My Vacation On the Exotic Shores of a Blackhole - Part 2

_{This is part 2 of a freewrite I did yesterday based on a black hole image from NASA. To read part 1 click on any of these links. Like seriously. I've linked it multiple times. Why haven't you clicked one of them yet? Fine! Click here to read part 1. We good now? Can I get on with the story? Good!}

_{Image used under Creative Commons Zero - CC0 license (source)}

I drifted out of my chair after having removed the straps holding me in place, and grabbed a hand rail on the ceiling to propel me towards the back.

Why did this have to happen? I just wanted a normal cargo run. Why couldn't I just be part of the cargo for once?

I opened the door to the shower. It was one of the few expenses that I really splurged on in this old hauler. You'd normally never see a fully functioning shower in a cargo hauler this old and run down. There was no way I was taking a sponge bath every time I had to wake up from a cold sleep due to something messing up. This was actually one of the things that I enjoyed the most when I did have to fix something that went wrong.

I took off my hyper sleep suit and put it in the hamper next to shower. It was coated with whatever gunk it is that they put in those hyper sleep chambers. I suppose it's better than waking up dead. But couldn't they figure out something that didn't feel so slimy and gross, yet dry up and cake in all your crevices? Uhh!

"Julia, can you give my hyper sleep suit a wash?"

"Right away captain."

"No rush. I'm probably not gonna get back into hyper sleep for quite some time. Depends on how extensive the damage is though. Hopefully I won't have to die out here."

"I'll do my best to make sure you don't, captain."

"I'm sure you will." I just hoped her best would be good enough. Too often it seemed like it wasn't. And this time might have been the worst. Stuck in the time dilation field of a black hole. Son of a bitch! I only hoped the damage wasn't worse than I thought it was.

I pulled myself into the shower and closed the door behind me. Reaching up to the panel on the shower door, I tapped a few buttons on the display, and water jets began spraying me from all directions, at the same time as the loud noise of a vacuum fan turned on, creating negative pressure in the chamber, so the water was sucked out. My feet drifted down to the grate on the bottom of the shower stall as the powerful vacuum sucked the water and air out the bottom.

I rubbed the water through my hair, and tried to get the sludge from the hyper sleep chamber off of me. I then reached up and put my finger over a button, before shutting my eyes and mouth tight. With a press of the button, I was suddenly sprayed with suds that foamed into a large mass, covering my entire body, before being slowly washed away. I shook my head, and tried to blow a little out that got up my nose.

No good. Like always, that damn hyper sleep goo was still in some of my "crevices". I reached up to a hose on the wall, and use it to clean some of the harder to reach areas. I knew no matter how hard I tried though, I'd be feeling that stuff caked in all the wrong places.

With a press of a button on the display, the water stopped, and I put the hose back on the mount on the wall of the shower. I pressed another button, and proceeded to be blown dry by the shower.

That was probably the best thing that would happen to me this trip. There's just something about a nice shower after a long hyper sleep.

With another press of a button, the vacuum pumps turned off, and I drifted off the floor as I opened the shower door, and pulled myself out.

I opened a cabinet door outside of the shower, and grasped around inside before yelling at my computer. "Julia?!!? Where are my clothes?"

"Sorry captain, it was an oversight on my part. I can have one of my robots bring you a set of clothes now."

"No, that's alright. I'll get them myself. But you better not start my popcorn too early! Factor in the extra time needed to get to my quarters and get dressed there."

"Yes, captain."

"Now I gotta drift all the way to my quarters with my dangly bits going in every direction. You better not be watching Julia!"

"I'm always watching, captain!"

"So that's why you forgot to have my clothes prepped for me. Fucking perverted computer. I've got a pervert for an AI! Next thing you know she'll be probing me in my sleep."

"You know that I regularly prob you to test your health and vitals during hyper sleep, captain."

"I fucking knew it! You're a pervert! I've got a pervert for an AI!"

"I don't know what you mean, captain."

"Yeah, sure you don't, you fucking pervert."

I drifted down the hall towards my quarters, and opened the hatch. It took me a bit to get in, and I had to brace myself against the wall. My quarters have a manual airlock on them, and a backup air supply, just in case I was boarded by pirates, or my ship decided to go psycho on me. An AI a few models above her had actually gone full Carrie on her crew, slaughtering the lot of them. Rogue AI's are nothing to joke about. It was part of the reason I had chosen her model when I first bought the ship, and upgraded her systems. They were known to be very reliable. Her personality was something I built up over the years though. I had grown rather attached to her though, no matter what my behavior towards her might suggest.

