Science Fiction Olympics Submission Thread

[Shaun]

All submissions for the Science Fiction Olympics go here. Please post them below in any way you feel fit (using spoiler or quote tags, or no tags).

This event has a public theme, which is listed below the deadline.

What is the Science Fiction Olympics?

It is an individual event in which the participant must write a science fiction story in 5,000 words or less using the theme provided below. The story may be any kind of science fiction, broadly defined.

The deadline is June 30th, 2010, by midnight (EST).

Theme: "Glider"

[avettica]

559 words of rushed work. Hope its good anyway.
Landover U.S. Space Corp. Academy 2113

“Private Lancaster would you like to take the glider out today?” Thomas Lancaster turned to his commanding officer, and smiled.
“Of course sir.” Captain Ramses tossed over the keys to Thomas and looked him straight in the eye.
“Now son you are my favorite private and I probably shouldn’t have you taking out such an expensive piece of technology, but I trust you don’t lose that trust.” Thomas nodded as Ramses stone cold eyes turned away. He like his captain, but something about him sent shivers down his spine. He wasn’t sure if it was just the way his captain looked or the rumors going around the academy.
Landover Academy had been set up in order to build up more space support for the U.S. after a recent attack from outer space. The whole idea of training in space sounded like a science fiction novel to Thomas, but as a recently enlisted marine he was transferred to the newly formed space corps in order to become one of the first space pilots of the United States of America. It had seemed like an honor, but he still remembered his father’s goodbye in his head.
“Thomas I know you may like this idea of space and all, but I’ve never trusted our armed forces on Earth. If I was you I wouldn’t start trusting them in space either.” Thomas knew his own captain was one of the men that sent shivers down his father’s spine. Since about the mid 21st century the armed forces had become corrupt. In 2061 it was decided that instead of the president being in charge of the armed forces a superior officer, now know as a six star general, would have total control over all. The first six star general, Fredrick Vanslkye was a good general. He was highly favored among the people and his troops. Unfortunately he was assassinated after ten years on the job, and the power struggle began. Vanslkye was appointed, but some thought that for a job that big there should be an election. Due to the public’s lack of knowledge of military intelligence it was decided that a general that was either five or four stars would be appointed.
“That’s were it all began.” Thomas remembered his fathers story. The rest of the six star generals were all corrupt and either ended up being assassinated, a drunk, or killing themselves. The current six star general was the most corrupt so far, and had been rumored to send mercenaries to kill misbehaving privates. Thomas swept those bad thoughts from his mind though, and he headed to the glider hanger.

Captain Ramses settled himself in the main command center of the academy. He wanted to watch Lancaster try to maneuver the glider. As soon as he took off Ramses sat back and watched the boy take make his last moves, think his last thoughts, and breathe his last breathe.
“Pull the trigger” he snarled and the man at the control board pressed a red button, and Thomas Lancaster became a pile of dust. Ramses moved back to his regular post. The boy’s father’s opinions had gotten him killed. He remembered what Thomas had told him about his father.
“My father says to not trust anyone.” Well kid maybe you should have listened to your old man.

[Optional Toaster]

I hope this isn't a minute too late or whatnot. :doh: I apologize if it is. And also to the judges, I apologize for my sketchy story.

551 words.

Ash drifted down from the sky in sheets, accumulating on the damp earth. It was as if the vault of the sky had been opened, and death in the form of powdery residue had been freed to replace the solid ground.

Eliza stood at the heart of the desolate park, watching the bleak, gray atmospheric show in a navy blue peacoat. She pulled a brown leather-gloved hand from her pocket and opened it to catch the flitting ash.

It nestled into her curled brown hair and caressed her cheeks. It felt cool against her skin, electric with confusion, anger, and fear.

She vaguely wondered if the ash in her palm belonged to her departed husband.

“Say it,” she commanded herself in a steady, monotonous tone. An inner voice answered her own.

You know you can’t.

Eliza tried. “Cooper is de…” She broke off.

Why can’t you just say that he’s dead?

Eliza didn’t answer herself.

Thinking about how very few referred to the dead as actually dead, Eliza put herself at ease.

She began to go back, back to just moments ago. First, she saw the bombs and the digital billboard filled with Gliders, the hackers’ emblem. The three by three square filled her vision, one perfectly round, black orb in the top row, middle column, one at the very right in the center row, and the entire bottom row filled with a shadowed circle for each squared space.

Next, she saw Cooper, the last thing she wanted to see, and if not last, then not at all. Eliza saw his paled, eternally comatose face, his mangled body out in the charred road. The bombs had claimed him, and death had carried him away in its cold, calloused grasp.

Eliza wanted to call out to him, but she knew that would bring her back to his body that still lay there in the road, untouched but for death. Death and the bombs.

She didn’t want to remember her life with Cooper before that day; she didn’t want to remember that he had been in her life at all.

A flickering digital billboard flashed the Glider at her again, and she fell to her knees. The ash flew up around her and settled back down on her peacoat.

I’ve brought this upon Cooper, she thought to herself. I’ve brought this upon everyone.

And then she began reminiscing again. Eliza found herself in the preparation lab, cleaning her tools for her next patient.

