you know what i need??? more myth and superstition in scifi.
give me starship captains like the sailors of old, weathered and wary of the vast beast that is deep space, who religiously keep their own personal traditions and rituals to appease her and guide their ships safely through her vast depths.
give me wide-eyed ensigns eagerly drinking in tales of great creatures of the void, space whales and other more malevolent leviathans, dismissed as tall tales by more cynical cadets who only trust the sense of their own eyes.
give me whispered accounts of ghost vessels, lost long ago in great battles across the universe, populated by a literal skeleton crew.
give me a space bermuda triangle.
give me a universe as cold and unfathomable as the ocean, and no less mysterious and forboding.
There’s a ghost on the ship, some say. The newer captain tells the newest recruits that it’s the first captain of this ship, who died in battle, sacrificing herself for her crew. She still haunts this place, he says, helps anyone who follows the path of good, and hinders those who turn towards treachery and greed. Some drink in his tale with open minds, interpreting every knock and creak as a sign of haunting. Others are more cynical, more disillusioned. The ship’s medic claimed she couldn’t have been real, then had the worst luck for a week until the captain dragged him out of the medbay to apologize.
In other ship, the crew believes in ship elves, creatures stolen away from old earth, who, in exchange for a home and food, will keep the ship lucky. Almost everyone puts bowls of synthetic milk and honey by the vents every night – during turbulent rides, it spills and gets all over the place until the engineer invents something spill proof. They can’t say they’ve seen the things, but they’ve never had an engine failure, lost things always come back quickly, and when the engineer said they didn’t believe in the elves, the water pipe above their head burst, soaking them in water. They grumble it was coincidence, but they still made those spill proof bowls.
There are tiny travelling vessels that prays to old gods, making shrines in the rare unused corners. There are rumors of creatures in the void – things in fuzzy pictures and strange footage no one can explain (besides the skeptical, who roll their eyes and say it was just another ship in the distance). There are databases shared between ships dedicated to strange and mysterious occurrences. There are some people who make a business out of travelling the galaxy, boarding ships with bulky devices, looking for proof of the strange and mysterious. There are rituals and songs and offerings and omens, passed through the ship’s crew like a family might pass down poor eyesight or red hair.
Space is already mysterious. But once we figure that out, we’ll bring our old mysteries with us.
| Via: somewhat-honest-abe |
