Streams of binary from the microchip inside her head very suddenly and very rudely flowed from the edges of her vision field and dazzled before her eyes, all coming together to form that one word:

Captain.

The only thing she was ever supposed to know and supposed to be. There was nothing else meant for her.

Captain.

No one had ever bothered to tell her who she was; why she was commandeering a ship holding a cargo of exactly forty-nine cryogenically frozen children to the Gliese 777 star system in the Cygnus constellation, and at age fifteen! Who had she been during the first five years of her life, during the time she hadn’t been traveling at half the speed of light...

“Captain Andromeda!” Andrea’s eyes fluttered open at the sound of her assigned name. She had never really liked it much.

“Andrea! We’re approaching Mission Stage B.” The voice on her right was Leo’s. “You have to concentrate now. Remember, we might all die if you don’t.”

“Hmph. That sounds reassuring.” Andrea’s eyes wandered over the complex arrangement of buttons, joysticks, and display monitors laid out on the control panel before her.

Leo gave her one of his thoughtful looks. Andrea allowed a smile to spread across her face. Leo’s microchip instructions were to be the co-captain, captain’s advisor, astronomics and physics expert, the brains and logic of the mission. Much more important than the heart, was what she thought of him in contrast to herself.

Andrea straightened up and glanced briefly around the Deck. Castor and Pollux were seated again, Pollux to her left and Castor to Leo’s right. No, it was the other way around. The two of them looked so much alike, they would be identical were they the same sex. She could tell Pollux apart from her slightly longer sandy hair, and the annoyed expression she had every time she was referring to the captain. The crew knew well that Pollux was extremely jealous of Andrea’s job, while she was stuck in the darkest corner navigating.

Andrea inhaled and exhaled, trying to make her breath as long as possible, trying to delay the time in which she would perform the maneuver never before attempted by any other human. Well, she was pretty sure of that. Either way, there had never been escape. She had literally been programmed to do this task. The smallest miscalculation and the lives of 53 people were at risk.

“Tell me the stats, Pollux”

“Of course, Captain Andromeda. We are about... 32.6 million kilometres from Sirius A. Our speed is... 53%. We are exactly... 82.2° off to port from the 0-Position.

“53% of our maximum speed or of Light Speed?”

“LS. You’re welcome, Captain Andromeda.”

“Right”, Captain Andromeda looked away at her controls, cringing. Pollux was in a mood again. “How long will it take?”

“If we do reach LS”, Leo answered, the question obviously directed to him, “then about another twenty-five years.” He said nothing else, which rarely happened.

 Andrea took another deep breath before setting two port engines to 20%. She watched the 240” Spectral Radiation Monitor Viewfield rotate 82.2° counterclockwise before counteracting the spiral.

“How are we doing so far Castor?”

“X4 Ganymede progress status: Anti-hydrogen fuel secure. Engines 1 through 8 functional. Particle accelerator links intact. Micro-Gravity Stabilizer functional. External Friction Manipulation enabled. All processes now performing at 110%!” Castor sounded pleased with himself. He really enjoyed mechanics.

“Sirius A-distance is 15.9 million kilometres and closing”, Pollux’s voice was dry.

Sirius A’s spectral signature crawled slowly into the Monitor. It was more of a white bar along the edge, but soon the entire screen was white except for one gap near the bottom. Andrea wished she could see Sirius A as the living, burning majestic ball of gas it truly was. But of course, she knew she would be immediately blinded by its light.

“How long do we go around for?”

“106°, then we’re clear for Gliese.” That was Pollux again, but Andrea only registered the digits 1, 0, and 6. Slowly, she raised her hand to the speed control joystick and set all eight engines to 60%.

“Up and around.”

Only white was now visible in the Spectral Radiation Monitor as the X4 Ganymede accelerated towards Sirius A. The ship’s crew felt its vastly enormous gravity, pushing their eyeballs uncomfortably deep into their sockets. The only thing keeping them from being crushed to less than microscopic dust was Castor’s Gravity Stabilizer. Sirius’ own gravity was pulling the ship into the orbit that would launch them to Gliese.