She had never found anything unusual about her job, especially since the government had created it for the benefit of the people. Creating equality was a miracle, but the result hadn’t ended as they had anticipated.

Eliza thought of her (previous) profession. All she had done was give her patients the operation so that the government could think for them. It wasn’t anything horrible, as the hackers had thought.

The hackers. They were responsible, too. If they hadn’t opposed the idea of a perfect world, Cooper wouldn’t be dead, I wouldn’t be out of a job, and I wouldn’t be buried in the ashes of the people I knew, Eliza thought.

She rolled onto her back, basking in the dim light and pressing the side of her face into the bed of ashes.

The Glider emblem blinked back at her.

[Alice Glitterhorn]

Aiight. Edited and everything.
Sugar Glider <--Yet another awful title.

3500 words (exactly. Do I get points for the coolness of it? :P ) Representing TEAM JAWESOME.


“That’s the fourth one this month.”

Two green-clothed men stared over the edge of the cliff they were standing on. A hundred feet below, a swarm of white-clothed EMTs were crowded around a body bag. They rolled it onto a stretcher easily, as if it was only a small child in the black sack, and shoved it in the back of their truck. There were no ambulances allowed at these accidents - they would draw too much attention to the strange circumstances of the government-funded experiments.

The faint scent of blood was carried on the November wind, where it reached the noses of the men high above the ground. The larger of the two grimaced, the corners of his mouth tightening; the other watched the truck disappear into the thick vegetation of the forest, where it would transport the body to the Hybrid Mortuary. They had to hide the lab in a forest, away from any sort of human life, for privacy and safety, yet the living quarters for the Gliders had been built out in the open area along the cliff. And every now and then, while being walked around the lab, one of those damned creatures would escape from their Watcher and launch themselves off the cliff to their deaths.

“Lemmings,” muttered the older man, Jameson, in a strong Southern accent. He pulled the black Watcher cap off his head and ran his hand through his thinning brown hair in distress. It had been his ward that jumped today, and no doubt he would be in serious shit when he talked to the Director of Hybrid Living. The director would get bad marks if all his living hybrids ended up smashing their brains into soup-like substances.

“Lemmings don’t actually throw themselves off cliffs, sir. That’s only a myth.” Ronalds coughed into his hand, hoping that he hadn’t spoken out of turn. Angering the larger man was the last thing he wanted to do.

Jameson shot him a look that could have withered the strongest cactus. His jaw was tight as he spoke. “I’m just about done with your shit, Ronalds. Now I have to go talk to the director. Be careful not to follow suite with the Gliders.” He put his cap back on and turned to go back to the living quarters. Ronalds wearily watched the man leave; he shuddered in the sudden chill of wind and briefly wondered if Jameson was going to have him killed. His words had sounded almost like a foreshadowing of his fate. Many others had mysteriously disappeared after pissing off the older man, and none of them had ever been found.

After staring at the deep red spot that lay on the ground a hundred feet below him for a few moments longer, he started jogging after Jameson. It was almost time for his Glider to take a walk around the grounds.
-------------------------------------------------

The director’s room was as distasteful as ever. Six framed diplomas were nailed to the greenish-gray wall behind the desk, which was made of some sort of stained-white wood. In one corner, paint had started peeling in long strokes, like a tiger had decided to sharpen his claws there. Jameson wouldn’t have been surprised to find a tiger in the director’s room. Nothing about the director surprised him anymore. A filing cabinet was situated against the back wall as well, and it was covered in magnets that shouted such colloquialisms as “The Spliced Way is the Right Way!”, “Got Glider?”, and Jameson’s personal favorite, “Here Be Hybrids.” It was these corny expressions that made up the director’s speech patterns and gave Jameson headaches from their disgustingly up-beat colors.

“Thank you for reporting back to me, James,” the director said, hitting the edge of a pile of papers on his desk. He was a large man, bear-like really, which only made it more embarrassing to have the magnets on his cabinet. His blond hair was tucked into a red bandanna. Jameson wondered how this man had the brains to be Director of Hybrid Living; maybe he’d forged those diplomas. He would have looked less out of place in a biker gang. But the Hybrid Living section took all types.

“It’s Jameson, sir. Not James.”

“Oh, really? It’s not James Jameson?” The director chuckled and set the papers down on the left side of his desk. He motioned for Jameson to sit down in the leather chair on the opposite side of the desk and took a notebook out of a drawer. To Jameson’s horror, a picture of the director surrounded by Gliders had been taped to the front of the notebook, and above the picture was written “Our Family.” He looked closer and saw that one of the gray creatures had been crossed out in red marker.

The director took another moment to flip through the pages, reading bits here and there as if to remind himself of what was inside. He cleared his throat and his eyebrows knotted together at one particular page. Jameson started to sweat. For all his big talk, he was the only one who knew just how much power the director had in the Hybrid world - especially the Glider part.

Finally, the silence was broken. “Do you mind if I spray some Febreze? It’s been a little mildew-y in here ever since that big rain we had last week.” Without waiting for an answer, the director pulled a bottle of air freshener from a drawer and started spritzing it all around the room. Jameson’s eye twitched, and he burst into a fit of coughing when he inhaled some of the spray. But he didn’t protest.

