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 15 Minute Ficlets' Challenge #56.

Y'know what's weird? Everyone always does the "in space, no one can hear you" blah blah blah and usually with some joke or other. But there's a lot of noise in space. It's kind of like listening to ambient music, or if you were ever in the wilderness back on Earth, all the noises that don't really stop in the background.

Hyperspace, now, that's it's own deal. There's all kinds of noise in there, sounds like dying whales or something to me. And a lot of visual noise, if you can get that – the quarks blinking in and out, always monodirectional, and the pulsing of the dimensional fabric of space-time.

Yeah, you didn't know I could speak like that, did you? I can, just don't feel like it most of the time. It's not needed.

But truespace, that's the one everyone says should be quiet. And I guess in the early days, when Earthlings were just getting their feet wet in the depths of space, they probably figured it was quiet. But if you're inside a ship, there's always background noise. Whirring of fans to keep the air circulating and fresh. The clicks and hums of machinery. The gurgling of those damn liquid recyclers – okay, it's been a while now, can't they have figured out how to get rid of the gurgling every time someone uses the can?

Then there's the radio static from the stars. Around the Vulpeculae system you get a lot of it, because of the star arrangement. One of the first things someone did was develop the tech to 'ignore' the noise from the Vulpeculae stars, 'cause otherwise it'd be constant static droning on the comm.

True silence isn't healthy, I think I read that somewhere once. Homo sapiens evolved with ambient noise – wind, water, animals, insects. Grew up from monkeyhood on a quiet world with lots of quiet background sounds. After industrialization, we got plenty of loud sounds to start messing up our hearing. Androsynth are still just smart apes, like Earthlings, except smarter o'course.

I think that's why they don't actually reduce too much of the noise on a ship. We expect background noise 'cause of our evolution. Even when we have to go outside the ship – and man, you don't wanna do that if you can avoid it – the suits make some little noises so you don't just hear your own breathing, or you'll go crazy from it.

'Course, a bunch of the spacers are probably crazy already, yours truly included. I mean, you ever saw a groundling go up in a ship for the first time since the Exodus? I think it's the growls that get 'em. If we ever find out what's causing those noises, 'specially in hyperspace, we're probably gonna wish we hadn't. That's probably why nobody looks into it too deeply. At least, if they have, nobody's talked about it much.

I figure, if it's anything bad, it would've made its presence known by now. Either there's nothing intelligent out there, or it doesn't care about us, or it knows we've got guns and is staying away. We haven't lost a single ship since we came out here, and we wanna keep it that way. We'll need everything and everyone ready and willing if and when the Earthlings ever come out here to face us down.

Comments? Email me: laridian at aol dot com