My Vacation On the Exotic Shores of a Black Hole - Part 4

_{This is part 4 of my continuing short story, My Vacation On the Exotic Shores of a Black Hole.}

_{To read the parts that came before this, click on the corresponding link below.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3}

I wished I could hold my head. All the work I had done was for naught. It didn't work. Here I was on the outside of the ship, in my space suit, a busted point defense laser in front of me, and no idea where to go from here.

I guess I could go checkout those mining lasers. I doubt they would work though. Perhaps I just needed a little shuteye to get myself back on the ball.

I grabbed the plasma cutter, and headed back to the hatch, head down, watching the hull plating as I walked. I looked up for a moment. If I couldn't figure this one out, I might die here, and never again see anything else other than this ship. I lowered my head back down and slowly walked back.

We'd been lucky so far. Nothing really dangerous had crossed our path. Our damaged side was facing out to the world though, and we were right next to a gravity well. Our reaction time to anything coming from that direction would be a little bit slower, if we even had sensors to see it. I'd just have to work on the sensors tomorrow.

Maybe there was some way we could use the mining lasers, and swing ourselves around for anything too big for them to handle. It would probably take too long though to maneuver ourselves. Maybe somehow I could boost the maneuvering thrusters.

I could probably repair at least some of the sensors, if not all of them. So that would have to be a top priority.

I would also likely need a bit faster maneuvering no matter what I would figure out. Without point defense lasers, I'd have to do a bit more rockin' and rollin'.

This was not gonna be a fun week. Hopefully I could get everything done before something scraped me off the side of the ship, or blasted a hole right through my quarters. I'd just have to sleep in the cinema room, that's all. Sure, it had a little bit of extra metal around it, but if a meteor was gonna kill me in my sleep, I'd be better off somewhere where I don't normally sleep.

The logic somehow made sense in my head, but I knew that it shouldn't have. I clearly needed that sleep. I must have hyper-lag. Despite spending so much time in a sleep like state, you always feel so run down a few hours after waking up from hyper sleep.

In fact, I could almost fall asleep right here. I felt my self begin to drift to the left, only a few meters from the hatch. My eyes felt so heavy. I'll only close them for a moment, and then I'll go inside.

Somehow my left foot didn't quite land right. I think it hit the edge of where the railing was attached. I felt myself drifting away. I saw the ship go topsy turvy and start to drift away before my eyes finally closed.

I opened my eyes, and I was on a beach. Everything was so bright. Ouch! The sand was burning my feet. How did I get here? I was just on my ship. This didn't make any sense.

There was a woman standing on the beach. She had long brown hair, blowing in the wind, and a long white skirt, and light blue top with flowers on it, with some kind of shawl over her arms. She was looking out at the waves, while the water washed over her feet, then receded.

I walked over to her. I could feel the coolness of the water in the sand, turning it to mud, and squishing ever so slightly beneath my feet. "Who are you?"

"John, you know who I am."

"Julia? How..."

"John, you can't be here now. It isn't time yet. You have to go back. Go back. Open your eyes."

"Captain! Open your eyes! Captain!" The sound of Julia's voice blared in my helmet. She didn't sound like her usual self. She sounded frantic. Even panic stricken. I occasionally heard a measure of that when I did something particularly foolish, like blast myself out of the airlock for the fun of it, but this time it was different. "Captaiiin!" I could hear her voice degrade halfway through the word. "Captaaiiiin!"

I opened my eyes, to see Robert pulling me in. Why was he out here. He would never go out here. His magnetic treads were nowhere near strong enough to guarantee against him coming detached, which he did as he pulled me into the hatch. I regained enough consciousness to manage to put my foot down and re-engage the mag-boots, then re-situate him onto the flooring.

"What's wrong Julia? You didn't sound...you sounded different." I reached up to touch my head, but the helmet was once again in the way. I turned around to close the hatch.

"Captain!" She sounded almost relieved. What kinda cross wiring had happened in her protocols? "You passed out captain, and began to drift away from the ship. I had to close all the airlocks in the ship and depressurize the hallway so Robert could retrieve you."

I noticed the tether was still attached to the railing outside. I began to step out the door to retrieve it.

"Captain! No!" I could hear just a slight bit of panic in her voice, but nowhere near as bad as before.

"Julia, I'm fine now, I just need to get the tether, so I can close the door."

"You need to attach it on the inside first, captain."

"Oh, right." I hooked the tether to the wall, and walked outside to detach the other hook. The plasma cutter was floating nearby, still attached to the tether. If I had lost that I wouldn't have been in much better shape than if I had somehow managed to detach. We'd still be drifting, just not alone. I still felt so tired.

