I watched, mesmerized by the sight of the once solid ship seemingly split into three parts as they all started to rotate at different speeds. The crowd below cheered with the melodians at the far side toward the ship looked as though they started spinning faster than the other three sections, the front section of the ship didn’t change in speed at all, but from the perspective of the stopped viewing platform I was in, the central ring came to a slow stop, eventually lining up so the two ramps I’d seen before were on either side of me.

  “Tess?” I heard Nori’s voice from my side.

  I turned to see she’d pulled next to me with a nervous smile, her hands were shaking, looking nervous, but she gestured for me to point the camera at her again.

  “This final phase three of game” she said as I held the camera up to see her “last phase big one, phase two winners get… do… three, next time. Once in three, stay there. Uh… You see, big ring do stop. Only best do three, dangerous or else. Big speeds” she said as I saw her trying her best to keep her hands from shaking as she spoke.

  “Nori? What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I uh…” she said, switching to the mechara language “I never liked this part all that much. Reminds me of…” she started to say before taking a hand up to scratch the back of her head “Uh, it’s not important. Could you just keep the camera going for a bit? When phase three is done just press that little button on the back, you should see that red symbol on the top of the screen go away. I’ll be downstairs.”

  Before I could say anything she pushed off the wall and moved up toward the doorway at the center of the viewing platform.

  I brought my attention back to the ship, the central ring had come to a complete stop, the sound of the three sections moving against each other sounded like something I’d heard from my past.

  A familiar song played, but instead of bringing my thoughts back to my mom, I remembered something else. The last time I had heard the central ring winding up was when I was by myself.

  I stood inside the burnt rubble of the hollowed out tree I once lived in, looking out at the ship as the rings began spinning up. I felt myself getting heavier as the speed built upon itself. The games hadn’t happened, but a different song was playing. It sounded aggressive, it sounded angry, but it sang of remorse, of sadness, of regret. I could feel its emotion, I could feel the grief it felt as it sang a final song of goodbye.

  There was a bright flash, an explosion on one part of the far side of the ship. I heard screaming as the flames spewed out an incredible amount of smoke into the ship. A moment later another explosion followed.

  I pressed my back against the wall of what used to be the inside of my house as I watched the explosions follow around the ring, one after another. I kept feeling heavier, the central ring spinning faster than I’d seen it before as it spun in the opposite direction from the rest of the ship. As it spun, I kept feeling heavier.

  The song became distorted, as though the ship was having a harder time thinking, the beats becoming off time, the melody falling apart, but its final thoughts came through clearly. It was sad, but happy to be set free.

  The final explosion came out near where the first had happened and the music stopped entirely, the sound of the screeching sections of the ship were the only sounds I could hear.

  I was afraid, I didn’t know what to do. Smoke was filling the ship from all around the central ring.

  I wanted to cower, to hide, to close my eyes and pretend it wasn’t happening. But my eyes were drawn to a small dot that emerged from the smoke, launching itself up from the central ring toward the glass viewing platform. As I squinted my eyes I could see there were people inside.

  Once the dot got close to the platform, a small explosion came from its side, blowing the glass on its side into pieces, the dot slipping inside a moment later.

  Almost immediately the interior of the platform’s walls began turning yellow and black in lange splotches across its inside.

  I put my hand up to my mouth, my eyes unable to look away as I recognized the colors I was seeing. Mechara and melodian blood splattering across the inside of the container.

  A high pitched whine came from the back of the ship, pulling me out of my thoughts and back to the present as an iris opened up from the center, moving out to the outside of a large opening at the very center.

  I took a deep breath, trying to get the horrible memory out of my mind as I remembered I was supposed to be holding the camera.

  With the iris fully opened I zoomed out as I watched hundreds of melodians on familiar skateboards pour out of the opening, spiraling along the paths through the wooded area of the ship.

  They started slow, but slowly built up speed as the descended along the cone-like shape of the back section of the ship and eventually getting to the roadway that ran along the central ring.

  The ship’s music started getting more intense. Heavy base beats filled the air, a loud consistent booming that felt as though it was encouraging the contestants to find the correct speed.

  I followed a small group of melodians that were passing underneath me, holding the camera on them as they made their way along next to the central ring. Some were moving faster, some slower. It was hard to tell what they were supposed to be doing, but none of them were going fast enough to match speed with the central ring, which seemed like it should have been the goal.