Once the director had settled back into his seat and the room smelled like fresh flowers, he clasped his hands together and leaned forward as if to tell Jameson a secret. His voice was low when he spoke. “Now, is it true that Lila had an accident today?”

The older man looked at him in confusion. “Lila, sir?”

“Your Glider. Her name was Lila. You should have remembered that.” He frowned.

“Oh. Oh, yeah, she took a dive off the cliff when I was walking her. I’m truly sorry for your loss in the family, sir.” It pained Jameson to call the creature “her” and to say it was a loss. It wasn’t a loss to him. It was just the death of another of those damned creatures. If he was honest with himself, he was constantly wishing that every one of the human-sugar glider hybrids would spontaneously die. It wouldn’t be the most unusual thing to happen in the genetics laboratory.

After a moment of intensely staring at him, the director pulled a pen out of the cup on his desk and started scribbling in his notebook. His mouth had tightened into a thin white line. Jameson squeezed the arms of the chair he was sitting on and took a deep breath. Sooner or later the director was going to ask-

“And who is going to replace Lila?”

Jameson’s eyes went wide. He hadn’t thought about it yet, but if he hesitated too long, the director was going to answer for him. That was the last thing Jameson wanted. He had a wife to take care of, and two little girls waiting patiently at home to see him again. “Ronalds is being a nuisance, sir,” he murmured weakly.

Think of your girls. Think of your girls.

He hated betraying his coworkers. Even the nosy asswipes like Ronalds. But the younger man was the only name he could think of in his split-second decision. He didn’t deserve it. None of them ever did, in truth.

“Thank you, Jameson. Would you like to go on leave, starting tomorrow? You’ve got about a month of days stacked up.” It wasn’t really a question. The director knew how much Jameson had been dying to go home. It took about two months for the processes to be completed. Half the time was for the muscles and fat to be scooped out like ice cream; for the bones to be shaved down to nothing more than fragile sticks. The other half was for the genes to be ripped from the remaining cells and glued to sugar glider genes. Everything was mechanized now - it used to take two years to combine the different genes for every cell in the body. Now it took a fraction of that time, and they had even made solvents to help along the meshing of human and marsupial DNA. The human became less human on its own.

“Thank you, sir,” Jameson gasped, standing up so fast that he nearly knocked the chair over. His heart was pounding as he pulled the Watcher cap off his head and placed it gingerly on the desk. Adrenaline was released into his veins. Fly away. Flight. Don’t fight. He didn’t need to tell himself twice. “Thank you so much, sir.”

“No, thank you, Jameson. Now go on. There will be a car waiting for you in about twenty minutes.” The director shooed the older man out of his office. Once the door was shut and he sat in silence, he took a cell phone from his pocket and started dialing the number for Genetics at the lab hidden in the woods.

“Hello, Mr. Director, sir. How may I help you?” The voice was cheerful - painfully so. If Jameson had heard it, he would have been horrified that anyone could use that tone of voice in such a bleak place.

The director looked at the name written on his notebook in thick letters. “Tell Maynard that he’s got two new subjects coming in.”

“Yes, Mr. Director, sir. Anything else?”

“And call the Tate family. Mrs. Tate is going to be notified of her new status as widow later on today.”

“Yes, Mr. Director, sir-”

He hung up and put the phone on the desk, staring at it thoughtfully. The Genetic Engineering Laboratory for Homo Sapien Sapiens-Petaurus Breviceps would soon be in disarray with the arrival of the new men. The Gliders would be happy to have more brothers coming soon. The director decided that he should make a visit to the Tate family himself - it would be more personal that way. And the second man didn’t even have a family, so he wouldn’t have to give the same speech twice.
-------------------------------------

It seemed like his body had been made out of clouds. It was so light and airy; he could fly if he wanted to, just lift his arms and grab an air current beneath him to push him towards the sky. There he would glide with the migrating birds across pink sunsets. He would see all the wonders of the world that he could never manage to find when grounded.

The only nagging thought, hidden behind a wall of wishes to go on holiday in the sky, was that he wasn’t used to this feeling. He was usually heavier. His feet used to leave prints in the ground. And he was convinced that as he was now, he would be gently bobbing up and down when he walked, leaving not a single path to be followed.

He must be having a dream. If that was the case, he didn’t want to wake up, and why should he? It was perfectly all right to keep dreaming.

So he turned back to the image of blue horizons and traced the silver lines on the clouds. He danced waltzes with the breezes as if he were a man twenty years younger, twenty years of stress falling out of him like discarded trash. Higher and higher and glided. He somersaulted over airplanes and jogged along the vapor trails. He reached up towards the sun and felt the air thinning, threatening to crush him (but you can’t crush a man with no weight). This must be what it is like to be a gas, free to go wherever you want, to spread yourself thin over distances. Ah, what an incredible feeling...
------------------------------------

He wanted to scream. His left arm was perpendicular to his body, limp, and being held by a doctor. No, not a doctor. A sadist. A table had been rolled next to his arm, and the sadist was slowly scraping off fat and muscle from the bone. The gore was already piled high on the table, forming a sticky clump of red and yellow that made him wish he had the ability to vomit. But his body was frozen by a continuous flow of liquid running through his blood vessels - what was left of them, anyway. His right arm was under the leather restraint that ran across his torso, both of which where heavily bandaged. But even the bandages weren’t as large as his body had been before.

