Young Writers Society

The wyrm shrieked again. Its cry weakened the viewscreen ever further, adding more cracks and stretching the spindly legs of the original. Sweat beaded on Avery's brow as he clenched his teeth and looked between the wyrm, the glass, and his unconscious companions. It also hit him that having Jason teach him how to pilot a space ship might have been a good idea. He shook the aforementioned's shoulder frantically, trying to bring him to.

“Jason, come on!” he hissed.

Accepting the futility of his attempts, though not without angrily slapping Jason's shoulder, he looked over the control panel. It couldn't be that difficult, could it? He'd messed around with the silver can's controls before, though that hadn't gone very well, to be honest.

He didn't really have many choices in the matter, now, though. He had to give it a shot. Tipping the chair Jason lounged in and spilling the now-drooling man into a heap on the floor, he took the pilot's seat and cracked his fingers.

There was a set of golden steering handles directly before him, connected at the bottom with a large gap between the top ends. A sea of multicolored buttons surrounding these; some flashing and blinking, some desolate — and a particular red light towards the top of the console beeped menacingly. A small screen beside the light read, simply, “WARNING: Cabin Depressurizing.”

Lovely.

“Okay, Avery,” he muttered to himself. “You've survived outer-space for this long, don't screw up now.”

Grabbing hold of the steering controls tentatively, he felt the ship jostle slightly.

“Whoa,” he said, trying to re-steady the steering.

Instead, the ship lurched downward. Or, as downward as one can go in space.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!”

Pushing the handles down a bit, he managed to level out the ship and return it to its peaceful, straight route — directly at the wyrm again.

“Okay, up to go down, down equals up. And back where we started.”

The wyrm reared its head, but didn't scream this time. Odd, Avery thought. Or maybe not odd. Avery didn't know very much about space wyrms, except that they apparently had a thing against spaceships and they liked hugging stars.

“Bzzt,” he heard behind the chair.

“Oh! Benny-- Benny, you're up!” Avery spun the chair around.

“Ye-es, I a-am, Sir Avery.” the droid responded, pushing himself off the glimmering, colorless floor. “Many apologies, sir. Benny has had his fair share of space wyrm encounters, and the mention of such a creature brought untimely memories. But Benny is up now. How may I help you, Avery, sir?”

“Benny, do you know how to fly the ship?” Avery asked.

Benny seemed slightly crestfallen. “The good Sir Avery is not a space pilot?”

“N-no, I'm sorry, Benny. I haven't had much chance to learn yet, but can you fly it?”

Benny sighed electronically. “Yes, sir. Benny can pilo-ot.”

“Thank you, Benny. Really.” Avery said.

“Ye-es, whate-ever,” Benny replied disinterestedly.

Avery frowned, standing from the pilot's chair and letting Benny clamber up into it.

“Whe-ere do we want to go-o?” Benny asked.

“Well, er, Jason wants to go to that wyrm up there, but I don't think that's a good idea--” Avery paused as Benny chirped, beeped, and keeled over once again, tumbling off the chair and landing on the pile of Jason in the floor.

“Seriously?” he said. “Dammit, good Sir Avery can't pilot a spaceship, but at least he doesn't faint at the sight of giant bird food.”

With a sigh, he shoved Benny off of Jason, so the man wouldn't suffocate, and sat back in the chair. The red light was still flashing, beeping quietly, but alongside the small screen's warning of “cabin depressurizing” was a notification bubble reading “Set Auto-Pilot Destination?”

“Huh,” Avery said, raising a hand to the screen and tapping the bubble, wondering if it worked like Earth tech. Sure enough, the bubble and warning disappeared, giving way to an extensive map.

“Oh boy...”

A search bar of sorts had also appeared, but Avery didn't have a clue where they were, or what planets existed outside his currently-far-off solar system. He decided to go for one that didn't look or sound too intimidating, like 'Dirk', which appeared to be the closest inhabited planet on the map. Avery had known a guy on Earth called Dirk, and he'd never particularly liked him, but right now he would take either Dirks over the space wyrm before him.

He tapped the screen, glancing up at the monster while he did so. There was a beep as the map accepted his selection. The ship began to shift its course away from the terror ahead and Avery looked to the screen triumphantly.

It now read, “Course Set: Pompeii”.

“What?” he said, dumbfounded. “Who calls a planet Pompeii?!”

He was suddenly flung back to history class in grade school, the teacher describing the horrible burning of Pompeii at the hands of the volcano above.

“This isn't good,” he mumbled.

Tapping the screen again, he tried to bring back the map, but all he got was the original warning of a depressurizing cabin. A growl of frustration slipped his lips, soon joined by a shout of rage, bursting from his lungs. A small bubble in the lower right corner of the screen notified him of the travel time before they would reach Pompeii, their new certain doom. Only thirty minutes.

Unfortunately, another bubble popped up in the opposing bottom corner, telling that there were only 25 minutes until complete depressurization. What were the odds?

Avery wandered to the sofa, falling into it with his elbows resting on his knees and his head held in his hands. He wondered if there were a lock-down button, like with the hospital parking bay and the silver can, so he could close off the cracked viewscreen and keep the cabin from running out of air. Wandering back to the control panel, he did find such a button, but it appeared to be for a complete lock-down. Avery wasn't sure how he felt about traveling through space without being able to see what was outside. He had a small flashback to the Cephalods clambering around the roof of the silver can.

