The Stars Have Eyes - Chapter 26: Shipping

Chapter 26: Shipping

Maggie wore an expression bordering on awe, with eyes wide, jaw hanging, and slithering locks flailing. The phenomenon unfolding before her was something she had both heard about and seen glimpses of, but to witness it in person was positively breathtaking. She was standing at the entrance of a massive atrium, an open space filled with thousands of people. Normally a crowd of this magnitude was accompanied by a certain amount of disarray, especially when cramped into one spot. Arguments over seats, kids running around willy-nilly, and a colorful mix of various body odors were but a few of the factors that contributed to a noisy, rowdy atmosphere.

However, this was the Third British Empire – a civilization and culture built upon a series of ancient and sometimes peculiar traditions. One of these was their obsession with queueing, as embodied by the dizzyingly long lines of people calmly and quietly awaiting their turn. Nobody tried to cut in place, argue with the attendants, or otherwise inconvenience others around them. People could even leave their spot for a few minutes and come back to it without so much as saying a word to those in front or behind. The only voices heard were of clerks and employees that called for the next in line, at which point everyone in that queue took an almost unanimous step forward. All in all, it was a display of order made all the more impressive by the near-total lack of oversight, not to mention its sheer scale.

“Maggie? Hey, Maggie!”

“… Ah. What is it Joe?”

“You alright? You spaced out for a bit.”

“I am fine. I was merely overwhelmed by this queueing phenomenon.”

“Oh, that? Yeah, I feel you. Quite the mess with this many people, innit? Can’t even keep a proper straight line.”

The girl alternated between staring at the unreasonably long rows of people and giving the man confused looks. Even she couldn’t imagine how high his standards for queueing were if the display before her was deemed as ‘quite the mess.’ Admittedly it wasn’t perfect. The lines weren’t completely straight, as he said, and occasionally someone would have to be nudged along, stuff like that. Those flaws were so minor, however, that complaining about them was like raising a fuss over a few dead pixels on a wall-sized monitor. Then again, Joe had been staring at that metaphorical screen for his entire life, so perhaps the flaws stood out more from his perspective.

“Which was our flight, again?” Joe inquired while peering around the atrium.

“445-015-B,” Maggie replied.

“Ah, over there, then,” he pointed to one of the dozens of queues. “C’mon, let’s get this over with. I hate the bloody spaceport.”

The couple made their way down some steps and towards their designated boarding dock. Maggie took her place at the rear of the line, eager to partake in this curious British tradition. Joe was far less enthusiastic, though. He kept grumbling under his breath right up until he took the spot behind the girl, at which point he clammed up completely. His foul mood was, as per usual, caused by something irrational. Namely, his astrohodophobia. Not only did he have to face his fear of space travel head on, but him ending up in this situation was technically his own bloody fault.

Maggie had been accused of copyright infringement for bearing the appearance of renowned actress Melinda Sparklestar. Joe wasn’t familiar with the legal technicalities, but he knew that accusation wasn’t something to be taken lightly. With how good gene mods were these days, it was frighteningly easy to copy a famous person’s looks and potentially impersonate them. Such imitations could cause quite a bit of trouble even though they’d never trick automated security systems. Truthfully this sort of fraudulent activity was closer to identity theft than copyright infringement, but was still considered the latter due to the convoluted way the laws were written. Essentially, the studio that employed Melinda Sparklestar owned the rights to her physical appearance, and it was their responsibility to crack down on anyone that was a close enough match.

It was plainly obvious that Maggie fit that criteria, given that her face was nearly identical to the actress’s. Even worse, she had deliberately chosen to wear that appearance. It would have been a different story if she was born with it, but that absolutely wasn’t the case. Admittedly she had no idea the face she plucked from Joe’s brain way back when was copyrighted, but the law didn’t really care about such circumstances. She looked like Melinda Sparklestar by choice, which meant that Bubble Spotlight Studios – the actress’s employer – had the legal right to force her to change her face or risk fines and potential jail time.

The couple naturally weren’t too happy with this development. Though it was a trivial matter for the Class-3 entity to sculpt herself a new appearance, both she and Joe had grown too emotionally attached to the way she was. They had discussed their options and decided to challenge the copyright claim in court. Neither of them were lawyers, nor did they know anyone who was, but Maggie was absolutely certain she was capable of defending herself. Joe had to agree that if anyone could successfully navigate the convoluted web of stipulations and regulations that made up modern copyright law, it was an unfathomably intelligent entity of cosmic order.

