Space Witness
Valentine had killed a man. Not just any man: he had assassinated the President. Two to the mouth and one through the neck. Blood so dark that you’d swear it was tar. God bless America. Amen.
The money hadn’t been the motivation. Neither had been the pats on the back by high-ranking officials and their promise of a perfect life where he’d have anything he wanted. The motivation had been simple: Valentine wanted to get caught; wanted to die.
He was a classic retired soldier, a real pin-and-lapel guy. He could have had any pretty blond out there, could have had himself a real woman. Could have had a nice car too. Instead, he got himself a gun and used it to blow the President’s face into chunky sushi. And the high-ranking officials—those backstabbing pricks that had hired him in the first place—were the ones that arrested him; faces masked by fake shock.
Let’s use him as an example. Show our new method of execution. By the Space-Act Articles of 2092 we can exile him off in a ClearEye. Put him in cryo-coma until the stupid see-through bubble lands on some desolate uninhabitable planet a million years from now. Yeah, let’s punish him by not killing him! I mean, it’s still execution, we’ll just let space do it for us in a million years! Yeah, a million years! God bless America! God bless! You guys wanna go out for a cup of hot brew? Who’s being elected as the new President by the way?
The news cameras and flashes, the judge and jury—even the bone-breaking beating he got by Homeland—it all passed in a blur. Valentine was done with it all. The pain, the politics, the talking —gosh, us frikin’ humans talk, talk, talk: pointless. He was tired of being alive and sick of being classified with the same species as everyone around him. They were just a bunch of blithering idiots sitting on a rock and arguing about who had the biggest stick. Flush him out in space? He didn’t care as long as he didn’t have to interact with another human again. No more children gunning down families with AK-50’s, no more pasty politicians smiling with their wet small teeth and coal-black eyes, and no more pointless talking. He didn’t have to worry about PTSD therapy bills, the Hispanic guy that kept peeing in his backyard thinking no one noticed, or paying his taxes. Hell, half the people in the country probably thought he was a lucky man for getting exiled.
They brought him to a large unmarked white building within a military complex. A cold-looking man with a lab coat asked him a bunch of questions about his physique, measured him, ran psychological tests, then left him in an empty room to brood for a couple of weeks. They eventually pulled him out and off he was again, to another facility. He was taken into a different building, this one all metallic and shiny. Valentine was strapped to a gurney and brought into a white-walled doctor’s office. Three men walked into the room: a doctor, a priest, and a government official. It was like the setup for some bad joke.
Thomas Valentine, I’ll be injecting you with a pretty interesting concoction. It’ll put you out so that we can get you into a cryo-coma. The machines in the ClearEye will wake you when you’ve landed on a habitable planet whenever that may be.
Thomas Valentine, I’m Father Darren. I’ll send you off with a prayer as we launch you into the bosom of our father above. May your soul find rest.
Thomas Valentine, I’m here to oversee the legality of this process and that your transition onto the shuttle and its launch is smooth and successful.
Valentine looked away and stared at a small green plant sitting in the corner of the room. Too bad they were all dudes, he would have really loved his last memory with another human to be one involving a half-naked nurse blowing him a kiss. The doctor injected him with something blue and his vision faded into emptiness, his thoughts calming as he entered dreamless sleep.
The silence was interrupted by a pneumatic hiss and a tiny clear chirp that sounded almost friendly. Valentine opened his eyes. A voice sounded out.
Thomas Valentine, your cryo-coma has paused. Malfunction—reboot cycle initialized. Error—no sustainable planet found. Restarting coma in three-hundred seconds.
Malfunction? Where was he? Valentine’s mind sluggishly tripped and prodded itself to try and figure out what was going on. His vision focused in on what was around him. What was beyond him. A star field. Eternal pinpricks of white, yellow, red, and blue lights swimming in darkness. The ClearEye finished its hissing and humming and there was silence. Absolute silence.
Valentine was in a clear bubble floating in the middle of space. His mouth opened and shut; even though he had expected an incredible view—this was beyond what he imagined. What had the computerized voice said? Malfunction? He didn’t see any planet around him. Had he been awoken out in the middle of nowhere?
“Computer, how long have I been out?” he asked, voice raspy and almost mute. The computer sensors picked it up though.
Twenty-One-thousand, one-hundred-and-four years Mr. Valentine.
