An Unexpected Flight
| An Unexpected Flight | |
|---|---|
| Date of Cutscene: | 19 February 2020 |
| Location: | Akiár Imperium |
| Synopsis: | What should have been an uneventful flight from Kyshán to Akiár… isn't. |
| Cast of Characters: | Kian |
Kían had never expected to attend the prestigious Imperial University on the homeworld itself, and in fairness he was going for reasons other than academic excellence. He couldn't deny he was excited at the prospect: he'd only been to Akiár once in his life, years ago, before his First Flight even, before his wings had even started growing. That felt like a millennium ago. Now he was going on his own, to study—and to be studied—at the main university itself, in the actual capital region. He could even join the gallery at the Imperial court and see Her Serenity the Empress herself if he wished.
Heady stuff for a Kyshán boy who had done nothing other than have a meta. Granted, it was the first major meta in a century among his people, but it wasn't anything he had actually accomplished, it had just sort of happened to him. Truth be told, he hated the rhy'thar that had upended his life. For the first time, though, it was finally proving more a gift than a curse. Yes, he was going to the Imperial University to be studied, but he would also be able to study while there. A degree from the main university was just about a guarantee for life, regardless of the field.
His parents and sister had seen him off at the spaceport two days before, and he'd contacted them once each day since by trimensional while the ship accelerated, getting ever closer to the speed of light. Trimensional was almost as good as being there in the flesh. The mental contact was tinny and thin, but the ki'thar, the Gift of Mind, always lost something when processed electronically.
Personal communications were currently disabled; ship's velocity was now nearly close enough to lightspeed to engage the tachyon conversion drive and swap the mass of the ship to the other side of the light barrier, for the cruise to the homeworld. From what Kían remembered from that one trip long ago, it wasn't anything that one actually felt, except for maybe a tiny twinge so fleeting he couldn't be sure it had actually happened.
He settled into a seat on the observation deck with a glass of spicewine. Watching the moment of transition was popular; various microwave and radio sources blueshifted into the visible, making for a completely different sky than one normally saw.
Kían took a sip of his wine, and shivered involuntarily. Just before the announcement that the conversion was imminent, he identified the energy source that he sensed as being the tachyon drive powering up. It was like a niggling little itch at the fringes if his consciousness, not enough to hurt, but too much to ignore. Distracting. He hoped it wouldn't be there the entire trip, that would quickly become annoyi—
The view from the observation deck: there is a flash of blue, and an unsupported glass of wine falls to the floor with a splash and a 'tunk', at the very instant the stardrive engaged.
The view from Kían, son of Kái and Erýn, of clan Káeh: the universe opened up and yanked him in, smeared him from one end of his home galaxy to the other, left him there eternally for a split of a split of a split of a split of a submicrosecond, and unceremoniously spit him out.
Somewhere.