That was all well and good, but taking this matter to civil court required that they first met with a legal team that represented Melinda Sparkelstar and her employer. The law firm in question didn’t have any offices in the solar system where Joe lived, hence why he and Maggie were in line to board a shuttle at the spaceport. The man silently chided himself over his past short-sightedness. Why didn’t he ask Maggie to pick a different face from his memories right at the start? Well, no, he knew the answer to that. It was because she was really hot, and he was really stupid. Furthermore, it was also his idea to go to that seaside resort last week, which, given the timing, was probably the reason why the studio noticed Maggie in the first place. No matter how he looked at it, it was his own fault he was about to climb into a metal box and get fired into the void of space.

Well, it wasn’t all bad. The girl was plenty excited to board an interstellar vessel and hitch a ride to another planet. Joe could tell she was grinning ear to ear even though he could only see the back of her head. She rarely displayed this much enthusiasm, and her good mood was quite infectious. It served to temper the man’s nervousness somewhat, though nothing could quell his fears completely. He grew progressively more agitated as the queue he was in steadily moved forward. By the time he reached the desk and had to speak with the spaceport employee, he was sweating profusely and looked rather pale.

“First time flying, sir?” the girl behind the counter asked knowingly.

“Ah. Erm, uh, y-yes,” he barely replied.

“Would you like to purchase a sleeper brace, then?”

“Uh… What?”

“A sleeper brace, sir. It’s a neck accessory that synchronises with your PnP implant and induces a harmless coma that lasts for the duration of the voyage. From your perspective you would doze off just before lift off and then wake up at your destination in the blink of an eye.”

Joe considered the offer. From what he understood, his trip would start with a ten hour shuttle flight to a freighter, which would need another six hours to maneuver into position before it initiated its wormhole generator. The jump itself would only take about twenty seconds, but he’d still have to sit through another thirteen hours of space flight before finally touching down on Lancaster-3. That was a total of roughly thirty hours of travel, the entirety of which he’d spend terrified out of his skull. The option to just skip all that unpleasantness seemed almost too good to be true.

However, he caught a glimpse of Maggie’s expectant face and was struck with a pang of guilt. The girl no doubt wished to share this experience with him, and would be disappointed if he just clocked out. Taking the sleeper brace would be both selfish and cowardly, and no man wanted to show such a pathetic side of themselves to the one they loved. So, with a sigh and a wince, Joe decided to bite the proverbial bullet.

“I’ll pass, thanks.”

“As you wish, sir. Please put your luggage on the automated trolley at your feet and place your hand on the scanner.”

The man complied and put his duffel bag on the wheeled automaton next to the clerk’s desk, which sped off somewhere and allowed another unit to take its place. Joe then pressed his palm into a small glowing panel that beeped affirmatively after a few moments later. The attendant thanked him, pressed a few buttons on her end, then directed Joe towards docking bay 213-A, same as Maggie. The couple passed through a series of hallways and escalators before arriving at a rather cramped waiting room. There was barely enough seating for ten people, but that wasn’t an issue since there weren’t any other people around at the moment. The metal walls were empty save for a few vending machines on one end and a massive window on the other. Joe’s eyes were drawn to the pane of bulletproof glass, beyond which lay the vessel he was about to board.

Sat in the middle of the docking bay was an orbital shuttle in the shape of an arrowhead. Its outer plating was painted a brilliant white, with a solid black stripe along its edges. The designation OS-64-M was stamped in large, blocky lettering at the tip of each wing. Joe actually recognized that model. Also known as “Silver Tempest,” it was the shuttle equivalent of a fancy high-end sports car. It was featured prominently in several of the games in Joe’s library, and each of its virtual representations handled like a dream.

“… Wait, we’re getting aboard one of those?!” the realization finally hit him.

“Yes,” Maggie chirped in delight. “I arranged for it specifically.”

The girl had also been impressed by the vessel’s performance in the digital world and wanted to see if the real deal matched up to the simulations.

“You’re not gonna fly it yourself, are you?” Joe inquired.

“I would like to, but I haven’t gotten my pilot’s license yet.”

