6y 10m 2w 6d
It had been an eventful month for the pair. John was a local celebrity amongst the inhabitants of the station. It wasn’t odd for a small crowd of people to trail after the pair as they went about their shopping. Regalo had taken up the role of being John’s bodyguard (not that the human needed actual protection), answering questions John didn’t know how to answer and making sure the crowd didn’t get too close to the slightly skittish human. Revno’s bar had grown significantly. The once slightly shabby bar had transformed into a fine dining venue, complete with waiters and autochefs in the back. High-ranking officials of the station’s management regularly dined at the restaurant. The small corner that John had started out playing in was transformed into a small stage for the human. When John announced that he would be leaving the station soon it caused an uproar in the station, some areas even breaking out into riots.
John stood on a stage erected for this night at the docks. Before him a sea of aliens stood with a contained sadness. Regalo had informed him before the concert that the entire population of the station had gathered for the final concert. John took a deep breath then spoke into the microphone.
“Citizens of the Unto Dawn Station, I would like to extend my thanks to the station managers who organized this event tonight. I would also like to extend my deepest gratitude to Revno Renconox. It was at his fine establishment where I first performed and by his kindness I was allowed to perform there every night. Over time I can now count Revno amongst one of my companions.” John paused as a rush of emotions took him. He had only spent a month on the station. The only friend he had made was Revno and even then it was only a professional friendship. “Your first concert will always hold a special place in your heart” Madame Yuki, his violin instructor, voiced in John’s head. My first alien concert.
“Citizens of Unto Dawn I say farewell.”
John took up his stance and began playing. The children and some of the more emotional adults burst into tears at the beautiful melody. As the piece carried on, everyone in the audience was crying in their own ways. The melody seemed to be telling the audience thank you: thank you for the memories, the experience, and the fun. At this point the crowd was sobbing heavily but hopeful that maybe one day John would return. Maybe not tomorrow nor in the next 10 years but one day John would return. At the end of the song even John himself was slightly misty eyed.
“Thank you people of Unto Dawn. You have been a terrific audience. Goodbye.” At that the audience went into a depressed frenzy, begging the musician to stay with them.
John turned and walked off the stage and to his ship. Revno waited for him at the docking ring.
“My friend, I will miss you dearly. My restaurant will feel sad and empty without your beautiful music as will my heart.” Revno confessed as he clasped a pair of hands on John’s shoulders and the other pair at the human’s waist in a Locayl handshake. John, lacking the necessary amount of limbs, settled for placing his hands at the large alien’s hips.
“Don’t worry Revno. I asked Regalo to leave a record of all the pieces I have played in your restaurant. I may not be there but I hope to remain there in [metaphysical presence].” Revno bear hugged the human with all four arms for a good while before letting go.
“It is my hope that I can visit your home world one day so I can meet the people who can turn emotion to sound.” John beamed at the Locayl then boarded his ship.
John arrived at the clean bridge where Regalo was manning the FTL console.
“Give me a status update.” John sat at the command chair. Regalo rolled his eyes at the request but answered. “We’re good for FTL in 3 minutes.”
John smiled. “Send word to Gorai. Tell them the esteemed musician John and his faithful care taker Regalo will be joining them.” Regalo once more rolled his eyes at the request. It was impossible to send a transmission all the way to Gorai for the planet lacked an FTL relay.
“Caretaker? I prefer the term Warden. It sounds…. Cooler as you would say.” Jon rolled his eyes and chuckled a little.
6y 10m 2w 5d
Regalo awoke in their bed. He yawned as he stretched out on the enormous bed. The Locayl bed from their residence had been a gift from their landlady, a plump Vzk’tk. He looked around and as usual John had already risen from bed and was somewhere in the ship. Regalo slowly shuffled out of bed, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. In the distance he could hear the sound of the iolin. Ahhh, a good way to start my morning, he thought as he walked towards the sound. Regalo often thought of his human friend in his spare time. John was a walking mystery. One moment the human acted like a cub seeing the world for the first time and Regalo had taken to seeing him as such the next his intensity and fiery passion put stars to shame. Even though John could very much tear apart any being limb from limb Regalo felt protective of the human. John’s ID card had said that he was from a temperate 9 planet but Regalo knew it was simply due to John’s ignorance for what the average world was like. The only way a species of John’s strength and density could arise was from a death world. I wonder which class of death world John comes from though…. I’d imagine it’d be a class 10 because of that absurdly high gravity… Regalo mused as he kept drawing closer to John’s music.
