The Mission - Part 1

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He was chosen for the Mission out of all the filth crammed into that seemingly infinite prison. All the degenerates and the lowlifes from every corner of the vast universe thrown inside this limitless structure outside the bounds of time and space. Crimes comitted of such intensity that you would not be able to imagine anything remotely of the sort if you were left alone for a billion years, having all the time to imagine the bounds of human cruelty. Of course, innocents were locked up too. No system is perfect after all. I guess the tragedy is that nobody, not even the supposed saviors tried to bring about reforms to this particular system. The general consensus was probably that you get thrown inside the Crux, you deserve no mercy. That goes for innocent people too. The thing is, the line between a monster and an innocent had vanished. If you asked anyone inside that god-forsaken place what they were in for, you'd be told that they didn't do anything. It was the fucking Rangers. Inside everybody was innocent.

Alas, such is life.

And so he walked through the corridors of the prison that stretched throughout time, passing all the drug-fueled fiends and cannibals. And for the first time in history of that place, there was complete silence. No one dared to hiss, or laugh or shout. For they knew that this one man walking past their cells was going to be subjected to something bad. Something that was even worse than that place. They had learned their lesson after this happened the last time. The Management had something in store for this guy and if anything, it wasn’t going to be pretty. There are fates worse than death. The Crux had taught them that much. But that man was going to be suffering from a fate worse than even that place. So they curled up on their worn-out, maggot infested, bladed beds. They cried, coveted their eyes and ears, and went to their happy place. Just to escape from reality at that particular moment. They wondered what he had done to deserve such a fate. The Crux was full of murderers and fiends: the scum of the universe. Even the very filth and scum of the universe wondered about the crimes of the tall man. Soon he became a legend among the inmates but that is a story for another time.

As he entered The Endeavor, he stared out at vast blackness of deep space. He figured that it was going to be the last time he was going to see that kind of comforting solitude. Inside the luxurious ship, he was told by the powers-that-be that he was going to be sent into UX-21882. Which was a fancy name for what the mercenaries called The Big Swallower: a black hole. This was his Mission. That's not that bad, he thought. Of course it wasn't that bad, it wasn't bad at all. You'd go into that circular ball of nothing and the force of gravity would do the rest. "The rest" in this case being that act of getting ripped to shreds, and those shreds getting ripped to shreds, and so on. A quick and painless death. He "agreed", as if there was much of any choice at all.

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And so without further ado, he was fitted up with a pretty bare-bones suit which included a half-empty oxygen tank, a microphone, a video camera, and the rest of the science-y stuff which he admittedly knew nothing about. But there was something eerie about this whole prospect. Why the suit?, he wondered. The Crux was the infected part of the universe's anus. He was no different than the others, if he was going to die anyway than why set him up with a suit? And the microphone and the camera? No, this was something else, someone high up was watching this.

As soon as he was out of the airlock, the ship wrapped out of there. He was set free right before that humongous black hole from which not even light could escape. He was staring into the black eye of his death, and he was staring into it happily. He floated in the vacuum of space, slowly drawing near to the Swallower. He could feel nothing. Not the cold, not the fear, and not even regret. He didn't know how he ended up where he was, or what he had done to get there. Time had erased the very fabric of identity. Whatever he did or didn't do, the higher-ups didn't care. They needed someone expendable. A lab rat. And where can you find better lab rats than the fucking Crux. Inhumane, you say? Well they could easily play it off like they were giving the guy a death sentence, which was a mercy in itself. This was a win-win for the PR department, if they had any.

For here am I sitting in a tin can
Far above the world
Planet Earth is blue
And there's nothing I can do...

He closed his eyes as the black hole drew him further closer to it's core. Soon he wouldn't feel a thing... or so he thought.

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Hey guys thanks for reading! I finally decided to sit down and write the story I've been thinking about. This is the first part. Hope you like it. The second part will be up as soon as I find the time to write it. Let me know what you think, thanks!

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