  The music started getting more complex, more instruments came into play as more of the players seemed to settle into a certain speed.

  With a sudden buildup in the instruments, the players' suits all lit up. Each player got a solid color that went from their helmets down to their tails. Most were red, the others were various shades of color that went up into the higher wavelengths, all the way up to a few players that had ultraviolet lights covering their bodies.

  The crowd cheered as all the contestants that had turned red suddenly turned to the side, moving out in the direction of the forest and slowing down, leaving the other players on the field.

  The red players seemed to be out of the game, leaving the others on the pathway, they all moved faster while the rhythm picked up in pace, more instruments joining into the song as more complexity was introduced into the music.

  I could start to feel its intent, understanding what was supposed to happen, the instructions getting clearer as the hundreds of melodians were whittled down to a remaining hundred or so, all spread out across the entire circumference of the ship.

  They were being told how quickly to go and where they should be. Some seemed to understand the message, some didn’t understand as well as all the contestants fell into bunched groups.

  A loud buzz rang through the ship, the central ring lighting up green. The crowd cheered louder than I’d heard before as some of the melodians began moving over the boundary and onto the center ring.

  I couldn’t believe what I was watching, their skateboards weren’t moving fast enough, they were moving slower than the center ring, which caused them to be moving backward relative to where they’d been going before.

  They kept facing the same direction, holding onto their boards as the wheels seemed to slow them down as they moved backward along the central platform, their heads were down, their arms and tails raised up at an angle as the boards slowing them down.

  I watched one of the ramps quickly approaching several of the melodians that had moved into the ring, joining into it without enough space between them and the ramp as it approached.

  The front of the ramp was sloped like a wedge, the purpose of its shape becoming apparent as the unfortunate melodians were pushed off from the central ring, out onto the forested ring where they’d come from, knocking them off their boards and causing them to slide along the road they’d been riding on just seconds earlier, their suit lights turning red as they crashed out of the ring.

  For the ones that didn’t enter at the wrong time, they’d come to a complete stop, their arms and tails raised up, keeping them planted on the ground. I noticed that since the central ring was spinning at the same rate as the zero gravity viewing area I was on, they shouldn’t have been experiencing any gravity themselves, but somehow the boards pushed forward, making them go faster than the ring itself as they started moving in the opposite direction from the ship.

  The music shifted, its patterns losing its complexity as it shifted over from trying to give them intricate instructions to simply telling them to go as fast as they could.

  Players that found themselves closer to the ramp were trying to move as quickly as they could, but didn’t have much space to build the speed. I focused the camera on the ramp to my side, watching as they started trying to ramp up, but the wind generated inside the ship carried them off course as they crashed into the forward and rear sides of the ship, skittering along the ground as their colors changed to red.

  The ones that started further away from the ramp were building speed, their positions on the board changing as they started getting enough gravity to not have to rely on the wind to keep themselves held to the ground. They laid down flat, trying to gain as much momentum as they could before they began climbing the ramps.

  In an instant, all the contestants were in the air, traveling upward toward the center of the ship. I tried to keep the camera on them as they came toward the central platform at incredible speed. The music stopped for a brief moment, making the cheering from everyone around me the only thing I could hear as they drowned out the sound of the ship.

  With a loud wooshing sound the melodians zoomed past our central platform, their hands outstretched, holding the board against themselves as they kareened past everyone in the center.

  My eyes were brought to the other side of the ship where another ramp awaited them, but unlike the one they’d launched off of, the other had a bright blue line just a few hundred feet away from it. On the central ring the line was stationary, but on the front section of the ship it remained parallel, but was moving across the ground to match its speed. It looked almost as though the ship was gliding underneath the line of lights itself.

  I didn’t have much time to think about what that meant before the music picked up once more. It resumed its simple tune, abandoning the complexity of the earlier songs in favor of simply telling the contestants to move as quickly as they could manage.

  As the first melodians landed on the opposite ramp the audience cheered, the entire ship felt alive with excitement as they poured onto the opposite side of the central ring. To my surprise, they all immediately turned to the side, turning onto the front section of the ship, just before they reached the blue line.

  The music built in intensity, the crowd cheering louder as the melodians poured onto the front section as the blue line got wider, following the melodian in front as if they were dragging the blue line out across the entire surface of the ship. Some of the others closed the gap quickly, another melodian taking the lead, the blue line moving forward with them.

