Thursday March 21, 2016 Richard blinked, surprised as everyone else brushed and rushed past him and onto the ship with it's mysterious pulsating yellow light somewhere deep within. He grunted and stumbled as Largent pushed by, slamming his shoulder hard into Richard as he went. Cassidy, Hall, and Carter followed the rest of them onto the ship, with Alden following along at the back of the pack, a disdainful expression on his face that Richard thought probably had more to do with the fact that they had been cleaning up garbage than it had to do with the ship in front of them. Finally, the first to arrive but last to board, Richard followed along behind everyone else. One foot in front of the other, each step slowly eating up the ground between him and the inevitable. maybe he was waiting, hoping an adult would happen by and stop him? Was that why he was delaying? He wasn't sure, but he didn't like the implications, so he finally ducked his head and married forward, stalking his way up the ramp. The gray metal beneath his shoes seemed to give, like rubber, but was undeniably strong and firm as steel. It was a dizzying feeling, knowing that the ground under him appeared completely solid, but it felt as if it was sagging beneath his weight. When he reached the top of the ramp he took two more steps into the ship and lifted his head, getting his first look of the inside of a real space ship. ---------- "Think they're going to be disappointed?" Om asked, tossing a handful of popcorn into his mouth. "Wasn't I?" Al countered. "At least at first. It [i]did[/i] look kinda boring at first. Didn't start getting interesting until a few minutes later." Om nodded, a wicked grin playing around his lips. "Oh, look. It's closing up." Al turned his head just in time to see the light wink out of existence as the ramp closed silently behind Richard, the last of them to enter the ship. "I hope you know what you're doing," he muttered. "We all agreed, Al," Om snapped irritably. "You and Be would handle the... wild contacts... so to speak, and I would handle something like this. And in the last twenty odd years this has been the first situation like this we've ever encountered. So if you don't fucking mind, I have more than earned the right to conduct these tests as I see fit." "And how many of them are going to go off the deep end? You don't even have the slightest clue what they'll end up with. Some of them could kill people, Om, and if they do that'll be your fault." Om glared at Al, his gaze steady and filled with anger. "I am well aware of the risks, and more than willing to accept the consequences. A basic risk assessment is enough to tell me that the potential benefits rather far outweighs the potential risks." Al threw his hands up in the air, making a disgusted sound at the back of his throat. "I give up. Some men just want to watch the world burn." They fell into silence for a few minutes, Om still munching away on his popcorn. Finally. "Did you just quote The Dark Knight, at me?" "Shut up." ---------- [b]Ship[/b] Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The ship was empty. Richard blinked and rubbed at his eyes with his fists for a moment, unsure if he was actually seeing what he thought he was. When he opened his eyes again, nothing had changed in the slightest. The inside of the huge triangular ship was completely and utterly empty. No chairs, no equipment, consoles, controls or embellishments of any kind. The floors, wall and ceiling were all a smooth grey tinted metal with swirling patterns and designs etched into its surface. Sophia was walking around the perimeter of the room, poking the walls at random points with the tip of one finger. Largent and his new cronies stood in the center of the empty space, staring around them with a mixture of awe, shock, and anger written across their faces. Hall just looked amused, which freaked Richard out more than usual. "What the hell is going on?" Richard asked, taking a few more steps forward and craning his head from side to side, looking for anything at all out of place. He couldn't even tell where the yellow light was coming from. It appeared to pulsate in the air around them with no discernible source that he could find. "Weird right?" Carter asked, chuckling strangely. "There's nothing in here to indicate this vessel was ever manned or operated by anything living. I'm guessing it's an unmanned vehicle, possibly remotely operated from a larger control ship." Richard arched an eyebrow in his direction. "A mothership? Really?" "Look around, Stupid," Carter snapped, spreading his arms to indicate the cavernous empty that surrounded them. "There's absolutely no way this ship traveled interstellar distances on it's own. It's too small. It has to have been part of a larger vessel and was sent down here for some reason." "What reason could there possibly be to send a completely empty ship to land in a park in the middle of nowhere U.S.A?" Richard snapped back and Carter shrugged. "No idea, but you're assuming the thing is empty." Richard blinked again and looked around him slowly at the vast empty space. "This isn't empty?" "You never know. Look at the distance from the floor to the ceiling." Carter pointed at the ceiling above their heads. "I'm five foot three and I could probably touch that ceiling if I jumped." "So?" "So? From the outside this ship is easily fifty feet thick top to bottom. Now, if the outer hull is five feet thick all the way around that's ten feet off, top and bottom. Seven feet in here, allowing for the possibility of error in my estimate of the height of the ceiling. That's fifty feet minus seventeen, we're look at a good 33 feet of unused space. Some of that's gotta be engines, life support, etc, but I' be willing to bet there are other systems, other operations that are hidden within the walls and such like on a submarine. Space is at a premium so everything has to stow away nice and neat in order to make it all fit properly and still have room for people to live for months on end." Richard felt as if his head was spinning. [i]Huh, never knew Carter was such a sci-fi fan,[/i] he thought idly and wandered over toward the ramp. He got two steps when he came to a stop, staring at the smooth, unbroken floor in front of him when before there had been a ramp leading outside the ship. "Um... guys?" he asked, nervously. "Where's the ramp?" ---------- [b]Trapped[/b] They were trapped. People started to panic pretty quickly after that. Not surprising, really. “This is all your fault, Midget.” Largent snapped, glaring angrily at Richard. “My fault? Did I make you run onto the alien spaceship? Think before you