Any sort of description I could muster wouldn’t give justice to what I met with next. However, I will do the best I can. But in that moment, I had no idea what 99%–no–100% of what I saw on that spaceship was.
Needless to say, it overwhelmed me.
“This is the control room, Rayden.”
I whistled, impressed. To tell the truth, whistling was really all I could do. The staircase I had found near the entrance climbed higher than I had expected, leading to this spacious room that must have sat at the very top of the ship. In fact, once I looked out the trapezoid-shaped windows circling the entire room, I could see the ceiling of the cosmodrome just inches above us.
A wide oval desk sat right below the strange, tinted windows. The desk acted as the wall, filling every side and corner, leaving just a space large enough for five people to stand side by side in the center. The desk was colored a deep black, save for the multitude of odd lights that flashed in every color and danced along its surface.
An oversized chair with small silver wheels at its feet stood at the front of the room, right before a part of the desk that protruded from the wall a little further than any other part of it. Similar chairs lined the sides of the room next to smaller parts of the structure.
The rest of the room matched the deep black of the desk, including the floor. The floor looked so dark it almost tricked my mind that a hole gaped beneath my feet, and I’d fall into it at any moment.
“This room is where I will help you fly the spaceship,” Dex said.
“I have to fly it?!” I looked again at the other chairs on the sides and behind me. “It seems to me this isn’t a one-man operation.”
“With my help, you don’t need more than one man. I can inject myself into the systems and guide you through everything. In fact, it will almost feel like you are not the one operating the ship at all.”
My eyes scanned the strange lights surrounding me and blinking at me erratically. They made my head hurt.
“Alright, fine. Let’s get going.”
Dex directed me to sit in the large chair at the front. In front of the main “control panel,” as he’d said. Now, I was only a Tier 2 and still an adolescent–I wasn’t even yet 17–but none of those facts stopped the frown that dug into my face once I sat in the plush black seat and sunk so far that my shoulders sat about half a foot below where they were supposed to.
Dex didn’t even have to speak to me. It was like he took over my brain, though I still maintained all awareness. My own thoughts remained at the forefront of my mind, but the rest of my faculties were in Dex’s control. I tried not to think too much about the fact that he could literally take me over.
Through the promptings of Dex, my hands moved without me having to think, and I watched with tight lips as my thumbs pressed against the two divets in the desk at either side of me. When my thumbs landed, the divets emitted a white glow, and the entire ship buzzed. I could feel the vibrations from the buzz travel from the floor and through my legs.
Again, Dex didn’t have to say anything. The information describing what was happening filled my mind with no prompting. The machine had just connected with me. Like its systems were in my head, and I in its systems. Or was it Dex’s mind in the mix of everything, and I was just along for the ride?
A rumble, then a loud creak, sounded above. Through the windows in front of me that stretched to the top of the domed ceiling, I saw the two slabs of metal in the ceiling of the cosmodrome slowly chug open, revealing a tunnel leading upward, just wide enough to let the ship through.
My hands, still working against my will, landed on two levers just in front of where my thumbs had just been. The cold of the metal levers bit my palms as my hands gently pushed them forward, but only about an inch.
Another loud rumble, this time its source seemed to come from underneath me, reverberated through my entire body. Within another two or three seconds, my insides seemed to lift and travel toward my head, and then I realized the ship had begun its ascent into the tunnel.
I was floating! No–flying! In the air… just like a bird! Kind of. The ship had no wings that I could see, but what else could I compare a flying vessel to? With my connection to Dex and the ship’s systems, I knew immediately that something called “rockets” affixed to the ship’s underside was propelling us upward. Except for the loud rumble of the rockets, the ship hovered so smoothly.
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As the spaceship continued its ascent, I wished Drayek could see me now. But the higher we went, every part of me–though thrilled–wanted to squeeze my eyes shut. I was raised in Edrona–a desert city with nothing akin to a spaceship that could help me imagine something like it. It was beyond anything I could have ever dreamt up. But something about Codex’s hold on me kept me from closing my eyes. I couldn’t even shiver at how unnerved that made me feel.