Piloting was one of those mechanical skills that came naturally to Maggie. Unfortunately, it took more than raw ability to get a pilot’s license. The most troublesome prerequisite was that she needed to complete a virtual training course that included two hundred hours of mandatory flight practice. She hadn’t gotten around to doing that yet as her other hobbies, interests, and duties kept her quite busy. Not to mention that she couldn’t afford to purchase a shuttle of her own just yet, pushing the time-consuming chore down towards the bottom of her priority list.

“As such, I must await a later opportunity to pilot an OS-64-M,” she added.

“Ugh. Can’t we like, pull some strings to get you behind the stick?” Joe grumbled. “I know you’re an incredible pilot, but I don’t trust some random stranger to fly me around.”

The girl smiled sweetly and rubbed his shoulder in a soothing manner.

“It’ll be alright. Even if the worst happens and the cabin experiences explosive decompression, I can sustain your life functions for at least two weeks, even in a vacuum.”

“Look, Maggie, I know you’re trying to help, but saying things like ‘explosive decompression’ and ‘life functions’ really isn’t helping.”

“I apologize. Would you like to lie in my lap instead?”

“… Yes, please.”

The couple took a seat and Joe rested his head on Maggie’s thighs while she gently stroked his hair. He didn’t usually get an excuse to get spoiled like this, so he took full advantage of the opportunity. After a while the room started to fill up with other passengers. Joe was always rather shameless, so he didn’t mind the strangers too much. Unfortunately the feeling wasn’t mutual. The British were notoriously reserved when it came to public displays of affection or intimacy, meaning the couple’s sickeningly sweet display left the strangers feeling quite awkward. A lady in an extravagant fur coat stepped up as if to protest, but a single look at Maggie’s face made her back off without uttering a word.

She didn’t know why, but the woman got the sudden and overwhelming premonition that something terrible would happen to her if she dared to ruin the moment.

About half an hour later, an announcement declared that the shuttle was ready for boarding. Joe, Maggie, and the other fourteen passengers all made their way over to the vessel and started filing inside. The interior was about as spacious and comfortable as a tube-train, albeit with more elbow room and a better selection of complimentary snacks and drinks. This was a first class flight aboard a top-end vehicle, after all, so small luxuries like that were a given. It was many times better than the economy class ‘people haulers’ that stuck passengers in tiny hibernation pods and treated them like literal luggage.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” a practiced voice poured out of the intercom. “My name is Charles Faraway, which is rather fitting since it’s my job to take you far, far away from here.”

“Ugh, this guy again,” someone in the back groaned.

“I’d like to issue a formal warning to all passengers,” the pilot continued. “The ship’s internal inertia dampeners are a little bit ‘leaky’ at the moment, so you may experience some amplified G-forces during lift off. We apologize for the inconvenience and invite you to pass out if you feel like it. Launch will commence in exactly thirteen minutes, so straps yourselves in and enjoy the ride.”

“Leaky? What’s he mean by leaky?!” Joe panicked a bit.

“Would you like me to fully explain the fault in question?” Maggie offered.

“… How long would that take?”

“Approximately three and a half hours.”

“You know what? Yeah, sure, let’s hear it.”

The girl’s face lit up even more than before. This was the first time anyone had agreed to hear out one of her ridiculously detailed and painstakingly thorough lectures. Truth be told, Joe needed some way to distract himself, and he could do a lot worse than listening to Maggie’s technobabble. Sure enough, barely two sentences into her explanation she was throwing around terms like ‘Mueller particle field’ and ‘kinetoscopic projections.’ It worked like a charm, instantly overloading Joe’s brain to the point where he just smiled and nodded as words went in one ear and out the other. He barely even noticed those thirteen minutes pass by until the engines rumbled to life and he got an intense sinking feeling in his gut, though he got used to those soon enough.

“And so, the dragon decided to make tuna casserole for the twins.”

“… Wait, dragon? Casserole? What?”

Joe’s trance lasted for almost an hour before that ridiculous sentence snapped him out of it.

“I’ve been reciting a work of fiction for the past seventeen minutes just to see if you were paying attention,” Maggie said with a displeased pout. “You haven’t heard a single thing I’ve said on the matter of inertial dampeners, have you?”

“No, no, I heard you,” he insisted. “I just wasn’t listening.”

Maggie narrowed her eyes dubiously, but then relaxed her glare with a sigh. Technically speaking, the man said he’d ‘hear’ her lecture, not ‘listen to it.’ She had gotten so excited that she had overlooked that little tidbit.

