Thursday Taster 17: Parallel slip

Hello and Welcome to Thursday Taster again. Talented writers from all over the blogosphere gather together to give readers tasty parts of their work in progress, you can find the list here. 

 

 

Today, we continue with Parallel Slip just where we left it. Frederique just thanked the girls.

 

It was apparently unexpected. I really wondered who I was and how I had become captain.

I took my seat, the document in front of me were written in a language I couldn't read. That was one thing that I never understood. I could speak and be understood and they could understand me, but for the rest I often had no idea. What kind of choice had lead humanity to that kind of universe?

I took the paper and tried to order them. I was still here, something more had to happen.

"Captain, on the right, they are attacking us," one of the woman said.

I knew I could do something from this seat, I just didn't know what button to press. I was here to save the day, but I couldn't control a spaceship and I had no idea about the weapons. I was just in charge of something I couldn't take care of. I wished that the other me would decided to come back and fix it, but apparently that wasn't her intention.

"Captain, let's do it," that was the man I had put in charge.

I wanted to smile of relief to see him, but I wasn't too sure anymore. I kicked my chair away from the desk to give him space. A gesture that he didn't seem to be waiting for. I slide my hand over the control panel.

"You're in charge."

He turned around the table under the bemused eyes of the two women.

"Captain, are you sure?"

"I've never been so sure," I said.

He took a deep breath and pushed one button, pulled on things I had no idea. I tried to memorize the order.

"I think you should give the last move," he said.

"This was your idea, you are in charge, take your responsibility."

He took another deep breath, looking at the vessel in front of our glass screen and pushed a red button. That was easy, it was always the red button. The spaceship shook. He stumbled. I clung at the armrest of my chair and everything stopped.

"Target destroyed," one of the woman said. "Mission successful, ship damage, less than 0.02 percent."

"That's less than any other defense in the past twenty years," the other woman exclaimed.

"Captain," the crowd was back.

I stood up trying to show that I was in control when I obviously wasn't.

"Don't you ever dare discuss my decision again," I said. Or maybe my other self said, because I heard that white noise again. I blinked three times. That's how I make sure that I'm back.

"She moved," I heard a voice and I was pulled from a long tube.

My head was painful. It was always painful when I fell and nobody was here to catch me. I felt a bit disoriented. I was with my mother, going shopping I had just walked out of the car and my body had stiffened and I had fallen backward, seeing the sky and my mother had yelled my name as usual and here we were again, the hospital and their brain scan. They loved to look at my brain and at the abnormal activity there after the fall. I could tell my mum a hundred times that it wasn't necessary, she would always get me there. I sat up.

"Take it easy," the doctor said.

"I'm fine," I answered.

 

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