“Sorry about that. Cath is just concerned for everyones health in the forseable future.” I took a sip of my own floating bag of juice and pulled at the nearest tablet. “We can abandon the mission before anyone starves Cath. Here is the procedure if you haven’t read it yet.” I handed her the tablet with the procedure and documentation for abandoning the mission.
It would suck to end a 2-year mission 5 months in. The standards of the SLV make our lives more worth than a simple research mission. “Let’s get back to our guest.”
Cath Grumbled again about utopians and Micheal went back to nibbling on his lunch. It felt sometimes like I was the only curious scientist on this shuttle. “Where were we Martin?”
Martin was spinning his juice bag in the air and moving it in an eliptical patern, without his hands. “Something about utopia and food?” Martin took the juice bag out of the air and stuffed it into his robe pocket for later use.
“I’ll be honest and say I have no clue what is happening. Give it to me straight, how bad is the situation?” Martin had a serious look in his eyes for the first time in our short time together. I was a little surprised at the sudden mood change and just shrugged my shoulders.
“There isn’t really a situation. The only real issue is having you onboard. This trip cannot support 4 people. We have 2 months if we share food.” The issue was not that bad. The return trip is what took most of the time. And extra food was provided incase the trip was 2 months longer. “If we go past that time we starve in the last month of the return trip.”
I was sure the way he got on the ship might be the best way to get him off it. Martin was a jolly man, but our lives were techniaclly on the line. “Also, other factors like oxygen, water and life support would also be affected.” The efficency of our systems wouldn’t be able to keep up with another person.
Martin held up his hand as if he was in class, without much fanfare from the rest of us I motioned for him to ask his question. “I could grow us some food if you guys don’t mind me using some farm plot. I can also setup some watering runes and maybe even a fertilising tank if you don’t mind parting with a cow or two.”
If he didn’t look so damn assured of his offerings I would have hugged him. Cath and Micheal on the other hand just giggled at his offer. “Martin. I’m sorry to say, but we are nowhere near anything or anyone.” I took the tablet from Cath and went to the home screen.
On the background was a 3D image of our space station ever so slowly rotating. In the middle was main hub we were in, with a storage module branching out the left side of the main tube. The storage module had three extensions as well, one for each of us. Then to the right of the main hub we had the sleeping modules attached to the leisure modal. The leisure one was mostly exercising machines and our life support systems.
The main hub was kind of like a community office space. Communications, monitoring, extra equipment. Most of everything else combined, the idea was that if needed we could cut off the arms incase of some weird emmergency.
“We are in the void of space. With all the space in the universe, we just don’t have enough space to setup a farm.” I Turned off the pad and let it drift away. “We packed for a journey and there were no plans for an extra passanger. Unless the boss wanted to test the ship’s emmergency system.”
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Martin was deep in thought before he leaned back and put his hand over his eyes. “The issue that I have been sent to solve is myself. How vexing.” His hands came free from his face before pushed his fingers through his hair. A small chant there after that sounded slightly latin left his lips before a small gust of warm air flowed over my face followed by a cool sensation. Martin pulled his robe straight and looked determaned. “Let’s get some solutions going then.”
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“The most pressing one would be our food. As was stated many times.” Martin was pacing back and forth on floor again. It still annoyed me that I didn’t know how he was doing it. His gait and step had no indication of magnets. He was walking like he was in his living room.
“Is there any way we can gather materials or matter? Anything will do.” He took a book out of his perpotionately smaller pocket and started to flip through it.
Cathrine was staring at the pocket in question trying to deconstruct it with her eyes. I was trying to the folds in the book cover, and Micheal was scratching his head. I hope it wasn’t space dust. “If there isn’t a source we can get to we might need to set up an attraction array and hope we strike gold.” He said while still flipping through the book.
“Maybe we space the anomely.” Micheal was never fazed. Him suggesting murder was a shock to me. “Let’s just let him ramble and we can send a message to HQ about it.” Cath took the Pad floating near martin and started typing up a request.
“Martin, we need to check with The Boss about how to proceed. Lets not do anything drastic and we can figure it out when we get back to home base.” I reached to the panal next to the dinner table and took out some coffee bags for the crew. It was about to be sleep time and we were not sleeping any time soon.
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Martin was not impressed at how passive these people were. If a situation was bad enough for a summoning, there wouldn’t be a second to waste on a letter to the king. Food was important. He would need to fix this while he tried to figure out the real reason he showed up in a box in the void.
His trusty book of Arrays was always in his front pocket. Memory faded, but the book of nedetruebla was as good as the day it was conceived. Being passed from master to apprentice the book was an invaluable source of knowlage. And humour.
The three floating normals were going about their tasks, fingers tapping on the glass infront of them. Martin started taking mental notes on the variety of collected gathering arrays that have been gathered. From Seed catchers to metal attractors. He was sure the lightly Crossed out female finder was not needed for this situation.
Catching something in a place where there was nothing was a very interesting conundrum. The void always looked back so it couldn’t always be as empty as most thought. Something had to be, for nothing to fill the gaps. Martin snapeed the book shut and shrunk it into his pocket again. “I think we might need a show of power before you take me seriously.” That certainly made the tapping stop, and all eyes turn to him.
An empty coffee bag floated closer to Martin. With clap and a collapsing bang. Everything moved closer to Martin for a second before being moved back to their previous position. He moved his hands apart. In the space of the coffee bag, there was a black cube.
Martin snapped his fingers below the cube. Light dimmed. Small fireworks sprang from the top, ringing and colourful like the second fourth of July. “And hopefully that is shocking enough for you normals to see and believe.” It was Martin’s favourite sequence.
Cath was again trying to deconstruct martin with her eyes. Micheal was shocked, it was the most I got out of him from a single moment. I was ecstatic. It was anomalous, untested ground, it was new in a world where we discovered most and left nothing to imagination.
It was magic.
Martin was proud of his show. He was glad they at least appreciated it. Then he clapped again. The space of the cube was occupied by the coffee bag again.
The coffee bag had a hole missing in the centre.
And then the power turned on and the alarm was raised. All systems tried to reboot. The health support was first and then the pressuriser. Only after everything started did all three of us realise. “That’s fucked.” The fridge was flashing red. And the Giger counter was ticking a little more frequently. The dripping came back a moment after everything else.