“I just think your voice is really lovely, you know?” he tried to smooth things over. “You could be talking to me about literally anything and I would still enjoy it. So, by all means, tell me more about this casserole-making dragon.”

The girl chuckled lightly and resumed reciting a lighthearted fantasy novel titled “The Dragon That Will Bake the Heavens.” From a critical standpoint, it was nonsensical, derivative, repetitive, and all around poorly written. Why and how this literary equivalent of a train wreck was added to her memory was a mystery that Joe knew better than to inquire about. At least, he assumed it was in memory rather than her reading it from an online source in real time. The internet connection on orbital shuttles was notoriously nonexistent once they left a planet’s atmosphere, and Butterpond-4 was already rapidly shrinking behind them. Or so the man assumed. He had a feeling taking a peek at the exterior view would trigger a panic attack, so he did his best to avoid doing that while also trying not to think too hard about his situation. Filling the entirety of his attention span with Maggie and her soothing voice was just fine by him. It made the ten hour flight pass by much quicker than he would’ve otherwise thought.

“Attention passengers, this is your pilot speaking,” the intercom sputtered to life. “We are currently on final approach to our destination and will be docking with the Trafalgar in roughly twenty minutes. Those of you who wish to see the freighter in action may switch to external camera feed number four on your personal screens.”

Upon hearing this, Maggie abandoned her reading of “The Dragon That Will Bake the Heavens” mid-sentence and tuned in to the announced channel. Sure, she could see clean through the hull of the shuttle, but her sight didn’t extend far enough to pick up any celestial bodies or other spacecraft. Space was really, really empty, after all. Joe somewhat reluctantly tuned in as well. The allure of seeing a freighter live was enough to overwhelm his apprehension of floating through space. And indeed, the images relayed by external camera feed number four were quite the sight to behold.

A mass of brown, barren rock sprawled out in every direction. This was Butterpond-4-A, the only natural satellite of Joe’s homeworld. A huge chunk of its crust had been cracked open like someone was peeling an unfathomably huge hard boiled egg. Canyon-like fissures filled with molten rock converged on a small sea of liquid fire, right in the middle of which was a mountain-sized chunk of crust. This strange island was dotted by the lights of civilization – signs of ongoing mining operations that rapidly and aggressively extracted nearly a quarter of a million tons of metal and minerals per day.

A fleet of automated cargo shuttles transported all of this raw material into high orbit, right into the loading bay of a freighter-class vessel. The capital ship was even more enormous than Joe imagined it would be. It was many times bigger than a hyper-scraper and roughly the same shape, just sideways. The front half of it was occupied by an immense cargo hold and covered by red and white stretches of featureless hull plating. The rear of the freighter was dominated by four rectangular fusion engines. An array of open docks for smaller craft were available on either side and two control towers protruded from the top and bottom of the ship’s midsection. Everything else was darkened metal dotted with glowing yellow lights. Last but not least, the designation “ICF-M42 Trafalgar” was clearly and cleanly plastered near the nose of the ship.

“Woah! That’s so bloody cool!” Joe couldn’t help but be awestruck.

“It is quite the phenomenal piece of astronautical engineering,” Maggie agreed. “Eight kilometers in length, with a mass of three hundred and eighty million tons and a cargo capacity of one hundred and fifty thousand cubic meters. It is the ninth largest freighter in Imperial space.”

“That’s a lot of big numbers.”

The scale of it was far too much for the simple man to grasp in its entirety, to the point where he didn’t even try. He was so overwhelmed that he almost forgot that he was still in space. He remained that way right up until the shuttle started landing maneuvers, causing the camera feed he was gawking at to swing around to the void of space. The sudden change in scenery made him yelp and jump in his seat as he instinctively hugged Maggie across the torso. It took him a full five seconds to calm down enough to identify those firm-yet-soft mounds of flesh one of his arms was pressing against. He let go of the girl’s bosom with another jolt, this time from embarrassment.

“S-sorry about that! I wasn’t paying attention!”

“I don’t mind,” she merrily declared. “You’re welcome to hold them as much as you wish.”

