for anyone else. My main motivation was that I have a master's thesis to write next year, and I wanted some practice in writing something that was longer than a 5-page graduate school essay. This story definitely is longer than 5 pages. So, if you're curious (or want to see what happens when a math teacher tries to engage in creative writing), read on. (As always, all content of this blog is copyrighted.)
The Lethe
Captain Christopher Dobbins of the Earth Space Fleet sat anxiously in his seat as his shuttle climbed away from the surface of Mars towards Dry Dock Four. His blue eyes darted quickly from the controls to the handheld computer containing his orders. He had read the orders many times in the thirty minutes since liftoff, and he fought the urge to read through them again. He tugged at the tight collar on his dress uniform. He hated dress uniforms. They never seemed to fit him right, despite the assurances from every technical expert that the scanners on clothing fabricators always got the fit exactly right. It seemed to him that the collars always came out just a bit on the small side, constricting his throat just enough to be annoying but not enough to cause any problems. After one more futile yank on his collar, he stared out the window of his shuttle as it neared the newest ship in the fleet, the ship that was about to become his: the Hyperion.
The Hyperion’s opalescent appearance stunned him. He had seen the schematics, of course, even pictures on the holovision. To see the ship in person, however, made it seem more real, somehow. Perhaps, the realization that he would soon be walking her decks and get to experience first-hand her unique abilities worked to create this heightened awareness of reality.
The Hyperion was no ordinary ship. Unlike its predecessors, which relied on an Ion Drive to propel themselves at speeds approaching the speed of light, the Hyperion had a new form of propulsion—jump drive—that allowed the ship to avoid the speed limitations imposed by special relativity. In a process that Dobbins really did not understand, the jump drive allowed the Hyperion to bend space in such a way that the ship could, in essence, move to a different location instantaneously.
Fleet Command had told Dobbins of the plans to build the Hyperion three years ago, naming him as commander-in-waiting. Those three years passed slowly, as Dobbins slowly bided his time on the Constellation, continuing an interesting (but dry) research mission in the solar system’s Kuiper Belt. Despite his love for exploring, he found the concept of getting to explore other star systems firsthand too fascinating to escape his thoughts. More than once, he had dreamed that he was onboard the Hyperion, giving the orders for the first jump out into the great unknown.
As the shuttle neared the Dry Dock, it began a series of complex maneuvers in order to align itself properly for docking with the Hyperion. Slowly, the shuttle neared the main shuttle docking bay on the starboard side of the ship. As the two vessels drew near, the automated controls of the shuttle took over, guiding the small transport flawlessly into the port. With a dull clang, the two ships joined together, and the doors at the right side of the shuttle slid open.
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