His ear twitched as he noted something different in this tune from the rest. John usually played beautiful compositions from his world effortlessly and it showed from how smooth and rich the songs were. This song was rough and coarser than the other ones. Regalo began to stalk silently through the halls of the ship. Eventually he stopped at the door of the cargo bay. The Gaoian decided against interrupting the human but was too curious about what exactly he was doing with that instrument. Regalo crept to the upper levels of the cargo bay and settled on the rafters above, looking down on John. The human had his violin out and there was paper on his music stand. John had tried to teach the Gaoian how to read his species’ notation but Regalo still struggled somewhat and from this distance it wouldn’t matter. Regalo saw John playing the piece with an almost demented obsession. Every time Regalo heard a mistake in the piece John would simply start over from the beginning. Regalo was confused before it dawned on him. He’s learning new pieces! All this time Regalo had heard songs John had already mastered but never had he heard John in the process of learning a new one. The mistakes the human made were plentiful at first and prompted hundreds even thousands of repetitions. Regalo snapped out of his absentminded listening by John roaring. The human started over and this time did not stop until the piece was finished. It was still rough around the edges but there were no more glaring mistakes. Regalo checked his coms and almost squeaked at how much time had passed. I’ve been here for 6 hours! Regalo slowly got up and rushed as quietly as he could to the mess hall of the ship to prepare their midday meal. Once he had finished preparing the meal and setting the table, he called John to the table and ate in silence. John had a fierce look in his brown white-rimmed eyes. It’s as if he’s still practicing in his mind…
The pattern of John practicing for hours on end, only to be interrupted by a meal and Regalo teaching John how to work the FTL console, simply baffled Regalo. John would continuously repeat the song, refining it more each time he played. Regalo watched in awe as the human simply kept starting back from the beginning the second the piece would end without any loss of motivation. John simply would not stop practicing. Regalo had opened the violin case whilst John slept to try playing the instrument. The horrible squawks and screeches Regalo managed to create showed the amount of skill required to even produce a good sound let alone what John could do. Well John did say he practiced the instrument since he was old enough to hold it. Regalo wondered if this obsessive perseverance was a common trait in humans. Regalo remembered their first day on the station, the grieving John had slipped into when he was prohibited from returning home. The intensity of the grief was bewildering but he supposed it was appropriate. What surprised Regalo the most was when he had inadvertently cured, or at least assuaged, John’s melancholy by giving him a purpose. Since he had declared that John would become the finest musician in the galaxy the human now approached life with vigor and curiosity. Even now, when he planned to take him back to Gorai, John marched with an unyielding obsession. It was like the impossibility of the task and the futility in trying were merely inconveniences to the human. Where as most aliens Regalo met simply tried to survive John seemed to exude something more. Merely surviving wasn’t enough for the human. John needed more than the simple life they had led at the station. I don’t think I’ll ever truly understand John.
6y 10m 1w 5d
John woke up to Regalo shaking him. “Get up we’re here.” John groaned as he rose from the bed. He was soon dressed in a red top and grey trousers he’d gotten from Unto Dawn. The pair walked to the bridge in time for the station’s coms to reach them.
“This is Irbzrk station. Please state your business, send a ship manifest over and whether you will be residing on your ship.”
Regalo tapped away at a console whilst John awkwardly stood there.
“This is Regalo to Irbzrk station, I have sent over the manifest and we will be residing on the ship. We are here to collect a purchase the details of which I am sending you now,” the Gaoian responded as he kept tapping away at the console. John had no idea how the coms console worked. Hell the only part of this ship I can work is the FTL and even then it’s ‘type destination here and let computer figure everything out’. John thought as he watched the alien do alien things with an alien computer. “Alright we can hop into the new ship with our things,” Regalo announced.