  I did my best to keep the camera focused on them as they raced up and around from where I was watching.

  It didn’t take long for the blue to reach halfway around the ship, the cheering from the crowd following along with the contestants as they tried to outpace each other.

  The entire ship erupted in sound as the first place melodian made their way toward the beginning of the blue line and finally closed it in on itself, turning the entire front section of the ship blue.

  The music came to a sudden stop, the crowd continuing to cheer as the players slowly came to a stop. It was hard to see, but I could just barely make out the first place person getting surrounded by mechara as they came to a stop, their hands in the air as the mechara were jumping up and down around them.

  A loud hum came through the ship as it looked like the center ring was starting to slow down, the outer section transferring its excess speed onto the center ring as it started bringing everything to a stop once more.

  I blinked, remembering I was supposed to do something.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Looking down, I saw the camera was still recording. I hoped I’d gotten enough of what they wanted, but I felt like I was watching the game more than the camera at most of the points.

  At least some of it should be good I thought to myself as I brought my thumb up to the ‘record’ button and toggled it off.

  ***********

  It didn’t take long to find Nori after making my way to the bottom of the lift. She was surrounded by a bunch of other mechara who were asking her about the game, what she thought, how she thought it went. I could tell from the sound of their voices they were more excited about talking to Nori than anything else, each one trying to get their own words in.

  I could hear her trying to answer them but there were too many people talking for her to get any words out.

  I moved around to get to a place where she could hear me, then held up the camera as high as I could.

  Thankfully she was able to see it and spoke up over the crowd.

  “I’m so sorry everyone but I have to get going but it was good to see everyone out here again!” she yelled out as she pushed her way through the crowd in my direction.

  Several of the mechara tried following after her but she moved quickly, gesturing to me to keep up as we made our way away from the glass elevator and out toward one of the regular elevators that went through the deeper parts of the ship.

  I followed after her, shuffling along as quickly as I could despite her legs being quite a lot longer, letting her move faster than I could on my own two legs.

  As she got to the elevator she quickly slid inside, holding the door open for me as I caught up, the door closing quickly behind me as the sound of the crowd suddenly got cut off, leaving us in silence.

  With a loud groan Nori pressed her back to the wall of the elevator and slowly slid down until she was sitting on the floor, her hands at her side as she looked up at the ceiling.

  “Exhausting” she said as the elevator started moving down.

  “It looks like it…” I said as I moved next to her. I thought about laying against the other wall but it was actually nice to be at eye height with her for once.

  “See, that’s what I was talking about. I can’t go anywhere without people surrounding me. Asking me questions, wanting to know my opinion on something, wondering what’s going on with the ship. Sometimes I just need a break, you know?”

  I nodded “Yeah… It seemed like a lot of them just wanted to talk to you for the sake of it.”

  “Exactly!” she exclaimed as she raised her hands up for a moment before putting them back down on the floor.

  I couldn’t help but notice we were starting to get noticeably heavier, causing me to look up at the light panel on the wall to see we were approaching the green section of the floors.

  “Uh, where are we going?” I asked.

  “Oh, right so, I have a whole bunch of things from the humans in a maintenance sector that should have the thing I need to get the video off that little card thingy there so I can send it back to them.

  “Oh? I thought you’d just send the card to them or something” I said.

  She opened her eyes to look at me, her face looking a lot more relaxed than it had been before.

  “Trust me I wish it was that easy but it’s not so easy to move down to the planet and back like that. No, they sent a bunch of stuff up to us. It wasn’t easy but we got it working well enough to be able to get basic communication going. Their technology is a lot more… Hmm… You know, it’ll be easier to just show you, if you’re interested that is.”

  “Oh, yeah I’d love to see it” I said, curious to see what they’d sent up to the ship.

  “Perfect!” she said as she slowly got up onto her feet, the elevator coming to a stop “let’s go then” she said, leading me out the door.

  To my surprise, the green floor was pretty different to the blue and red I’d seen earlier. The blue seemed to be made only for the mechara to live in, with big organic shapes lining the corridors and walkways. The red floors were only for the melodians, which had much lower ceilings, 90 degree edges everywhere so they could be a lot more space efficient.

  The green floor appeared to be a mixture of both. The architecture was set up with brutalist looking shapes and pathways, having that high efficiency space usage, but the ceilings were as tall as they were on the blue floors. The walls, ceiling and floor were flat, but with extra wide hallways with big tire markings on the floor. Unlike the other two styles, they weren’t made for pedestrians, they looked like they were primarily designed for vehicles to travel on.

