Harmony

    Damned transmitter...
    "Blink? Hey Blink! Do you hear me?"
    Silence. Then some confused words came through the earphone dodging the background noise, but nothing to be understood.
    "...the crew is... I've... cargo bay, now... field we..." Then silence again. Nothing, the interference was still too strong at the moment.
    Carefully, Jean turned about and pointed back towards the gateway, then with a slight movement of his back paws cast himself up, maneuvering into the passage with a tailflap.
    It was quite funny to find himself swimming from a starship's captain's room to the bridge, trough the cold waters which filled the entire place.
    Jean spun around, again looking in amazement at the structure all around him. At first sight, looking at the environment with an earth creature's eyes, its building could have been hard to understand. The bridge, like all rooms on that ship, was a perfect ellipsoid, with instruments and displays and consoles distributed evenly on the inner surface. No tables, no seats, a few protruding items. In the middle there was no captain's place, only the sensors block used to detect the helmsman's movement and transmit it to the ship itself. Now that would have been fine to try! The captain, instead, always floated around one of the ellipsoid's focuses during traveling.
    The main screen, now left to transparency, was one exact half of the room's form, allowing for the dolphins to feel at ease with their sight, but then of course a good sight wasn't their main concern. Jean knew most instruments on the bridge were extremely sophisticated speakers and microphones, apt to work up to the highest frequencies. Almost all information about the route and the ship's surroundings were translated to sounds by the sensors: dolphins only navigated by sight or autopilot when everything else had failed. Which actually was exactly that case.
    Out of the screen, the Mjolnir was well visible, right above the transport, and so were the asteroids all around the ships, as far as the eye could see. The crew had been lucky he and Blink had caught their request for assistance message short after their collision with a large rock. Right then the tigress should had already transferred all survivors to their vessel.
    The fox swam out of the room, followed by a school of colorful fishes. They looked not afraid of the new guest.
    After a few meters thought, the transmitter began to catch the signal again.
    "...an... Jean, hear me? Return here, we got the crew."
    "Yes I'm hearing. So what, nothing else to do?"
    "No, there's just a detail but seems nothing important. I've gathered the crew in our docking bay, they can breath and are more or less well, but, they're trying to tell me something, and the translator is bitching again with all that interference. I won't understand them until Entity reaches me here, and it'll take a while, at least until we're off the asteroids. We'll care later about it."
    "Ok, if you think it's nothing important..."
    "It actually seems something they're worried about... from their gestures, I might guess there is something they really want retrieved from the ship, but that's no way now. The asteroids are rocking out there, their whole ship might shatter at any time. Just get out from there! We'll tow the wreck and search that item later if necesszzzz..."
    The transmitter fell silent again. Curse their computer system, obviously the interference were due to its malfunctioning.
    Time to go anyway. Jean looked around. Nothing incredibly special was on sight; would have been fine to give a look to the engines room later, maybe also to the sickbay.
    That part of the corridor only had dark algae growing around, sending a rather queasy smell through his suit's filters. He remembered that spot. Left, up, up, right, forward until the red sings, then... the path to the docking portal was clear.
    On a ship like that one, the concept of up and down was actually quite meaningless. Compartments and conducts were distributed in all directions around the main corridor, making for a quite dizzy effect to Blink. Hard to wonder how tigers couldn't easily depict volumes in their mind. It came natural to foxes like him to immediately think of the hidden sides of objects and to feel clearly the angles and space between surfaces. Most civilizations of Jean's world had discovered and studied three dimensional geometry far before the two dimensions particular case.
    Suddenly his ears started as the earphone sent in a single, high note.
    "Ow! What the hell...?"
    The painful echo sounded for a few seconds within his head. It somewhat made he think of a microphone with badly balanced volume. Another stupid interference, really annoying. To think their computers could get spoiled even if they worked perfectly underwater!
    Jean proceeded down the corridor, not too fast: the sight was well worth a full appreciation, so similar to an actual underwater cave. The Mjolnir only had a small greenhouse, while the largest Alliance ships often carried fine sized forests among with a small sea system. The dolphins instead didn't use to separate the closed ecosystems aboard the ship from the operative sectors, and wandering around was truly a feast to the eye. Feeling nearly at home had to be quite encouraging during long space missions.
    It didn't look his home world with all that water, yet he somewhat liked the feeling of the large corridors. And -
    *thump*
    ...
    Jean blinked, frightened.
    ...? Something had hit his muzzle!
    What, he was... no longer seeing?! He looked up at the metal surface. It took a moment to understand.
    He was seeing, he had just swam straight against a wall.
    "Ran into a wall? Of all the odd things..."