Twenty-one-thou—! Valentine’s mouth felt dry. It couldn’t be. He had jumped into the future, so far ahead of where he had come from that his mind couldn’t process it. Everything he had known back on Earth would no longer exist. Twenty-one-thousand! What changes had come about since then? Did humans even exist anymore?
Restarting cryo-coma in ten. Nine. Eight.
The computer was going to knock him out again! Valentine looked at all the wires strapped to his arms, being fed from electric devices plugged into the white and silver harness holding him in place; the only contraption on this bubble that wasn’t see-through. All his nutrients, oxygen, water—everything— came from the harness; recycling all of his waste and refeeding him.
Two. One. Initializing.
Fluids pumped into his body. The ship hyper-froze him once more. Valentine faded to black.
Thomas Valentine, your cryo-coma has paused. Malfunction—reboot cycle initialized. Error—no sustainable planet found. Restarting coma in three-hundred seconds.
Again.
Valentine opened his eyes, feeling like he had awoken from a long dreamless nap. Something massive seemed to move across his vision, so close he thought he was about to be crushed. A massive gray rock. He was in the middle of what had to be millions of asteroids, gently moving along in the dark of space. One collided with another, their silent crushing force shattering chunks of rock. The asteroid-field was thick and Valentine could hardly make out the stars in the rare gaps he saw. Large shadows ran across his clear bubble as the small versatile ship dodged around the objects. He would have expected booming explosions, grinding, cracking, groaning noises—but the silence was infinite.
“Computer,” he croaked. “How long?”
Thirty-three-thousand and twelve years since your initial launch, Mr. Valentine.
Thousands more years had passed since he had awoken last! Valentine watched the asteroids, transfixed, as his mind tried to comprehend the depth of his situation. He was thousands of years old. Thousands! Where was he? How far had he traveled?
The ship obviously had some form of malfunction, having awoken him twice now for no reason—maybe there was some error with the scanner, thinking it had picked up on a habitable planet. Was the ship going to fail him now? Keep him awake until he rotted away?
He had expected to die for what he had done-wanted to die— but this, this was an existence he couldn’t decipher. A half-life. What was the meaning of this? This magnificent imprisonment? This beautiful entrapment? Eternal purgatory.
Time was meaningless out here. It didn’t matter how old he was or where he came from. The universe didn’t care. These asteroids didn’t care.
Restarting cryo-coma in ten. Nine. Eight.
So the ship was functioning somewhat still. He wouldn’t die just yet. Maybe he would fade away in his empty sleep. Never wake up.
Two. One. Initializing.
Thomas Valentine, your cryo-coma has paused. Malfunction—reboot cycle initialized. Error—no sustainable planet found. Restarting coma in three-hundred seconds.
Again! It had happened again!
Valentine opened his eyes and immediately shut them, feeling as if he had almost gone blind. All he had seen was white, red, and blue. A patriotic explosion of light so vivid he could have been vaporized.
“Computer… the light—“
Compensating with hue adjusters... Adjustment complete.
Valentine chanced cracking his lids just slightly. It was bright, but not unbearable. He opened his eyes all the way and beheld a magnificent sight. Before him in all their ethereal royal floating glory were two stars dancing around each other; one blue and small and the other large and blood-red. Arms of flaming gas trailed out from both, wrapping around each other almost as if in loving embrace. Textured haze and waving heat morphed and pocketed the surfaces of the celestial beings. Beautiful.
Valentine didn’t even think about his situation, instead just gazed at what lay before him. The stars were probably still hundreds-of-thousands of miles away. But they were so big that Valentine felt that if the ship came any closer, it would evaporate and be swallowed up by the infernos. He was so mesmerized that he even forgot to ask the ship how long he had been knocked-out.
Restarting cryo-coma in ten.
Truly if he was to die out here in the deepest corners of space—at the very edge of the universe and beyond the mysteries of the mind— then this was the best way to go.
Two. One. Initializing.
Thomas Valentine, your cryo-coma has paused. Malfunction--yeah, yeah. He knew.
Valentine opened his eyes, watching blue fluid being sucked out of his arms, belly, and legs. He could feel it on his back as well. The cryo-fluid. Where was he now? He looked up slowly, his neck creaking like the most ancient hinge in existence.
He was in some sort of gaseous cloud. Lime-greens, pinks, and orange swirled around the ClearEye as if the embodiment of living color was waving to him. Streaks of what looked like upside-down rain ran up the clear material of the ship, giving off little bursts of electric fizz. Again, as like every time before, there was no sound. Where was he?
