Alec's Dream

by Dave Birchbauer

  Jessie woke up in the ALEC’S DREAM. Her immediate reaction after seeing her friends being taken away had been to run to the transport tubes to chase after them. But soon after reaching the tubes, it occurred to her that she didn’t have any idea of what she would do once she found them. Needing a place to think and plan, she made her way back to the ship falling asleep in Leland’s pilot’s chair, exhausted.

  Time had no meaning on the Kan-ji ship as days and nights were artificial. She had no idea how long she had slept. It was light when she returned to the ship and it was still light. She may have slept only a few hours or a few days.

  Coffee, she wanted coffee. Funny, she had never even tried coffee before. But now, for some odd reason she needed it. It wasn’t long before she was sitting alone in the galley enjoying the aroma rising from her cup while picking at a breakfast bar. Her attention drifted to the greenish symbols surrounding her wrist and hand. "What are these?" she wondered rubbing them.

  "Really, they're not that bad looking, if they were just a different color… like blue." To her surprise the symbols turned a light blue, the same color she pictured.

  "Huh? What about red?" She thought of a bright cherry red. The symbols changed to match.

  "Go away!" she said aloud concentrating on the words thinking she could make them disappear. They remained red. "Fade away! Disappear!" she tried, still nothing. "Turn the color of my skin." They stayed red. "Get brighter." she thought. The red symbols glowed intensely. "Fade back." They returned to normal. "They must mean something… must be there for a reason." Her mood went black, so did the symbols.

  Thinking of her friends she closed her eyes… to look through the ships plans now flowing through her mind. She searched the front ship section, through its many compartments, levels, rooms and corridors until finally finding the interrogation area. She found it in the sections middle levels; halfway between the core and the outer edge. Satisfied that was where her friends were being taken, she began working on her plan. Not only would she need to rescue them, she needed to find a way out of this seeker ship after they were freed. That meant finding a way to get the ALEC’S DREAM to the rear ship section. She played her plan over and over in her mind until she couldn’t concentrate anymore.

  She got up for another cup. All she could think of was that she was just a little girl, all alone in a giant alien spaceship needing to outsmart a ship full of aliens, and to rescue her friends. Still, she kept at it, her plan seemed simple enough, but in the light of day… it just seemed so overwhelming.

  The ship’s silence was broken by a voice from the ships radio. She recognized it immediately. “Mom?” She ran to the navigation console.

  “Mom!” she hollered frantically adjusting the controls.

  “Don't transmit Jessie, they can find you if you transmit honey, just listen.” Her mom’s voice was heaven sent.

  Jessie wanted to talk to her so badly. With incredible effort she took her hand away from the controls. “I love you mom.” Jessie said flipping the transmitter on before pulling her hand away.

  “I love you too. I can't talk long either. We're here where you told dad we should be.” Jodi’s voice quavered. “I want to know if everything is OK, but just hearing from you says a lot. Remember, we'll be here when you need us. This is mom, out for now.” The radio went dead.

  Whistling, she hopped back into the pilot’s chair and powered up the console. “I thought I wasn't going to feel sorry for myself anymore!”

  Refreshed and ready, she began her mission. Her biggest problem was how to get the ALEC’S DREAM out of the Kan-ji ship. They could try returning the way they came now that she knew how to operate the air lock, but she had a bad feeling that the trench they came in from would have likely been destroyed or at least still be guarded. She decided that leaving through the rear section was their best chance. Getting there was the problem as she needed to somehow transfer the ALEC’S DREAM to the last section… without being caught. She closed her eyes evaluating the ships plans again. The middle ship section walls were thick and honeycombed with service ways. She needed to get the ALEC’S DREAM inside them and eventually decided on a large chamber opening to the inside of this section, near the central axle. Something in her memory made her think that it was once used for transporting material and equipment during the ship’s construction. It was a good place to hide the ALEC’S DREAM while she rescued her friends. Unfortunately, the service tunnel was on the back wall which meant she would have a long walk to the front section.

  Not being a pilot, much less able to fly a radio controlled helicopter, Jessie was well aware of her talent… or lack of it. So piloting the ship into a small opening in the wall miles above the ground without any help was going to be a problem. She wanted to wait for the cover of night, but knew her only chance of getting this done would have to be in the daylight. With a small prayer, she took the controls and the ship shakily lifted off.

  The central axle that the three ship sections spun around, also served as the main, and only, passageway connecting them. The axle was made of a solid core surrounded by many layers of varying sized hollowed out channels. Some were conduits for ventilation, power and water. The larger ones were used for moving equipment and freight. Still others supported magnetic passenger trains. Stations, inside the ship section walls intersected with others that spread throughout the walls.

  Jessie’s plan was to use one of those larger freight channels for transporting the ALEC’S DREAM to the rear ship section… where the seeker ships main hangers were located. She couldn’t do it herself. She needed Leland and the crew. For now, all she could hope to do was park the ALEC’S DREAM in the abandoned maintenance chamber. In her mind’s eye, she pictured the entrance as a large round opening about a quarter-mile from the axle. She found it easy to steer the ship up to the central axis but once there, it got confusing. She couldn’t picture where the opening should be; the walls massive size and the fact it was rotating made her lose all sense of direction and perspective.

