Space Odyssey(rate this!)

I may try to get this published when I'm done, so let me know what you think.




6:56 AM, January 1st, 2211 -
Somewhere in Sector X...

Laid before him was a dashboard flickering with oddly colored lights and guages. Dax looked about curiously for somthing. The oxygen seemed a bit low, he had some trouble breathing. He found the correct guage and looked upon it. "92" it read. Unusually low. The avarage was around 110, and the highest it could possably be without passing out was 140. Dax turned and approached the back of his small vessil. He reached out slowly and opened up a pannel on the wall, then began to press some buttons. He pulled down a switch and the AC began to blow harder. He had turned up the oxygen output. But he would have to be careful not to blow off his oxygen supply to quickly.

Dax was an agent with the Universal Protection Agency, UPA for short. He was with the Law and Galactic studies unit of the agency. His job was to study the universe and all of its aspects, and at the same time uphold the law. Today was a special day. Not for Dax, but for the universe. It was New Years day, January 1st. Dax was not ammused by the antics he was forced to take part in at midnight the previsouse night. He did not care so much, "The date is changing just like every other day, only you think its special because its the first day of January." he complained all night. While all his comrades were up late partying, Dax had work on his mind. He was currenty in a small intergalactic UPA spacecraft, heading from Earth to Mars. It was the year 2211, yet things could not be harder. In the year 2190, Mars had been made inhabitable, and people were pooring to the planet from the over populated Earth in the thousands, daily. Needless to say, the small cities and towns the UPA had built where quickly over populated as well. The planet was quickly evolving, the poupulation is growing faster and faster as people herd to the new planet.

Lately, the icecaps to the North had not been melting, as the ones to the South had been. This was not good because the planet would only have half the water it needed. Dax was on his way to meet up with some other agents to study the ice, and figure out why they werent melting. All seemed well for the time, fuel was still over half way full, even though Dax was past the half way point between Earth and Mars. Oxygen levels were slowly rising, and Dax's paycheck was rapidly rising because of his intergalactic studies. He was one of the best agents with the UPA. Dax walked back across the ship and plopped into the pilot seat and gazed into deap space. It had always made him tired, there was somthing about space that did that to people. It was cold, quiet, peaceful. As Dax began to doze off, he noticed a red light blinking just above his head. He looked up at the light and watched it for a moment. Then he reached up and pressed it. Alarms began to go off, they frightened Dax, and he fell out of his seat. He stood up quickly to read what the alert screen was displaying. Dax read the neat gothic text, it stated that several large objects were approaching quickly from the left. Dax looked onto the radar screen, and saw that the objects were within one hundred miles. He gasped and sat quickly into his pilot seat, buckling the belt as he did.

He grabbed hold of the controlls and reset the computer for manual controll rather than auto pilot, and pushed the handles down. The small ship jerked down, wipping Dax's head around. The ship dove down and was flying as quickly as it could. Several asteroids began to fly by, going hundreds of thousands of miles per hour. If one was to hit the space craft, it would go straight through, if that happend, the oxygen would escape from the pod. If only Dax had been paying attention rathar than falling asleep, he would have noticed the asteroids coming, and would have had plenty of time to avoid any possable collision. Dax yanked the handles left and right, up and down, trying not to get hit. Hundreds of small asteroids wissed by fast enough to tear a military cruiser in half, which would be very difficult to do, even with the most powerful of intergalactic wepons, which have been know to be powerful enough to destroy small moons.

The ship flew around in circles, dropping, rising, turning, and spinning about. Every asteroid missing by inches. The ship shook wildely for a moment, and when it stopped, several alarms were going off. An asteroid had hit the back corner of Dax's ship, and the blast had disabled his left engines. The ship then began to spin out of controll, being pushed only by its right two engines. Dax would have shut off the engines and called for help if there were not asteroids flying by, but his only chance would be to continue moving out of the asteroid field, rather than stopping in the middle of it. Now, unable to move out of the way, sevaral other objects began to hit the sides of the spinning craft. The lights shut off, and the oxygen lines broke, blowing steam into the cockpit. Power was lost and the ship hurdled off into a random direction. After a few moments of panic, the terror had ended. Asteroids seized from hitting the craft, and all was calm. Dax reached up and pressed the ignition button. The ship reved up and finally started. Some of the lights flickered on and lit up the cabbin. Steam was still blasting out of the ceiling and walls, it made Dax feel light headed a little, and he knew he would run out of oxygen soon. He took hold of the handles and pushed the ship back onto its proper course. Mars was just ahead. Dax's eyes glew with delight, he had never been to Mars, and was anxiouse to see what the planet is like. Only one engine was left running, and the computer had stabalized its power source, allowing it to only use enough force to move the ship slightly to the left, rather than spin out of controll.

