One Drop In Time Read online

His hygiene was not what you would call ‘up to par’ as he frequently went for a week at a time without bathing, or changing his clothes. The fact that he stunk never entered his mind as to the reason why women shied away from him, not to mention the fact that he farted loudly in public.

  The bed slowly conformed to his body, and after a minute a glass or plastic door slowly slid down, and cool air began entering the enclosure. He was tired because of a partially sleepless night, and as he rested, his eyelids closed, and he was asleep.

  He awoke with a start, and began to panic, How the hell do I get out of here? He forced himself to calm down. He searched around the walls, then overhead, and saw a button sunk into the ceiling; he pushed it, and the clear door slid slowly up into it recess.

  Did you think these folks just locked themselves into their bed? He laughed at himself, and climbed out of the cubicle. He turned the wheel on another door that led deeper into the ship, and began hearing humming, and chuffing of machinery behind the bulkheads.

  He walked on, opening more doors by turning more wheels, and then he did he realized that they were actually air locked doors. He pulled a door off a bulkhead, and saw tubes of liquid. He soon tired of the machinery rooms, and returned to the bath room. He peed again, and then pushed a button on the small silver colored lavatory, and clear liquid came out of the spout. He dipped his hand under the stream just before it quit, sipped the liquid, then swallowed. Tastes like plain old water to me. He drank deeply, and then returned to the exterior door, and walked down the steps.

  The man looked dead to him, so he put his foot against his back and shoved the man over. Then he realized that he had been on the ship the whole day, as the sun was just sinking beyond the distant ridges. It never dawned on him that the man might have cooked in the desert heat, as people meant no more to him than sacks of cement. He walked out onto the sand, and looked up at the ship, and then he saw the pipe going into the ground. He walked over to the pipe, turned a handle, and water spurted out in a stream. So that’s what they were doing! He turned the valve off, and then climbed the stairs back into the ship where he found a lighted button along with a screen that read what he thought that said ‘Full’.

  He pushed the lighted button, and heard a whine, as the drill raised back into the ship with a permanent sounding clank. He pushed another button, and the stairs began to recess into the ship, then the door came down, and made contact with the facing, then made a gentle sucking sound that told him the door had pulled against some kind of gasket.

  Air began to circulate through vents in the hull causing a cool draft to run through the ship. He had a locked in feeling, but that soon left as he lost himself in the maze of symbols that surrounded the screen, and was written on the keys of the keyboards.

  He spent the next eight hours lost in the main computers, and the various small computer boards spaced around the ship, and time meant nothing to him; his brain stuck in the same mode, until the strange squiggles began to ooze into his brain to form pictures and patterns that made perfect sense, then began the slow realization that if the ship still ran, that he was free of the earth that had held him down for so long.

  He returned from a bout with the ship to the main control’s, sat down in the soft seat, and began pushing buttons that could kill him in an instant. They didn’t, and the ship began to lift off from the desert floor. He watched a large screen come to life to give him a view over the desert outside as the mountains became small hills, quickly receding into clouds, and gravity began pushing him gently into the soft seat. He felt the seat begin to push back at the gravity until he was molded to the seat. Soon he saw the earth hanging in the screen. He pushed another button, and felt the seat release him, and he began to float out of the seat. He grabbed the seat back, and pulled himself back down into the seat; he fumbled around, and found the ends of seat belts in the sides of the seat, pulled them, and buckled himself into the seat.

  He typed at the communications keyboard, and the small screen began to run through radio frequencies with blinding speed.

  “Hello, hello, hello.”

  The screen stopped suddenly on a frequency, “Hello, hello.”

  A speaker crackled to life, “Hello, who is this?”

  “This is Gene Gordon.”

  “Where are you Mr. Gordon?”

  “I’m pretty sure I am in space above the earth, at least that’s what the screen shows.”

