Terms like “floor” and “underneath” were all relative, of course, since the ship moved through space without a real up or down. Because everything in space is always moving, directions are imput into the computer relative to the ship itself, the ship being the origin, the Z axis running through the center of the ship and the X axis running perpendicular to that, arbitrarily picked by the ship‘s computer. For his own benefit, James marked where the computer recognizes the X axis on the inside of the ship by placing two X‘s across from each other. Then, using spherical coordinates, the ship could place a vector in space with a distance, the angle of the vector from the Z axis (theta, θ) and the angle of the vector from the X-Z plane (phi, φ) to chart a course to anywhere in the galaxy. It was up to the memory banks in the ship’s computer to avoid large predominant celestial bodies such as planets and moons and lay a course around them, but little bodies (little is another relative term, of course, since compared to the Sun, Pluto is little) could either be input into the computer temporarily for a course change, or simply bypassed manually by controlling the helm.

James bounced from the small porthole in the quarters and settled into his seat in the bridge. The seats were aligned one hundred twenty degrees apart from each other around the center of the ship. This allowed for maximum area and viewing capacity for the crew on all sides. Of course, the ship had sensors of all kinds to determine its position in space, but it often helped to be able to see what it was sensing.

“I say we send out signal flares, like they say they did in the old days.” Sinbad made a gun with his fingers and pointed in the air. “Often the older ways are the best ways. That’s what they say at least.”

Alan rearranged his blanket to uncover his head. “Who says that?”

Sinbad shrugged. “They do.” Sinbad floated back and forth past Alan making all sorts of gun noises and finger points.

“Who’s ‘they’?” Sinbad raised an eyebrow. “You’re always saying ‘they say’ this and ‘they say’ that. Who are these mystical people that supposedly know everything, huh Sinbad?” Alan repositioned himself. He caught Sinbad’s finger in his fist on the next pass. They eyed each other down. “So? Who’s ‘they’?”

“Sinbad gave a smirk and used his other hand to poke Alan in the ear. Alan yelped and let go of Sinbad’s hand.

“I’m not sure who ‘they’ are. They’re the old-timers. The ones that say guns shot little metal pellets instead of pulses of energy. They’re the ones that said we weren’t always able to fly past the stars faster than the speed of light. They’re the ones who say that everyone used to live on Mother Earth.”

Alan covered himself up again. “That’s impossible. There’s no way everyone could’ve lived on Earth at the same time. There are 500 billion people in the whole galaxy, and you’re telling me they all fit on Earth. Not blinkin’ likely.” Alan’s head popped out again. “What do you think James? What are you doing over there? Sleeping? You’re bed’s over here.”

James looked up from the instrument panel and turned back to his friends. “I’m trying to figure out a way we can fix the ship’s engine so we can at least move to a place where we’d have a better chance of being spotted.” By my calculations, if we move fifty meters at 37 degrees theta and -40 degrees phi, we should be in an open spot where there are less asteroids to clog up the view.” Sinbad grabbed James’ shoulder from behind.

“That’s a great idea James. Let’s get moving!” Alan sighed from underneath his private domain.

“Have you forgotten we don’t have any fuel?” James shook his head.

“We do have enough fuel to move us to that point.” Alan threw the blanket off.

“And you want to waste it to get to that spot? We’re in the middle of nowhere! We’ve been drifting for hours! Why don’t we just send out Sinbad in a suit and he can push us there!” Alan’s eyes blazed with frustration. “Even if we did make it to that spot, there’s no guarantee we’d stay there. In time we’d just move away and towards the biggest thing closest to use, which would probably just be Sinbad’s head!” Sinbad frowned.

“Hey! You’re mad at James, not me! Stop it with the big head jokes!” James moved between them before the ball game became a fist fight.

“He’s not mad at you, or me. He’s just annoyed with the whole situation.”

“I think he‘s gotten crazy from being under that blanket all the time,“ snipped Sinbad.

“That’s only from looking at your giant head all the time,” retorted Alan. James pushed the two apart by their foreheads.

“We’re all going stir crazy from being inside this tin can and looking at each others’ heads. Fighting about it isn’t going to solve anything.” Sinbad rubbed his head where James pushed it.

“Fighting about it would make me feel better. I still owe him for that big head comment.” Sinbad turned himself away from Alan and strapped himself in a chair at the table. Alan withdrew back under his blanket.


Word count: 961
Total word count: 2686
Notes to self: Beginning Week 2. Good job remembering spherical coordinates! Think of a way for them to get out of this mess.