Convergent Realms

VI

Ellie was still awake when all authorized personnel were called to the deck. She definitely wasn't authorized, but she was curious, so she went anyway. The captain had sounded rather stressed when he made the announcement, so she knew what was happening was urgent. She rushed up to the deck, the control center of the ship, and saw what the problem was. She wasn't an expert in time travel, or wormholes, for that matter, but she knew that since everyone else was panicked, something bad was about to happen.

Someone saw her, and before she could say that she wasn't actually authorized personnel, she was given a job. Luckily enough, "authorized personnel" meant anyone who could hold a wrench without dropping it. They were trying to manually override the ship's AI by what could only be described as messing with the ship's core systems so much that the AI had no choice but to pull back. But alas, this kind of technology didn't react well to being messed with, and they were locked out of all control soon.

That was when the technicians gave up, and parted the way for the captain to see the damage. Ellie didn't notice, and she only saw the captain when he was looming over her shadow.

"Would you mind?"

Ellie shot out of his way so fast that she could feel her feet moving before her brain registered the end of his sentence. Now they all watched as the captain inspected the damage, looked around at the rest of the control room, and declared his diagnosis.

"There's nothing we can do. We no longer have any control over where we're going."

He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair, frazzled and molded by the hat, then he stood up and asked for a drink. Ellie chuckled for a moment under her breath before she realized that they probably weren't going to survive this. They couldn't have been aware that something like this would happen; for all she knew, it was the first time something like this had happened.

After all of the commotion had died down, Ellie went back to her room. She tried to wrap her head around the fact that there were a million ways that they could die and only a few that they could live, but it just wasn't sitting right with her. She contemplated going to sleep using medication, which would essentially just be suicide. It'd be less painful than whatever other fate the world had in mind for her, though.

She pulled the pill out of the drawer she had kept it in since she'd been given it at the beginning of the trip and examined it. It was almost round and very smooth. Gray in color, and exceedingly small in her hand. She imagined herself swallowing the pill, right then and there, and immediately falling asleep. Her head would hit the floor and she would be gone. No one could wake her up.

Then she made her decision. She turned the pill around for a second, and then she brought it closer to her mouth. She didn't care, she would just sleep the rest of her life. She dropped the pill right above her mouth, and then a miracle came her way.

Well, a sort of miracle. Her body was thrown against the wall, and she could tell she'd probably broken something, but the pill was halfway across the room. Then it wasn't, as Ellie was then thrown back across the room to where the pill was. She threw up, but gravity wasn't done with her. The ship was turning violently, hitting solid things, which meant the end was near. She stopped fighting to get to the pill because she knew it was no use.

She tucked all of her arms and legs as close to her chin as she could manage and felt like a bouncy ball the entire ride to her doom.

But then it was smooth. Just another smooth ride. Just one problem: she was standing on the roof. Everything in her room was knocked around thoroughly, including her, and now she got to live the rest of her life upside-down. Or would she? Could she survive this? Maybe her fate was to live!

Then she once again became a bouncy ball as the entire room began its shifting once again. Now it was more erratic though, and she could feel the individual bumps as the ship hit different objects. Which meant that they'd made it to a solid realm!

So just as long as she survived this, she would be alright. Now she was motivated to become a bouncy ball. She embraced everything - life, happiness, the floor. Speaking of the floor, Ellie could tell that the ship had finally hit it. Partially because there was no more bumping and rough turbulence, and partially because something had tore a hole in the side of the ship that reached all the way to her quarters.

Adrenaline pumping, she crawled her way through the large hole, finding body after body. She honestly couldn't tell who was dead and who was knocked out, and she really didn't care as long as she could get out of this place. A couple of people were conscious, but only barely. Ellie gave herself just enough time to see if they would make it another half hour or so, and then she moved on. For one of the lowest-ranking jobs in the military, Ellie was doing better than most of these people.

She laughed when the emergency lights came on. Some heard her and laughed themselves, and others had simply given up. Then she saw nothing. But this was a special sort of nothing. It was a hole in the flashing red lights that called for help. It had to be outside. She now ran through the torn holes in the thick metal, and soon she saw it. It was the outside world, and it was beautiful. Tears filled her eyes, and she let herself roll out of the ship, to the ground beneath. That was her mistake. It was much steeper than she thought, and she began to roll down a grassy hill. It hurt a little, but she couldn't see anything through her tears, and she didn't want to feel anything either.

It reminded her of a legend she'd been told when she was younger. A story about two lovers on a ship, not like a spacecraft, but one that worked on the water. It had sunk, and only one survived. Ellie felt like that one survivor as her eyes cleared up and she was able to see the night sky. She silently wished that there were other survivors on that ship, that she was not the only one. If it was anything like that legend, there had to be a couple more people like her.