She was back in the tiny space with short, plastic ties snaking around her wrists and she struggled and thrashed until her wrists burned, but couldn’t get free.
Her arms were pulled up, up, up until her fists grazed the top of the box, the box that would be her coffin well before she was dead.
She wasn’t dead, her heart was beating like a trapped bird, her muscles were trembling but she couldn’t move and the walls were so close, so very close. The air thickened. Sweat dripped down her forehead unimpeded, stinging as it fell into her wide, wide eyes.
The walls were pressing on her, squeezing her shoulders and grinding her bones together and her mouth was gone and her eyes were gone and her screams were gone and only her howling mind was left in the box forever and ever and ever and–
Pea jerked awake as an alarm sounded. She flailed, then fell heavily on the black plush carpet. The jolt sent fresh pain through her hands, still sore from pounding on the real closet walls.
Perhaps also sore from fighting dream walls.
At first, all the companion could do was gasp gulps of air in through a blessedly-open mouth. The overwhelming despair of her dreamself lingered and she was tempted to close her eyes and indulge it. Let it fill her until there was no space for anything else. Bury her head in the carpet.
However the alarm, so shrill and demanding that it cut right to the center of her cowering heart, grew louder and more urgent every second.
There was no one else to respond to it.
“Wha…?” she said. Super great start, she told herself. You’ll get that Captain assignment in no time.
“Uh, Escape Pod? Pod?” she tried again. “What’s going on?”
“We are on a collision course,” the cool, unhurried voice of the computer informed her. “I recommend evacuation.”
“But...” Realizing she was still in an untidy heap on the floor, Pea sat up and glanced around to make sure she hadn’t somehow confused the situation. Nope. Still in a tacky, brown velvet nightmare. The pool of water was glimmering just a couple of feet away. Pea realized to her dismay that it was a spa pool.
A spa pool. In an escape pod.
She dragged her brain back to the matter at hand.
“I’ve already evacuated! I’m literally in an evacuation ship. Does the escape pod have… an escape pod?”
“No secondary escape pods are available.”
Pea ground her teeth. She used her frustration with the pod computer as fuel to push up from the ground. Being upright didn’t seem to help the situation, exactly, but it allowed her fury to rise to the top of her mind, like oil sitting on the water of her despair.
“Can we move and avoid the collision?”
“Affirmative.” Pod sounded almost offended by the question.
“Well, do it, then!”
“A Captain assignment is required to pilot the ship.”
“Oh for fucks sake.”
The anger that seemed to be constantly bubbling under the surface of her skin flared up and Pea kicked at the nearest sofa. It stoically absorbed the blow.
Pea’s foot was somewhat less stoic in retort.
Limping, she made her way to the control room. She couldn’t quite bring herself to call it a bridge, even though that was obviously the intention. It was just too dinky, and way too indulgent, like everything else in the spacecraft. The overstuffed, red velvet seats, with their metallic bronze trim, looked like something out of a Victorian-esque sex dungeon.
Pod cut the alarm as Pea entered the control room, and instead began to helpfully count down to the collision.
“270 seconds to contact… 260… 250… ”
The issue was outlined on the viewscreen, which had changed radically since the last time Pea had seen it. Instead of a blank field, it was filled with the starscape she had expected to see in the first place. A scattering of faint stars glimmered in the dark distance, outshone by a blazing yellow sun, around the size of a baseball, in the upper left portion of the screen. Pea could see only one planet, like a streaky purple marble nestled in the night. The rest of the screen was filled with what she took at first to be an asteroid field, but quickly realized was actually some kind of man-made… well, sentient-made… debris.
And her pod was drifting straight through it.
Even as she stared at the screen a few small pieces of metal loomed towards her, approaching so quickly she gasped out loud, before they flared and vanished.
There must be a kind of energy shield up around the ship, Pea surmised, relieved that there was at least some protection between her and certain death. Evidently it was not enough to stop Pod’s irritatingly-steady countdown.
Outlined an urgent neon-green, with an insulting red arrow pointing at it, was a much larger piece of metal, still some distance away but dead ahead.
Pea guessed that was the immediate issue (and didn’t need a giant arrow painted on the screen to do it). According to the emotionless countdown, it and the pod would collide in less than three minutes.
Pea shoved herself into one of the porno chairs and inspected the control monitors closely. They seemed identical, each touch screen about a metre wide, covered with icons of buttons and levers. The top half of each was dedicated to what Pea assumed was a view behind the ship, which looked clear enough.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Fortunately, nothing seemed as complicated as she had feared, and each icon was clearly labeled. Accelerator. Brake. Direction. Holding her breath, she placed two fingers on the direction control, which was an icon that looked like a chunky joystick. Gently, she slid them backward.
Nothing happened.
She tried it a bit firmer, pushing to the side. She added a tentative finger to the accelerator, then another to the brake.
The pod- and the debris- were unmoved.
As Pea re-examined the control panel, wondering what she was doing wrong, the pod computer helpfully took the time to comment.
“A Captain assignment is required to pilot the ship.”
Even as the cold voice spoke in her ear, it also continued the countdown in the background.
“Fuck it,” Pea said, and mashed at the controls, hoping that violence was the answer.
It was not.
“I recommend evacuation.”
“And how the hell am I supposed to evacuate?” Pea demanded. “There’s no other pod to take me. And we’re in the middle of a debris field, no thanks to you!”
Pea suddenly grasped the molded bronze handrests of her ridiculous chair and sat bolt upright as the contradiction hit her like a bolt of lightning.
“You piloted us all the way here, even though I’m not a captain! So why are you suddenly being such a bitch? Why can’t I pilot the ship? Why can’t you save me?”
The ship said nothing, and Pea realized she had probably confused it with too many questions.
