As always, the mother ship clicked and beeped. Its various components calculated, circulated, navigated, and transmitted. He had become familiar with all of the subtle sounds emanating from the equipment. With no human companions sharing his journey, the ship itself provided a conversation of sorts. The clicking of the K. D. head was like a metronome which kept time for a symphony of tones that not only informed Flash about the operation of the ship, it entertained him as well. At times it sang him lullabies, and at other times it warned him of impending danger.
Gradually Flash became aware of something different. A new sound whispered within the familiar heartbeat of the ship. A murmur so subtle that to become aware of it was to realize that one had been hearing it for some time.
Short bursts of static breathed within the mechanical song. When he focused his attention on it, it would disappear, but when he was concentrating on something else, he would become aware of it. Like silent eyes staring from a blackened window or a star so faint you had to look to one side to see it at all, he knew it was there. An echo of an echo, a dream within a dream.
The tiny ship bulleted through frictionless space, and Flash Meridian was haunted by the ghostly sound within his metallic cocoon.
While reading, he would often find himself staring blankly at the wall listening for it. It always seemed to recede as though trying to taunt him.
He was less concerned than curious.
He passed through several periods of sleeping and waking before there was a noticeable change.
The sound had become more obvious, and it reminded Flash of something… But what? It’s character was different than the other sounds he heard. It was mechanical and yet organic at the same time. Almost like… the sound was like… bits of voices from an AM transistor radio that is not tuned to a station.
Time passed, though Flash’s perception of time changed dramatically when he was between planets. Out where there is no day and no night, it wasn’t dark. The blackness of the backdrop was illuminated like a Christmas display. Some of these twinkling lights were actually galaxies that were hundreds of thousands of light years across. Billions of them hung there in apparent nothingness. Billions upon billions more were clouded from his view by space dust.
He sped along at a relative snail’s pace, insignificant in comparison to the heavenly bodies surrounding him. He was significant for the life force that animated him and allowed him to see and feel small.
With this vague and obsolete passage of time, the new sound within his ship grew.
Flash enjoyed sailing the uncharted expanse of space. Everything he could ask for was his for the taking. He was never interrupted, never disturbed. This was both a blessing and a curse. He craved companionship.
He and the K.D. head played games of strategy and skill, and this helped to keep his mind sharp. He came to see the automaton as a living individual, and he came to love her ever-changing facial expressions and her heartbeat of mechanical clicks.
The more he interacted with the flashing, elongated sphere, the more of his own nuance was incorporated into the software. He was aware of this phenomenon, yet he found comfort in it none the less.
The system contained a vast amount of human history in the form of music, literature, science, art and culture.
What had once seemed an almost limitless inventory, he now saw as one shallow exhalation of a fragile, distant planet. It was beautiful, like one glint of sunlight off of a droplet of seawater in the history of a vast ocean. Here and gone again in the blink of an eye.
Sad? Perhaps. But precious and rare.
He now represented all Earthlings on his voyage into the unknown.
The sound grew more and more pronounced, and Flash was, at last, able to track it to a speaker above the control panel. It did not come from his ship at all, but was transmitted from elsewhere.
He fine tuned the receiver until the transmission was clear. It was music. Organized sound pulsed through the cockpit, and Flash smiled. He was not alone.