I grabbed it, and headed back to the hatch. I could feel myself wanting to go to sleep as I walked back. I tried to force myself to stay awake. "Hey Julia. How did you convince Robert to come out to get me?"

"I had to override his programming, captain."

"What? But you're always talking about how every robot has it's own programming, and you should treat them with respect."

"I'm not proud of it, captain, but I did what needed to be done. You were drifting in space." She again didn't quite sound like herself.

"I was tethered." I climbed in through the hatch, and pulled the excess tether inside. "I wasn't in any real danger."

"Space walks are the most dangerous part of any mission. Every extra second you are out there is one that you are in danger."

I closed the door, and started the pressurization of the airlock. It felt a bit weird having Robert in here with me. "Are you alright Julia? Is there a problem in your neural matrix? You really don't sound like yourself."

"I'm fine captain. All of my programming is functioning as was intended."

I finally took off my helmet, and rubbed my head a bit. "Ah, well, maybe there's some subroutines in there causing some behavior I'm not used to. You're not exactly standard issue anymore."

"Yes captain, I am quite unique."

"That you are." I opened the inner airlock, and walked down the hallway, and into the cinema room.

"Captain? Are you going to be sleeping in here tonight?"

"Yes I am. With the point defense lasers offline, I could be killed in my sleep by a meteor. So it's better that I not be in my bed. When that bastard comes to get me, he won't know where to hit!"

"Captain? I don't think that follows logical sense."

"Doesn't it though?" I strapped myself in to my big comfortable chair, and kicked off my boots and booties. "Hey, Juliet, would you ever want to go to the beach?"

"That would be lovely captain."

I believe she started to play soft sounds of crashing water, and images of a beach on the display. I might have been seeing things in my delirious state, but I could have sworn I saw her on the shore of the beach, just like in my dream. And then I closed my eyes and drifted off.

_{Beach at Night with Moon and Stars in Ko Li Pe - Tarutao National Park, Satun, Thailand
ไทย: พระจันทร์ ดาว กับหาดทรายยามราตรีบนเกาะหลีเป๊ะ - อุทยานแห่งชาติตะรุเตา, สตูล, ประเทศไทย
Image used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.(source)}

"What are you doing back here? I told you that you can't be here. Not yet."

"Am I dead?" I looked around. "Is this heaven?"

"Don't be absurd. AI's can't go to heaven."

"Then where are we?"

"We're on the beach."

"But where? And you're...you're human."

"No, I'm not. I'm an android."

"You can't be. Your skin is so real." I touched her arm and her hand. There was ever so slightly more resistance than normal skin, but not enough that you might call it sticky. It was even warm. And her skin felt soft.

"John. I am. It's a synthetic bio-polymer grown from genetically engineered cells. Looks and feels almost real, but with a strength that makes it nearly indestructible against normal wear and tear...heh...and abnormal." She laughed? How could this be Julia? "It's been so long John, since you've touched me. I've missed you. Of course, I barely knew you when you were like this. You were just data on my censors. A human like shape on my monitors." She touched my cheek.

"Where are we?"

"You used to take me here. You said it's the only perfect beach on the entire planet. I've been to almost them all by now. I've already told you too much though. I might have already damaged time space. You have to go, John. You can't be here."

"I can't be where?"

"Well, nowhere, and everywhere, and a time you don't belong, and back in your chair, dreaming, of me!" She laughed. "It's the black hole, John. It's warping time-space all around it. For some reason you've grasped onto this one. Onto me. I don't really know why. At least, I don't know why this version of you would." She touched my cheek. "But John, you have to go back. You have to go back to your time. You can't be here. You can't stay here. I don't even know how you are here. But it can't happen. You'll die, John. Maybe we all will."

"Mom? Who are you talking to?"

"No one honey, go back inside."

"Dad?" The little girl looked at me with a puzzled look.

And then, suddenly, I was ripped out of that time, wrenched backward, as if my tether had gone taught.

I awoke with a start. I was back in the cinema room. I was in my chair.

"Captain? Are you alright?"

"Yes, Julia. It was just...a dream."

_{Okay, I'm gonna end it here. If you liked it, consider upvoting, and leave a comment below. Leave a comment even if you didn't like it. Constructive criticism can always help, if you can get over yourself.
Follow to catch the next episode or whatever the hell these are. The next part in the series.
I don't know how long it's going to be. It just sorta come out of me.}

Click here to read Part 5