The intestines had been the worst part to watch. They had even propped his head up on a box so that he could see every detail. They’d pulled them out like a jump rope and snipped off sections here and there. He had been forming a cowboy-gut, and the rotten meat that had been hardening his abdomen was all thrown away; the extra intestines would be used for something or other one day, was what they had said. There were six white-coated men in the room, all of which were torturing him in some way, had been doing something to make him skinnier, lighter, less dense.

Before they started, they’d told him that when he was done he would weigh about fifty-five pounds. He’d weighed nearly two-hundred at the beginning.

Perhaps, if he hadn’t had to watch, it would be bearable. The pain wasn’t so bad. They had been mixing some sort of pain medication into the stiffening liquid. But the sheer fact that it was his body that they were tearing to bits made him cry to himself in his mind. He imagined himself bawling on the ground like a child. It was a crude escape, but it was an escape nonetheless. After all, he couldn’t even close his eyes.
------------------------------------------

There was a mirror on the back of the door. He had been rolled into the blindingly white room on the stretcher and set up vertically. His head was strapped down still, and the only thing he could look at was his form in the mirror. The doctors had been cruel through the thinning process, and were once again trying to hurt him. There were no bastards in the world sicker than them.

Two months had passed since Lila the Glider’s death. In two months he had changed from a slightly larger-than-average man to some sort of unrecognizable form that sickened him and would slowly start to look like another creature entirely.

Gray, nearly-dead skin stretched too tight across his body. Eyeballs that were too large for their sockets and saw everything in shades of black and white. He could see the shape of his own skull, and his previously-thinning hair was gone, having fallen out when his genes were put back together. There was no nose, only two slits, and no mouth in the face. His bones were half as wide as they had been, and most of his muscle was gone to make him even lighter - they’d only let him keep enough that he could perform basic functions like walking and eating. And God, his genitals were gone. He was barely a male anymore. He was a Glider now, and only their names allowed gender to be known.

Thankfully, his arms were pinned to his sides. He didn’t want to see the extra skin that they had grafted together to make crude flaps of skin to act like wings. The body of the Glider had been vaguely based off of Petaurus breviceps, a small marsupial with membrane between its fore and hind legs. That was the same creature whose DNA had been combined with his own.

The flaps of membrane had, so far, been ineffective for gliding or flight. Even with over half of his body weight gone, he would never be able to fly. The director had said that in another fifty years or so they would genetically engineer a being capable of flight. Everything done now was experimentation.

He groaned continuously at the image of the disgusting creature he had been turned into. It was one of the only sounds he could make now, since he could no longer speak.

As best he could, he started looking around the room. There was nothing except a small bed in one corner and a toilet in another. It was a prison. The director didn’t seem to care too much about the newest addition to the family. All the others had been given lavishly-furnished quarters complete with televisions and four-post beds.

The sound of a click reached the holes in his head that acted as ears. The mirror disappeared as the door opened, and a woman with a Watcher cap came in. She shut the door softly.

“Hello, darling,” she crooned. She was beautiful, and it was unfair. Blonde hair spilled out from under the cap, accompanied by piercing green eyes. Unfair. It was all so unfair. If he still had tear ducts he would have cried. “How are you feeling?”

He squawked like a bird.

“Your family has been notified, James. Your wife was very sad to hear about your ‘unfortunate accident’.” The woman smiled secretively. “We’re going to have lots of fun though, aren’t we? Just the two of us.” She cast a glance around the room and sighed. “I’m sorry about this, but you’ll be moved into a nicer room once it’s been set up for you. You aren’t the only newcomer. Ronnie, too, has been added to the family!”

It was Jameson. My name was Jameson! And his was Ronalds... My wife. My girls. My little girls.

“The director told me that I should mention how happy he is to have you. I know it must seem a little unfair, since only one extra person was needed to be turned, but it was your ward that killed herself, the poor dear.”

Jameson wanted to be able to cry. He wanted to stop thinking; couldn’t they have altered his brain? He had to live forever in this human mind, accompanied by an ugly, alien body. Damn genetic engineering. He should never have started working here all those long years ago. It had been twenty years. Ever since they started creating the Gliders. Damn them. Damn them all!

The woman started undoing his restraints. He briefly thought about trying to escape, but then he remembered that he was so weak, he wouldn’t even be able to tip her over the slightest bit. They’d taken his only chance to run away.

But he couldn’t fly. And when he was allowed to go walking around the grounds, he could follow in Lila’s footsteps. He could end this. It would be better to die than live as a failed experiment. Too live without his family. He was so ashamed of himself now.

“My name is Ellie. I am honored to be your Watcher, James.” Her smile was gorgeous. How they had gotten her to work for this hell hole of an organization, he would never know. As soon as they went near the cliff, he would be over the edge as fast as he could.