  “There it is.” She spotted a round shadow on the wall twice as big as the ALEC’S DREAM. To her disappointment, she could see an inner door blocking the way in leaving her a parking spot no deeper than 30 feet. It took many tries, bumps and scrapes until finally landing inside the circular cave. She had to angle in to keep the rear end of the ship from hanging out.

  “Holy cow!” Jessie exclaimed nearly drifting to the ceiling as she stood up.

  “There must be something wrong with the artificial gravity.” She examined the console. Everything was off. She took a little hop and sailed to the ceiling again.

  “I wonder if it has anything to do with being so close to the center?” she wondered wishing Sofie or Jade were there to explain it to her. None of her memories prepared her for this. She sat back in the pilot’s chair and looked out at the closed inner door. Her memories didn’t include doors and she guessed they might have been added after the ship was built. Her understanding of the ships builders told her that there should be a control box somewhere near. She couldn’t see one, but since she parked at an angle and it was dark, it may still be there. All she needed to do was climb out and flip a switch.

  The door to the ALEC’S DREAM was on the side facing outwards. The moment Jessie opened it she was hit with a sense of vertigo. Her knees went weak seeing the ground miles below. With her heart beating wildly, she timidly slid out, crawling under the ALEC’S DREAM to the door. It was a large iris style door that was shut tight. She searched the walls on both sides of it. The controls were not there.

  “I don't believe it. Where could they be?” It was dark, but not so dark that she would miss a control panel. She closed her eyes and concentrated as she called up the ships plans. After some minutes she found she was not in the access bay she thought she was in. Worse yet, the controls were on the other side of this door. Fortunately, there was a maintenance shaft running below the floor that led to the other side. Unfortunately, the entrance to that shaf
t was on the outside wall below the opening she just flew in. At that moment, Jessie had an idea of a new invention; a personal anti-gravity suit as she inched her way to the opening. Reaching it, she looked down, miles down.

  With one end of a scavenged cable secured to the ALEC’S DREAM and the other end tied around her waist, she sat with her legs dangling over the edge of the opening. “At least I won’t fall that fast in the low gravity” she thought, not realizing how wrong she was, as her real benefit of the low centrifugal force was that the small cable she was using would never have been able to support her in normal gravity. Taking a deep breath, she rolled over to her stomach and slowly lowered herself over the edge while holding onto the cable. She probed unsuccessfully with her feet for a ladder rung. Lowering herself a little farther, she still couldn’t feel anything. It wasn’t until she slid all the way off the deck and supported only by the cable when she finally felt the ladder under her foot.

  “Why would they hang a ladder up here... this is so stupid.” She grumbled as she lowered herself to the next rung. A couple of more steps later she was fully supporting herself on the ladder... miles above the ground with the wind whipping her. After a few more steps, she found what she was looking for; a closed door 3 feet to her right. It was a square metal door, with a stick handle facing downward. Hugging the ladder with both hands, she reached out with her foot and gave the handle a kick, then another, until it pushed free; but the door remained shut. Climbing down farther, she wrapped her left leg and arm around the ladder and stretched out to pull the hatch open.

  Her muscles began shaking from fatigue as she examined the open hatch. ‘How do I get in there?’ she wondered. The opening was barely large enough for her to squeeze into… and she couldn't see inside.

  “How did I get into this mess?”

  With her eyes closed and her forehead resting against a ladder rung, she said a small prayer before focusing on the door. Not thinking of the miles between her and the ground, she let go of the ladder with both hands and reached out for the door. Her right hand found the open door while her other slipped inside the opening as her feet slipped off the ladder.

  “This ain't good.” she groaned. Her left hand felt nothing but smoothness inside the opening while hanging from the door. She stretched and reached as far as she could… and thankfully her fingers wrapped around something that felt like a pipe. She pulled and slid headfirst into the darkness. Crawling forward as fast as she could she suddenly felt something pulling her backwards. Panic nearly overwhelmed her until she realized she still had the cable tied around her waist. Untying it, she rolled on to her back and waited for her shaking to stop. “I hate heights” She said to the darkness.

  As the beating in her chest returned to normal, she resumed crawling forward wanting nothing more than to get out of the small shaft. She only needed to go a few feet before she found the shafts end closed off by a vent cover. It easily pushed open and she let herself tumble six feet to a corrugated metal floor. It would’ve hurt in normal gravity.

  Happy to be safely out of the small access shaft, she half skipped down the corridor not even caring if it was the right one. A few feet later, actually about sixty feet later, she found a ladder leading up to a door that entered to a large maintenance bay.

  “It looks like my luck is changing.” she said relieved. The bay looked like it had been abandoned for years, maybe since the ship was built. There would be little chance of anyone stumbling on the ship in here. The control panel was next to an iris style door. Pushing its large green button caused the door to spiral open, revealing the ALEC’S DREAM.