Beyond The Stars

by Flutter Guy

Home

“He didn’t scare you too badly did he?” The receptionist, Lisa Stone, said to Max and I as we came out of the hallway into the lobby. “For some reason he always feels like it’s necessary to tell horror stories to new employees. He says it’s to weed out the weak ones, but that’s stupid because we already know pretty much everything about you.” I was surprised at how social she was being. I was expecting a more professional demeanor and less chitchat, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t appreciate the friendliness.

“Oh, no he wasn’t too bad. He seems like an interesting guy.” I responded with a smile. “Although I think Max came close to fainting when he started talking about deaths and mutations and stuff.” Max turned a brilliant color of pink as Lisa began to laugh.

“Don’t worry Max.” She said kindly, “He always exaggerates those stories. Serious accidents are actually really rare. We have hundreds of people whose sole jobs are to triple check every experiment for safety and all of our scientists follow strict procedures when doing anything even remotely unsafe.” This seemed to work wonders on Max’s nerves for his breathing slowed back to a normal pace and his face returned to its original pale complexion.

“W-Well that’s good I suppose.” He stammered quietly, which got me wondering if there was something else that was getting him on edge, because the Max I knew wouldn’t have stopped talking after one sentence.

“Anyway, I guess you guys are wondering where your new place is.” She handed us a map of the compound, which seemed awfully bizarre considering it was about as big as my notepad and didn’t have any folds or slide outs. My eyes grew wide as the map booted up and said, with an English accent no less,

“Welcome to Black Moon Laboratories Michael. I am AIDA, your guide as you acclimate yourself with your new surroundings. If you and Max would please exit the lobby through the rear exit we can begin our tour immediately.” I swore I could hear Lisa giggling as we followed AIDA’s instructions towards the exit.

I turned to Max and asked what he thought so far. His face finally regained some color as he replied,

“I think I’m in heaven man. This place is amazing! Everything is amazing, and don’t even get me started on Lis-“ He stopped suddenly as the color drained once again from his cheeks yet again.

“Started on what Max?” I said with a hearty laugh. “I didn’t catch that last part.” He quickly turned away, stuttering and blushing as we stepped out into the sun.

AIDA gave us a pretty basic first look tour, which, despite taking almost three hours, left me with a billion more questions than when we started. She took us all around the central compound but said we would get to see the inside of each facility at another time. Everything was enormous and beautiful; it was hard to believe that this place had only been around fifteen years. How could anyone build something like this in so little time? I wondered to myself. Then I remembered these were the people who created ships that traveled at ridiculous percentages of the speed of light and had so many A.I.s they could put them in maps.

It had begun to get dark as we finally entered the residential area of Black Moon. It looked pretty much exactly the same as any other neighbor hood, if you could see past the drones dropping off mail and fusion reactor the size of a car powering the area. Yeah, perfectly normal. Any way, AIDA led us up to a decent sized blue house at the end of the main road and gave us the access code for the front door.

“Here is the provided residence you will be staying in while you are employed at Black Moon Laboratories. Your belongings have been placed in a bedroom according to our analysis on what conditions you enjoy living in. If you require assistance please dial 117 on your phone and state your dilemma. We will respond as quickly as possible.” With that she powered down and the little tablet went dark.

“Well,” I said to my strangely silent friend, “I guess we should check out our new pad.” He nodded and followed me up the steps to the door where I punched our access code into the panel to the right of the door, which slide open a la Star Trek.

The first thing that hit me was that nothing hit me. The house was just that; a plain old house. Granted it was a rather nice house, with expensive looking furniture, a big kitchen, and a T.V. the size of a small nation, but it was still just a normal place.

“Whoa.” I heard Max gasp from behind me. “This is not what I expected. Where’s the glowing ceiling or the floating chairs?”

“Honestly, I kind of like this better. It feels more like home.” Max thought for a second before saying.

“You know what, you’re right. It does feel like home.” He sighed and continued, “It’s perfect. I’ve really been needing something a bit more like this, you know? Something simple, something a bit more down to earth.” I laughed when I thought about what he had just said.

“That’s probably why they set up the residences like this. So you can come home to a normal house after spending the whole day making rockets and lasers and stuff.” Max chuckled as we continued to explore our surroundings, opening every fully stocked cabinet and looking in all the rooms. Max split off to check out his bedroom while I went to find mine. It wasn’t hard, considering it was exactly where I would have wanted it to be. I opened the door and my jaw dropped several feet when I saw what was inside. It was perfect. All of my books, games, and action figures were up on shelves, my computer was sitting at a desk in the far corner across from the bed which sat underneath a good sized window that looked out over the distant forests outside the compound. AIDA wasn’t kidding when she said our rooms were designed specifically for us, I thought with a grin.

Apparently I had lost track of time exploring every nook and cranny of this wonderland, because suddenly Max was behind me saying,

“Hey dude, nice room.” He was lucky I was on the other side of the room because I immediately swung the replica katana I was examining in a wide arc in his direction. “Holy shit man, watch where you’re swinging that thing! You could’ve killed me!” I hastily apologized as he held up AIDA and said shakily, “I just got a message saying we have to be outside the main physics lab at eight am sharp for our field specific tour. We should get to bed, it’s gonna be a big day tomorrow.”

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Sorry it took so long to update, despite its length. I've had trouble thinking of what to write and I've also had a fair amount of other stuff going on as well. Anyway, thanks for reading, hope you liked it!

I also have a question for any other writers out there.
Recently I've been reading a lot of VinylxOctavia ships, and I really really want to wright one now. However, I still to work on this one, which is looking like it'll be pretty huge. Should I go ahead and start another story, or wait until I finish this one?