Something flashed deep purple in the distance, almost indiscernible in the thickness of the colored vapor. His ship shook violently as Valentine was tossed around in his harness. Terror gripped him as he imagined one of the wires coming loose, something tearing out of him, or the power in the vessel shutting down.
Just as quickly as the shaking had started, it stopped and all was calm again. The colored gas gently caressed against the ship, sliding along the glass and wrapping around. Another purple flash. The ship shook with more violence. Was this how his life would end?
Re–shhh—ing cryo—fshhh. Fzzz. Nine.
The computer was wigging-out. Oh gosh, why had he wanted to do it? Why the President? The war from before. Children shot through the head. Direct orders from the top down. Corruption. How could he? How could he have pulled the trigger? That girl! Her brains everywhere! Oh if there was a God, forgive him! Forgive him for all the death! Forgive him for being gullible and listening to the lies!
Three. Fzzzz--
He just wanted the pain to end! He should have used the bullets on himself! This wasn’t a punishment! Immortality in the dark was beautiful Hell!
Initializing.
His eyes shut.
Thomas Valentine, your cryo-coma has paused. Malfunction—reboot cycle initialized. Error—no sustainable planet found. Restarting coma in three-hundred seconds.
It was endless. An endless pattern. Wake up, see something beyond description and understanding, and fall back into induced coma. He was witness to eternal art. Endless creation and destruction. Nothing about what made him Valentine, about what he knew–from mathematics to how to cook a pizza— mattered in this existential limbo swimming in endless nothing.
Black holes, only visible by the spiraling lights around them, made their presence known to him. Colored anomalies waterfalled in mischievous play. Stars and dead hollow planets, rivers of slow-moving light and diamond crystals, organic-looking yellow tubes and ice fragments, emptiness.
Malfunction. Malfunction. Malfunction! Coma.
“Computer, how many years?”
Two-hundred-and seventy-eight thousand--
Malfunction!
Coma.
Was this existence? Was this after-death? Was his life, his identity—all a figment of his imagination? An existence who’s only purposed was to stare at the mysteries of the universe with question?
Coma.
Thomas Valentine, your cryo-coma has ended. Sustainable planet found. Beginning approach Vector Alpha-Prime-zero-zero-one. Error: planet known. Earth.
Valentine opened his eyes. What? Had the computer said Earth? Had he really journeyed around the entire universe just to end up back here, the ship malfunctioning for hundreds-of-thousands of years? He looked out beyond the ClearEye and stared as his planet came into view. But it was no longer his planet. It was beyond different. Even the distant sun looked different.
He watched as his ship approached the floating orb he once called home. It was see-through, entirely made of glass like a crystal ornament. There was a brightness to the center of it; a metallic sheen and a fiery blaze. This place, how could it be Earth? What had happened to it? He saw the glass outlines of the continents he had known since Kindergarten. Africa. Australia.
His ship drew closer and began its decent, heading down towards what had once been New York. Down and down he went, mind trying to comprehend, to understand his life, his purpose, the meaning to everything he had been witness to.
He was close enough that he could see detail to the buildings now. Down he went, Valentine thinking that the ship would just land in the middle of the street.
There they were: the people! Coming out of their homes and shops now to watch him, wondering what in the world he was. They were human shaped, but glowing and somewhat see-through just like everything else around them. Their eyes were flickering yellow and their hair waved around as if there was a slow wind. Their faces were calm and focused, curious but unafraid. His ship landed with a gentle thud and stopped.
Valentine felt the harness release its grip on him, wires popping free and dangling limply. The strap that had held him in place for so long finally let go. He sagged to the floor, watching as a hatch slid open on the ClearEye. Fresh crisp air hit his lungs, so perfect, cold, and pure.
He tried to stand but couldn’t, his body weak from atrophy that the harness could not perfectly rectify. He used the ship’s wall to pull himself slowly to a kneeling position. Eventually he stood: half-in, half-out of the ship.
What seemed like hundreds of humanoid beings now surrounded the ship, all quietly watching. One stepped forward, showing no distinctive difference to the others.
Welcome Traveler. I am the President of this place, the elected leader. Where are you from?
Valentine smiled, then began to laugh uncontrollably. The President? Oh, it was too much! He continued to laugh, the ethereal-looking being cocking his head to the side in confusion. Valentine tried to control his mirth.