Walking was terrible. He remembered how Lila would stumble along, her knees knocking together, her feet twisting in odd steps. He went the same way. It was an effort to lift his leg up and a blessing to put it back down again. It felt like he was carrying hundreds of pounds strapped to his body. Ellie helped, lending her shoulder to use as a sort of crutch.

Outside, there were two other groups. One of them could have been Ronalds. Jameson couldn’t tell, though, and doubted he would be able to even if they were closer.

The grass kept tripping him up. And the wind was cold on his naked body. Painfully cold. Even Ellie was shivering in her jacket and thick pants. But they were almost there, near enough to the cliff that he could taste the brief freedom and joyful death. He turned away from her and started hobbling towards it, only twenty feet away.

A clump of dirt came in contact with his foot, and he went tumbling down. No! He stretched out his hand, reaching for the sweet air that hung over the drop.

“No, James! We aren’t allowed to go over there anymore. That’s been forbidden.” Ellie caught him and started to drag him away from the cliff. He squawked in protest, brushing at her hands like he could escape her grasp. It was futile. “I know you want to see it - it’s a breath-taking sight - but the director says we can’t allow the Gliders anywhere near there. For some reason they keep throwing themselves off of it.”

[Spacepirate]

Soul Searching in Deep Space

4328 words.

Welcome to Soul Searchers. Thank you for taking the time to read this advertisement and we hope that once this transmission download finishes, you'll think about joining Soul Searchers, in an effort to become a better YOU and also help YOUR country.

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What's my soul?

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The majority of past clients have found their souls, and are better off for it. They found themselves in space and so can YOU.

You can't find yourself, intimately, if you're stressed. We at Soul Searchers have found the perfect environment for you to achieve nirvana. Our answer is Deep Space.

What is Deep Space?

Deep Space is--

<You are now fast forwarding. Please hold on until you have arrived and press STOP when you would like to continue.>

--have the chance to help your country. Our information shows that you, GRAY JOYCE, live in The United Islands of Britain. Join Soul Searchers and you'll have the chance of helping your country and your people. Please continue listening to hear how this will work.

This is why you should join Soul Searchers:

Did you know that the Universe is filled with Oceans?

---

Gray Joyce inhaled salt water.

The dryness that seemed to permeate every cell in his body made him motionless in the waves. Shrinking. Always shrinking. He wrapped himself into the foetal position, trying to take up the least amount of space possible-- in fear. Too weak to move, he let the currents drag him through the nets of water. Like a seal caught between whales, he was caught between opposing waves and forced through every chink in the water molecules.

Tossed and thrown, he felt oddly stationary. Motion didn't exist to him, not anymore and possibly not ever in this water-logged body. His self was heavy and the pores on his skin bagged with salt until they dragged the rest of his organs down with them. His bones turned into shattered anchors, the pieces disjointed and haphazardly sinking to the bottom of his feet.

The glider was already a couple leagues away from him.

Gray floated through the search-lights whilst tidal weeds clapped him deeper and deeper.

"Come on ... Talk to me. Please, talk to me today. Why won't you, Sea."

And he repeated the mantra. The last four words.

Glitch? Hard to tell with this kind of equipment. But why would he repeat it? For reassurance. Spiritual? Is there any other kind.

He opened his eyes and he saw coral creep into his body. The burning stung momentarily turning water opaque, but he then adjusted to the colours of the deep. Shades of colour mismatched with an overall dark blue. And there were patches of darkness that he floated into. Caverns of black that stretched high above him. At the caverns he always blinked. Blinking to see if he was closing his eyes or opening them. He could never tell.

Pink spines started to tap the lines in his back. Sharp tentacles that probed the tips of his fingers and his feet. Pumice bodies that lied down next to his, rub next to him, this way and that, until Gray was marked with tooth-picked scratches. Some ran up and down his body pressing hard onto his veins. The vessels bulging under the pressure, as if the blood wanted to colour the water, like dye, and float like smoke. His body was carried further and further, seemingly in all directions, yet the coral pressed onto his skin leaving indents of their macroscopic life. Pressing so hard it seemed clinical. The way they prodded into his body measuring his pulse. The lub dub of their beat seemed to make up for his own. His heart slowed down in the cold.

His heart existed outside his body. It seeped through his lungs and his skin by osmosis. Dualism.

Out of body experience perhaps? No. The water is giving him hallucinations. He's going to die soon.

Proboscis feelers tripped over themselves as they crept from his stomach to his hips. They undulated each breath he took; his body heaving with every gulp he drank. Little pockets of sweat floated before his eyes, catching yellow in the light that there was.

Let there be light!

But light was now hard to come by in these depths and even less reached his eyes. What warmth followed was quickly shrouded by tonnes of water. Water that broke him. The world faded in and out, turned grey and ripples blurred into one and another. The waves cancelled, like his heartbeat, out and there was a stillness when his legs hit the sea floor.

The jewelled coral things scuttled away with the dust cloud. They left him in peace. A piece, a shaft, of light danced around him, illuminating his body like spotlights. Or like lamps on a dissection table. Cold and pure. Radiance revealing every scratch, bruise and broken bone.