  It was a little eerie that the entire floor was devoid of people on it, but it made sense with the gravity games having just finished. I’d never seen so many people on the surface at once, it was as if the entire population was up on the surface for it.

  My suspicions about the vehicles were confirmed as we rounded a corner to find a fleet of cars lined up along a wall. They looked like oversized jeeps with large car-like tires, an open roof and a windshield in the front with two seats in the front and three in the back with a large pickup truck like bed in the back. It didn’t look like the organic looking shapes to the vehicles I’d seen above, instead it looked like it was designed for utility more than anything else.

  I followed along as Nori got into one side of the car, moving over to the other side to sit in the passenger seat.

  As I got up into it I was surprised to see a seat that looked more like it was my size, it even had a large cutout at the back that looked perfect for accommodating a tail.

  Once I got in I realized there wasn’t a ‘driver side’ and a ‘passenger side’ but instead it was a ‘mechara side’ and a ‘melodian side’ because both of the front seats had a steering wheel and levers on either side of them available.

  I was surprised at how similar the design was compared to the cars that I was used to back on earth, but it made sense that the designs would be similar. The two races had simply stumbled upon the design that worked best and stuck with it.

  “Have you ever been to the central storage area?” Nori asked as she pulled a lever on the side of the car, making a bunch of the lights on the dashboard light up along with a large headlight on its front.

  “I don’t… Think so?” I said, hoping my answer didn’t sound silly. I didn’t know if it was a place that everyone went to and she was asking rhetorically or if she genuinely didn’t know if I’d ever been there.

  “Okay, I’ll drive us there then” she said with a smile as she pressed her foot down on a pedal, making the car silently start going forward.

  We started moving a bit quicker, driving down a hallway that ran along the circumference of the ship. It was strange to see how the roadway in front of us bent gently upward until it looked like the floor met the ceiling as the road curved up and away from us. I couldn’t help but notice as we went faster, I felt a little bit lighter, which told me we were going in the opposite direction the ship was spinning.

  The wind made it hard to talk, so Nori and I sat in silence as we made our way through the empty corridors, but it didn’t take long before Nori slowed us down as we started to make a turn to something I hadn’t seen before.

  As we turned to face lengthwise across the ship a large open area revealed itself in front of us. It looked like it stretched at least thirty stories high. It was like the common area I’d found myself in just before I’d met Flint, but it was far larger with several ships taking up the space across it. I recognized one of them immediately as the same type of ship that had picked me up from earth.

  When I’d arrived on Lifeboat 8 I was brought down to one of the lowest floors on the ship, but it appeared there were other platforms for them to be left on. It made sense for them to be in the green sections since it was as far out of the way as they could be while still being accessible to the mechara.

  Once we entered the space Nori slowed down a bit more, bringing us past the transporter ship and into the area just behind it where a massive series of temporary looking tables were set up in large rows with items strewn about them. There were thousands of items laid across the tables, sorted into sections.

  I recognized them immediately as objects that the humans had sent up.

  “Pretty cool huh?” Nori asked as we came to a stop “This is all the stuff they’ve sent us so far, which is supposed to help us with communication but there’s also a bunch of stuff that represents their culture. Gifts for us. We’re working on a similar package for them but we haven’t had a chance to send it yet.”

  I followed Nori out of the car and joined her as we walked along the tables.

  “Sport balls” she said, gesturing to a table that had a soccer ball, an American football, some baseballs and a few other random sports equipment like bats, tennis rackets and various other sports related equipment.

  “This is what their clothing looks like” she said as she moved over to a pile of shirts and pants on one of the tables, holding up a shit for me to see.

  “That’s pretty neat” I said, not entirely sure what I should be saying about an ordinary run of the mill shirt.

  “Yeah! But we need this stuff over here” she said, moving over to another table with a large assortment of computer equipment sitting at it.

  “Could I get that camera from you?” she asked, reaching her hand out.

  “Oh sure” I said as I handed it to her.

  She undid the slot for the SD card, taking it out and setting the camera down on the table as she took it over to a laptop, which suddenly felt extremely out of place in the context of the lifeboat.

