a ringing starts as i hear my captains words, This does not seem like a joke. The frightful voice of my crewmates doesnt help.

I pat my pockets down, rummaging for my cigarettes. Face pale in fear. I open the box and pull one out, but ruining it in one jerky motions. Tobacco flys down gently peaceful in its decent unlike my mind. I reach for another one, chattering in the background seems to be growing in volume. Smoke puffs flow smoothly from my lungs, The ringing in my head doesnt seem to be going away. I lean down, ass touching the hardplate ground. The sting of cold iron gives me some lucidity back.

"At this time, i recommend all of you to stay calm. There will be updates, as we learn more about the situation." People are screaming, but i honestly cant piece what they are saying together. the intercom was loud enough to drown them out. Other than the message i wish it came back on. The screaming is making me anxious.

Paula, The ship custodian motions for one of my cigarettes. I dont even bother and just throw the whole box over to her. She lights it with a pocket welder and throws it back. Her eyes are red from tears, as she cries with a mouth full of smoke chocking and coughing from being a non-smoker.

"Hey Jeff give me one" A disheveled old man leans down and reaches for the packet. Not even waiting for an answer he starts lighting his own one. Our corner is filling up with people grieving. Drinking coffee, smoking. swigging from their flask, as the fear of the situation is making everyone fall back on their vices.

The disappearance of mars happened atleast 6 hours before now. I thought the reason the cameras didnt show mars is because the ship is oriented on the other side. I ignored the crew chatter, as i believed what they said is far to ridiculous to bother with. The captain must have spent the last few hours scrambling to look for the reason that all traces of our mother planet disappeared.

"So what the fuck happened, did we fall in wormhole and get lost" The old man, that i never bothered to learn the name of. Had just asked a question that seems obvious to me.

"The star map shows that we havent moved from the 100 km area that we were in the last few weeks. The planet is gone, not us." I explain with a monotone voice, the will to live has completely left me. I understand that there is no logical or scientific reason for what happened.

"What do you mean its gone, cant we just go to where it left" He is pacing around. Reminding me of my father, when he found out my little brother was hospitalized. He just couldnt believe it.

"Nah man, its gone." I hear her cry louder. i feel like shit.

"Cant we like hail them or even contact earth" I stands over me, talking as if he is negotiating with me. Like i could do anything.

"earth hates martians and is probably going to shoot us with a rocket. Before we even open our mouths" I try to stand up, not willing to stay miserable and my cigarette is finished

I flick the bud to one of the food trays and walk away. The 20 people in the mess hall are also dispersing, Just because the world ended. Doesn't mean that we dont have a job to do. By the time i left, there were people scream and fighting. Discussions about our continued existence seems like a hot button topic.

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I was repairing the gravity emulator joint. The room has emulated gravity through the use of a spinning cylinder. The motor that keeps the room at constant speed needed for gravity. If i dont go back and finish servicing it, then everyone in this room will notice their weight disappearing.

Buzz* "available B crew please report to server controls" My radio lights up, as i hear the voice of the head engineer from the maintenance line. One of the good things about being in space. all frequencies are open.

"Copy that. Coming in a few minutes." I waited for a while, but there was no response. The others must be too hung up to get back to work. Because i feel bad for the head engineer, i volunteer.

I just flip the switch back on, deciding to oil the motor later. The cylinder is spinning to fast for a safe exit, so there is an internal pipe that you can go in and it slows down. Without having to get rid of the gravity for the mess hall and crew quarters.

Tugging on a rope, i glide through the hallway. Reaching a room that has server racks that contain all of our data. Data that seems to have become mostly useless. Atleast its common practice to save thousands of terabytes for entertainment. The internet is expensive in space, so having a local network with it saves on bandwidth.

"Yo, how have you been fairing" I greet the head engineer Yousef. Hes a stoic middle aged man that has body that would look perfect in a wife beater. Hes the kindest person i know, so dont say that. He wouldnt hurt a fly.

"Better than most, you dont usually step in on tech work." We shake hands.

"Its better to work then worry." I fidget, as he just gives a light nod.

I dont talk as we work on running diagnostics on the rendering program. It was crashing and there were complaints about it. As a mining vessel we need to map out the geometry of asteroids and protomoons, Its also useful in CAD software for model creation.

"Hey do have any idea why the planet disappeared" The silence is a little awkward and i am curious for the reason for this unbelievable situation.

"It could be through teleportation research, they used to be able to teleport people a while back. It could be research in the same vein." I remember what research he is mentioning, but the teleport was made with a multi trillion Mega-structure. Knowing even the simple parts of the physics involved in the process. You would understand what happened is totally impossible.

"Thats not how It works. The teleports work by pushing you to sub dimensions and when you stop the force you fall back on a spot. Making you teleport." the pushing force needs to be constant, while you get pushed your position in the sub dimension stays the same. You could spend hours or years in the sub dimension getting pushed to a position and when the pushing force ends you fall back on position equal to the pushing force.

"I said research in the same vein, not the exact same research." Hes typing on a keyboard writing shell commands trying to locate the bug causing the crashes.

"Wait do you mean, that mars is trapped in a sub dimension." I stop working on my computer. My focus taken up completely by the conversation.

"Its impossible for anything to get trapped in a sub dimension. Matter cant exist inside of them and most get expelled. A planet worth of matter would definitely collapse the sub dimension and cause everything to get expelled violently" Like the veteran he is. Explaining complex physics and writing code that would take me 4 times as long both at the same time.

"Are you saying that they got trapped in a parallel dimension." If that was the case, then that would mean its possible to jump across them. If that is possible then you would be able to create a perpetual motion machine. So that would definitely break the laws of thermodynamics. I dont know, the intricacies of the subject is to complex for me to really say anything about it.

"Knowing and guessing are different things. It could be a new weapon that transfers a planets worth of antimatter or some hyper advanced alien used a select all plus delete function on our planet." Hes still using using the computer.

"Antimatter bomb? A virtual reality reset? None of those even have the possibility of mars just popping back to existence and getting our lives back to normal." i grab my hair in bundle floating in the fetal position.

"Forget about it and get back to work" I give him a nod and he gives me one back. Letting the existential crisis to stay at the back of my mind and getting the fuck back to work.