The spaceship continued its slow climb up the tunnel and to the surface. My hands remained firmly planted on the levers and didn’t budge even a centimeter. And, of course, information popped into my mind, telling me that pushing them anymore forward would speed up the ascent, which would cause for less accuracy in the tunnel that the ship could barely fit into.
The information that kept spilling into my head didn’t stop there, and I could feel blood painfully pounding behind my eyes. But, from what I could gather, if the spaceship flew less accurately, it would mean more bumps against the tunnel, which would cause damage to the ship. I could determine for myself that damage wasn’t desirable.
Once I had finally settled into my situation and felt myself relax, a blur of shiny green scales and white fangs flashed over the windows in front of me. If Dex hadn’t taken over my faculties, I would have leaped out of my seat in shock. Another bigger Rockcrawler burst through the tunnel rock on the right and, not having enough room to maneuver, immediately slammed into one of the spaceship’s windows. Once my speeding heart settled, I studied the glass for cracks and was relieved to see none. But there was a smear of snake slime and some dribbles of its dark blood on the windows. But I wasn’t in a good position to see if the Rockcrawler had been severely injured or even where the snake had gone.
“Dex!” I called. “I think we might need to go a bit faster!”
Another bang, from the bottom of the ship this time…. It had to have been the third snake. The Rockcrawlers had devotedly hunted me down and burrowed through possibly miles of rock to get to me. There must have been a shortage of prey for them to hunt on a regular basis.
“Codex!” I called again, reverting back to his full name. He still didn’t respond.
But then my hands, by themselves and through the will of my AI friend, shot forward with the levers in tow. Every one of my organs plummeted, and the skin on my face flew back past my ears as the ship hurled upward at speeds I’d never thought possible. My eyes felt like they’d been hammered deep into my head, but even with the discomfort, I still caught sight of a sliver of sky peeking above. Within a second, the bit of sky transformed from a sliver to a gaping hole of blue that soon engulfed the entire ship.
Yes! I cheered in my thoughts.
I didn’t have much of a view of what lay below, but considering how high the ship continued to climb through the clouds, I doubted any Rockcrawlers could get to me at this point.
Two great balls of yellow met my ascent and grew bigger and bigger. My eyes felt like they’d burn right out of their sockets. Were those yellow balls the planet’s suns?
“Dex, should we adjust our path? If we fly into the suns, I don’t think we’ll come out any less than crispy.”
No answer. Again. Instead, more knowledge from Codex and the ship poured into me. It felt very similar to how I would recall my own memories, but since I didn’t actually remember any of this information, it was, as one would imagine, uncomfortably strange.
I learned that the suns of planet X-47-14 were still millions of miles away–in space. The information also helped me better understand what “space” is. It’s an expanse of never-ending matter with stars, suns, planets, universes… I felt so small compared to the extent of what and who must be out there.
Is Drayek somewhere in this “space?” I thought.
I didn’t know where Souls went after death, but I had always imagined they’d float somewhere up into the heavens–where the picturesque suns, moons, and stars resided. It felt like a great place to spend the afterlife. But I might never know. That is until I died… Still, if I did somehow achieve godhood some centuries down the road, I might never know!
Well, Lord Solomon was the God of Knowledge. Would I be the same? He could read the past and present of all essence. Did that mean he knew things about the afterlife?
I pushed away my spiral of deep and provoking thoughts and focused my attention on what was happening. My breath caught at the sight of my fingers dancing all along the lights of the control panel–pushing into them and making them sink into the desk. My Dex/ship connection told me these were called “buttons.”
The ship maneuvered to the right and increased its speed even more, my skin continuing its stretch, making me feel like it would fall off at any moment. The only way I could describe the sensation was as if some giant had placed the ship into the string of their bow and then flung it up into the stars with levels of strength even a god couldn’t replicate. Well, I could be very wrong about what speeds gods could accomplish, but hey, I was new to all of this! The farthest I used to think anyone could ever get into the Tiers was Tier 4. Spaceships, traveling to other universes, and any other scientific quandaries were not my expertise.
Before I could comprehend what was happening, darkness flooded my vision. It was as if someone had blown out the light of the suns like a candle. All I could see now were the lights flashing across the control board. My AI connection told me we had made it up into space–up with the stars.