At first there was much to do, check on all the life support modules, the backups and the hydroponic stacks.

They had done it all before. They had confirmed it before the departure. But then the voice of the traffic control tower had squealed in fright and informed them that they would be leaving momentarily.

No countdown, no fanfare, no building tension.

Aleph had a few moments to look over at Omega and then suddenly they were drifting up from the floor.

That had been simultaneously fun and boring.

Quarti had been frustratingly nonplussed by a lack of gravity.

In fact she had looked around at things floating without being stuck to the ground, smiled and then said she had ‘work’ to do and promptly crawled into one of the ‘Meditation Pods’.

That had been how it all started. A fresh wonder in every way.

Now it was a routine, and not even a very taxing one at that. Aleph had actually been working substantially heavier workloads in training and drills then she had to now.

It was not enough to do to engage her.

And there was nothing to see outside.

Omega was now actually helping with the maintenance and checks, when she was not stuck in one of the resonance pods or cleaning up the accumulated sweat and slime afterwards.

That had been one thing they had NOT been able to properly train in.

How to keep oneself clean.

Water acted very differently.

Aleph had almost choked herself when she overdid it while washing her face.

The sponging and towels and vacuuming and just opening up the farming stacks to bask in the warmth and light from the lamps to dry out was all very different.

Frustratingly it turned out that Aleph was actually the least able to maintain proper cleanliness out of the three of them.

Quarti apparently was a cheater, or something and was just leveraging ‘old memories’. Or at least that is half of what Aleph though was said.

Quarti didn't always know what words meant.

Or what her relationship with Omega and Aleph was supposed to be.

Half the time she was completely professional, half the time she seemed intent to try and get herself rubbed up against them as much as possible (which thankfully deflected her off of aleph most of the time anyway). Apparently Aleph’s reactions to this confused her though, and after a few suspicions Aleph realized that the hurt faces and messy smeared mirrors of tears sticking to her face were not an act to manipulate but genuine distress.

That had been an awkward shift.

But it was after the thirty-fifth shift of Quarti coming out of the resonance pod ‘working’ and before Omega had either settled in for a nap, a sponge down or her own duties that Aleph could not stand it anymore.

“Where is the Visitor?!”

Quarti blinked and looked around then shrugged.

“Is Visitor really the right word say? They were all visiting us then wise, but now we are with them together in the visiting? So are we not visitors too? And we have not arrived so visiting is not the visitors to be us. So maybe it is such that no one is a visitor anymore eh?”

Aleph huffed and waved at the still blank and empty port hole that only showed blackness.

“The alien then”

Quarti smiled as if suddenly understanding and growing delighted.

“Oh its word game! I love those... Helps so much with fitting right word to right !^[email protected] No not an alien either, they are not foreign to anywhere here, if anything it is us who are alien!”

Aleph blinked and sighed, at the start of the trip she had still gotten annoyed at quarti but by this point?

Not much point at all,

“I mean the courier, the pilot, the crew of the ship...”

Quarti nodded and smiled wide.

“I Knew that aleph! Fun game! I Winsome!”

She covered her face and took a breath. Then exhaled in that calming way Omega had recommended in times of high stress. Slowly drifting in a tumble into one of the walls.

“Okay, what I mean is that we have no contact with our host, who is conveying us, through SPACE, no way for them to inform us we have even arrived. No way to inform them we have an emergency”

Omega hummed and looked at quarti.

Quarti looked at Omega.

“Not a good idea, very not good much bad very unwise idea”

Omega looked at aleph then shrugged a bit.

“No where in the contract is our courier required to talk to us Aleph. Make sure we are alive, make sure that none of the life support fail. But it was removed when concerns were raised on what some visitors considered talking”

Aleph huffed and twisted a little in a spin before arresting her momentum with a toe. It sounded a lot like a stomp but had the annoying effect of sending her slowly twisting back around the other way nad requiring she grab a handhold to keep her eyes on omega.

“The contract required that they help us if we need it! But how are we supposed to let them know we need help in the first place?! We need to get their attention, at least a little bit to establish a protocol or a line of communication. We should have met with them in the first place. Just because we got a pair of diplomats to start it off with a bad case of burnout or whatever does not mean that we should risk our MISSION just to be polite”

Quarti looked at Aleph and grinned then looked at omega.

“Has a good point thinking... But spirits get hungry... don’t shout and wave. Says here is snack! Come eat souls!”

Omega looked between the two of them.

“I wasn't suggesting we just shout out like that, and this whole ship is alive, I’m sure that’s not much of a problem... you haven’t had any problems with it yet have you?”

Aleph tilted her head at Omega.

“Shout out?”

Omega nodded.

“Yeah there are a few tricks we could try, standard pings. In theory that should get the attention of the crew or something”

Quarti folded her arms over her chest and did much better pantomime of stomping her foot then aleph had managed.

“The something is the troubles. Don’t see all the somethings that can lurk, don’t know anything... Never can see them, to see is to be seen”

“Well what if I do the broadcasts and you spot for me?”

A heavy huff and then Quarti sighed, it sounded a lot like Aleph... actually the way it looked was a lot like Aleph. Completely with bumping into a bulkhead before turning to aleph and nodding.

“I be watching out for ya blue-lutsa-luv... they be shouting like a idiot asking to be soul sucked”

Aleph blinked.

“That’s a myth right... nothing can actually do that?”

Quarti just laughed.

Omega didn't offer any words herself and merely looked grim.

Before anyone could clarify the timer went off, and Aleph and everyone else had duties they needed to do.

Simple boring duties.