John felt giddy until up until they actually left the ship at which point the awe of living in space, once more, bore down on the human. Jesus fuck this place makes Unto Dawn look like a freaking village. Sweet Jesus this is a literal space mega city. He thought as he looked to the aliens around him. Instead of the majority of the aliens being Locayl, the diversity was absurd. He saw weird dog looking aliens if dogs had vaguely human like heads. Frog people could be seen dotted around the station. John recoiled at what looked like the unholy combination of lizards and ants gone wrong. Regalo clapped John’s back even though it would do as much as hitting a wall would. “You can’t get wonder struck every time we go to a new station,” he teased as he took hold of John’s hand, “now come on lets go see the new ship we paid for with the old one.”
John followed Regalo through the ocean of aliens. “Here it is.”
John gasped at the sight of the ship. Our ship. The sip was significantly larger than the Corti ship John had been in but a lot smaller than the freighters that would regularly visit Unto Dawn. The ship a vibrant blue which pleased John. In John’s opinion the ship looked strikingly similar to a firefly with its large stern and the protruding neck that led to the bridge at the head.
John mumbled “Whoa…”
“Whoa indeed, this ship was very expensive. It took up nearly all 582 credits you had earned and the old ship to get, all because of your paranoia.” John huffed in indignation at the accusation.
“It’s not paranoia! It’s just being safe! Honestly if I knew that this is how you guys built ships when the Corti abducted me I’d have a panic attack. I mean for the love of Christ do you just not plan on things going wrong?”
“So you’re telling me that we really needed to have the ship cleared for both in atmosphere and interstellar flight.”
“Yes! I don’t want to burn up and die if we need to crash land on a planet! Plus it cuts out the middle man of docking at stations when we get to colonies.” John retorted. Regalo couldn’t fault the human there.
“Alright. Then did we really need to make the ship aerodynamic? I explained to you what shaped shields did and you still wouldn’t,” Regalo countered.
“Do you really want the shields to fail in atmosphere and be stuck in something that glides a rock?” Regalo growled as the human made another good point.
“Why a backup reactor?”
“In case the first one fails.”
Regalo gave the human a strange look.
“You really do expect for everything to go wrong.” John shrugged at the comment.
“Everything that can go wrong will at some point go wrong and things going wrong in a star ship is way worse than things going wrong in a concert,” John replied as they entered the ship from the side at the base of the neck. Regalo had designed the ship to be crewed by 4 people but between the two of them it would be manageable. Regalo had let John design the interior. John took a right and Regalo followed. “Alright now behind us is the bridg e and in the neck is a sleeping area I’ll show ya later but we’re heading to the cool bits,” John explained with marginally restrained excitement as he entered the code for the sealed door to open up the rest of the ship. Beyond the door the hallway split into two with a stairway facing them facing them. “Now these two halls lead to the theater but we’re going down the stairs to see the parts we’ll be living in.” John explained as they descended the steps. A short while later a sparse looking room that didn’t look too dissimilar from their house at Unto Dawn, save that the door was on the other side, greeted them. “This is the common room! I mean once we actually make some money this place’ll look better but yeah the kitchen is there with a table and four seats n stuff. I got a couch made for Locayl so unless we get one of the Guvunu- Gurgu- Guvnuvnug- The big furry ones we’re covered for other alien crew!” John excitedly flopped onto the couch, causing it to crack slightly from the sudden force. Regalo rolled his eyes the human sheepishly got up. “Through that door over there is all of the system functions n’ stuff, so like the engines and reactor are there.” John gestured to the door, deeming the vital parts of any starship too uninteresting to warrant a visit. Regalo sighed and asked.
“And what does the theater that we sacrificed a large cargo bay for look like?”