Once in my quarters, I retrieved some coveralls and put them on, as well as socks, and reached into a cabinet to get my magboots before I thought better of it. With a heavy sigh, I drifted across the room, and opened the largest door in my room, other than the airlock. In the closet behind the door, stood a mechanical exoskeleton, boots and all. Well, the boots were about the only thing fully enclosed. The rest was just mechanical attachments that went along your arms and legs, and back, to augment your strength, and increase resistance to movement, to reduce muscle atrophy while in zero-g. It also came with mechanical gloves, but I only wore those when outside, or dealing with extremely heavy equipment.

I reached in, and opened a compartment on the bottom, and got out some booties that were made to go inside the larger boots of the exoskeleton, and tried to put them on. Well, it's not like I failed, I just happened to have to do a few somersaults, and may have accidentally run into a few walls, and possibly a ceiling, while trying to get them on.

With that ordeal done, I put on the boots, and closed the top, before testing that nothing had gotten caught and engaging the seal. Then I unstrapped the exoskeleton from the wall of the cabinet, and tried to attach it to myself without running into any more walls, or the ceiling. After I somehow managed to do so, I finally attached the exoskeleton to the boots, and activated it with the control on the arm.

And then I almost killed myself as the magboots propelled me towards the nearest metal surface. That wasn't fun.

Once I got my exo-legs, I walked out of my quarters, and into the hall, closing the door behind me, and then pausing to adjust the resistance on the exo-suit.

"Captain, you're wearing your exo-suit."

"Yes. Yes I am. I don't want my muscles to atrophy. There's no telling how long it's gonna take me to repair various systems so we can safely limp home...well, to the spaceport."

"I didn't factor in the extra time it would take you to put on the exo-suit."

"Oh no, the popcorn. It's cold, isn't it?"

"I'm sorry, captain."

I swiftly walked down the hall towards the kitchen, my boots heavily clanking against the metal grate flooring. The sensors in the exo-skeleton perfectly timed the release of the magboots with my steps. I got to the kitchen, opened the food dispenser, and took the popcorn out. I opened up the bag, and steam pour out.

"It's still hot." I took a piece of popcorn out, and put it in my mouth.

"I'm sorry captain. I lied. I was able to determine the likelihood of you wearing the exo-suit was significant, and determined that it would be best to wait to start the popcorn until you either exited your chamber, or significant time had elapsed that the likelihood of you wearing the exo-suit was almost guaranteed."

"Hehehahahah! You got me! Looks like those humor subroutines are rearing their ugly little head again."

"I'm sorry, captain. Would you like me to disable them?"

"No, that one was good. You really got me that time." I walked into the cinema of the ship, and strapped myself into the soft chair. "Okay, start the movie."

I have to say, the movie was epic. Julia really outdid herself. There were these two characters that always butted heads. One of them was the tsundere. He was kinda lovable though. There was real chemistry there. And then I saw it. The moment that meant I might never get home.

The meteor was flying at the ship. The point defense lasers kept firing at it. The crew was screaming. And then it hit. The left forward point defense laser exploded, and was sent careening off into space.

"FUCK!" I screamed out into the darkened room. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. FUCK! I might never get home. I might end up actually having to go into a stable orbit around the black hole, rather than risk going through open space without a point defense laser to obliterate micro-meteorites that would otherwise be impossible to avoid.

"Captain, it took out the port side forward defense system. Without it, we might be stuck here. The deflection shields aren't nearly strong enough to deflect all the debris we may encounter during our flight back home." The character's dialogue in the movie reflected so aptly what I had realized the second I saw it take out the point defense laser. I began to cry, and put my head in my hands.

"Captain? Captain? Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine Julia. I just... Well, you obviously determined exactly what the likely scenario is. It was in the movie."

"Yes, captain. But they didn't have you. I have faith in you, captain. You won't let us die out here."

I looked up at the screen, and saw the credits rolling. And then I started laughing. Julia had put varients of her name, sporadically intermingled with "ME!" and things like "The greatest ship's AI ever!"

FUCK! Well, if I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die fighting. And I'm not gonna die easy. It was time to get to work, and figure out what, if anything, could be done about this situation.

_{Well, I hope you liked today's freewrite. This is a continuation of yesterday's. If you got this far, and didn't read it, I don't know why you did that. This one was particularly hard fought. It took me way longer than I expected, and I got really tired after about the second hour. Yeah, maybe it should be longer for taking that long, but I was also in chat, and trading.}

_{If you like it, please upvote, and give me a follow. No obligation though of course. But please do comment below. Tell me what you thought of it. What did you like? What did you hate? Got any constructive criticism?}

Click here for Part 3