Joe could practically hear over a dozen heads snap around to stare at him and the girl. Maggie placed a hand over her mouth as she realized a little too late she was just a bit louder and ruder than she should have been. The man buried his face in his palms out of embarrassment. There were only three minutes left in the landing procedure, yet those somehow felt longer than the ten hour flight that preceded them. It wasn’t until the couple disembarked the craft and reached their private cabin aboard the Trafalgar that Joe was finally able to calm down a little. His ears still burned a bright red though, as he couldn’t stop hearing Maggie’s offer echoing in the back of his head. He laid down on the uncomfortable cot, buried his face in the pillow, and yelled loudly into it like a hormonal teenager trying to deal with the awkward boner they got from accidentally bumping into their crush. Almost exactly like that, actually. Thankfully the girl in question had left to take a guided tour of the Trafalgar, so she wasn’t there to see this shameful display.

In any event, it had been rather late in the day when Joe and Maggie left Butterpond-4, and the long shuttle trip had been rather tiring in its own way. Knowing he was in a fully enclosed room surrounded by millions of tons of armored plating quelled the man’s astrohodophobia to the point of triviality, allowing the man to doze off without really meaning to. Meanwhile his girlfriend worked the human part of her brain to its limits as she single-mindedly scanned the mountain-sized vessel from bow to stern while following the tour guide. She did more than simply observe, though. She compared the actual construction of the Trafalgar to the blueprints and schematics she’d acquired beforehand with some help from her military contacts. There were thousands upon thousands of deviations between the two. Most were minor and inconsequential alterations made as part of the ship’s maintenance, like an array of rivets that had been welded in place because they kept coming loose. Maggie had a vested interest in such discrepancies since one of her obligations towards the Third British Empire was to make its interstellar vessels slightly less reality-damaging.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to learn anything about the Trafalgar’s wormhole generator due to an unforeseen yet equally intriguing consequence. The device was encased in layers upon layers of radiation and energy shielding that also blocked her ability to peer through solid matter. This was rather curious considering it wasn’t supposed to impede psionics. Not intentionally, at least. However, wormhole generators harnessed enough energy to create and sustain an artificial black hole while simultaneously emitting a counter-gravitational field to ensure the vessel’s integrity. Such a ridiculous output would instantly liquefy any living creature within a hundred kilometers without seemingly excessive precautions and countermeasures.

All things considered, it was perhaps not all that unusual that the shielding blocked psionics even though it wasn’t expressly designed to do so. Still, there was a chance that this property might have something to do with the lasting damage the device within caused to the fabric of reality. Maggie made a mental note to study the shielding in greater depth at a later date. She would have preferred to do so immediately, but she was unable to gain access to the wormhole generator chamber without violating her obligations to the British government. It was somewhat regrettable, but this mystery would have to wait until a later date.

The rest of the guided tour was dreadfully dull by comparison. The ICF-M42 Trafalgar was a so-called construction freighter. It was designed to haul a literal mountain’s worth of metals and minerals halfway across the galaxy and then turn that raw material into space stations. Transporting people was just something it did on the side. As such, its passenger capacity was relatively small at just two thousand and there was almost nothing in terms of entertainment. In other words, there was barely anything going on aboard the vessel that piqued Maggie’s curiosity. She was briefly intrigued by the legions of drones and automatons scurrying between walls and floors, but got bored of them when she realized they were just doing maintenance.

When the girl eventually returned to the cabin and saw Joe napping peacefully, she found herself without much to do. The interesting parts of the ship were off limits, and she was far too removed from Butterpond-4 to access its online resources. She considered waking the boyfriend up, but didn’t want to disturb him unless it was an emergency. A curious thought then occurred to her. It was unusual for Magh’rathlak the Observer to crave stimulation like this. The Class-3 was used to spending millenia drifting through a void with nothing to occupy its vast intellect. Surely slogging through mere hours of inactivity shouldn’t be this dreadful a prospect.

After a brief introspective, Maggie concluded that these past few months of studying humanity had made her… impatient. Addicted, even. The frantic pace at which she acquired new knowledge about this reality was intoxicating. Admittedly a lot of that information would be deemed trivial by others, and with good reason. Speed-watching nearly a thousand hours of soap operas was hardly as impressive as learning the science and technology behind wormhole generators. However, Maggie didn’t discriminate. Knowledge was knowledge regardless of its source, format, or content. She’d never achieve omniscience if she was picky about which parts of reality she’d commit to memory.