“In defense of the theater, it only takes up half of the cargo bay with the stage and seating.” John walked back up the stairs with the Gaoian and turned down one of the hallways that led into the seating area. At the bottom of the hallway was a doorway on the side that led to the seat and another in front of them. “That door leads to the cargo bay and no I have not sealed the bay doors because we’re still gonna need a fast way to load nutrient balls and food.” Regalo’s question died in his throat as the human answered it. When the Gaoian entered the theater he was surprised by how elegant the human had managed to make it look. The stage was merely an elevated platform at the bottom of the room but there was easily enough room to accommodate 50 sophonts on the multispecies chairs. The chairs were arranged in rows that slowly rose up until the last row at the back stood before Regalo.
“Alright you win this theater does look pretty good considering it’s in a ship,” Regalo admitted, as he looked around the converted cargo bay.
John grinned proudly at the room.
The two returned to the entrance of the ship where they went up the neck. The hallway eventually narrowed as the outer parts of the hallway descended into the lower levels of the neck.
“Alright down there are the crew rooms, FTL engine, Life support, back up generator, and luggage area but over yonder is the bridge.” John explained as he gestured to the lower decks. The pair entered the bridge. The bridge had been left for Regalo to design and the Gaoian took no chances. The FTL console and navigation unit were significantly simplified so that John could operate it while Regalo did maintenance on the ship. There was a coms station that doubled as a scanner although neither of them could understand the scanner readings. The final station on the bridge was the remote console for the life support. Looking over all 4 stations was the captain’s seat. Regalo nodded his approval of the bridge.
“Alright John I’m gonna go speak to the station head to see if they could supply us with enough food for a month.” Regalo began walking out of the bridge. “Set the FTL coordinates to Sffsik station,” Regalo’s voiced called out from the neck.
John’s face went blank as his brain’s processor caught fire when it tried to process spelling the name of the station. Oh my fucking God do the aliens not know what vowels are? Or do they just all group together and think “hey you know what would fuck with people? If we spelled everything by smashing a keyboard” “holy shit Johnson that’s fucking brilliant! Here are my keys, go to my house and fuck my wife.” Jesus Henderson Christ how the fuck do I even type it in this. No Regalo this is not like a fucking computer from Earth this is space bullshit that has shape shifted to look like an FTL console. Ok ok just break it down and identify the sounds. There was totally an S then F then S then a K but there was noise in between them I think…. Ok Regsy idiot proofed the FTL console so it can’t be that hard right? “Just type the name it and click ok” Those were the instructions. Alright lets do this John. Lets put that whole 12 hours worth of training to use. Oh fuck how am I even gonna figure it out this is like my one job. God I should just wait for Regsy. No. John Orion Ash, you may have had a kooky star obsessed dad and a mom who’s the violin goddess of the west regardless of what other people say and you may be utterly shit with alien technology but you know what?! You will spell the ever-loving fuck out of that name. You will spell that name so hard that dictionaries everywhere will ejaculate at how fucking right that spelling is. John looked to the console with determination as he set about typing the name of their destination. Once he was done spelling the name John leaned back on the console chair smugly. “Yeah you piece of shit name fucking spelled the shit outta you.”
It was a good hour before Regalo return to the bridge. “Alright John hop over to the Nav unit and take us out of here.” Regalo ordered as he sat on the captain’s chair. John hopped over to the navigations unit and took hold of the helm. “Ok before I start I need you to know I have no clue what I’m doing.” John confessed as he activated the unit. Regalo’s eyes grew wide as John began fiddling with buttons. Before the Gaoian could protest John unknowingly pushed the speed level to full throttle. The ship bolted out of the docks and into open space. The sudden g force pushed them both back in their seats. John struggled against the force but eventually managed to slow them down.
Regalo took a moment to gather himself before looking at John. The human withered under the Gaoian’s gaze.
“Hey I got us out of the dock safely! Yaaaay go John!” The human said, saying the last part in a poor imitation of Regalo’s voice. Regalo sighed then ordered. “Just push us to FTL… and after that grab the nav unit manual book because we are reading it back to front until you can name me every part of that accursed machine.” John pouted as he sulked over to the FTL console and hit the button. The ship, The Lost Minstrel, jumped to FTL towards the Qinis colony Sefsek.