Charlize Theron Imagines

Passengers (1) ~ aeon flux

{Monican Aeon Flux}

Original Female Character: Monican Meta Carpal.

Disclaimer: I did base the setting of this story off the movie "Passengers" (2016), hence it's acknowledgement in the title. However, the plot is mine. Additionally, you really ought to watch "Aeon Flux" (2005) before reading this to understand certain aspects.

I chew my sandwich to a soft, ground paste; my eyebrows furrowing in concentration at a small screen in my hand. The news here fascinates me. Back home it was much of the same each day: kidnappings, treason and protests – but here we are futuristic seekers, digging through the depths of space in search of a better, cleaner, healthier world. To find strength where Bregna and Earth had only disease. The news here, governed by the benevolent Monicans, holds scientific discoveries and inventions that will improve operating systems and laboratories; Monican triumphs that have tumbled through our lives like a blizzard; and citizen success stories left, right and centre. It's a visionary's paradise.

Being selected to take part in this journey in hopes it will be everything humanity needs has been a saving grace for me. Bregna was becoming a place of desolation and despair. I need somewhere new; somewhere less bleak.

So far, the trip has been luxurious. We – five thousand passengers, and one hundred and fifty-eight crew members – left Earth in hibernation vessels upon the Bregna-Vista II to preserve ourselves for the flight through space. We were sucked into the void and absolute frozen stillness for twelve decades. We became time travellers. A few days ago, the ship's population awoke to its new dawn against a pitch-black background of so many unknowns, yet sparkling with stars of opportunity. I'd never experienced anything like it before; I am still recovering. And now, the real search began.

With the latest technology and its many investors, the ship brims with luxury and prosperity. I spoil myself each day with food and leisure, telling myself I deserve it because of this arduous journey. I can experience a world of high-tech gadgets from the comfort of my unit. Since moving day, I haven't come across any other passengers and I assume they too have been recovering from hibernation in their units. Unless I'm the only one. Am I so far detached from reality that even upon waking, I remain cocooned?

While I float away in my thoughts, my finger is hovering on standby above the screen of my tablet. I am startled back to attention when a methodical, yet musical voice erupts from a video on the screen. I inhale sharply and am reminded quickly of the bolus halfway down my throat as my mind ticks through each piece of information being thrown at me. I cough and splutter, shaking my head to divert my attention back to what had alarmed me.

A woman is speaking, staring away from the camera, a mindful eye guarding her exquisite face framed by shining black hair. I hone my hearing onto her but I struggle due to my deafening heartbeat. I pause the clip. My pulse runs through my auditory canal, pumping through it like it never has before. I place the tablet onto my dining table and the light metal tinkles against the glass. I touch the cool surface of the table. Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum. It seeps into me, bringing my boiling blood down to a subtle simmer. I glance around my unit. I frown. I don't understand this rush. I don't understand why she triggered me. I recognise her, but I can't think from where. I can't think.

A memory I don't recognise makes me lag for a moment; a normal memory, but not one I own: the soft tick-tick of wheels over tile and my mumblings of a grocery list, dulled noises in this blurred vision, and... the voice of the woman in the video! But I can't make out what she's saying. As I see it in my mind, I feel her hand run down my arm and take the slip of paper off of which I'd been reading, and she laughs. For a moment, I smile, then I blink and the vision is gone.

I almost give myself whiplash as I snap my head around to look back at my tablet.

She is mysterious, but openly so; like she wants me to know there's something more complex about her, and she wants to challenge me to figure it out. I am so drawn to her and to that challenge that my heart tries to leap out of my chest when I stumble across her existence. My eyes track the walls until they break through the window opposite the dining table. Out into the black, lonely nothingness that is space.

And yet, I realise... I don't need to be feeling this lonely. Nor do I need to feel so put off by a feeling for someone just because my body hasn't experienced anything like this in one hundred and twenty years. I don't have to find human interaction scary. Why is this triggering me? Why is she?

I breathe in and swallow my last mouthful. I feel every inch of it slide down my oesophagus like a small meteor being forced down a vent. I look down at my tablet screen. A paused moment in a pre-recorded portion of this woman's life lies before me. Rewindable. HD. Flawless.

I push my plate away from me and inflate my tablet screen holographically into the air. As her face enlarges along with the screen, I rise from my seat and back away. Her face lights up the room. I reach up in the hopes of imagining just a fraction of what it could be like touching her, but I find nothing except for pixels fragmenting at my fingertips.

Choking loneliness overwhelms me and I thrash beneath its grasp, hastily removing the woman's image from my tablet and collapsing into my chair. I clamp a hand over my chest and hunch over. My vessel nurse - AI at its finest - had informed me of post-hibernation sickness symptoms and side-effects, and frantically, I wonder whether the pain I feel squeezing my chest is that which they mentioned. However, what confuses me even more, is that it feels like grief. Like loss.

I breathe deeply... in through my nose, out through my mouth. I glance up at my front door.

I recognise the woman in that video.

I'll have to find out why.