And yet here she was, dismissing things she wasn’t wholly familiar with just because they weren’t as interesting as that mysterious psionic-repelling layer of shielding. She could easily take a closer look at those maintenance droids, for instance. Yes, they were simple, brainless machines the likes of which she’d seen many times. However, she didn’t know everything about them. Their construction was easy enough to inspect at a glance, but things like where they were made, who designed them, and what went into their programming were beyond her sight. Surely, if she wanted to be productive with her time, she’d leap at the opportunity to learn those details. Especially since she could tap into their local network and access their electronic brains without alerting anyone or violating her obligations.

So then why didn’t she do that from the start? Was her study of humanity starting to affect her on a deeper level? Actually, that was a stupid question. Of course, it was. Her delve into the subject was a deep dive, not a superficial whim. It would be odd if the Class-3 underneath didn’t change in some way. However, while Magh’rathlak the Observer welcomed this, it also could not allow its inner self to shift too drastically. It was ultimately an entity of order, and had to ensure it did not deviate from its nature too much. Change was good, but only in moderation. So, before it got around to digitally dissecting the maintenance droids, the Class-3 cosmic entity decided to do some work on itself first. Nothing drastic, just compartmentalizing certain thought patterns, purging a few overly chaotic ideas, and mentally reaching out to a few peers beyond the veil of reality.

Naturally, none of this was apparent from the outside. If a complete stranger were to walk in on Maggie now, they’d have no idea that an unfathomable intellect from another reality was reorganizing its thought processes. All they’d see is a pale, raven-haired beauty hovering ominously in the middle of the cabin while some random bloke snored quietly in the background. An odd and potentially terrifying sight to be sure, but hardly indicative of what was actually going on in her head. It was taking quite a while, too, as the girl was still in a deep, meditative state when Joe was woken up by a ship-wide announcement.

“Attention, all passengers and personnel.”

“Huh?! Wha?!” the startled man sat up in his cot.

“This is Captain Grace speaking,” the female voice continued. “We have just finished clearing the orbital plane of the Butterpond system, and will be making our wormhole jump in T minus ninety seconds. I apologize for the short notice, but we’re bumping our schedule up a bit. As per usual, the artificial gravity field will be disabled for the duration of the jump, so please make sure you’re either strapped in or holding onto something.”

Joe groaned and blinked as he tried and failed to process that information. He hadn’t fully woken up yet and his left arm was on pins and needles since he’d slept on it weird, so his attention span was practically nonexistent. He had no idea what the captain just said, other than the last part about ‘holding onto something.’ That wasn’t an issue since the cot he was in had these handy-dandy bars for him to grab onto. Which was what he did, though he wasn’t sure why.

“Attention, this is Captain Grace. Jump is in thirty seconds, so better brace yourselves if you don’t want a nasty bump when we emerge on the other side.”

Thankfully that second announcement cleared up much of his confusion. This might’ve been Joe’s first interstellar journey, but he’d seen enough movies to know what going through a wormhole involved. That said, he was a bit miffed that they didn’t give him more of a heads up. Oh well, it was no big deal. Even if he’d slept through those announcements, the worst that would happen was that he’d drift upward while the artificial gravity was off and then have a bit of a tumble when it was turned back on. It would hurt, but probably wasn’t enough to cause injury.

Then, Joe noticed Maggie. The girl was silently hover-sitting a few steps away with her eyes closed and hairtacles flailing madly. He had absolutely no idea what she was doing. However, he had a hunch that this wasn’t the right time to be doing it. So, when the feeling of weightlessness overcame him and the girl started drifting up towards the ceiling, the man had a bit of a panic attack over her safety.

“Maggie!” he called out to her. “Oi, Maggie! We’re about to jump, so-”

He did not manage to finish that sentence in time. There was a bizarre ‘shhhloooorp’ sound as the ship carried him through the generated wormhole, after which everything went black. He couldn’t see, hear, or feel anything, not even his own heartbeat or the clothes on his back. Joe’s minor panic attack rapidly escalated into a major one at the disturbing and unfamiliar situation he found himself in. Several frantic seconds later, his senses came back to him just as his back slammed back into the bed. This was immediately followed by a heavy, painful thud from the middle of the room.

Joe’s head snapped towards the source of that noise. Sure enough, Maggie had taken a nasty fall when the artificial gravity kicked back in. Objectively speaking, he really didn’t need to worry about her. She was quite durable and effectively immortal. However, no man could stay calm at the sight of his girl getting hurt. His adrenaline already spiking from the emotional rollercoaster, Joe scrambled out of bed and went to check on her. He completely forgot about his own condition, though that was mostly because a nasty surprise was all he got from the ordeal.

