The Terran Representative by Angus Monarch

miscalculation.
    “I’ve checked all the circuits,” said The Hive. “If it doesn’t work your mind will still be intact.”
    “But you still haven’t explained –“
    “The cryo-chambers have what is best described as a translator, so that one can speak with the chamber inhabitants,” said The Hive member behind me. It fiddled with something on its computer board. “The translator wouldn’t work for me. It couldn’t figure out my brain makeup.”
    The skullcap started to feel warm on my scalp. My head started to tingle. My brain, as best as I could describe, felt like it received a massage. “Why didn’t you try it with someone else then?” I said.
    “I didn’t want to reach out to just anyone,” said The Hive. “I was weighing my options, but you showed up, so I decided you’d be the best fit.”
    “So it could have worked with -” I started to say, but the room tilted hard to the left then everyone in it melted away. I gripped my chair’s armrests as tight as I could but they disappeared along with the room as well.
    The world went black then faded back into view with a soft, white glow. I continued to sit in a chair, but the place I sat in had no depth. There were no walls or ceiling or floor. It continued on as far as I could see. There was no texture. It just was.
    “Hello?” I said. My voice came out weak and wavery. I repeated my question a bit louder. Wherever I was the atmosphere seemed to suck up noise.
    Five people appeared in front of me: three men and two women of varying ethnicities. I recognized them as the sleeping colonists. They sat in their own chairs and looked to be dressed in the same clothes they wore in the cyro-chamber: a jumpsuit. All five sat with their backs straight, hands folded in their lap and feet flat on the floor.
    “Hello,” said one of the women. She had black hair bunched together in ponytail. “Have you come to wake us?”
    “Uh,” I stammered for a bit. “No.”
    “Then we are to remain,” said one of the men. His mustache bristled and moved like a walrus when he spoke.
    “No,” I said. “Well, yes. I can’t wake you because if you were to be taken out of the cryo-chamber you’d die.” I hoped they didn’t have any in depth questions because I’d have no answer.
    “Oh,” said the other woman.
    “Why are you in the cryo-chambers?” I said.
    “Admiral Kaur left us behind,” said the woman with the ponytail. “At a designated time we were to awaken and begin an independent search.”
    “A search for what?” I said.
    “A prison,” said one of the men. His voice was deep and he drew his words out.
    “What prison? I thought Kaur was going to colonize out of system worlds,” I said.
    “We were,” said the other woman. “But to do so we needed to keep Kaur’s end of the bargain.”
    “Admiral Kaur had struck a deal with an entity that would help us travel faster than the speed of light,” said walrus mustache. “It contacted her during the testing phase. If it allowed us free passage through its domain we had to help it find one of its compatriots imprisoned in our dimension.”
    I rubbed my temples. They sounded nuts. So far they weren’t anything like the other colonists, but they were still nuts.
    “So why didn’t it just find its friend?” I said.
    “It needed a connection to our dimension,” said the deep voiced man. “It said that it couldn’t search without something to allow it into our dimension. Its compatriot had been ripped from their realm into ours. By sending items into its dimension, Kaur allowed it to speak with her.”
    “She then became its vessel,” said the woman with the ponytail. “Through her it directed our search.”
    “So what about Augustine?” I said. “Do you know what happened on Masirah?” My voice started to rise. “You weren’t searching. There was wholesale slaughter going on.”
    The five looked from one to another then back to me. The woman with the ponytail said, “Executions