All was going slightly better for a moment, Dax was begginging to feel tired from the oxygen pooring into the room, and could not stand to keep his eyes open any longer. He closed them, and began to doze off, knowing that the computer would not allow the ship to crash into anything with the autopilot on. When the ship whipped off to the side. A large asteroid had smashed into the back of the ship, and had taken off the entire back left corner of the ship. It once more spun out of control, and was speeding tward Mars. All the air in the ship was blowing out of the gaping hole in the back of the ship. Dax reached up and punched a small glass case, breaking it. Then he pulled down the switch inside and a large metal door slid down behind him and shut the hole off from the cockpit. But so did the doors over the windows of the cockpit. Dax could not see and the autopilot was no longer operational. The engine was pushing the ship to Mars with all of its power. "UPA HQ, I'm going down!" Dax shouted into a speaker. When suddenly, all went black.

Dax awoke, broken, and covered in ice. Still in his seat with his seatbelt and an emergency harness on. The ship automatically lowers the emergency harness when the metal doors closed off the cockpit. Dax attempted to move his head down to look at his legs. But the harness was restricting his head movement. He would easily tell that his legs and arms were snapped like twigs, and could tell we was not going to make it much longer. The air had to have been near a hundred degrees under zero. Dax's space suit could keep him kind of warm, but not near warm enough. It was dark in the cockpit, but just light enough for him to see that he was no longer in space. Enough light was showing in so that Dax could see that large chunks of ice had broken through the metal shutters on the cockpit windows. Dax could hear his heart get slower and slower. He knew he was dieing. He tried to move his arms, but could not. Dax began to feel light headed, and colder. He finally helt his heart stop, and all the fight came out of him. His head went back and shut his eyes...


..

Dax was the kind of person who never gave up on anything. The kind of person that would shake your hand with both of his. The kind of person you would hire over everybody else for a job, and the kind of person that would do the best in any kind of class. For months he had been investigating several crimes that happend in the lunar city of Misuisu. Named, after the first asian american president, Misuisu was a shining city. But also one of the most crime infested rat holes in the universe. Even though there was only four places being inhabited by humans. Earth, the Moon, Mars, and a small orbiting city around Earth. More of a space station, but people live there. It's original purpose was as a stopping point to refuel on the way to Mars. But that was over a century ago. Now, space technology was good enough to go straight to Mars on a single tank.

Lately, there had been a series of murders all over Misuisu. The UPA first thought it was involved with some kind of crime family, like a mafia. But that was later called off. Now, everyone thought that it was just some psycho, and everybody in the city was hiding some kind of wepon on their person. Wepons were still quite simple. Gunpowder, and bullets. A standard UPA side arm was a Watson-988A. Which was a small handgun made by a company that originated making toasters called Watson. Watson Toasters, they didn't do so well in the toasting industry, so they went into wepons, and became one of the best known companies in the league. A standard 988A, was very small. Had only five round magazine capacity, and was very noisey. However it was very acurate, and extreamely powerful. It is lethal at medium range, imagine it up close. And it's accuracy is so well known that Watson began making them with a small, fold-unfold dot sight. Put up the small green circle mounted on the top, and a tiny red lazer appears in the middle. Makes the wepon even more deadly, and accurate.

But that is all about to change. His vision was blurry, and he could not see. Yet Dax continued to look around. He could hear ice cracking and falling. Like when you use a shovel to break it. A cold substance landed on Dax's face. He shook his head to knock it off, but it would not do anything more than just puddle in his eyes. He blinked repeatedly, and the liquid burned. Suddenly, anouther sound was heard. Metal grinding on metal. Small fragments began to pelt Dax's face, and they were warm. They itched terribly, and he could not have been more confused. Somthing came over his face, and moved about, then lifted back. It was rough, and itchy, but it was very obviouse that it was a towel. All the sound had stopped. The ice stopped falling, and the metal grinding had stopped. A strange grunting sound came from some where above him, but all Dax could see was a large black figure hovering over him. It made a loud shout. Dax could not understand it, it sounded as if sobody had just poked whatever it was in the rear with a sword, or some other sharp object. Dax's vision began to come back, the figure was becoming clear now. But to Dax's great astonishment, it was not a man at all. The large hidiouse creature reached down at Dax. He recoiled in his safety harness, but could still not move. It placed it's large gray, three fingered hand on the side of Dax's head and stroked his hair, mumbuling some series of grunts at him. Then it turned and shouted back up to the top of the ice.