    Jean turned, but there was nothing unusual around; the corridor was the same, two large green fishes quietly crossing it. He was in the place where he should had first turned left to reach the exit - only that he had not turned.
    "Now, now... this just teaches me not to pay attention where I put my fur. Distracting myself to this point underwater!" he thought with a smile. "Ha! Pray my friends at the Guild will never learn about this..."
    After swimming for a while in the new corridor though, he stopped again. Bright white corals were growing on the walls - but haven't been there before. His heart began to beat a bit faster.
    They weren't there before, and actually the doors showed different signs, that couldn't be the right corridor. But he had turned the right direction, the other possible way was down-right and he hadn't gone there, unless...
    With a few strong tailflaps he returned to the intersection, only a second before the eerie note sounded again.
    That time the note wasn't equally strong, nor annoying, but Jean had to face he couldn't say if it had came from the earphone. The suit he was using wasn't completely sound proof after all. But what would it mean? It was too a precise sound, it couldn't be another passenger screaming for help. The distant rumbling of the engines was the only sound his ears could track.
    The computer on the suit's arm signaled nothing unusual. After a bit of thinking he made a water composition control, which showed nothing strange as well.
    Anyway, Jean had no idea how to justify another error like that. It was serious, he was paying attention that time. But he then remembered a moment of hesitation before turning, thinking about it. Only a stupid explanation jumped to his mind. Might he have - damn it sounded absurd - confused the terms? Turned right, instead of taking the right corridor?
    "Bah. Ok, stop wasting time now" he thought. "Out, and quickly. This place is beginning to..."
    In the exact moment he raised his eyes from the tiny monitor, a wave invested him. His heart jumped. No.
    They were fishes. A huge school of flat fishes was calmly traveling past him, some of them just touching slightly the suit. They passed swiftly around him, leaving him slightly surprised. He hadn't noticed them approach.
    Without waiting further, Jean dived into the correct corridor as fast as he could. His ears were flat down into the suit, waiting nervously, but nothing else was sounding or appearing suddenly.
    To his relief he recognized the signs on the walls, but at the next intersection he felt confused again. What was the right way? Up, left, or straight ahead?
    Up. Yes, that must be up: he flew trough the corridor, between algae and fishes, and recognizing a sign he felt a bit better again. He arrived in a large room, with no windows.
    Black...
    The black void in front of him exploded within his mind, wiping away all other thoughts. The fox desperately tried to control the feeling... the fear was overwhelming, as well as pointless, there was no danger in...
    Void...
    He was feeling void everywhere...
    Jean threw himself in the nearest corridor, simply trying to go as far as possible from that room. Scent over scent streamed into his lungs ignored, fishes, and algae and metals. He stopped after an exhausting swim through corridors and spheres he couldn't recognize: how many turns, he had lost count by then.
    But it didn't fuckin' matter. One of the worst sensation he had ever felt progressively gripped his stomach.
    That, that was the wrong thing! He wasn't feeling the surrounding, no longer. Looking up, down, by side, all he saw were anonymous walls, all equal. He wasn't feeling hypotheses of tracks, distances and hidden intersections grow in his thoughts as usual.
    Calm, stay calm. What would have done Blink in that situation?
    No, dammit... she couldn't understand. She didn't feel space anyway, not the right way. But it's incredible, inconceivable, such a thing happening here, to me, to a fox!
    "Where is space!" he screamed.
    A delicate echo sounded around him, and right then the same scream came from somewhere behind him. He turned with a seizure. Nothing. Echo, still echo, the other focus of the ellipsoid. Of course. His fur was standing to the last hair.
    He was getting exasperated. The headache was coming out of nowhere, or had he felt it arrive? No way to answer. Being there or floating in outer space, he couldn't have told the difference. A few minutes before he was feeling all... and now!
    He soon realized he was doing what his people considered the worst thing ot do in a moment of disorientation: looking for universal beacon points; he was beginning to think about the room and corridors in terms of floor and roof.
    No, no matter what was going to happen, that had to be avoided, in there it could have been devastating...
    Moving unnaturally slowly, he entered the corridor opening over him. He remembered only the exit was there in the beginning... several times up...
    ...
    A long room, strange thing aligned on the walls. Dolphin beds, I guess. The crew's apartments. The exit is far. It happens... that fast! What can do this that fast!?
    The headache was crushing him. He could feel it, over his mane... right, that door is open, maybe...
    Why, why finish this way...
    ...
    Was he seeing that? A huge computer of some type on the wall in front of him, rotating, sort of? It was odd, twisted, shaped in hundreds of... cones?... all around him, covering half the room.
