The Heavens Above

by An abundance of squids

You wake up on an unknown and undiscovered planet with a chartreuse sky and a magenta plain of alien grass when a strange, floating red orb gives you choice. But what if, instead of taking its guidance, you spurn it to roam the galaxies unguided? What if you decide that the only fate and goal you believe in is only the sky above and what lies beyond?

1. Planet unknown - day 1,1

PART ONE - AURORA BOREALIS

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Starting EVOS v. 4.2.1

Initialising suit systems...

Shields online

Multi-tool online

health systems online

inventory online

scanner offline

Connection with Aurora Borealis offline

Connection with galaxy trade centre offline

I open my eyes. Yellow signs and text flashes before my vision as my suit's HUD finished rebooting. The superimposed text soon fades away, leaving me staring up, straight before the heavens. They are a pale yellow-green, with wisps of bluish cloud flitting over its smooth, unbroken surface like gentle blue waves in a sea of green. A star, burning a bright, overpowering shade of white stands in the centre of my vision, its surface partly covered by the clouds.

I lie there for a moment, taking in the sky and the sun, letting it all sink into me.

And then, I got up.

The chartreuse sky gives away to a plain full of gently swaying magenta grass, flecked with yellow stripes. The flat expanse is broken only by a few sparse trees and a handful of grey rocks with deep red veins twisting through their jagged surface.

And there, lying a few metres away from me, stands a ship.

Its powder blue finish is streaked with scratches and one of its wings leaks smoke, but the starship still looks intact. Several pods of supplies lay scattered around it, the remnants of its cargo and my pitiful attempts at preparation.

Walking over to the ship and her cargo, I try to salvage what I can from the containers, but most my items have been lost, cast to the atmosphere in my collision course with the planet.

I sigh and close the lid of a red crate. I had recovered a little iron and a flag bearing my black and orange emblem, but beyond that, nothing.

I turn to my ship. I needed to see how bad the damage was before I started to make any plans.

On the pale blue hull of the ship, her name is just visible through the myriad of scratches that now decorate it.

The Aurora Borealis .

Her cockpit window is open, but before I clamber over its top, something catches my eye.

Hovering just above the right wing of my ship, a red...orb floats. Its surface is made up of polygons, shifting and changing over and over with seemingly no pattern. Its red skin of shapes looks almost...alive, hypnotic and irresistible.

I move a hand to touch it. My gloved fingers are mere moments away from touching it when suddenly, something flashes through my mind. A flash of untold knowledge. A feeling of destiny. It flashes through me almost like it belongs here, in me. Like I am the intruder in my mind, not it. Looking deeper into its multi-faceted surface, I see another world, with a wrecked ship like mine.

And another pulsing, red orb.

And, even though it does not utter a single word, it gives me a choice.

Reach out and touch it and take its, take the atlas' guidance. The name flashes through my mind, and I instantly know that somehow, it is the name of the object, no the being before me. Take its guidance and let my journey have a purpose .

Or draw my hand back and spurn its ethereal assistance and be left to freely walk the uncharted reaches of the galaxy, forever lost but not without a purpose.

For a moment, my hand hovers before it, on the precipice of the choice. The promise of knowledge fighting my own desire for my own will, undetermined, unrestrained and unguided by any cosmic entity, benevolent or otherwise.

I withdraw my hand.

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changelog 21-8-16

+ started story

+ added chapter

/and I've done it again. started a new story when I still have another one that needs finishing. Damn.