  “So these things are pretty neat. The humans don’t use technology like we do. Rather than having one central computer that they share amongst all of them, they have all these little devices that work independently from each other. It seems kind of redundant to have so many of them but they’ll probably be catching up to us soon. They’re just getting toward the end of their own glass revolution so the computational convergence will probably happen for them soon” she said as she booted the laptop up.

  I noticed it had a charger plugged into it, which was curious.

  While she was waiting for the computer to boot up I followed the cable along the table where it plugged into a power strip, which led to an extension cord which led out toward one of the walls of the large room where a massive solar panel was set up.

  It suddenly made sense how they got everything hooked up. Whatever electrical system they had on the ship wouldn’t be compatible with human technology, so instead they sent a giant solar panel to generate its own power that would work with it all.

  I nodded, finding it interesting how they got everything to work together. As I turned around I saw Nori was putting the SD card into the side of the laptop, but my eye was drawn to another table as a familiar shape laid on the floor, propped up against the side of one of the tables.

  I moved over to it and without thinking, I unzipped the side of the case to find an acoustic guitar. It felt alien to me, an object from a past life that felt so out of reach. It was like an anchor that brought me back to where I grew up. I remembered all the nights I’d spent with a similar guitar. The last time I’d used one was when I was in the car with Emily and Gav as we made our way toward the satellite dishes. It had only been a few months, but it felt like I was remembering things from someone else. A different life. With different friends. Yet there it was, right in front of me.

  “... and all this stuff just showed up here with all these pictures to show us and we’re trying to figure it out but we had no idea what it did!” Nori said as I realized she’d been talking for a while. I’d completely missed whatever she said before.

  “Yeah that’s a lot…” I said, my eyes not leaving the guitar.

  “Right! And we’re having to learn all these things and how they go together and we dropped the pictures! We dropped them! And we had to figure out what order they were in, which was a whole thing…” she continued.

  I looked down at my hands, the divots in my claws were completely gone, I couldn’t even tell I’d filed them down to allow them to glide over the strings easier. It was as if I’d never done anything to them in the first place.

  “Bring the camera to me when you get a chance” I heard her say through my thoughts.

  I shook my head, pulling myself out of it.

  Nori was shaking her head, clicking on the touchpad on the laptop.

  The camera was still sitting on the table near her when she’d asked for it the first time so I grabbed it placed it next to her.

  “Huh?” she asked.

  “You… asked for the camera” I said.

  “Oh, yeah in the story, they said… Yeah” she tilted her head, taking her eyes off the computer monitor for a moment to look at me “Uh… anyway, so they told us how to plug everything in, which was easy once we got used to the different cables…” she continued.

  I nodded, listening along as she told me about how the setup for the computers went, but my eyes were drawn to the guitar once more.

  I missed it. I wanted to pick it up and play it, show her what I could do with it. I wanted to close my eyes and pour my thoughts into the instrument and let myself get lost. It had been so long since I’d played anything and I missed it so very much. I figured if I really wanted to, I could try to come up with an excuse for why I should take it with me, find a quiet part of the ship and let myself play it again.

  “... and then they said ‘plug the printer into the side of the laptop’ and we were so confused because…” she said, pulling me back out of my thoughts once more. I looked around to see there was a printer in a box on the other table. It didn’t look like it had been opened and it didn’t have any pictures on it but it said “Epson” on the side.

  Nori stopped, following my gaze.

  She went under the table toward the printer box. As she got to it she used a talon to split the tape, a moment later she pulled the printer out of it, her mouth slightly agape before she turned to me.

  “Tess…” she started to say before she was interrupted by a voice nearby.

  “Nori? You’re being asked to join for the after party” a mechara said from the entrance of the giant room.

  Nori shook her head “Sorry, uh… Right, tell them I might not be able to make it” she said, her eyes not leaving me.

  The man swiftly left.

  “Is that with the players from the games?” I asked.

  “It is” she said quietly.

  A thought occurred to me. The melodians playing the game. They understood the music, they weren’t like the other melodians I’d met. They couldn’t be. I wanted to meet them myself, possibly ask them about who they are, what the music means to them. If there was anyone on board the ship that understood me, they probably were the best place to look.

  “Could I join you for it?” I asked.

  “You want to go? It’s uh… Not as glamorous as you might think, besides they seem to…” she began to say.

  “I’d love to go, yeah” I said, practically hopping up and down.

  “Mmm… Okay, this file should finish uploading soon, we can uh… We can go together” she said.