“Here. I’m from here.” he said with a small chuckle.
The money hadn’t been the motivation. Neither had been the pats on the back by high-ranking officials and their promise of a perfect life where he’d have anything he wanted. The motivation had been simple: Valentine wanted to get caught; wanted to die.
He was a classic retired soldier, a real pin-and-lapel guy. He could have had any pretty blond out there, could have had himself a real woman. Could have had a nice car too. Instead, he got himself a gun and used it to blow the President’s face into chunky sushi. And the high-ranking officials—those backstabbing pricks that had hired him in the first place—were the ones that arrested him; faces masked by fake shock.
Let’s use him as an example. Show our new method of execution. By the Space-Act Articles of 2092 we can exile him off in a ClearEye. Put him in cryo-coma until the stupid see-through bubble lands on some desolate uninhabitable planet a million years from now. Yeah, let’s punish him by not killing him! I mean, it’s still execution, we’ll just let space do it for us in a million years! Yeah, a million years! God bless America! God bless! You guys wanna go out for a cup of hot brew? Who’s being elected as the new President by the way?
The news cameras and flashes, the judge and jury—even the bone-breaking beating he got by Homeland—it all passed in a blur. Valentine was done with it all. The pain, the politics, the talking —gosh, us frikin’ humans talk, talk, talk: pointless. He was tired of being alive and sick of being classified with the same species as everyone around him. They were just a bunch of blithering idiots sitting on a rock and arguing about who had the biggest stick. Flush him out in space? He didn’t care as long as he didn’t have to interact with another human again. No more children gunning down families with AK-50’s, no more pasty politicians smiling with their wet small teeth and coal-black eyes, and no more pointless talking. He didn’t have to worry about PTSD therapy bills, the Hispanic guy that kept peeing in his backyard thinking no one noticed, or paying his taxes. Hell, half the people in the country probably thought he was a lucky man for getting exiled.
They brought him to a large unmarked white building within a military complex. A cold-looking man with a lab coat asked him a bunch of questions about his physique, measured him, ran psychological tests, then left him in an empty room to brood for a couple of weeks. They eventually pulled him out and off he was again, to another facility. He was taken into a different building, this one all metallic and shiny. Valentine was strapped to a gurney and brought into a white-walled doctor’s office. Three men walked into the room: a doctor, a priest, and a government official. It was like the setup for some bad joke.
Thomas Valentine, I’ll be injecting you with a pretty interesting concoction. It’ll put you out so that we can get you into a cryo-coma. The machines in the ClearEye will wake you when you’ve landed on a habitable planet whenever that may be.
Thomas Valentine, I’m Father Darren. I’ll send you off with a prayer as we launch you into the bosom of our father above. May your soul find rest.
Thomas Valentine, I’m here to oversee the legality of this process and that your transition onto the shuttle and its launch is smooth and successful.
Valentine looked away and stared at a small green plant sitting in the corner of the room. Too bad they were all dudes, he would have really loved his last memory with another human to be one involving a half-naked nurse blowing him a kiss. The doctor injected him with something blue and his vision faded into emptiness, his thoughts calming as he entered dreamless sleep.
The silence was interrupted by a pneumatic hiss and a tiny clear chirp that sounded almost friendly. Valentine opened his eyes. A voice sounded out.
Thomas Valentine, your cryo-coma has paused. Malfunction—reboot cycle initialized. Error—no sustainable planet found. Restarting coma in three-hundred seconds.
Malfunction? Where was he? Valentine’s mind sluggishly tripped and prodded itself to try and figure out what was going on. His vision focused in on what was around him. What was beyond him. A star field. Eternal pinpricks of white, yellow, red, and blue lights swimming in darkness. The ClearEye finished its hissing and humming and there was silence. Absolute silence.
Valentine was in a clear bubble floating in the middle of space. His mouth opened and shut; even though he had expected an incredible view—this was beyond what he imagined. What had the computerized voice said? Malfunction? He didn’t see any planet around him. Had he been awoken out in the middle of nowhere?
“Computer, how long have I been out?” he asked, voice raspy and almost mute. The computer sensors picked it up though.
Twenty-One-thousand, one-hundred-and-four years Mr. Valentine.
Twenty-one-thou—! Valentine’s mouth felt dry. It couldn’t be. He had jumped into the future, so far ahead of where he had come from that his mind couldn’t process it. Everything he had known back on Earth would no longer exist. Twenty-one-thousand! What changes had come about since then? Did humans even exist anymore?
