Behind the Barrier

S. R. Gabriels

She was cold, but the comet they had been trailing for the past year or so was a fast one and close to a small sun. Resting by a bay window, she daringly poked at the burning glass. The sun's hue was pure gold. She could spot its metallic rays even through the black-tinted pane.

"Gonna burn yourself," Ozzy warned. He sat at a table and spoke to her without raising his eyes. She paused, glaring at him. Squeezing her fingers into a fist, she waited for the right moment.

Her hand hovered in the air for a couple minutes as she watched Ozzy get sucked further into his project at the table. He had been fiddling with pieces of scrap paper for the last hour, pulling each corner to meet its opposite. He kept doing this, folding again and again until an odd starburst shape was formed. He was entranced.

She let her fist collide with the smoldering window. Thud. Ozzy jumped.

"Why?" he asked, soon realizing the prank. "Seriously," he grunted, shaking his head. "I hope you break your hand."

She laughed. "And I hope you realize that origami, or whatever you're doing, is not your calling." Ozzy acted tough because he was tough. But she liked his human sense of shock. Smiling at him, she relished in the moment.

"Ozzy, promptly to Unit 8," a voice sounded over the intercom. Quickly, he stood and rounded his crafts up into his pockets.

She looked back out the window as he left. The ship had circled this particular sun about twelve times every day, but she couldn't think of a name to give it. She knew she liked its sheen; it reminded her of a mask she wore for a school play once—a paper plate with cut-out eye holes, the whole thing dripping with glitter glue.

She was born and raised on the ship. So were her parents and grandparents. Interstellar travel promised "unique experiences and opportunities" on which folks could base their pride. The honor to bestow personal titles upon celestial bodies was a contagious interest among passengers. With roughly seventy-five hundred onboard, people first wondered if everyone would get a chance to claim an alien planet or immaculate constellation as their own.

But it was space. Endless things to "own." It was a bored pastime among them now. The comet they currently pursued was called "Trixie's Comet," named after a two-year-old who lived in Unit 54. Other plots owned by the toddler: "Moon for Trixie," "Trixie's Planet," "Trixie's Blue Planet," "Trixie's Orange Planet..."

The ship pulled out of orbit and stabilized ten minutes later.

Well, it's about time, she thought.

"Alice, please approach Unit 13," another staticky voice prompted over the intercom. She would have to think of a name another time. It was already called something else, but she felt it deserved something different.

"Were radars down when ya left last night?" Vidal asked Alice as she came through the Unit entryway.

"No," she said, shaking her head. "Why? Are they acting wonky?"

"Yeah," he said. "For some reason, the calibration won't lock like it's suppose'ta," he explained. Alice looked across the large white room. Flustered navigators poked at screens and disassembled computer parts. Route developers consulted code experts through phone calls, hoping to free the systems from its stagnancy.

"I can't get anything to work," Vidal said, smacking the side of his monitor. "I mean, it's not like everything's frozen, but some stuff is displayed in only two dimensions. An expensive ship can't afford for its expensive equipment to bug out..." He shook his head and sighed. "It's suppose'ta work in three dimensions—THREE," he emphasized.