500 Words a Day - Launching

This one went a little dark, I'm afraid, but I guess that's where we are right now. Stay safe!

I wake up at 06:00 like I do every day, even without any sunlight. The stars beyond the porthole look just the same, always the same. Just the cycle of the light-strips in the ceiling tell me that ‘dawn’ is on its way. Still, I can’t complain. Life on the ship is alright, you know?

I wake up the same, stretch the same and get out of bed. I put on my slippers, my bath-robe, and switch on the coffee machine. While the machine begins its morning hum, I turn on my tablet and scan through my messages. Six notifications, but most of them are from the rest of the crew. One catches my eye - it’s a video message from back home.
This one should be savoured.
I wait for the coffee to brew, add the creamer, and take a seat on my sofa. I start feeling a buzz of excitement - videos from back home were a rare treat, as normally we couldn’t spare the bandwidth. There was a strict rationing of one message a week, and only a few GB at a time. We’d been out of port for six months and I was beginning to feel it - a kind of weight pulling down at me, a black hole beginning to grow.
I took a sip, and pressed play.

The Book of Josiah - Chapter 19

 

The end is nearly upon us - just five more chapters until the end of the Book of Josiah! Enjoy.

    “I thought they would have found us by now,” Jos said as he and Jonah hurried down the twisting passageways, “it’s not exactly like we’re hiding from them.”
    “I told you,” replied Jonah, smiling enigmatically, “they won’t find us until the time is right.”
    “Jonah, I’m not sure about this, I’m frightened.”
    “I know. Look at it this way. The ship is going to crash into the city unless something happens. Even if I am completely insane and having paranoid delusions about some conspiracy, nothing we can possibly do now could make the situation any worse.”
    Jos had to admit that Jonah had a point. He felt a new resolve fill him. Despite the impossible odds, he and Jonah would manage to save the city. Together, there was nothing they could not do. They would get to the bridge and somehow they would turn the ship around. There wasn’t long to go now.
    But Jonah suddenly toppled over like a tree blown down in a hurricane. It was all Jos could do to avoid being knocked to the floor.
    Violent tremors began to course through Jonah’s body - he began to shake uncontrollably. Jos started to panic - was he having a fit? what should he do? Jonah’s arms and legs jerked spasmodically but without force, like a mad puppet. He had to do something!

The Book of Josiah - Chapter 13

    A wave of dizziness passed through him. It started somewhere in his bowels, before rippling through his spine and up into his head. His legs felt insubstantial, as if they existed in three places at once - a nauseous feeling swelled in the pit of his stomach. He swayed, and nearly fell. Grabbing hold of a barrel, he caught himself, closed his eyes, and waited for the sickening sensations to pass. They left him a few moments later, with no trace of their presence remaining.
    Jos opened his eyes and looked around him. He must have stood up too fast when he stepped out of the ventilation shaft. At least he hadn’t revealed their presence here by falling over, or getting sick.
    Jonah didn’t seemed to have noticed that anything had been amiss. He was peering over the silver barrels into the vast brightly lit room beyond. Jos moved up beside him and inhaled sharply. He had heard of such engines in theory, seen the plans, the blueprints, but nothing could have prepared him for the actual presence of the great machine that dominated the room.
    It was the size of a large house, a mass of heaving metal and plastic. Parts were of nickel, parts of ivory, parts had certainly been filed or sawn out of rock crystal.  It was huge, brutish and ugly but with a strangely compelling elegance, like some sort of prehistoric predator swimming the oceans of space, devouring all that entered its path. But most entrancing was the engine’s strange song. From the depths of its belly came a ghostly sound, like a howl or a whale song. At irregular intervals it broke free and filled the room with an eerie song. And beneath it all was the purring hum, a note so low and loud that it made teeth buzz and bones vibrate.
    Surrounding the beast were dozens of displays, each shooting multicoloured readouts into the air, relaying the demands of the engine. The technicians scurried around and obeyed the whim of the machine, whether by pushing the buttons, turning the dials or pulling the levers that were spread around the room in a seemingly random manner. But arcane white markings painted on the steel walls suggested that beneath the chaos was a deeper order - an order that the uninitiated could not perceive.