Restarting cryo-coma in ten. Nine. Eight.
The computer was going to knock him out again! Valentine looked at all the wires strapped to his arms, being fed from electric devices plugged into the white and silver harness holding him in place; the only contraption on this bubble that wasn’t see-through. All his nutrients, oxygen, water—everything— came from the harness; recycling all of his waste and refeeding him.
Two. One. Initializing.
Fluids pumped into his body. The ship hyper-froze him once more. Valentine faded to black.
Thomas Valentine, your cryo-coma has paused. Malfunction—reboot cycle initialized. Error—no sustainable planet found. Restarting coma in three-hundred seconds.
Again.
Valentine opened his eyes, feeling like he had awoken from a long dreamless nap. Something massive seemed to move across his vision, so close he thought he was about to be crushed. A massive gray rock. He was in the middle of what had to be millions of asteroids, gently moving along in the dark of space. One collided with another, their silent crushing force shattering chunks of rock. The asteroid-field was thick and Valentine could hardly make out the stars in the rare gaps he saw. Large shadows ran across his clear bubble as the small versatile ship dodged around the objects. He would have expected booming explosions, grinding, cracking, groaning noises—but the silence was infinite.
“Computer,” he croaked. “How long?”
Thirty-three-thousand and twelve years since your initial launch, Mr. Valentine.
Thousands more years had passed since he had awoken last! Valentine watched the asteroids, transfixed, as his mind tried to comprehend the depth of his situation. He was thousands of years old. Thousands! Where was he? How far had he traveled?
The ship obviously had some form of malfunction, having awoken him twice now for no reason—maybe there was some error with the scanner, thinking it had picked up on a habitable planet. Was the ship going to fail him now? Keep him awake until he rotted away?
He had expected to die for what he had done-wanted to die— but this, this was an existence he couldn’t decipher. A half-life. What was the meaning of this? This magnificent imprisonment? This beautiful entrapment? Eternal purgatory.
Time was meaningless out here. It didn’t matter how old he was or where he came from. The universe didn’t care. These asteroids didn’t care.
Restarting cryo-coma in ten. Nine. Eight.
So the ship was functioning somewhat still. He wouldn’t die just yet. Maybe he would fade away in his empty sleep. Never wake up.
Two. One. Initializing.
Thomas Valentine, your cryo-coma has paused. Malfunction—reboot cycle initialized. Error—no sustainable planet found. Restarting coma in three-hundred seconds.
Again! It had happened again!
Valentine opened his eyes and immediately shut them, feeling as if he had almost gone blind. All he had seen was white, red, and blue. A patriotic explosion of light so vivid he could have been vaporized.
“Computer… the light—“
Compensating with hue adjusters... Adjustment complete.
Valentine chanced cracking his lids just slightly. It was bright, but not unbearable. He opened his eyes all the way and beheld a magnificent sight. Before him in all their ethereal royal floating glory were two stars dancing around each other; one blue and small and the other large and blood-red. Arms of flaming gas trailed out from both, wrapping around each other almost as if in loving embrace. Textured haze and waving heat morphed and pocketed the surfaces of the celestial beings. Beautiful.
Valentine didn’t even think about his situation, instead just gazed at what lay before him. The stars were probably still hundreds-of-thousands of miles away. But they were so big that Valentine felt that if the ship came any closer, it would evaporate and be swallowed up by the infernos. He was so mesmerized that he even forgot to ask the ship how long he had been knocked-out.
Restarting cryo-coma in ten.
Truly if he was to die out here in the deepest corners of space—at the very edge of the universe and beyond the mysteries of the mind— then this was the best way to go.
Two. One. Initializing.
Thomas Valentine, your cryo-coma has paused. Malfunction--yeah, yeah. He knew.
Valentine opened his eyes, watching blue fluid being sucked out of his arms, belly, and legs. He could feel it on his back as well. The cryo-fluid. Where was he now? He looked up slowly, his neck creaking like the most ancient hinge in existence.
He was in some sort of gaseous cloud. Lime-greens, pinks, and orange swirled around the ClearEye as if the embodiment of living color was waving to him. Streaks of what looked like upside-down rain ran up the clear material of the ship, giving off little bursts of electric fizz. Again, as like every time before, there was no sound. Where was he?