    The device was there, maybe an exit, why couldn't he reach it! It was far.
    ...
    ...dad... I will never see again...
    ...
    The void. Where he was? Blue, that looked water. Yes.
    Blue...
    A crash! A light. Earthquake, then other ones... wasn't that water?
    Too late...
    Like floating...
    Everything was so confused, so silent... no smell of...
    In water... but shouldn't he feel his own weight then? Water was all around.
    Floating.
    Or not. Wasn't it space?
    But there was water...
 
 

    In the end, the horse slowly withdrew his hand from the drawer. He was holding an old styled gun, possibly a true antique, but shiny and superbly cared of. His gaze ran at the country outside again.
    Out of the window, the sun shined high, behind the clouds. Only a few rays managed to find their way, falling onto the forest below - that same forest. Like day itself knew what had happened in the last two days, and what was about to happen right then...
    "Well enough. Computer, terminate program." The holographic studio disappeared, leaving place to the familiar and messy sight of Jean's room.
    Ok, much better. Every word sounded neat and clear, and the phrases made sense again. Jean noted down the holomovie's title, and to finish seeing it sometime later.
    He found even the sight of the sliding door opening and Entity and Blink entering the room unusually fine; her felinity smelled almost relaxing, with the odor of the algae aboard the dolphins ship still haunting his lungs. The tigress was bringing the Hynosian tea they used to have each morning.
    "Hiya! Feeling a bit better today?" she asked warmly.
    "Quite better" he answered, shifting his whiskers to a slight smile. "This night I managed to sleep continuously at least. I didn't even have nightmares nor hearing hallucinations. And now I understand all the words spoken again."
    *That's a good sign* stressed Entity, floating in front of him. *If the aftereffects are already disappearing, the harm you suffered should heal naturally without problems. By the way, the captain of the dolphins' ship sent you the best regards of him and his crew for a prompt recovery, as well as his excuses for the horrible accident.*
    "Uh, that wasn't necessary..."
    *I myself do wish to give you my most sincere excuses, as well. I had not been scanning the ship for harmful sound frequencies, taking it for granted that all the sound devices had been disabled. It has been a terrible fault by my part, which I ensure will never happen again.*
    "Oh, cheer up! I'm safe, I'm not? Now I remember only a few things about it all. It seems impossible, at that time I felt the sensations so clearly... It all happened in nearly an hour, you were saying yesterday? To me it seemed just a few minutes."
    "Fifty five minutes to be precise, but now try not to think too much about it. That was an awful experience. Even most dolphins can't stand that kind of stimulation for so much time without getting harmed."
    The tigress drew a small table near, pouring the tea in two huge cups, then handed him one. The strong aroma of the Hynosian infusion felt very good.
    "Well, you know me mon ami, I can't avoid being curious... and to be sincere I'm quite fascinated by the dynamics of what happened, and I'm pretty sure you are too. Bordermusic... I had never heard about it in all the years I've spent studying at the tech academy back on Renardène. I just drew four bad cards in a row. The first when we helped a crew with a bordermusic fan in it... the second when the ship's computer collapsed disabling the sound isolation system... the third when the bordermusic system in our friend's room was activated by overload... and the last when I found myself swimming near to the system, and nearly got my brains toasted. Isn't such things which make our work funny?"
    Blink shrugged and slowly shook her head, looking all but convinced; her scent betrayed the worry for his status still. Part of her DNA, he thought.
    "Mmm... usually... except when it goes that near. It's just for luck we left the asteroid fields in time and managed to open a breach in the hull in the right spot" she muttered. He sighed, staring at the large white feline quickly sipping the tea lick by lick, as her people used to. He stood silent for a while after finishing his own.
    "You see, the most horrible thing was feeling unable to react... and most of all unable to sense the surrounding. I felt my awareness run away piece by piece. And so fast! Gods, it was..." He sighed slowly, closing his eyes. His whiskers trembled.
    "You know how much I... my people relies on direction sense. For a moment I thought I'd never had regained it. Moving through the ship, and seeing it pass without feeling it... like being deaf and unable to smell and blind forever. Worse."
    Blink just nodded, flipping her tail.
    *I guess losing the sense of surrounding would be equally frightening for me as well. I have found that it is one of the most developed senses in both our species* observed Entity.
    While retrieving the empty mug, the feline's eye fell on her own claws, half retracted.
    "I see I can hardly understand what does it mean to you. Perhaps it's something like being paralyzed would be for a Rah'Warian."
    Jean raised a finger. "Exact, you got it. Stay sure it's the most appropriated similitude."
    "Well, now rest at will, my friend. I ensure we'll need to be really in shape for next mission!" she said with a smile.