6. The Third Level

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6. The Third Level

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A blue path made up of continuous arrows appeared on the ground. Lifting up from the chair, I began following it. Even at that time, I still had no idea how unorthodox that vessel truly was. Having exited my quarters, I saw myself in the middle of a hallway five meters wide, flanked on both sides by one-hundred square meters quarters. My own was just behind me, and from left to right all I saw the other ones, belonging to the rest of the crew. They were all sealed, portraying above their entrance the red gleaming of the name of its respective owner. The moment my own apartment was closed, the name Mike Rajhalo Spencer also turned out red.

The place was eerily quiet, its suffocating silence disturbed only by the sporadic hums coming from nowhere. With every step I took, my footsteps echoed, sending chills down my spine. Shadows seemed to shift just out of sight, and I could not shake the feeling of being watched, always wondering what truly lay behind each sealed door. The memories of my stay in the desert were still perfectly clear in my mind.

“You are safe here, Mr. Mike,” Kallom-4000 said. “There is no one else but you and me in this vessel.”

“Thanks.”

From West to East, North to South, the quarters were distributed in the following way:

First row: Ismael Karlave Cossa Oshiro Fratken Felix Colomb RĂĽdolf Bolton Nixilian Elijah Kang Erva

Second row: Lucia Garrota de Irvis Mike Rajhalo Spencer Vladimir Dit Kuznetsov Susan Lkravart Maneli Beatriz Ferreira Augustiniana

I checked all of the quarters. They were all closed except to mine.

“Only the owner can have access to their own quarters,” Kallom-4000 explained.

“Are you sure they are all empty? No one inside?”

“I am sure, Mr. Mike. Even though I cannot see their insides, since the data is encrypted to me too, I can check the t-signals of all crewmembers. The only one active in this ship is yours.”

What struck me most was the sheer size of the units. Each of the quarters spanned a hundred square meters, with ten in total. Typically, even the largest spacecrafts are judicious with space allocation, reserving it for essential components like cargo holds, fuel tanks, life support systems, waste disposal units, battery banks, crystal grids, and gravitational rotors. Given this, how could a spacecraft afford to dedicate such vast expanses solely for personal quarters?

Going South, a single metallic door at the very center of a wall extending from left to right shone “Lounge” in green neon light. As soon as the door opened, with a hiss, a vast space opened itself for me. It was enormous, for a spacecraft at least. The floor was made of a sleek, polished alloy, so perfectly displayed that it looked like computer-generated. Above, geometric panels crafted a ceiling that seemed almost organic, with beams of soft blue light filtering down, casting the room in a serene glow. Remarkably, full-grown trees reached up from the ground. Nestled amidst this biome were seating areas, made of clear, almost invisible materials, blending seamlessly with the environment.

In the middle, ten stools circulated the front bar at the right center of the lounge. They were all empty, but I judged the number ten not to be a coincidence. That was the whole crew. Besides, huge screens on the walls depicted in unison random relaxing scenes. Sometimes, it was the ebb and flow of tides in some paradisaic Earthly beach, the mountains of Mars, the plains of the Moon, the orbital stations in Jupiter, the lushful forests of the Hankilla System, the icy plains of Jurdel-Ik, or scenes of distant galaxies yet to be reached. Other times the perspective of a bird softly flying through white clouds, other times the scene of a raining forest, and so on. Holographic projectors from the ceiling also depicted abstract shapes whose sight soothed the mind, would we stare at it.

Different from the rest of the vessel I had seen so far, the place was not crowded with technology. Instead, most of it was just empty space. It was as if it had been designed to be a safe haven for the mind against whatever was happening outside. That was how I felt at least. In any case, there in that place, that clean, elegant, open, and vast lounge abandoned in the middle of nowhere made me feel uneasy, a level of ontological isolation as I beheld the empty hall.

Kallom-4000 projected itself from one of the big screens.

“There is something deeply wrong with this vessel,” I looked at him. “The units are enormous. It is almost as if the engineers didn’t care about space allocation. I mean, almost as if space itself wasn’t a problem.”

Kallom-4000’s circles rotated in agreement.

“I have noticed the same intriguing aspect. I guarantee you, Mr. Mike, that you will be even more surprised. Please, follow the blue path again, so that I can show you.”

Kallom-4000 led me again outside of the lounge. To the right, following the corridor along, an elevator was just at the end. It was a small space, with a sleek, metallic finish over a circular platform. Inside, it was cushy and cozy. The sliding door was transparent, but the moment it closed a blue holographic projection of a panel displaying the elevator commands appeared over the concave surface of the mirror. The interface presented the following options in Syrakian hieroglyphs:

1 - First Level - Command Center 2 - Second Level - Research Center 3 - Third Level - Quarters (current level) 4 - Fourth Level - Park 5 - Fifth Level - Burrow

“A spaceship with five levels?” I asked.

Kallom-4000’s eyes materialized as a small circle at the bottom-right of the holographic panel, yet his voice resonated omnidirectionally within the capsule.

“There is also a sixth level, called Zeroth Level - Observatory. However, it can be accessed only through the Bridge. Unfortunately, it is locked.”

“Locked?”

“Yes. The key is encrypted with Captain Rüdolf’s main key. Thus, it would be required of him to liberate access.”

“Okay, we will deal with it later. For now, I want to see all the levels. I will start from the bottom up.”

By saying that, I clicked the button indicating the fifth level. Then the magic of the vessel startled me again. I was expecting my body to be moved down, as the expected descent of a traditional elevator, but what happened was that my transfer was instantaneous. In one instant, I was in the fourth level. In the next, I was in the fifth level.

“Teleportation?” I asked, surprised.

“It looks like so, but I am unable to confirm.”

Teleportation would require vast amounts of energy. There was no logic in wasting that in something was frivolous as a personal elevator between levels.