Writing: Sci-Fi Serial Pt 2

Hey everyone. Here's part two of my new story. Part one can be found here.

Chapter 2

As exciting as the voyage was to begin with, Gerald soon found himself becoming bored with the entertainment. It wasn't enough to have the most advanced spacecraft money could buy if you were bored out of your mind on it. He glared at the wires and screens around him, all the while knowing that they would help him reach his destination that much faster.

Palao, however, seemed so far away. While he waited, he had read a host of encyclopedia articles, all of which had praised the safety record of the settlements around the star. Then after a few hours spent bathed in the pale white light of the screens, he had come to the conclusion that none, in fact, were biased in the way they were written. It seemed far too good to be true, but Gerald had long had enough of shunning opportunities because of pale suspicions.

So he left the dark grey spaceplane on autopilot, and decided the best course of action would be to entertain himself would be to sit in his luxurious cabin and while away the hours. Just how he would do that was unclear, but at least he'd be comfortable lying in his oversized bed. He had some sensory augmenting games, some lewd sensory movies, and some impressive A.I. he could talk to.

By week two, he had spent only few hours sleeping, and the rest had been spent pleasuring himself in the way only someone who hadn't had sex for a long time could, as well as lifting weights and playing a shooter game based on one common on the original earth. It was entertaining enough, with steamy jungles and post-apocalyptic planets, but he had played it many times, so it wasn'tlong before he moved on to a spaceport simulation, which required keen micro-management, and tested his mind to the limit.

All the while, nothing around him changed. Various A.I. and hidden machines dealt with dishes and waste, as well as the course, so all Gerald had to do was wait. Wait, within in the smooth, bare white walls of his room, which he quickly decided didn't have enough entertainment built in. He had decided that the previous journey too, but for some reason nothing had happened. It seemed to him that he forever failed to live outside the moment. It was a wonder he'd managed to escape his pursuers for so long.

But they were the problem, weren't they? Living was cheap and easy if you knew how, but hard if you had someone on your back for no reason. He cursed the day his father had named him, because that had been his downfall.

Week three brought him more days of lounging around, and he began to wonder if his journey would ever end. He was scared to look at the softly glowing screens, because every time he wondered how he might feel if it turned out he was still many thousands of miles away.

It was much to his relief, then, when the A.I. running his main computer annouced loudly that they were less than a day away, right in the middle of a particularly graphic scene in one of his movies. Normally, he might have been annoyed, but it was his favourite A.I., with a welcome message.

The A.I. in question was Lark. The name was actually an acronym for Logical Artificial Robotic Krait, where Krait was supposed to be his actual name, but Gerald thought that was stupid. He much preferred using the acronym, and Lark didn't mind. The A.I. had been with him since the beginning, making it quite old, but very reliable. The voice was still the same real sounding but also unsettlingly robotic voice Lark had always had. Others talking to Lark would feel like something was wrong but wouldn't know what, but Gerald had long become used to it. Lark was his friend.

It was Lark who would accompany him in his initial scout of the territory of Palao, through some very clever networking technology he didn't understand, as well as through neural nanotechnology.

When it came down to it, Lark was the only reason Gerald had survived. He was alone, but at the same time he had the best friend he could have hoped for.