Giving the decision some breathing room — ironic considering the situation, he thought, chuckling anxiously to himself — he decided to explore the lower levels of the ship, which they'd completely skipped over in their haste to escape the hospital. Wandering over to the door at the rear of the cabin, he stumbled carelessly, tired, into the tiny stairwell. Enough steps to bring him down a short story were all that made up the spinning staircase, and lead him to the stomach of the vessel. A number of metallic, gray crates sat at the opposite end, and a few more along either wall. Another door to one side, jutting out of the wall a ways, revealed a lavatory.

“Useful,” he said, making a mental note of its existence.

Checking some of the crates, he found some spare food supplies in one, some sort of crimson dust in another couple, and one with spare changes of clothing. Around the narrow corner of the restroom, on its outer wall, he noticed a series of shelves embedded in the tight wall space, filled to the brim with fuel canisters and what he guessed were battery packs. Probably for Benny, maybe for the ship. He couldn't really make an educated guess.

A third door sat beside these shelves, and Avery opened it to find a small closet with spacesuits and helmets inside. Also useful; maybe he wouldn't have to lock-down the ship after all. He took one of the helmets to keep handy, just in case, seeing as he'd lost the one Jason gave him.

Heading back upstairs, to the cabin, he found Jason and Benny both still out cold. Ridiculous. Also ridiculous was how long he'd gone without food – or how long it felt like he had, at least. That meal at Filthy Beau's felt like it had been years ago, especially given his tiny coma right afterward. He poked around the snack bar for something that didn't need cooking. Noticing the things Benny had knocked over, he set them back on the counter and considered them for a snack as well. The fruit looked intimidating. One resembled a thorny blue mango with a stem on either end, and the other was some sort of purple, fuzzy plantain.

He grunted uncertainly at the produce and turned to the bag of chips instead. The wording on the bag was some language he had never seen before, and featured an exploding planet as its logo. Unsettling. It also lacked a nutritional fact section, or any kind of ingredient list, at least as far as he could read. He set the chips down as well, if they even were actually chips. His stomach grumbled, and would just have to continue grumbling until somebody woke up and told him what was what.

Avery checked the small screen on the control panel again after lying on the sofa for some time. Nineteen minutes until they reached their destination. Fourteen until they couldn't breathe anymore. He decided to put his helmet on and get one on Jason's head somehow, then wait out the landing. His mind began to wander to whether or not the ship could auto-land itself, then. But they were going to a planet called Pompeii, could it get much worse?

After securing both himself and Jason with helmets and oxygen tanks — Jason's sitting beside him since Avery couldn't properly strap it to him — Avery tried to figure out how to work the television by the snack bar. It had to be a television, he wasn't sure what else it would be. Hopefully not more depressurization notifications, he thought. Even aliens needed something to entertain themselves with, right?

He first searched for a remote, but didn't find one. He pressed on the walls all around the screen, but it didn't switch on. Then he tried waving his hand in front of it, just because why not, but that didn't do anything either.

“Why can't they make it obvious how to turn it on?” he sighed, fogging up the lower part of his helmet.

Suddenly, the screen lit up and light ambient music began to play from the walls.

“Oh,” he said, looking around in surprise. “You talk to it, of course.”

“Anything I can help you with today, sir?” a gentle, sophisticated voice asked.

Avery jumped, his head swiveling around in search of who was talking.

“Sir?”

He looked back to the TV and saw a rigged, neon green hologram standing beside it, shaped like a tall man with a towering pompadour, flowing tailcoat, and massive bow-tie. A teeny mustache sat on his upper lip.

“Oh, er.” Avery wasn't sure how to react. He resorted to, “Hello?”

“Hello, sir. How may I help you today?” the hologram spoke again, its voice warm, welcoming, and gentlemanly, like a shining green butler.

“Um, who are you?” Avery asked.

“I am the Entertainment Guru On-board, sir. I am here to assist you in your viewing and listening needs. All leisure and entertainment activity is my duty to foresee, as I happen to be the best at preparing selected entertainment, or suggesting some of my own, should you be stumped by the endless possible selections. You may call me EGO.”

Ego was right, Avery thought.

“Er, alright, well,” he began. “Do you play music?”

“My good sir, music is my specialty,” EGO winked, then bowed. Quickly raising only his head, he asked, “What sort of music would you like to enjoy today, sir?”

“Do you have Earth music?” Avery asked, though not confident that even EGO would know of any.

“Why of course, sir! Earth music happens to be one of my favorites. I'm glad you share the same taste.” He fully rose from his bowed position and winked again.

“Any particular song you would like, sir?”

“No,” Avery said, shaking his head. “Whatever you want to play.”

“Very well, sir!” EGO said with another bow as the lights dimmed. “We have a special beat, today, by Earth's very own David Bow-tie! The locals call this tune 'Space Oddity'.”

“Of course it'd be ironic,” Avery sighed, looking up at the dimmed lights as the song began to play through oinvisible speakers. “And you didn't even pronounce his name right.”

“You're welcome, sir. Enjoy,” EGO said with a grin before fizzling out of existence.

“Yeah, alright. Sure thing,” Avery replied to thin air.

He stuck his hands in his pockets and stepped back to the control panel, checking the screen one more time. Ten minutes until landing. He stared out into the darkness beyond the cracked viewscreen, at the oncoming world. It was made up of greens and browns, blue canals snaking across it. It looked rather nice, until Avery spotted the peaks. Of course they had volcanoes.

With a sigh, he prepared for landing, the walls singing all around him.