“How. Do. I. Live. Through. This.” She bit out the words, her jaw painfully clenched. Fear was snaking up through the anger now, a sinuous, chilling thread that threatened to freeze her in place.
Better to stoke the anger - stay hot and hopefully alive.
The pod computer hesitated, in the way that Pea was coming to realize meant that it was calculating. So the stupid thing had been braying about evacuation without any idea how that could be done.
Pea took firm hold of her anger. It felt more than justified.
If the debris didn’t break up the pod Pea might do it herself.
“There is an emergency suit in the recreation room. It can support you in vacuum conditions.”
“OK.” Pea took a deep breath and began to rush back into the recreation room, when a thought occurred to her.
“How long does it take to put on an emergency suit?”
“The suit requires ten minutes for pressurization.”
“God damn fucking hell!” Pea slammed her injured hands against the door frame as she yelled, then gasped with pain.
The countdown continued. Less than two minutes to go.
“OK, OK, what else can we do to prevent a collision? Please, can’t you just move the ship? Like, on auto-pilot?”
Not waiting for an answer, Pea barked out a command.
“Pilot out of the debris field.”
“I cannot comply. A Captain assignment is required to pilot the ship.”
Cradling her hands together, Pea strained to remember exactly what she had said last night. Maybe it needed the exact right wording to fly somewhere and she had just hit upon it by mistake. She vaguely remembered it saying something about authorization. She just didn’t know enough. Maybe the ship only worked in that blank void, whatever it was. Maybe the ship wouldn’t obey because it was too close to the star system.
Or maybe the ship was just an absolute bastard who hated Pea and wanted her to die.
“Please, just tell me what I need to say!” she begged as the countdown clipped the one minute mark and continued inexorably on.
The chunk of debris outlined in green was growing rapidly to fill the screen as it approached. It looked like a solid piece of hull, the size of a small car, painted green and gold on one side, with a shimmering tangle of pipes and wires on the other. It spun lazily as it approached, a motion which would no doubt tear through the little pod with ease. The neon-green outline provided by the computer contorted as the metal spun. A second arrow had been added to the first, which made Pea want to bellow with rage.
For a bizarre moment she had an overwhelming urge to climb back into the closet.
“Please rephrase the question,” the pod said.
As 30 seconds approached, a different idea popped into Pea’s head. “Do we have weapons? Can I shoot it?”
If nothing else, going out in a blaze of glory might make her feel better.
“Phasers are present on the pod.”
“Oh thank god, finally. OK, where are they?”
“A Captain assignment is required to use the phasers.”
“Arrgghhhh!” Pea screamed as the chunk of hull bore down on her, ten seconds away from ending her life.
It had been a shitty life so far, but she still wanted to keep it.
She wanted to know her real name.
She wanted to know who he was.
She wanted to tell him he had really, really bad taste in escape pods.
Pea tensed, curled up with her knees to her chest, waiting for the end to come. The pitted mass of metal filled the screen… and slid out of sight.
Nothing happened.
She almost fell over, she had braced so rigidly for an impact that never came.
“What happened?”
“Escape Pod A is no longgggggg...”
The computer voice fuzzed out in a spray of static. Another voice, young and high-pitched, with a strange, lilting accent, filtered in through the crackle.
“Hello? Is someone there?”
“Oh my god, yes!” Pea scrambled upright, and looked around foolishly, as if there was a mic somewhere that she could yell into.
There was nothing to be seen out the viewscreen except more bits of debris, several of which, she suddenly noticed, now also had urgent neon-green outlines.
Well, that was just perfect.
“Are you operational? I pushed you so you didn’t hit that… thatttttt... “
“Comlink operation restored.”
The static… and the voice... cut out abruptly as the pod computer spoke.
“Restored!?” Pea took a deep breath. Anger was good at keeping her mind clear, but it wasn’t exactly helpful when dealing with Pod.
“Look, Pod, I was talking to someone!”
Predictably, the pod had no answer to that.
“Escape pod computer,” Pea said, slowly, carefully, and barely a hint of burning rage in her voice. “Please let me talk to the person who was speaking before.”
The longest hesitation yet, as Pea held her breath. She could almost hear an upturned nose in Pod’s voice when she finally deigned to speak.
“Connection restored.”
“Hello, hello?” The voice was much clearer, without the static that had marred it before. It was frantic. “Please say you’re there, I don’t want to be alone… Hello?”
“Hello!” Pea said. “I’m here, I’m here! Who are you?” She scoured the viewscreen for an intact ship, but saw nothing but crumpled bits of metal. There was nothing on the backview either. “Where are you?”
“I’m right next to you… can’t you see me?” The youthful voice filled with concern. “Are your sensors down too?”
“I… I don’t know how to work the sensors!”
Pea suspected she could figure it out, but that Pod wouldn’t allow it. That wasn’t something she was eager to admit to a newcomer.
“Um… OK?” Surprise and confusion came across, clear as a bell.
A small thread of black doubt spun through Pea’s golden relief at another human voice. Her spark of hope that it might be him was snuffed out before it even had a chance to live.
Could this person possibly be a captain? Someone who could save Pea? It seemed very unlikely. They were so young, and wearing their heart on their sleeve. It seemed more like a child, and possibly another escapee.
“I guess I’m… I’m next to your dome thingy.”
Putting aside her trepidation, Pea rushed into the rec room and ordered the pod to make the dome translucent again. Apparently you didn’t need a Captain assignment to pull the curtains.
Right there, seemingly close enough to touch, was another ship. It was chunky, strangely organic, and it seemed to be hovering uncomfortably close to the escape pod, but it was there. Pea sagged onto one of the couches.
Another ship. Another person.
She wasn’t alone in the universe with only a second-rate pod computer for company.
There was someone else here too.