And the wave light was just visible to Gray. His eyes closed, puffed and red-- throbbing.

The spotlight moved. It twirled like sand on a beach, running through his vision until, at the last moment, it turned spherical. White light, yellow in his eyes, looked like the surface of a moon above him. So far above him that the moon's influence could never reach here.

Gray Joyce died again.

---

Gray Joyce inhaled salt water.

He's doing it again. I know.

He put his hand in front of him. He watched the water run out of his cells. He could see his hand getting smaller. Shrinking. Always shrinking. And it hurt.

The pain, the pain of becoming less, physically, as a person made his body shake. He wrapped himself into the foetal position, trying to take up the least possible amount of space. Too weak to move, he let the currents drag him through the nets of water. He would die here. A part of him knew it.

Déjà vu? No, rather, foreshadowing. He knows he will die.

Yet Gray didn't care.

He could be tossed and thrown about as much as the Moon wanted but he would always feel stationary. It was odd, he mused as the ocean rushed into every orifice. Motion didn't exist to him, not anymore and possibly not ever in this water-logged body. His body was heavy and the pores on his skin filled with salt until they dragged the rest of his organs down with them.

He felt both heavy and light. Both drowning and buoyancy. The Moon was cruel. One more wave and he would've sunk, but the Moon kept him here. Halfway caught between living and dying. Looking up, he could see the sky. Blue upon blue. He could see the moon as well. That yellow spotlight, that seemed to cut straight through the water into his body. Sliced him right in half, the Moon did.

To his right was the glider. He could feel it beneath his fingers. The metal rusting as fast as he was aging. It groaned as the pressure increased, the metal sockets wheezing in protest, sending clanks echoing into the ocean.

Gray floated through the search-lights of the glider. He could've gone in anytime he wanted. The button that opened the hatch trembled beneath him. And in that instant he pushed away with his feet.

"Come on ... Talk to me. Please, talk to me today. Why won't you, Sea."

And he repeated the last four words as if they were prayer of mourning.

He felt coral creep into his body. His eyes were closed because he was too scared. He could imagine the colours.

Purple spines started to tap the lines in his back. Smooth tentacles that probed the tips of his head. Pumice bodies that lied down next to his, rub next to him, this way and that, until Gray was indented with long bruises. He was cut already and he watched the smoky blood escape like air in the water.

Patterns in the sea, dyed red. A darker, richer red. And it all seemed a waste. A waste of blood. He felt faint as more and more of him floated away in spurts. There was more of him out of him, than inside.

Interesting isn't it. What? Interesting how some things are defined each and every time. Very... I wonder what's causing all of this though. How can each time be the same?

Light was hard to come by in these depths and even less reached his eyes. What warmth followed was quickly shrouded by tonnes of water. The world faded in and out, turned grey and ripples of water blurred into one and another. The waves cancelled, like his heartbeat, out and there was stillness when his body hit the sea floor.

He was alone now. The dust clouds of his weight scared away the coral. Coral that wept by the sidelines, from the oil stained pews because--

Gray Joyce died again.

---

"He died again."

"Quite." The man turned as he said this and walked over to a control panel. The panel was set into the wall, slightly tilted and reflecting light like black marble. The whole room was like this. Deep set marble floors and walls stretched to five sides. A lighter type of stone made up the ceiling. On looking up, there was a square pattern of lights and engraved in the centre were the words and logo of Soul Searchers.

The logo was placed atop the 'searchers' and it composed of one eye. Inside the eye was empty space and the jagged lines of a wave.

The older man pressed the smooth surface. It rippled whenever he touched it, sending out a light ping from all five corners. He then turned and observed the younger man, who was standing in the centre of the pentagon watching the large flat screen that held the space on another wall.

The young man turned around, "So this makes it how many times?"

Two pings later and a number flashed onto the marble. Two billion, one hundred and fifty seven thousand, seven hundred and twenty nine.

"That's a lot," the man grunted, "Almost the population of Mars."

"But you don't understand. Numbers mean nothing! Did you learn anything?"

The young man blushed at this attack, looking back at the television screen. It showed an expanse of blue. A crystal world with banks of sand shoved onto the edges, second thought to the main attraction. And it attracted both of the scientist's eyes. They all looked fixed onto this scene, even though they had seen this countless times.

It always started the same. Gray would fly over the Southern Beaches and fly until there was only blue. Until the sky and the sea formed into one, and it didn't matter which was which because Gray, and his glider, always crashed into the blue.

"Always like this then?"

The older man pressed something and then the screen divided into half, and then half of each half, into eighths, sixteenths, until there must have been hundreds of films papered on the wall.

Each showed, roughly, the same. The same expanse of blue. The same glider. The same man.

"It's all the same."

"Well done... But you're right. It is identical. He lives it all. Roughly one life each second--"

"So that's, what, eighty years?"

"--each second. So that would make about, you're right, eighty years. I have a feeling it's been longer. Indeed, he can almost choose to make each life longer or shorter as he wishes. My father worked here... before me. Before all of this. He was the first to look after Mr. Joyce as well."

