Chapter Text
Enid floated in the dark and the empty. Before her lay a sight only one other human had ever personally been witness to. The sight of the Milky Way galaxy from beyond the galaxy’s edge.
The stars shone bright and warm before her, the only home humanity had ever known.
Enid hung in a dome of transparent material on the edge of a dark space ship. When she had first seen it she had thought it truly dark but as she turned to the other side of the dome, slowly twisting in space, she was confronted with true darkness.
An endless expanse of emptiness, darkness more complete and absolute than any she had ever conceived. No stars, no light, nothing.
A year ago, the thought of the galaxy’s edge had given Enid a feeling of creeping horror. Something distant and scary but not something she would ever be confronted with.
Now? The dark no longer disturbed her.
‘Enid?’ a voice called through the open hatch to the rest of the ship “below” her. Enid finished twisting slowly to see her girlfriend looking up to her from below.
Girlfriend, lover, fiancée ...
Wednesday Addams, the only other human to have seen this impossible view, was approaching.
‘I’m done with my work. Do you want the gravity back on?’
‘No, I’m good to float a while longer’ Enid grinned as Wednesday floated up and gently collided with her. Wednesday offered a brief embrace before backing up. Today was looking like a low-contact day.
But that didn’t keep Enid from staring into Wednesday’s eyes.
Speaking of staring into the dark...
Wednesday Addams wore a perpetually black wardrobe, normally a simple jumpsuit although expertly tailored to her petite frame. But her personality carried a size her body did not. Serious eyes that could pierce you like a knife or bury you in an avalanche of ice.
Or could melt and fill you with warmth.
The two girls floated for a moment more, Wednesday looking up to the galaxy “above” her like it had personally offended her.
Enid examined that expression with some concern, because Wednesday had a habit of lashing out at those who wronged her disproportionately.
‘How did the experiments go?’ Enid prompted.
‘Fine’ Wednesday answered tiredly, lacing her fingers with Enid’s hand without looking at her. The action was smooth and confident, despite the lack of sight, because for the past three months Wednesday hadn’t needed her eyes to see Enid at all.
But sometimes she still communicated like a magic-eight ball.
‘And...’ Enid prompted grinning as she used the connection to pull herself closer to Wednesday and give an affectionate bump with her head.
‘I’m capable of commanding the drones in more complex manoeuvres’ Wednesday admitted bitingly, gently pushing Enid away without letting go of her. ‘But I can’t seem to coordinate them effectively in zero-gravity yet. Because they do not have a personal understanding of zero-g or coordinating under it.’
Enid gave a non-commital hmm and let the matter drop.
The drones Wednesday referred to were not robotic in nature, but alien life forms that had imprinted on her. Enid had tried to get Wednesday to recognise them as something more than tools but her girlfriend seemed adamant about maintaining an emotional distance with them.
Although in fairness, Wednesday maintained that distance with almost everyone they had ever met, human or not.
The matter dropped, the pair enjoyed a quiet moment, appreciating the view. Enid knew Wednesday enjoyed staring at the dark even more than she did. Something about it really seemed to speak to her.
But after a while Enid broke the silence. It had just gone on too long.
‘Still no communications?’
When Enid turned to Wednesday’s face there the faintest flicker of a smile.
‘Still nothing. There are no relay stations to request messages be redirected. They’re all pointed where we once were. But don’t worry my love, we’ll be returning to the connected areas soon.’
Enid tried not to feel like Wednesday was subtly mocking her. It wasn’t just that Enid wanted an update on the state of a few celebrities. Her first month in space had impressed upon her the limitations it imposed on the opportunity to gossip. But there were actual important things they needed information on.
Wednesday was confusingly wanted by the United Worlds Security Authority, both for brokering peace with an unknown alien species but also because she had accidentally, maybe, committed a few war-crimes rescuing Enid.
Enid’s own parents were being pressured by a corporation that had probably inserted illegal augmentation technology in Enid. And last Enid had heard from them before they left the galactic fringe, her father had caught an infection.
The Crackstone corporation which had been dogging Enid’s steps for the past year had not made any obvious moves after the bounty hunters but Enid had friends trying to investigate it. And though that friend had apparently joined a shadowy secret society they had still been trying to feed Enid information on that.
There were so many things that Enid could really use an update on.
Then Wednesday cupped Enid’s cheek with her palm and the spinning in Enid’s head calmed a little.
‘It’ll be alright mi solcito,’ Wednesday whispered, and like always, Enid believed her.
‘Assuming we survive re-entry’ Enid grimaced.
And Wednesday broke out into one of her rare beautiful smiles.
After their recent brush with bounty hunters, Wednesday and Enid had needed to take drastic measures to avoid repeat encounters. For which they had gone beyond the galactic edge.
It was common knowledge that for faster-than-light jumps, there was a “goldilocks” zone around stellar bodies that you wanted to exit and re-enter from. The presence of mass had stabilising effects on the exit and entry angles and the distance travelled, which at the scale of the distances a single jump took you, was extremely important.
You didn’t leave material space, not really, so any impacts en-route would be catastrophic. Tiny particles could be shielded against. A planet could not.
It also meant that if you found yourself somewhere with no large stellar bodies nearby, say between stars, getting back into the regularly used transport space was a gambling nightmare that usually ended with everyone involved dead.
Wednesday had actually been looking forward to that part but since leaving the galaxy had been perplexingly disappointed. This far out their variation should have been in the order of light-years and their angle should have been fluctuating by whole degrees with every jump.
And yet, their ship had come out within five hundred kilometres of their prediction every time.
Wednesday and Thing, her ship’s computer, were going over their navigation charts one more time, seeing if they could have miscalculated, but no. Their ship, for whatever reason, was launching and re-entering as though they had been in the goldilocks zone of a star about three-tenths the size of Earth’s Sol star the whole time.
It would have been a boon if it were not so confusing.
‘Thing,’ Wednesday spoke, addressing the empty room. ‘Do you remember when we first took over this vessel?’
The ship had not always been the form in which Thing had developed. He had once had a much more restrictive form back on Earth, raised in her family’s estate. When she left for space and he had come with her, he had uploaded himself into the ship systems and in every way that mattered become the ship itself.
Ping he answered. The ping was a positive confirmation. Thing did not use any human language when he could avoid it.
‘Do you remember how we had to recalibrate from what the reported capacities were?’
Ping. Long-scrape
‘We thought the reports were incorrect, or that one of the modifications we made was responsible.’
Worble.
The chassis in which Thing now found himself had once been a terraforming array, capable of entering a system and redirecting the power of the sun to alter planets over time. Not a full terraforming station but the ability to handle large amounts of energy had been something Wednesday thought was worth keeping. After all, what melted a dead planet’s crust could do as much to a living one.
Thing drew up his own schematics and put them on screen in front of Wednesday. The pair of them were both familiar with them. After all, there was no part of him that did not need the occasional maintenance and Wednesday had investigated everything herself at least a hundred times.
There was nothing that explained this. Not in any known science.
Wednesday did not appreciate anything that stepped outside that.
Roulette table spinning
‘I don’t put a dozen disgustingly successful jumps down to luck’ Wednesday spat with venom.
Plate smashing.
Thing had conceded the point.
‘In two days we’re re-entering the galaxy’ Wednesday sighed. ‘There can be no mistakes.’
She didn’t really mind dying in some suitably explosive space accident. Death was an old friend and fear of it made people stupid. But she was responsible for more than her own life right now. If things went wrong, Thing and Enid could die with her.
And that was just unacceptable.