But this time both Quarti and Omega each went into a Meditation Pod themselves.

And a dozen more shifts passed.

The first time she had asked if there was any contact.

Quarti just laughed and Omega shook her head.

They both looked strained though by whatever they were having to do with the Resonance.

There was a shift after that and omega actually had to take a break, looking utterly exhausted and moving like her spine hurt. It reminded Aleph of what trying to cram too much research into her head had felt like.

It gave her a sympathetic cramp up and down her back.

Quarti however was looking a lot calmer and happier.

The shift after that Quarti had declared the overwatch ‘no big thing’ and then after that they had stopped going into the pods at the same time.

Which honestly was a huge help because Aleph had been ending up with more and more of the farming and cleaning duties around the habitat while the two of them holed up in the pods trying to ‘make contact’.

By the seventh shift Omega was actually even more annoyed looking then aleph had been at the start.

“No one responds... nothing but a... A wait prompt... it just... all i got...”

Aleph launched a soaked towel towards omega on a nice slow trajectory.

Omega grabbed it and wiped down her face where the sweat had built up a sheen.

“Thanks aleph... It’s just... was put on hold”

Quarti started tumbling and laughing at that.

Aleph blinked.

“Hold?”

Omega nodded.

“Yah like when you try to access a crystal reader and it hasn't finished spinning up so it says ‘Please Wait’ ? it was like that but it never responds with anything else... I just spent a whole shift asking and asking and all I got was the exact same response over and over”

Quarti nodded.

“We tried some it good now? We can be quiet and not flashy and loud now and just wait good for trip-over?”

Aleph was a bit discouraged after that as well.

They were traveling with actual aliens, but apparently no one wanted to actually talk?

The next shift though she had an idea, they had some machines, there were OTHER ways to communicate other than resonance.

So between her duties she took out some of the survival gear, assembled them and when Omega noticed she blinked.

“The long-light sender? You think maybe they will notice light over resonance?”

Aleph nodded and then flicked the thing on and started tapping out a basic easy rhythm.

Quarti seemed amused but also was happy apparently that no one was ‘shouting’ anymore. And it was not interfering with her duties.

She tried that for another five shifts. Tapping out a few clicks into the flash of invisible long-light. Then left the receiver open to let her hear any response. But all she got was static and the same rhythmic pulsing. Like a heartbeat and a whistle.

No message, no response, no words, not even an echo of her signal.

She even made sure that the thing was working by putting together a second receiver.

But she kept trying, long light receivers on different frequencies. Casters in shorter-light. Flashes out the window with he brightest bulbs they could scrounge up.

Eventually one shift she had been at her wits end.

Aleph had grabbed a wrench, braced a leg through one of the hold fast straps.

And was bangingagainst the superstructure of the pod.

Every impact resonating the module like a bell, sending her swinging back in an arc around the pivot of her hooked leg.

Gently sinking into the cushion she had placed to catch her head and bounce her back.

And then back into the bulkhead.

Quarti was trying to figure out new words to a song the beat apparently reminded her of.

Omega looked kind of sad, but also like she did not want to intervene. She had picked up more of the farming and cleaning tasks from Aleph.

Giving her more time to focus on trying to signal out.

Although she was getting doubts. The shifts in acceleration that she guessed were changes in their course happened.

So they were traveling.

But she imagined perhaps they were forgotten.

Doomed to never see anything interesting.

Doomed to never see the light shield raise on the window and let her stare blankly at the darkness beyond.

She banged the wrench on the bulkhead again before she realized she could see hints of light and movement out there.

That Quarti had stopped singing.

That Omega had gently grabbed her wrench to arrest her movement.

She looked at her friend blankly. How long had it taken for the futility of her actions annoy Omega?

Wait that was a different expression.

Wonder.

She turned back to look at the porthole, She could see beyond it.

The light of their pod shining out undiluted by the shield.

And there before her was a glossy black set of features, smiling lips and sinuous contortions besides. Not really clear where anything began or end.

The visitor.

The pilot.

An Alien.

She gulped and before remembering herself she spoke aloud.

“Hello... I’m Aleph... C-could we have a bit of a chat?”

Then she realized the idiocy of what she just did. They checked the external airlocks. It was practically vacuum out there.

No way the sound would reach the flensing stroke and part the wound, take and snatch to love and shred the fuckling flower so pollinates the pregnant belly fruits -

​ Wait ?​

WHAT?!?​

Aleph had never felt or known or been anything like that moment. For a brief baffled instant she thought she had possibly died.

It was like she had grabbed her body from the inside of her skull and shaken it till it buzzed.

Her nerves jolting with spasms from a brush of conflicting chaotic sensations that she seemed to be dragging herself down into, thinking deep on her memories, on rhymes and words and private secret wishes in the dark.

She was as if she was her own tongue with rasping hooks that somehow were also softest petals dragging up from the kernel and core of inside of her brain and out till she was scraping the backs of her eyeballs. and out along the sides of the inside of her skull.

It made her raise every hair to a goose bumping attention and shiver her skin up and down like she was trying to get it to wrench off her bones.

Her innermost self was made from obscenities in order to tell the black alien inside the box she wondered what was causing the rhythmics.

She was blinding light and the color purple, ice cold and hot as molten solder. She made her insides twist around themselves and try to move in ways she was pretty sure she did not have muscles.

She was hurting herself and loving it and hating it and every bit of herself was pain and want.

She made herself try to scream, cry, laugh and clench every muscle in her body at once.

The last thing she could think before giving up on consciousnesses all together was thus:

The stories were true.

Horror and wonder waited beyond Terra.