Peering into the Darkness

Posted on Thu 15th Sep, 2016 @ 12:12am by

361 words; about a 2 minute read

Mission: Prologue
Location: Officer's Quarters
Timeline: Night.

Chlamydia Addams lay on her bed. The bed was a board, with sharp spikes driven through, point upward. The doctor, dressed in patent leather footy pajamas, was physically relaxed, her weight evenly distributed across the nails. Her Zeta Reticulan spider, Thing, rested on her abdomen, and she stroked its legs gently, absently.

The Doctor's black eyes were open, staring at the ceiling above her bed, into the invisible infinities beyond. On Archimedes, she thought, there was a porthole above her bed. How many nights had she lain just as she was now, staring out at the pseudomotion of the stars? Three nights she'd been at this base.

She missed the basso throb of the ship's engines. Most of her adult life had been spent with that sound in the background, she thought. At twenty-six, she had gone aboard United Star Ship Santa Maria as a junior lieutenant. Twelve years later, she had achieved two promotions, served on three starships. Each ship's drive was slightly different. She could, she thought, have picked out where she was by sound alone. Santa Maria's four nacelles had created an echo effect in the rumble of the plasma injectors. USS Hood, the largest ship she'd served aboard, had been pitched deeper, while Archimedes.... the thought trailed off.

Archimedes had changed everything. Ever since Archimedes, there'd been something missing. The obvious answer was the memories of three months, but there was something else; something more that was missing. It was like the socket of a tooth that had been lost, she thought. She couldn't quite recall the shape of the tooth, but she knew it had been there. It was slowly driving her insane, she thought, smiling slightly. Not that insanity was unusual among Addamses; she'd stood out all these years more for not being insane.

The white sheep of the family, she had called herself, when she and Geiger had talked about... she searched her memory. What had she been discussing with Geiger? It wasn't there. Part of the blackness. One fragment had washed ashore, one piece of a puzzle. But the rest was gone.

Chlamydia Addams lay on her bed of nails, watching the darkness.

 

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