Intrepid - 3756 C.E. Paul held Beatrice to his chest. Well, not all of her of course: just the head and shoulders. The rest of her was scattered in fragments across the living room, now so evidently the dismembered remains of an android rather than a human. It wasn't blood but a strangely viscous black liquid that seeped out of her mouth, from the stumps o...
Chapter Three Earth - 3752 C.E. Notwithstanding the fact that along with the rest of humanity scattered beyond the orbit of the third planet Paul had wanted to visit Earth ever since he was a child, his initial experience was actually rather disappointing. It wasn't just that he'd forgotten what normal gravity felt like after the time he'd been living on t...
As a woman outnumbered by men in the Intrepid's senior staff, Second Officer Sheila Nkomo made a special effort to befriend her fellow female officers. She wasn't in a position to get to know Captain Kerensky particularly well. This was partly a consequence of relative rank, but also because her captain was a lesbian. It wasn't that Sheila held any prejudice...
Chapter Sixteen Earth - 3753 C.E. "What I don't really understand," said Jorgen, "is why you ever got married to Paul." "It's because I love him," Beatrice replied. "Is that so difficult to understand?" "Well, if you love him," Jorgen persisted, "why do you make love to me so often and so passionately?" "Because I'm a passionate woman," said Beatrice as...
Chapter Eighteen Intrepid - 3755 C.E. It was over in all of seven seconds, but for Paul it wasn't until the final fraction of the seventh second that he was conscious that anything had happened at all. And what he was aware of was more disorientating than calamitous. It had started with a sudden jolt that shuddered through the room and in particular the be...
Chapter Four Godwin - 3749 C.E. Once again Paul had failed to notice the time passing while he'd been working in the laboratory. He couldn't be at all sure when he glanced at the clock on the wall with its antiquated twelve-hour period clock whether it was ten o'clock in the evening or ten o'clock in the morning. It would be a trivial matter to find out f...
Chapter Eleven Intrepid - 3756 C.E. "Why are you so anxious?" Beatrice gently asked Paul while he lay beside her. "Are we really going to enter the Anomaly?" her husband asked. "If that's what Captain Kerensky said then I can only believe that's exactly what the Intrepid, and us in it as well, will do." "I thought that was something we would never do,"...
The music in the club pounded in his ears. The lights were low, and the lasers lit up the fog atmosphere. Cage dancers gyrated in their steel boxes high above his head as he walked through the crowd. Even though this was typically his scene, Paul was anxious- he wasn’t accustomed to being alone in a group of people…waiting. This wasn’t his city, wasn’t his l...
I usually wake up very early -- sometimes as early as 3AM. I am the kind of person who, once awake, has to get out of bed. Then, several hours later, I find my eyelids drooping and end up taking a nap. Fortunately, I am self-employed and work from home, so this is not a conflict. The morning I am writing about was no exception. Up at 4AM, coffee, reading and...
Intrepid - 3756 C.E. Although Captain Kerensky thought otherwise, the one person on the Intrepid who more than any other was a mere spectator since the Intrepid entered the Anomaly was Beatrice. And she was also imprisoned within an invisible force field where she was unable to communicate with either human or robot. Beatrice witnessed the same Apparition...