They were in a large hole, surrounded by ice, and Dax was still confused. Anouther large creature jumped down into the hole with some big metal tool. He placed it at the top of the safety harness, where it was latched to the pilot seat. A slow buzzing was heard, then a sudden pop. Dax felt the harness come free of the seat, and his head fell forward. The beast grabbed the harness and pulled it off, holding Dax's head up as the thing tossed the harness off to the side. The other creature leaped down into the cockpit from the roof of the ship. He grabbed Dax's safety belt buckle and broke it, releasing the belt. The creature grabbed the head of the belt and gently moved it off of Dax's body. Then it reached down and pulled Dax's feet free from the console that had been bent down over his legs. Dax cried in agony, but the creature continued untill he was completely clear of the ship. The other creature layed two metal rods down on the roof, then a green beam of light stretched from one to the other. It was some kind of a stretcher, Dax assumed. The creatures lifted him up and placed him onto the stretcher, taking much caution not to hurt him. The two climbed onto the roof and picked up each end. "Thank you." Dax mumbled. The creatures showed no reaction.

At the top of the ice, sevaral small, strange looking crafts were parked. They were strange looking indeed, like nothing Dax had ever seen. Sevaral other creatures stood about as well, watching. Some were not even of the same species. some were different looking. Some were small and green. Others where not even in any form of a human body. The two creatures placed Dax on a floating platform. It had no padding, and was uncomfortable when they withdrew the stretcher. The platform began to move. Dax tried to move his head around to see where he was going, but his neck was just to tired. He then entered some small pod, he was going into one of the strange ships. When he was all the way in, he could see the door closing at his feet. He began to moan as the light slowly closed off. A loud spraying sound came from all around him. Some thing was being put into the room with him. He recognized the scent. Nitrus Oxide(laughing gas). He felt light headed, then tired, and eventually fell asleep.


Several hours later, Dax awoke. His head was clear, and he could see and hear better than ever. He sat up. He had been laying on some kind of a table. A large metal table. It was cold to his back and legs. He looked about curiously. He was in a large gray room. In the middle was Dax and his table. His eyes caught onto a small boy standing by a sink. He was washing some tools with a small bloody rag and water. "Hey." Dax called out. The boy turned. "Where am I?" Dax demanded. "The operating room." The boy said turning back to his work. "A lot of people respond like that. So were you in some kind of accident?" Dax looked in confusion. Then looked down at his body. He was sitting up, using his arms to brace himself on the table. He turned his legs out and leaped onto the floor, trying not to let the sharp edges of the table put a gash in his bare back.

He aproached the boy. "Accident?" Dax asked. The boy turned. "Yes, were you in some kind of accident, or can you remember?" Dax stared. "You cant remember?" Dax shook his head. "All I remember was crashing into the ice." The boy nodded, thinking Dax was simply confused. "Your owner around?" the boy asked. "What?" Dax questioned.
"Never mind. You got a place to go to?"
Dax nodded. "Yes, I'll go back to my place on Earth."
The boy laughed. "A human having a place on Earth? No seriously, where do you live?"
Dax stared in confusion. "Earth..."
The boy shook his head. "Dont worry, the nurse will be in here in a minute, and listen well. She has a terrible accent. Would you say some thing crazy if I told you she was from Pluto?"
"Huh?" Dax grunted.
"Thought so. She is a Plutonian..." The boy began. He described to him Pluto, and the appearance of it's inhabitants. Apparently, Plutonians were large, hideouse, lizard like people. The door wooshed open and the nurse made her way in. The boy continued to ramble on, making insults about her appearance. Dax nudged the boy. "Shut up, she is right there." Dax whispered.
"Dont worry, she cant understand us." the boy responded. "So do you have a place to go or not?"
Dax shook his head looking at the nurse. "Apparently not."

The nurse looked up from her small black note pad and made a loud hissing sound at Dax. He once more stared in confusion. "Well, are you gona' ansure?" the boy asked tapping Dax's shoulder. "She asked me some thing?" Dax responded. The nurse made the same annoying sound again. Dax's mouth hung open. The boy sighed, pushing Dax aside, he began to make a bunch of squeels and hissing sounds at the nurse. She nodded and continued to press buttons on the screen of her note pad. "What did she ask me?" Dax asked. "She asked how you were feeling. I told her you were okay."
"Well, its pritty obviouse now that you dont have anywhere to go, seeing as you live in crazy land on Earth. You want to come with me. Us humans have to look out for one anouther."
Dax nodded.
"Good, you might wana' get some thing on though, it's kind of chilly." the boy finished looking down.
Dax looked down. He had been completely unaware that this entire time he was butt naked. The boy began to giggle as Dax covered his shame.

The two walked out of the building onto the streets, Dax wearing the same rediculouse outfit the boy had on. "Where do you live?" Dax asked. "Right down there." the boy ansured pointing, and the two began to walk. The streets were packed with people. But they werent people, all of them were weird creatures. Dax looked around for anouther human, but could not find anybody. He looked up. The buildings towered higher than ever imaginable. And several small ships wizzed by a few hundred feet above his head. This was all so strange to Dax. He had never heard of any kind of alien species on Mars, or in the universe for that matter. But he assumed it was just a part of Mars, seeing as he had never been there. He began to wonder if he could visit his parents while he was in the city. His parents had rushed to Mars when people were permitted to leave Earth.