The Book of Josiah - Chapter 10 - JOS

    The ventilation shaft was dark and narrow, cold and dry. Crawling through the tunnels, Jos had a few bare centimetres on either side. His knuckles were raw, the muscles in his hand ached while his knees protested every movement. The ceiling was low and irregular - Jos kept banging his head. The air had a strange, metallic taste, and was far colder than Jos was used to. Back home he had never gone out much, there had been no need. He was glad to have his coat with him now, and tried to wrap it tighter around his body. The shaft was too narrow and he could not get it to work. Damn, he was too old to be crawling on his hands and knees.
    Ahead, barely visible in the darkness, was Jonah, who seemed to move through the shaft effortlessly, as if he had been born there. He made it look so easy. Had he the choice again, Jos would have chosen an alternative route. This might be safer and faster but if he hit his head one more time, he would scream some choice obscenities. There was only one thing that Jos knew for certain: these shafts had not been designed for crawling through.

The Book of Josiah - Chapter 4 - JOS

Chapter 4 continues the story of Jos, the first part of which was Chapter 3.

    Jos watched the chronometer slowly mark the passage of time. He had thought about sleeping but had given up. No matter how tired he was, he found sleep to be a coy mistress. He wanted to speak to Ammi, had wanted to ever since Jonah had been arrested - had that really happened? It all seemed so far away now, so unreal.
    At 7:30 am CET, the starship entered its daytime cycle, and the world onboard seemed to wake from its slumber. Though he had made this journey many times before, Jos still found the lack of objective time somewhat disturbing - day or night, the world beyond the window was as dark as ever. He was finding these little adjustments harder and harder to make. He wasn’t as young as he used to be, and could no longer shrug off the space-lag as if the time difference was nothing but a blink of an eye.
    Ammi would probably be up by now but to be safe he waited another ten minutes. Was he afraid to call her? What should he say? It had all seemed so clear last night, so obvious what needed saying. Jos practised what he would say inside his head but was not satisfied with any formulation. At precisely 7:40 he gave up, resolved to just see what happened, and activated the computer. The display flickered into life, projecting the desktop directly into the air. Deftly, he manipulated the black keys before him, not even glancing down at the pad. This might have been a clumsy way of working but direct computer-mind interfacing was still in the embryonic stage. And anyway, the idea of such an interface, hacking a computer into your mind, was disgusting - he would use a keypad still.
    Selecting off-ship communications and the address of Ammi, he sat back and waited for the computer to find the connection. Soon enough, an image of his wife appeared on the display - she had obviously just washed her hair, which looked dark and heavy. Her hazel eyes were warm and she smiled as she saw him.
    “Jos! How nice to see you.” Ammi’s melodic voice filled the cabin. “I’m just going out the door. How’s the flight going?”
    “Fine, fine. As good as could be expected.”
    “That’s great. And you’ll be here in two days?”
    “A bit less - we should arrive tomorrow night.”
    “Great.”
    “How are you?” he asked, but it wasn’t what he wanted to say - the words stuck fast in his throat and sat there smoldering.
    “Fine. Nothing remarkable going on here. The usual bunch of patients - viruses, flu, ear infections - nothing in particular going on.”
    An uncomfortable silence fell between them.
    “Well, I must be off,” Ammi said, “busy day at the surgery.”
    “Yeah. See you soon, have a good day.”
    “You too. Bye.”
    “Bye.”
    Ammi’s image blinked out. Jos shut down the computer.
    Something inside him was missing. He felt a hole and did not know what to do about it. He should have told her how much he loved her, how much he cared for her - at least he should have told her about Jonah. But no. He said nothing. He always said nothing. Why could he not talk to her? There hadn't used to be silences in their conversations, had there? There was always tomorrow. Maybe when he saw her it would be easier.
    Jos felt a headache looming at the back of his skull - too many sleepless nights. What he really needed was a good breakfast, put everything else out of his mind.
    The walk to the restaurant was not long but Jos found himself thinking about last night, when he had taken a similar walk. Jonah loomed large inside his head. The whole encounter had been so strange. Why had he poured his heart out to someone he barely knew? And some of the things he had said. Nonsense yet seemingly true. He could not explain it.
    Considering that it was still relatively early, the restaurant was quite busy. Jos joined the back of the brisk queue, trying to decide what would be the best cure for a looming headache.
    “I wouldn’t have the eggs if I were you,” came a low, murmuring voice from next to his ear.

