The Heel of the Station
The stars looked brilliant in the window of the Achilles; the entire view was brilliant in fact. The galaxies, planets, all of them filled me with an extreme sense of joy. The Achilles was the flagship of all scientific advancements that humanity had to offer in the year 2104. I walked through the halls and thought of how big the ship was compared to me and, then of how big the entirety of space was compared to the ship, and the vastness of it all. The fact that everything in space is so big it is beyond human comprehension.
After a while of painful walking I reached the tube travel system that went throughout the whole space station. It’s official name was The Tortoise System but everyone in my branch of the Station called it the Tube Interstate Travel System. I put my briefcase in the back compartment of the tube capsule and laid in the bigger front part and watched as the door slowly closed on me before whisking me away at near light speeds. It took a mere 5 seconds to reach the main part of the station where the majority of the population was held. My wife and kids were there to greet me. I braced for impact as my kids rammed me for a hug. Unfortunately I was only there to join them for lunch before I went back to work. This was my normal routine and it was one that I kept to since I got my job in the linguistics department, I felt it kept me grounded in a way. The lunch was short and sweet and reminded me of all the good I have in my life on The Achilles. I said my goodbyes and headed back to my section of the ship.
I worked in the language department, I was in charge of the alien language department. Humanity was yet to find an actual alien species but there had been traces of alien broadcasts found on radio waves that were being studied. We had actually gathered enough information to roughly communicate in an alien language. I thought my job was the coolest and most important on the ship seeing as how our ultimate goal was to find and communicate with aliens.
Days typically felt upbeat, and surprisingly festive for a linguistics office, but that day was off. Everything was calm and silent. Coworkers kept their heads down and worked quietly, there wasn't anything that anyone knew about that made this day stand out but things were eerie nonetheless. There was nothing that could prepare anyone for what happened next. I was standing at the outermost edge of the branch of the station when an alert suddenly appeared. Alarms were blaring everywhere.
“ASTEROID IN COLLISION COURSE!!! PREPARE FOR IMPACT!!!” speakers boomed!
Everyone moved to the big screen that was displaying information about what to do while I was looking out the window. I saw a star growing bigger at an alarming rate before quickly realizing what it actually was. I had mere seconds to think before there was a loud sound and I was blasted back and knocked unconscious.
When I woke up everything hurt. I had the biggest headache, some deep cuts in my sides. It took awhile for my vision to fully recover. I found the strength to get to my feet and look around, I saw a mostly destroyed mass of what used to be the linguistic office. I walked around the rubble looking for anyone other survivors who were with me and to get a bearing on where I was, no one was around. As I was searching there was a screen that came on, I went over to it and figured how to use it fairly quickly. It displayed stats on the chunk of the station I was apparently stuck in, things like oxygen production status, life support status, a rough map of the part of the ship I was left in. While looking through it I discovered I could also see the number of vitals in the ship. my hands trembled as I went to look at it. I clicked the button to display the number of vitals and my entire body was immediately filled with shock and horror.
“One vital found” It displayed.
I frantically searched for more on what happened exactly and where the rest of the ship was. I eventually came upon a black box file that contained the logs of the entire station right up until the impact. It turned out that a wormhole opened up and an asteroid came out that had a direct course to the station and we only had about thirty seconds to respond. The asteroid hit somewhere in the center of the station and caused huge fractures throughout that caused all of the other branches to immediately jettison but they were too late. The ship that I was in was all that was left of once great station that was a flagship of human scientific progress.
Everything was gone. This year was supposed to be the Achilles 75th anniversary since departure. I was born and raised on the station, everything I had ever known was there. Everyone I had ever known and loved was gone. I was completely and utterly alone on the ship, the sole survivor. I slowly fell into a state of extreme despondency, there was nothing to give me hope of escaping my loneliness.
A little while after my initial shock of making this depressing discovery a little light came on in the corner of the computer screen. “Turn life support (y/n)” the screen displayed. Thoughts of if it even mattered that I turned it on. There wasn't a reason to continue on what was the point of turning it on. I’ll never quite know why but eventually I did turn it on. I was kept alive by the ship’s built in life support for about a year before another message came on the screen. “Incoming radio signal” it read. My eyes lit up, I was filled with life as I clicked on the notification. After a bit of connecting the computer played the signal, It was alien. It was in the same alien language that the linguistic department had been studying. Roughly translated the message said “Distress signal detected, dispatching search and rescue, stay calm”.