"He pioneered Soul Searchers?"

"Oh God no! Bah. Souls. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I'm too old to believe in souls. No. He worked in the government side of things."

There was a silence when Gray crashed into the ocean.

The bottom tail of the glider touched the water, sending spray against the metal exterior. There was never any sound. And the sunshine made the whole scene look enjoyable. If death ever could be as enjoyable, as laid back as this. Both men had to keep reminding themselves that this person was about to die. The younger man was watching intently. He shivered when the aircraft touched water, submerged and the screen went blank.

"I've got another couple of questions..." he asked.

The man by the panel looked busy. His arms touched the screen as if he was conducting an orchestra. His fingers in a delicate balance with the instrument. Long ripples met up with smaller thicker ones and they interfered to produce various kinds of noises and functions. He nodded, not looking back.

"The glider. The machine. How does it work? Does it even exist? Exist here, I mean?"

Then all noises stopped.

The marble let the ripples flow out, and disappear, thus turning the wall into solid again.

"The glider?"

"Yeah. The glider."

"Well... did they not teach you that?"

"No," said the man, shifting his feet on the dark floor.

"What does the glider look like?"

"Em. What does it look like? Here are the blue prints--" he was cut off and made to start again, "Metal! Metal. I'm guessing four part standard engine, propelled by a fusion--"

"No. No. No! What does it look like?"

"Streamlined metal suit--"

"What does it look like?"

Gray Joyce plunged into the water.

"Well, an animal obviously. Most machinery is derived from the perfection already present in nature--"

"Keep going."

"So it would be an animal."

"And?"

"A sea creature?"

"What type? Come on, boy!"

Gray Joyce was drowning.

"Em... Well... a--"

"Yes. Yes?"

"--a ray. A manta ray. The glider is in the shape of a manta ray."

Gray Joyce died.

---

The hot sands of time ran under him. It speeded up and melted to create this slab of white going on infinite. The glider was fast. The air around the ship turned hot. He was travelling through countries one leap at a time. One fan beat of the sails.

The tail, a long and thin steering tail, hit the surface of the water and broke it. Sliced it into half.

He was still going too fast.

But that didn't matter. He needed the ocean, as much as the ocean needed him. The Sea. It was here now. Here in this place with no sand. No land. The screens were clear. He was alone with the waves. With the crystal strips that floated over and under.

And he longed to be under.

The glider accelerated. Gray's hand on the screen. Increasing velocity. This made the tail flap wildly and it threatened to break off. The wings seemed lost and powerless to stop. They screamed as the wind sprinted past them in punches. The water spray ran down the sides in drops. The glider was crying, but it went faster and faster till

Gray crashed and sunshine was replaced with an eerie light. A light that was never fixed. It changed to its whim. Shining onto whatever it felt worthy. It burnt the rest.

The ocean was no place for a lone man and his flying machine. The glider groaned as water seeped in through the broken wings. Bits at first fell onto the floor, then little streams that took home on the control panels. A crack in the window made sure Gray got wet.

He breathed easier with water in the cabin. He licked the water around his face as it fell. The salt in the water bit his tongue but he lapped it nonetheless.

"Why am I here?"

Why is he here?

"I need to find my soul."

He needs to find his soul. I thought you didn't believe in souls. I don't, but he does.

Gray was up. The water was now at his ankles. The cold water was a shock to him but one he would need to take. He had to learn to cope. This was his home now. The insides of the glider was too cramped and he needed to be free. The rough metal and ugly plastic seemed to be decaying in this place. This ocean of truth was so close. It revealed the glider, the death of it ever so painfully. Ever so slowly. His chair spun as another jet of the Sea came through the window. Those little cracks like spiders scurrying across his eyes. Across the dark tinted glass.

He saw his soul.

Reflected outside of the glass. The focal point of the shattered glass. The first crack. It was outside the glider. Everything he wanted was outside. Trapped. He felt slightly claustrophobic. The metal walls seemed to creep up on him, and hide all the oxygen themselves.

Hyperventilating, Gray felt pain crash onto his shoulders. His body turned hot in the fire that ignited in his throat and brain. He stepped backwards, dizzy, and fell onto the metal wall. It's burning touch stole his breath. He collapsed into the leaking water and closed his eyes. Half of his face breathing in the ocean, and the other half burning in the glider.

He found himself naked. His clothes on the other side of the room. Arranged, folded and placed in the puddle.

His hand hovered over a screen. He wore everything he had on his on the edge of his hand, his sleeve. It pulsated as if he was clutching his heart there. All of his blood rushed to those fingers. The button that opened the windows.

Still tinted, he only imagined what the colour, what the underwater air would feel like. What it would be like to feel the waves rush into his face.

His soul was somewhere outside the glider. Somewhere in the Sea. And he wanted to find it. Perhaps just out of grasp.

He pressed the button without a care in the world. The pain in his chest already rolled away. Away somewhere above sea level.

Gray Joyce inhaled salt water.

---

Soul Searchers is happy to announce that you have been chosen to take the first step onboard the journey.