The Book of Josiah - Chapter 3 - JOS

The Book of Josiah, chapter 3, and this is where things get complicated. Remember that there are 3 parallel timelines, Josiah, Jos and Joe. Chapter 3 we meet Jos for the first time. To try to keep things clear, each chapter will be labelled with the name of the character in the heading, and will be given different colour and font wordles for images. Chapter one is here and chapter two is here.

    The dream sucked him in. He tried to fight it but could not - there was nothing to hold onto. Jos was pulled into it.

    When he next escaped the darkness, Jos stared up at the unfamiliar ceiling. Semi-conscious, he contemplated the dream. He knew where it was going - he had dreamt it before, many times. He did not want to see the end of it, not again. When he returned to sleep, he would dream of something else. Something nice.
    Having resolved the issue to his satisfaction, Jos rolled over, fell asleep once more, and returned to the nightmare.

    Jos’ eyes snapped open, a cry of terror forming in his throat. Then he stopped himself. Just another stupid dream, he thought, another stupid dream. Pushing aside the unfamiliar sheets and rough blankets, he sat up and looked around. The room was very dark, with only a trickle of light from under the door and the glitter of distant stars beyond the porthole.  A sudden and violent cough seized him and shook his body. Was the water in here drinkable? No matter, he had to drink something, quell the scratching in his throat. Jos swung his legs out of the too-soft bed and started to stand. A noise to his right stopped him dead - a soft moaning, a small rustle of the sheets.
    Eyes half-closed and burning with exhaustion, he could barely see a thing. With a gentle thought command, Jos brought the lights on to low. And had to stifle a cry of surprise. There was someone else in his bed. A woman. And it was not his wife.
    Half out of bed, Jos stopped, his mind simply grinding to a halt on a single question - what had he done?
    The very question betrayed himself. He knew what had happened and yet resolutely refused to move his thoughts back to the night before. Still, the harder Jos fought not to remember, the more the details flooded into his mind. The smell of her perfume, exotic and tantalising, like nothing Ammi ever wore. Snake skin shoes, daringly unethical. Long fingers caressing a flute of champagne in the bar, as everyone had gathered to watch the news. Her lips, so red, so intoxicating. A glorious body, wrapped in strange cloth that shifted from brown to gold, a neckline so low it was almost indecent.
    All evening they had been making eye-contact, her green eyes coy and smiling; they promised everything yet gave little. He had been drinking like a man who arrives at a party and finds he doesn’t know anybody there - drinking to fill a hole in his life. From the moment she walked in he had been enthralled but tried to deny it, to pass it off as nothing. So why did he offer to buy her a drink? He was so cold and she had said yes. He had never dreamed she would want him, not with his muscle turning to fat, his hair receding, becoming grey. But she had said yes, smiled, laughed, played with her silken hair. When she invited him back to her room, was it just the alcohol that made him go?
    And after that he had no memory. Had they had sex? That was the crucial question. Since he was naked in bed and his clothes were lying around the room in small heaps, he could only assume the worst. Had he at least enjoyed it, this betrayal? Why couldn’t he remember? All that was left a growing sensation of guilt and shame. What had he done?
    The only thing he could do now was run.
    As quickly and as quietly as he could manage, Jos gathered up his things. The cough returned a couple of times, seizing his body with tremors. He held them in as much as he could but the noise seemed unbearably loud in his ears. Each time he glanced furtively at the woman - he didn’t even know her name - to see if she was stirring but she never moved. All he wanted to do was to get back to his room, have a drink of water, and go back to sleep.
    He was dressed in under a minute and quickly searched for his keys, all the time trying to avoid looking at the bed. Eventually he found them, lying underneath her blouse in the corner of the room. He moved to the door.
    “Jos?”
    Damn, she was awake. What should he do?
    “Yes?” he answered quietly.
    No response came.
    Jos hardly moved, straining to hear any kind of noise.
    A moment later, a soft snoring told him that she was asleep once more. He turned off the lights and fled.