“Maggie! You okay?!”

His concern proved justified as he placed a hand on the prone girl’s bare shoulder. Immediately he noticed that her skin didn’t have its usual ambiguous temperature, but was just straight up warm. Not only that, but the swirling un-light was gone from her eyes and her hair was completely inanimate. Usually this meant she was either momentarily dead or otherwise unconscious, but neither of those seemed to be the case. She was breathing splendidly and her pitch-black irises were deliberately staring right at Joe’s face.

“Maggie? Hello?”

The man waved a hand in front of her face and snapped his fingers a few times. She didn’t say anything, but she did react by tracking those movements. Not with her eyes, but with her entire head. It was more than a little unsettling. Not sure what to do, Joe tried to help her to her feet. The girl took the prompt and stood with ease, but did not move beyond that. He made a few more attempts to get her to respond. All were met with that blank, unblinking stare.

“Ah, bugger,” the man pinched the bridge of his nose. “Should’ve known. You’re from another dimension, of course something went tits-up when you passed through a bloody wormhole.”

“Query: what is the relation between the upright position of breasts and artificial anomalies in the space-time continuum?”

Well, she was talking. That would’ve been good news if not for her flat tone and strange manner of speaking. Something was very clearly wrong, but Joe was at such a complete loss that he struggled to do or say anything. It wasn’t like she’d relapsed or anything. Even Maggie from a few months ago showed more emotion than that.

“Query: what is the relation between the upright position of-”

“There’s none, okay?!” the man blurted out without thinking. “It’s a figure of speech!”

“Query: Which part of your statement is a figure of speech?”

“Th-the ‘tits-up’ part.”

“Query: What is the meaning of tits-up?”

“It, uh, means something went wrong.”

“Statement: Acknowledged and committed to memory,” the girl declared, then fell silent again.

Joe could do little but rub his face in confusion and groan with exasperation. This was the last thing he needed to deal with first thing after waking up. At the very least he was done panicking, allowing him to try and piece together exactly what was going on. To begin with, this was Maggie, so it was probably something both nonsensical and perfectly logical. Thinking back to just before the jump, she looked really busy to the point where she ignored not one, but two announcements.

The man’s media-addled brain came up with a fittingly ludicrous explanation with frightening speed. What if Maggie’s body got here alright, but her brain got lost in transit? Figuratively speaking, of course. She wouldn’t be doing much of anything if her skull was literally empty, let alone looking around and asking questions. But if she was gone, who was controlling her body? Some kind of autopilot maybe? It was hardly impossible considering who and what Maggie was. And hey, if it was a question of putting her mind back in her body, Joe knew just what to do.

“Right. Either this will work and I’m the greatest,” he mumbled under his breath, “ or it won’t and it’s going to be incredibly creepy.”

He stepped forward and gently held her head in his hands. The girl did not resist in the slightest as he pulled her in and gave her a full kiss on the lips. Sure enough, he felt the familiar sensation of ‘something’ pouring out of his throat and going down Maggie’s. A few breaths later, he pulled away and was relieved to see the pale girl had returned to her usual self, swirly eyes and wriggling locks included.

“I am impressed,” she smiled sweetly. “You figured that out faster than I anticipated.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty awesome sometimes. You all good, though?”

“I am fine, yes.”

“Good, that’s good. Phew…” the tension finally started to leave him. “What happened to you anyway?”

“My consciousness was forcefully ejected from my vessel when we passed through the wormhole,” she confirmed his theory.

“Is that going to happen every time we go through a wormhole?”

“Yes,” she nodded. “I am a foreigner to this reality, and as such am easily detached from it.”

“Can’t you, I dunno, strap your brain in or something?”

“I could attempt to develop some appropriate countermeasures. However, I feel that is a waste of my time and energy considering how easy it is for you to bring me back.”

“Yeah, alright. Leave it to me,” he proudly declared. “I’ll snog you as many times as it takes!”

“Just so you know, mouth-to-mouth contact is not vital for the revival process. The most important factor is physical proximity between anchor and vessel.”

Joe squinted as he made an attempt to read between the lines.

“So… the kissing is unnecessary, but appreciated?”

“Exactly,” the girl smirked.