Redemption

Cause And Effect (Old Version)

The sounds of distant seagulls and waves crashing echoed across the harbor, machinery being operated sounded behind us and accompanying them was people discussing amongst themselves over the most trivial things with some occasional laughter sounding off randomly from the masses, and metal groaning softly in short intervals as well as the distant pitter patter of water softly falling against concrete in the dry dock near us.

And yet nothing could take our attention off of this woman, not even for a second.

None of us made a sound and all hopes of this being a simple yet pleasant conversation went clear out the window the second she told us what her name was.

Everybody knew of the story surrounding the Ourang Medan, there was not one person on base who could say that they hadn't, elder ship girls would tell it to the younger ones as a scary story and they would talk about it amongst themselves until they each had nightmares of sinking ships and people being scared to literal death.

Some of them even dressed themselves in sheets and body paint to portray a lackluster appearance of the ghostly ship herself as part of a Halloween costume or prank on the others.

Occasionally groups of people would even gather to discuss the possibility of such a ship even existing with the extreme lack of evidence and proof pointing strongly against and the reasons as to why it disappeared if it did.

Nobody ever paid any attention to those people because nobody would ever believe them, their fables of government conspiracies and extra-terrestrial beings made it hard to do so.

Although, after the sirens had arrived, people started listening to the back-half of those stories a lot more.

Which is probably why it was so hard to understand that all of those theories, all of those ridiculous stories they told suddenly had some base proof to back it up.

The ship herself given form.

Nobody knew how to respond next and we each just shuffled awkwardly waiting for the next shoe to fall, for her to tell us that it was just a joke, for anything really.

Even Enterprise didn't seem to know what to do next as she blankly stared between the rest of us and the woman at her side.

The woman, who was beginning to notice the tension in the air, seemed to be getting more afraid by the minute.

I cleared my throat and asked, "Um... do you mind repeating yourself?"

She looked around at all of us, "...I'm the VC2-S-AP1 Ourang Medan?"

There was a brief moment of silence as I stood back up and held my palms together in front of me, "You mean to say that you're the Ourang Medan?"

"Yes, I am."

"THE Ourang Medan?!"

She seemed to get more afraid at the emphasis of my words and her name, "...Yes?" she answered hesitantly.

Looking around a bit more, she bravely asked: "What's the matter?"

"You don't exist."

"What?"

"The Ourang Medan is a story ship girls use to scare and prank each other, it's just a myth."

"A... A myth?!" She cried out softly.

We stood there for a bit before she raised her voice again, "What... What stories do they tell?"

The operator spoke up this time to answer her, "They usually talk about a... a ghost ship. A Dutch Freighter in distress. That the last message sent was the words 'I die' and that they found... that they found every crew member and animal lying dead on the floor in a state of absolute fear before the ship exploded and sank."