Welcome to the Journal of Now and Forever. This Journal is a collection of my Star Control and Star Control 2 fiction. Note: Some of this material is, by necessity, extrapolation from the slim information provided by canon sources.

New fiction is posted first at My Livejournal before it appears here. This story is in response to First Lines 1000's Challenge #18.

Otto was drunk, drunk with the feeling of hyperspace oozing around him and the sight of the quarks flickering in and out of existence. The quarks always travel in one direction, a direction that Otto thinks of as northwest even though there is no such thing in three-dimensional space.

Sometimes he wonders what the quarks are, although the theory favored among the Androsynth is that the small cometlike lights are other beings or ships flickering in and out of hyperspace. If that's true, there's certainly plenty of them traveling, but why then all one direction? Why "northwest"? Otto doesn't know, and suspects no one else does either. Perhaps someday they'll have a chance to explore the mystery. Although perhaps they're not ships, since ships show up in hyperspace as roundish black blobs.

There must be something important in that direction, spacers guessed, if the quarks' direction meant anything at all.

Otto was no longer pilot of the Micromanager; that ship is continuing its exploration and resource collecting in the Vulpeculaes. After the encounter with the probe, Otto was transferred to a new ship, the Skyblazer.

No new information had been released about the probe. Requests for information were met with "The investigation is still continuing," or words to that effect. Otto and the other spacers knew what that meant: nobody had any idea where it had come from or who sent it, but nobody wanted to admit it, either.

That didn't stop the Guardians from patrolling Vulpeculae space. And because hyperspace allowed you some warning of incoming ships – the big black blobs against the bright blood-colored pulsing – the patrols took place almost entirely in hyperspace, which made Otto a happy Androsynth. This was why he'd become a pilot – the chance to spend days upon days in constant ecstasy from the sheer feeling of it all.

He still didn't know why hyperspace affected him so. He'd tried understanding it, but in the end just accepted that perhaps it was a combination of the Androsynth love-of-work with strange radiation frequencies, or something, and whatever it was, it never faded, never got old, as long as he was there. That, and that he appeared to be the only one who felt that way.

At least the Vulpeculaes were easy to patrol. The pattern they were in – the great central star and the six "sisters" around it – made for a nice, accurate "sphere of influence". Otto wondered if the Vulpeculaes were actually the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters of antiquity. Of course, the actual Pleiades star cluster was composed of more than seven stars, whereas the Vulpeculaes were exactly seven. Astronomy wasn't Otto's strong point back on Earth; now that he was a pilot, he knew much more about it, but the constellations and stars were different somehow, between hyperspace and the Androsynth's adoptive home system, and no one looked at the old Earth star charts any more.

Already the spacers were expanding their patrol range past the seven Vulpeculaes, out to the Lalande group. There was a practical limit to the Guardians' reach; even fusion engines required refueling. While the Guardians could make it to Sol and back, that was about the farthest they could manage, presuming they flew in a straight line, both ways. For actual patrols – flying from waypoint to waypoint – they'd stay closer to home in case of emergency.

In some ways it wasn't much different from his 'truck driving' in the Micromanager; he was still traveling from here to there with not much else in between. But there was a difference: hyperspace. And that made the otherwise boring piloting much more enjoyable.

Otto was aware that the rest of the crew didn't share his enthusiasm for it, although they appeared to appreciate his willingness to practically live in the pilot's chair. He knew they wondered about him. But the new mission leader – Thad, a BOOJI-series – didn't ask anything beyond getting the job done, so Otto didn't worry about it.

Which led to Otto happily, blissfully lightheaded and barely piloting the ship – it wasn't like he needed to devote a lot of brainpower to it, at present – when Thad came to stand next to him as the Skyblazer cruised through the crimson light.

"Something else, isn't it?" Thad said. Otto grunted by way of reply; he was trying to come down from his traveler's high.

"You know the quarks?" Thad continued, as the tiny white "comets" flitted in and out of the space around the ship. "How they always head in one direction?"

Otto nodded.

"Guess where they're headed? Galactic core," Thad said, in a musing voice.

So, that was "northwest" then. Possibly useful to know, Otto decided. Of course, the next question was –

"So why are they always heading for the core?" his mission leader went on. "Nobody knows. We can't detect anything or any place they're coming from. They can't be energy particles, because those should go away from the core. If they're other ships, they're on another entire plane of existence. Maybe someday we'll find out, eh?" He gave a friendly slap to Otto's shoulder, making Otto blink as he nodded.

"Someday..." Thad paused for a while, as Otto tried to look busy adjusting his controls. Of course, the controls always did need adjusting, in Otto's opinion. The pause ended: "Well, I don't know when it'll be. As far as anyone knows, the quarks go on forever toward the core. To follow them, we'd need an amazing amount of fuel... and probably waypoints, starbases, with enough people and supplies to man the starbases and restock any ship heading that way. Or a much better hyperspatial drive. Or all of that, come to think of it. We may still do it in our lifetime, if things go our way."

Otto sighed. It would be something – that would be months or years of traveling, and who knew if the quarks had a destination at the galactic core, or if they kept going past that. But Thad was right – those days were far off. To have starbases set up on the way meant the Androsynth would have to greatly expand their territory, and without more Androsynth, that was unlikely.

Still, he'd be first to volunteer for such a thing. The journey alone would be enough for him.

Comments? Email me: laridian at aol dot com