Andrea heard Pollux’s voice inside her head. Their microchips allowed them to communicate with one another through thought over any interference.

“Speed is 65% LS. 7 of 106° completed.”

Then Castor: “External Manipulator holding. Progress stable.”

Then she finally heard Leo. He might have said something reassuring, but Andrea couldn’t quite tell.

There was a sudden jolt that nearly threw the four teenagers off their seats.

“The stellar fire”, Leo explained. “We should hold as long as the Manipulator does.”

“Speed is 78%. 22 of 106°.”

“The Manipulator and the G-Regulator are both damaged but holding.

Another sudden jolt.

“88%. 50 of 106°.”

“Manipulator failing! Now at 55% capacity.”

The entire ship was being shaken with extreme violence now. Andrea tried to ignore this and watched the bursts of burning hydrogen come off Sirius’ face in the Spectral Radiation Monitor. She felt her stomach twist and every atom in her body felt as if about to explode, then implode.

“95%! ... 97! ... 99! ...”

Vivid glowing colour suddenly exploded from every quark and photon, but Andrea felt nothing. Her body had been taken away from her. The walls of the Ganymede were gone. The light could not reflect off them fast enough. She looked up and gasped, but no sound came out. Every individual particle of the star stood out on its own, and when she looked hard enough, she saw one hundred million kilometres to the other side. Every particle was giving off a series of undulating waves that spread out in every direction. The waves changed direction when they collided with matter. It was light. She was seeing light. The whole thing was unreal. It was like nothing any living thing had ever seen.

“110, 120% LS! Captain! We’re at 102°. Now!”

Binary interrupted the surrealism once again. There was still one thing she thought she had to do. Andrea smashed the engine joystick to 100%.

A vast amount of antiparticles collided with the hydrogen inside the engines and the ship exploded from Sirius’ orbit, altogether exceeding the speed of light. Andrea’s microchip overloaded and shut itself down.

Space was a hazy lavender colour because of the refraction of light from the atmosphere. Andrea was standing on a hilltop surrounded by a thin arc of trees on one side, and by a calm lake on the other. Buildings stood across the lake reaching for the faint evening stars. The twilight shaded them into a calm ocher yellow.

Andrea turned back to the trees to see two figures emerging mysteriously from them. For the first time she noticed she was dressed in clothing like she had never seen before. Instead of a blue nylon jumpsuit, she was wearing a sort of light vest with very slim straps at the top and a strange billowing robe that only stretched from her waist to her knees. Andrea looked up and saw the couple smiling some steps in front of her.

“Where am I?”

“You’ve left behind the three dimensions. You’re dreaming.” That was the man that had spoken. He looked familiar, but there were only three other people she had ever known, and he didn’t look like any of them.

“What about the Ganymede?”    

“Don’t worry. You’re almost there.” This was the woman. She too looked familiar.

“But Leo said it would take twenty-five years.”

“It does to the rest of the universe, but not to you. You are no longer traveling through Space but through Time.”

“Who are you?”

The couple smiled. She was sure she had seen those smiles somewhere before. And aboard the Ganymede too. Wasn’t her own smile just like theirs?

“Take this.” The woman raised her closed fist towards her and opened her fingers to reveal an ordinary pebble.

“What’s this for?” Andrea reached towards the pebble and pulled...

There was another small explosion. Andrea found herself holding the knob that activated the electromagnetic brakes and the Ganymede’s crew hyperventilating around her. She looked back at the control panel and discovered that the ship was orbiting a small planet at an incredible speed, but the interaction between the planet’s magnetic field and the ship’s was slowing them down. Andrea managed to catch a glimpse of two stars in the Monitor: a medium yellow one and a red dwarf. The Gliese 777 binary star system. They had made it.

“Whoa”, she said before passing out, “so much for the easy part.”

Nikolai Frasser won Honourable Mention in the Youth Short Story Contest as part of the Words Alive Literary Festival. He won a $20.00 gift certificate from Chapters and publication in the Pen & Pixel and Words Alive web sites.