speak, you stupid neanderthal.” Richard growled at the taller boy. “Did anyone hear anything or see anything?” Carter. “How do we get out of here?” Cassidy. “Everyone, just shut up!” Richard suddenly bellowed. While everyone had continued arguing Richard fought down his own rising sense of panic, just enough to realize that there was a new sound. Something below the level of their raised voices. Everyone fell silent. Even Largent, who just glared at me, his lips pressed into a thin line. “Listen,” Richard said and stepped closer to one of the smooth walls. I reached out and gingerly pressed my fingers against the metal. There was a low buzzing, a vibration running through the ship. “Somethings happening you guys. You can feel it in the walls.” The rest of them followed suit and touched the walls, except for Largent and his cronies. They stood sullenly in the center of the room like a bunch of toddlers that had just been put on time out. Richard almost laughed out loud at the mental image of Largent and his buddies in a preschool time out chair with Dunce caps on their heads, but he was just able to control myself. “So?” Largent snarled. “Somethings happening. Big whoop. How the hell are we supposed to get out of here?” he grunted. “What makes you think I know?” Richard sighed, tired of fighting with the irrational Largent. Richard glanced over at Sophia when she walked up and suddenly put a hand on his shoulder to get his attention, and found that she was looking almost straight up at the ceiling above them. Richard really wasn’t sure that he wanted to know but his gaze followed hers, almost against his voluntary will until he finally noticed the same thing the rest of them were now looking at. There were a series of structures growing down from the ceiling, a ceiling that before had been only a few feet above their heads but was now easily twenty feet high and rising. And Richard didn’t think the structures were growing like in the mechanical way. Like Transformers where metal parts move and shift and grow into new shapes. No, this was like the ceiling was melting and dripping down toward them and as each drop solidified at the tip it created a slowly growing steel grey spike until the ceiling looked like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. A set of spikes pointing down toward us. The end of each individual spike began to glow as everyone inside the ship, started very much, to freak out. A voice started speaking over some sort of P.A system, cycling through languages so fast none of them could even begin to guess what they might have been. Finally, it settled on English. “Eleven biological targets for modification. Mutagenic Radiation Array will fire in four… three… two… one… There was a brilliant blast of light, brighter than anything Richard could remember ever seeing before in his life. His eyes burned. For a moment, he was sure that he would be permanently blinded. Fire raced across his body and through his body. Acid flowed through his veins while lightning traveled across his nerve endings. And just when he opened his mouth to scream in agony everything went blessedly dark. ---------- Saturday March 23rd, 2016 "What the-" Richard started, setting bolt upright, head swiveling left and right, eyes wide in terror as he took in his surroundings. He was lying in bed, in his room at home, in his pajamas. "What the hell happened?" A quick glance at his phone where it was plugged in on the nightstand next to him told him it was 9:34 on Saturday morning. "What the hell happened to Friday?" he muttered. He scrambled out of bed and went clattering down the stairs to find his mother in the kitchen. "Um... mom?" "Hey, baby. How're you feeling?" she asked and stood from the table. Coffee in one hand she walked over to him and pressed the back of her hand against his forehead. "No fever, you look and sound a lot better too. Feeling alright?" Richard blinked, his confusion growing with every passing minute. "Um... I feel fine. What happened? Did I sleep through Friday?" "Oh jeez, baby," she sighed and pulled him into a hug. "That fever was really bad if you don't even remmember. Hungry?" He nodded dumbly as she pulled away and went over to the oven to pull out a plate covered by foil. He sat down, she placed the plate in front of him and he tucked into eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, and waffles while she talked. "Your teacher, Mr. Thorne? He dropped you off Thursday night, said you guys had a productive evening cleaning up trash in the park." "I remember the park," Richard muttered, nodding absently. "And I remember cleaning in the park. But I don't remember leaving the park or coming home from the park," he said and she frowned. "I'm going to call your school on Monday and complain about that teacher. There was no reason to have you kids out so late on a school night." "No, mom," Richard interrupted. "It's fine, just what happened next?" She sighed and leaned back in her chair. "You had a fever yesterday morning so we kept you home from school and you slept all damn day. You've been out basically since about ten thirty Friday night." "A day and a half?" Richard was shocked. A solid 36 hours, easily, were missing from his life. He jumped up and ran upstairs into his room. In minutes his pajamas were thrown on the floor and he was dressed in boots, jeans, and a t-shirt with the Disturbed Demon grinning broadly on the front. He ran downstairs, past his startled mother and out the front door. Without missing a beat his leaped the three steps that led from his porch to the ground and ran across the grass toward Sophias house. Maybe she would remember something from the other night that he couldn't. It was when he made to slow down as he approached the front door that he realized something had gone terribly awry. He didn't slow down. He couldn't feel the ground beneath his boots. He didn't have time to- [b]THUD[/b] "Ow!" he yelped and fell onto his back as he crashed into the wooden door leading into his friends house at full speed. He winced, waiting for the painful landing that he knew was going to happen. It didn't happen. "What the?" Richard opened his eyes as he heard the sound of footsteps approaching from somewhere inside the house and glanced down. It was obviously fairly quickly why he hadn't been able to stop when he approached the house. He had been trying to use his feet, friction against the ground that would bring him to stop. The problem was, he hadn't been [i]using[/i] his feet to run in the first place. It all came crashing down, just as the door to the house opened. Richard was floating a solid three feet off the ground!