The Stellar Horizon cruises towards the beacons marking the edge of the flow shoal. The ship’s engines thrum, sending a gentle vibration throughout the entire ship. Buzz floats at the helm, making adjustments to the thrusters with ease as the capacitive touch screens respond to his every movement. He seems almost in tune with the ship, rendering more traditional controls like the flight yoke unnecessary.
"It's been years since I've seen Leoria's emerald skies," Alina muses from her seat next to Buzz in the copilot's chair. "I remember the purple tundras stretching out as far as you can see." While reminiscing about her childhood home she lifts her knees to her chest and allows the heels of her boots onto the front edge of her seat. She hugs her legs while allowing old memories to wash over her.
"Sounds like something out of a human fairy tale," Buzz remarks.
“No, it had plenty of rough edges as well, but it is a pretty planet,” Alina states wistfully. “But , I have a lot of fond memories from my parent’s shop.” Alina turns her soft brown eyes towards Buzz, “What was your childhood like?”
At this question, Buzz's demeanor seemed to brighten to a slightly lighter pink hue. “I was born in the Crimson Nebula when my parents each gave up part of themselves in the form of ionized hydrogen and cosmic dust. Under their guidance it coalesced, forming me, a new creature. Being formed of my parents in such a way, a portion of my knowledge literally came from them. It would be like an infant in your culture being born with the intelligence of a teenager.”
“Being born a teenager, that had to be difficult for your parents,” Alina comments while smiling at the mere idea.
“Well, there was the time that me and my friends accidentally interfered with the seeds of a new planet when we were racing around a variable star. I was sure my parents were going to perform decomposition on my molecular bonds,” Buzz concedes.
“Leave it to you to accidentally destroy a civilization millions of years before it could even start,” Alina laughs. “It makes me getting caught cheating on my eighth grade calculus exam seem so trivial in comparison.”
With a final adjustment, Buzz prepared the ship for the transition to the astral plane. Buzz announces over the intercom, “Initiating space-time bubble in 3-2-1. Space-time bubble initiated.” A nearly transparent bubble encapsulates the ship in a piece of real space. “Entering the astral plane from the flow shoal in 5-4-3-2-1.”
As the Stellar Horizon enters the astral plane Alina's mind drifts back to a lecture from her astrophysics teacher in 10th grade.
“According to the theory of special relativity, faster-than-light travel is not possible as nothing can exceed the speed of light. Additionally, objects with mass would need to be converted entirely into energy as they approached this speed. Even if it were achievable, the vast distance between inhabitable systems would mean that only a small amount of time would pass for the traveler, while much more time would pass for those observing from a stationary standpoint. For example, traveling from Leoria to Cosinda and back at 99.99% of the speed of light would take about 8 years for an observer on Leoria but only 45 days would have passed for the crew on the ship.
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However, physicists have discovered an alternate, although not parallel, plane of existence commonly referred to as the astral plane in which space and time operate differently. FTL drives, which do not actually travel faster than light, encapsulate your ship in a space-time bubble and move your entire ship into this astral plane. Without this space-time bubble, your ship, and therefore you as well, would simply cease to exist as you are not designed to persist in this alternate plane of existence.
Not all points in space seem to connect to this alternate plane, but those that do typically have six points that connect to this plane simply referred to as astral flow shoals, but to increase challenges in traveling through this alternate plane is the fact that where the astral plane and our reality connects seem to occasionally shift in impossible to predict manners.
Some may argue that we have not yet developed the necessary math to accurately predict these shifts and changes. While that argument is technically true, we can compare this to how science still doesn't actually understand why people yawn. The current leading theory on yawning is that it may be a thermoregulator for our brain, which sounds reasonable, except if you yawn, why does everyone around also start yawning. So without intending to trivialize what astral plane physicists do, certain parts of the astral plane might be unknowable just like our lack of understanding about why yawning is strangely contagious.”
The ship trembles gently as it slips into the astral plane. Every star appearing to press flat and smear into a rainbow of colors and eventually turning their surroundings into a uniform gray. Through this astral plane they would travel light years of distance to reach Leoria in less than a stand.
———
The Stellar Horizon, in need of a universal timekeeping system while in space, aligns its chronometers with those of Vega, the capital of Oceania. This standardization makes travel in both real space and astral a little more regulated for the crew and since a majority of astral travelers have standardized on the same time it also makes it easier to interact with other ships and space stations.
Therefore it is rather late by the time the Stellar Horizon actually enters the flow shoal and everyone on board has had a long day. Cally notices the bags under her eyes in the mirror as she finishes rinsing her mouth. Exiting the head, she sees John leaving the galley with what looks like a coffee thermos and heading for the common area. John silently waves and Cally equally silently nods.
As Cally enters her own cabin, she looks around at a rather spartan room. It has a bed, a desk jutting out from a bulkhead and a chair. While glancing at the bed she gently mumbles, “At least it looks like the sheets and pillow were recently laundered.” She leans the chair against the door, tosses her duffel underneath the desk, and she moves the pillow to the floor on the side of the bed that is opposite to the room’s lone entrance. Cally makes sure her blaster and her blade are both in easy reach of where she intends to sleep. She takes off her flight jacket to use it as a blanket. Cally thinks to herself, ‘There are those that would consider me paranoid, but its that paranoia that kept me alive in the service. Heck even before that, this same paranoia kept me alive on the streets as a kid.’ Cally listens carefully, faintly hearing something playing on the holo-vid projector, and shakes her head at the idea of staying up and watching movies. Cally stretches out on the floor and finds a night full of dreams, or maybe they would be considered nightmares, of the past.