The process was difficult and many people did not get the CHANCE to take part, which is a real LOSS. After much contemplation of records, health, interests, and social status, Soul Searchers believe we have picked the perfect candidates. We have picked one hundred and eleven candidates for this journey. We anticipate more flights to happen in later programmes.

You, GRAY JOYCE, are passenger number one.

You, GRAY JOYCE, are to report to Mars Base Seven in, exactly, nine weeks. All transport and equipment has already been organised. You do not need to bring anything except yourself-- and your willingness to find your SOUL.

A deposit of money has been placed in the accounts you specified as insurance. You have selected FAMILY.

Your venture in deep space will be at the frontiers of science and humanity. Soul Searchers would like to remind you that it is too late to back out, and that everyone, across the world, are very PROUD of your achievement. You are doing this for your country.

For the world.

For the search of WATER.

And humanity's survival to come.

There are some slight consequences to do with your travel into Deep Space, but these are rare and only slight. If you do encounter any of these then there will be a team of scientists, back on Mars, to help you. Allow a couple years for transmission and answering. If you have anything you DON'T UNDERSTAND then feel free to contact the number provided later on. All information, on here and extra, will be replicated before and on the journey.

Some common reactions to Deep Space travel are: nausea, confusion, (non permanent) memory loss and OBSESSION.

Any other negative reactions or problems are not the DIRECT cause of Soul Searchers and can only be accountable by the person in question.

The last point of note is that this is a journey to find your soul. It may take a while but patience is a virtue. Be comforted that the latest Imedi researchers have been used to provide the safest, the best journey you can have.

<You are now fast forwarding. Please hold on until you have arrived and press STOP when you would like to continue.>

--When you arrive at Mars, you will be sedated. You will not see the spaceship due to health and safety legal reasons, but you will be told everything prior to flight. There will also be INFORMATION given to you when you are awake in Deep Space.

You will be frozen. Cryogenically. Set to wake when the Soul Searcher Glider arrives at the edge of Deep Space. You will wake in a room with a sensory depravation chamber. This is the beginning of the gateway to your SOUL.

---

"I don't understand."

Both men remained silent. The screen showed pictures of the spaceship and of the Glider.

"They are the same. Confusing, isn't it?"

The younger man nodded.

"No one really understands how. How the clients can visualise the Soul Searcher spaceship when they haven't ever seen one before."

The younger man nodded again, drawing his eyes back onto a screen of blue.

The old man continued, "And this has been the same with every client. Every single one--"

"Wait. There's more? I thought it was just this guy?"

"He's number one. There are one hundred and ten more." The old man shifted on his feet. He turned and played with the marble wall, turning the lights on and off.

"But... where are the rest of them?"

"Imedi is not perfect. The fluids in the chamber can only stop death so much. And you, of all people, should understand the dangers of Deep Space."

"So they're, what? Dead?"

The old man winced.

"Not exactly. They're alive, but what can only be described as comatose. They're dying."

"I'm sorry. I'm not sure I understand you. They didn't tell us about this at the training."

"They die. And they die. All in the ocean. Die again. Their brain, subconsciously, sees the pattern, each and every time, and fast-forwards. It's a loop you see. Each time, time gets infinitely smaller. And on repeat."

"What are you getting at?"

"Their brain cuts the corners, skips. Skips the flying over the sands, skips the breathing of water, skips the coral and goes straight to the dying. Adam, those hundred people are constantly dying. They are constantly reliving their death but their life becomes shorter and shorter... There's only so many times you can die virtually."

Both men turned and watched Gray Joyce die another time.

---

Gray Joyce hadn't moved from the chamber in about eighty years. All the nutrients kept him well, whilst the equipment kept him from death-- physically at least. He was unaware that in long slab rooms next to him, there were rows and rows of people who were always going to be in the state of dying.

A part of him always knew that. The déjà vu he got inside the glider increased each time he (lived and) died.

He was alone in Deep Space. He would keep trying though, keep trying to find his soul in the ocean. It was there. He knew it. He could feel it each time he took the plunge. A part of him escaping his body. He'd find his soul and then go back home. Back home to his family... even if it took another hundred years.

---

Soul Searchers wishes YOU a pleasant flight. Who knows what you'll FIND.

---

The two scientists stood there both watching the screen. The lights were dimmed and the marble marble. The younger man took a step forward as if to touch the glider, to touch the man inside it all, to touch his smile (his foolishness or was it bravery). He gave the orders.

"Zoom out."

The room pinged and the screen zoomed out from the manta ray glider. They saw Gray Joyce in a casket of water, his head barely visible above the dull liquid. It then showed the streamlined spaceship. The manta ray shaped spaceship. Floating through Deep Space. Even light had given up here. It moved so slowly ... not travelling at all. A brief fleck in the wide expanse of darkness. It was so small.

Small.

The scientists clung to the small hope that somewhere in the folds of Deep Space were oceans. Water in space. Water that could be brought back by the sheer will power, brain power and soullessness of one hundred people. Of one person. Brought back to the rest of human kind. It was a tiny light that was about to go out.

And if it did, then there would just be an empty vessel, filled with dying people, hanging in a space without Oceans.

Yeah, I really could not be bothered editing. Massive headache. Ah well.