Something flashed deep purple in the distance, almost indiscernible in the thickness of the colored vapor. His ship shook violently as Valentine was tossed around in his harness. Terror gripped him as he imagined one of the wires coming loose, something tearing out of him, or the power in the vessel shutting down.
Just as quickly as the shaking had started, it stopped and all was calm again. The colored gas gently caressed against the ship, sliding along the glass and wrapping around. Another purple flash. The ship shook with more violence. Was this how his life would end?
Re–shhh—ing cryo—fshhh. Fzzz. Nine.
The computer was wigging-out. Oh gosh, why had he wanted to do it? Why the President? The war from before. Children shot through the head. Direct orders from the top down. Corruption. How could he? How could he have pulled the trigger? That girl! Her brains everywhere! Oh if there was a God, forgive him! Forgive him for all the death! Forgive him for being gullible and listening to the lies!
Three. Fzzzz--
He just wanted the pain to end! He should have used the bullets on himself! This wasn’t a punishment! Immortality in the dark was beautiful Hell!
Initializing.
His eyes shut.
Thomas Valentine, your cryo-coma has paused. Malfunction—reboot cycle initialized. Error—no sustainable planet found. Restarting coma in three-hundred seconds.
It was endless. An endless pattern. Wake up, see something beyond description and understanding, and fall back into induced coma. He was witness to eternal art. Endless creation and destruction. Nothing about what made him Valentine, about what he knew–from mathematics to how to cook a pizza— mattered in this existential limbo swimming in endless nothing.
Black holes, only visible by the spiraling lights around them, made their presence known to him. Colored anomalies waterfalled in mischievous play. Stars and dead hollow planets, rivers of slow-moving light and diamond crystals, organic-looking yellow tubes and ice fragments, emptiness.
Malfunction. Malfunction. Malfunction! Coma.
“Computer, how many years?”
Two-hundred-and seventy-eight thousand--
Malfunction!
Coma.
Was this existence? Was this after-death? Was his life, his identity—all a figment of his imagination? An existence who’s only purposed was to stare at the mysteries of the universe with question?
Coma.
Thomas Valentine, your cryo-coma has ended. Sustainable planet found. Beginning approach Vector Alpha-Prime-zero-zero-one. Error: planet known. Earth.
Valentine opened his eyes. What? Had the computer said Earth? Had he really journeyed around the entire universe just to end up back here, the ship malfunctioning for hundreds-of-thousands of years? He looked out beyond the ClearEye and stared as his planet came into view. But it was no longer his planet. It was beyond different. Even the distant sun looked different.
He watched as his ship approached the floating orb he once called home. It was see-through, entirely made of glass like a crystal ornament. There was a brightness to the center of it; a metallic sheen and a fiery blaze. This place, how could it be Earth? What had happened to it? He saw the glass outlines of the continents he had known since Kindergarten. Africa. Australia.
His ship drew closer and began its decent, heading down towards what had once been New York. Down and down he went, mind trying to comprehend, to understand his life, his purpose, the meaning to everything he had been witness to.
He was close enough that he could see detail to the buildings now. Down he went, Valentine thinking that the ship would just land in the middle of the street.
There they were: the people! Coming out of their homes and shops now to watch him, wondering what in the world he was. They were human shaped, but glowing and somewhat see-through just like everything else around them. Their eyes were flickering yellow and their hair waved around as if there was a slow wind. Their faces were calm and focused, curious but unafraid. His ship landed with a gentle thud and stopped.
Valentine felt the harness release its grip on him, wires popping free and dangling limply. The strap that had held him in place for so long finally let go. He sagged to the floor, watching as a hatch slid open on the ClearEye. Fresh crisp air hit his lungs, so perfect, cold, and pure.
He tried to stand but couldn’t, his body weak from atrophy that the harness could not perfectly rectify. He used the ship’s wall to pull himself slowly to a kneeling position. Eventually he stood: half-in, half-out of the ship.
What seemed like hundreds of humanoid beings now surrounded the ship, all quietly watching. One stepped forward, showing no distinctive difference to the others.
Welcome Traveler. I am the President of this place, the elected leader. Where are you from?
Valentine smiled, then began to laugh uncontrollably. The President? Oh, it was too much! He continued to laugh, the ethereal-looking being cocking his head to the side in confusion. Valentine tried to control his mirth.
“Here. I’m from here.” he said with a small chuckle.