The two finally came to a stop at a small blue door. The door was old, and worn out. It was bashed in and rusting, and could desparately use a new coat of paint. The boy reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. He waved it infront of the door and it slowely moved open, making a terrible squeeking sound as it did. The boy walked in, Dax had to duck down to get through. "Mom, I'm home." the boy shouted enthusiastically. A tall, elderly woman charged into the room and embrased the boy. She was thin, and wore the same outfit as the boy and Dax had on. She had wirey brown hair that was balled up into a neat little bun at the back of her head. She held a metal spoon in one hand and wore an apron. She jumped back in shock at the sight of Dax. "Who is that?" she demanded. "Mom, this is my friend. He was in some kind of accident and needs a place to stay."
"I'm Dax, it's nice to meet you." Dax said putting his hand out. The two watched it in confusion. Dax noticed and balled his fist, putting it back to his side. "Nice place you have here." Dax commented looking around. It was not nice, it was a crappy little hut of a room at the bottom of a building. "Baby, why dont you go into the other room and set the table." the boy's mother said. "Yes, ma'am." the boy responded, and ran off into the next room. "I dont know who you are, and if your owner finds out that your here, he would probably be angry with us." she said. Dax looked into the woman's eyes. "Ma'am, I dont have an owner of any kind. Other than my boss." the woman's eyes lit up.
"So, your one of those lucky bastards that get the owner who actualy cares about humans. Good for you, but please dont let my son know that. Dont go putting those crazy dreams into his head."
"I understand, Ma'am."
"Come with me, we were just about to sit down for supper."

The three sat at a table. The boy's mother filled a bowl from a small metal pot with some kind of green goo. Dax recoiled in his chair as he watched the goop splatter into the bowl from the pot. She placed the bowl infront of the boy, he sniffed at it delightfully. "Smells good, Mom." he commented. She filled a bowl and placed it infront of Dax. He sniffed at it. It smelled terrable. It smelled of old cheese. Bubbles popped at the surface, and small orange chunks floated about. "Try it, it's good." the boy ordered. Dax looked at the woman, she watched him. He took his spoon and dipped it into the bowl. He lifted it to his face and got a nose full of the awful stench. He looked once more at the woman, who was still watching. He placed the spoon in his mouth and pulled it out clean. He swooshed it around in his mouth for a moment, and swallowed. "It's good." he finally said. The woman smiled and looked down at her bowl. And it was good, Dax ate anouther spoonful, then anouther, and anouther, and eventually his bowl was empty. "That was good, Ma'am." he said rubbing his full belly. "So, Dax." The mother began. "I never actually told you my name. I'm Abigail, and this is my son Lial."
"People call me Ly." the boy added.
"What is your last name?" Dax asked.
"Last name? Humans dont deserve last names here."
"What?" Dax said looking from the mother to the boy.
"Where are you from, Dax?" the mother asked.
"Earth."
The boy sighed.
"Earth?" the mother asked in astonishment. "A human has not set foot on Earth for over three centuries." she added.
"What are you talking about, I was just there yesterday."
The mother looked over to her son. "Sweety, can you clear the table for your old mother?"
The boy nodded and began collecting the dirty dishes. When he left the room Abigail looked back to Dax. "I think you better leave."
"Ma'am?"
"There is some thing obviously wrong with your head, and I wont have you in my house."
"Ma'am, I assure you, I am completely sane."
"Oh, yes. I can certainly tell."
"What has happend, I'm so confused. Yesterday I was flying here to Mars from Earth. Then I crashed in the ice, and now this?" Abigail watched in astonishment.
"Is this even the same year? What year is it?" Dax demanded.
"3211." Abigail responded.
Dax stared. "3211?" he questioned.
"Yes, 3211. Why?"
Dax paused. "Some thing strange has happend indeed. When I crashed in the ice, it was the year 2211. Now its 3211. A thousand years."

The two stared at eachother for an ocward moment or two, then Abigail finally broke the silence. "So, Mr. Past Man. What did you do a thousand years ago?"
"I was an agent with the UPA."
Abigail gasped. "The UPA? A human has not worked with the UPA since the war."
"War? What war?"
"Half a century ago, There was a great war. The Vaamirrs came to mars and pritty much just opened fire. They fought for a long time, but eventually took over Mars, and the Plutonians at Earth surrendered. The Vaamirrs now controll the universe, and it's not a diplomacy, like the Plutonians had, it's a Dictatorship."
"So when was the last time a human did anything important."
"Humans do important things every day, but they just never get paid for it. Humans have been slaves to the other species for hundreds of years, Dax."
Dax began to feel sad. "What a strange future..."