  “Yeah right, and I am in the White House, get off this frequency Mr. Gordon; this channel is reserved for NASA, and it’s illegal for unauthorized use of a government frequency.”

  “I think I’ve found an anti-gravity drive, do you think NASA would be interested?”

  “No, and if you don’t get off this frequency right now, I am calling the FCC! Now get off here!”

  Gene was silent a minute, “Ok.” He reached up and pushed a button, and the speaker went silent.

  I would have thought they would be interested, but they probably would have tried to take it from me anyway. I need to test it out some more. I guess I own it.

  He remembered the one thing he had forgotten, food, so he searched around the ship until he found a spigot. He pushed a button, and some greenish stew like stuff began coming out. He dipped his finger in it, smelled it, then tasted it, and it tasted good. Food problem solved.

  Gene settled into the seat, and began to push computer keys, and then he felt the drive kick in again, only this time it was a gentle push that went away in a few minutes, yet he saw the earth disappear from the screen. The stars that he could see on the view screen began to wheel slowly.

  He unhooked the seat belts expecting to be able to float again, but he was able to walk around as normal. Artificial gravity…neato…I need to piss anyway.

  He walked back to the John, and heard the comforting sigh of the ships systems getting rid of the waste. He looked at the screen again, and now the stars were slowly wheeling round and round, and he realized that was the source of the artificial gravity. The ship was turning as it bored through space. What's that forming on the screen? There was a bubble forming around a diagram of the ship. It works; I think the ship is reaching light speed! Oh my God, it works!

  He had read a theory that said if you expand space on one side of a ship, and contract it on the other side, it might be possible to reach faster, and faster speeds. He could see the bubble forming that looked to be about an inch from the ship, providing the camera was flush with the hull, and he thought pretty sure that was correct.

  Gene Gordon lived in the moment. He didn’t worry about anything, because the truth was, he had a bubble around his mind, and heart, just as the ships' drive did. It pushed the world before it. He was getting sleepy, so he walked back, and this time, pulled off his sneakers, crawled into the soft bunk, and was asleep before the door came down.

  When he awoke several hours later, and walked to the pilot’s seat, he saw that the bubble surrounding the ship had grown larger, and he could see the stars between the bubble, and the ship. Also the numbers that indicated the speed of the ship were getting larger at the top of the screen.

  For several more days he explored every area around the ship he could get to. In the rear of the ship, he had found a closet with space suits in it. I wonder if I could do a space walk with one of those? His mind moved on. He began to go over the ship again with a proverbial fine-toothed comb. He found some of the gray metallic like suits the men had been wearing, so he stripped of his worn jeans, and sneakers, pulled the suit on which had built in boots in them, and immediately realized that the material was far more comfortable than his own clothes, and it seemed to fit perfect. He walked around in the boots, and it felt like he was walking in a dream.

  He was sitting on the seat staring at the stars when the bubble around his mind gave way, and burst, and he realized for the first time in his life he was totally, and completely alone. He remembered the desert, and the girl he had expected to have sex with in Las Vegas. He remembe
red the office people who had tried to make conversation with him.

  In a word, Gene Gordon woke up, and came to himself.

  He rushed back to the John, ran water, and splashed it over his face, and then he looked up, saw his unkempt figure in the mirror, and what he saw shocked him to the core.

  He remembered the man at the foot of the stairs; the suffering on the mans face as he had died from the desert heat, I let that man die without even thinking! His awakened heart drove him back to the console of the ship. He sat down in the seat, and longed to see one face…any face, but there were only the screens and the star's wheeling…wheeling.

  For several days, he tried to get back into exploring the ship, but soon realized that it was only a machine, admittedly a sophisticated one, but nevertheless, just a machine that was taking him light-years away from the good earth.

  He remembered his mother shooing him out of the kitchen long ago, just barely, but he could remember her. Other women were human, why hadn’t he seen them as such? He had looked upon them as objects.

  He remembered a girl who worked at IBM. He had really