Page 1 of Collision!
Prologue
In the woven knot of yarn hung from the ceiling of the Starlit Salon, the shadowlight sphere of the resonark waited.
Its prismatic fractal fringe continued its never-ending unraveling into distant reaches of spacetime.As the energy radiating into those infinitely attenuating lines crossed into the abstract depths of quantum mathematics, delicate rainbows of light arced outward.The lovers’ song that had finally brought it into focus still whispered faintly around the threads of plasilk and alpaca wool.
After the transcendent catharsis where the crew and passengers of the Love Boat I had collectively manifested the elemental expression of love—and maybe had a few too many synthequer cocktails—they’d dispersed to their staterooms and duty roster assignments, all of them profoundly moved by the experience.
Still connected by their lingering awe, the resonark’s energy touched them in different ways.
Some responded by joining physically, but only if they’d already been so inclined; such a quantum manifestation contained infinite variables, and for such a bonding to occur, particular conditions—much like intimate body parts—had to be aligned.
Some indulged in a bit of late-night, carbohydrate-focused nibbling, emptied their species-specific excretory system, and slept the most peaceful sleep.
But a few…dreamed.
And those dreams couldn’t be contained by mere plasteel bulkheads or even the bony prisons of cranial skeletal configurations.They spiraled out into the night along the eternal vibrations between stars.
And out there, something awoke.
Chapter 1
The morning after the Love Boat I regained power, Mariah woke hungover.
And she’d never even gotten drunk.
Or, to practice radical transparency, she’d gotten drunkback on Earthmore than once, but she hadn’t done itlast nighton synthequer.This was an emotional hangover, which she’d also practiced more than once on Earth, and which she swore was worse than Everclear punch.
Each moment of the evening had been more…momentous than the last.When Remy and Ikaryo had sung together with such breathtaking, wordless beauty.When the anomaly had responded in a spectacular lightshow of cosmic wonder.When the captain and Felicity had explained to them all that they’d witnessed what was essentially the birth of love on their plane of reality.
That wasn’t quite how they’d worded it, but Mariah was a student of esoteric cosmology and had just enough grasp of astrophysics-for-newbies to make her a menace on an actual, real-life spaceship.
Which she’d cheerfully admit.
Or she would be cheerful again—as soon as she shook off this odd malaise.
She drank a glass of water, peed, wolfed down a few of the sugary alien fruit balls from the in-cabin snacks, and trotted off to the all-hands meeting.The captain had said he’d share all they knew about the resonark.
Maybe she’d suggest a more meaningful name for it.
Resonark.That sounded like a hairball—the aggravations of which she had more experience with than Everclear punch while supplementing her fiber fine arts with mittens and socks made from, like, Mittens the twenty-year-old tortie and Sox the continuously shedding sheepdog.
What would be a more lovely and mystical name, to match the anomaly itself?
Before she could come up with any suitable suggestions, she was among the throng of crew and fellow passengers streaming into the Starlit Salon.Everyone gawped at the resonark, shining above them, as awe-inspiring as the night before.
And Mariah had to say, its cosmic charisma quite elevated the looping, vibrant veils she’d knitted last minute at Felicity’s request.The cruise director had only told her they needed some décor for Remy’s impromptu concert—not that it would be the resting place for a quasi-celestial entity.
Too late to putthaton her farmers market vendor applications.
Soon enough, everyone was distracted from the resonark by the reveal of the breakfast buffet.Chef Styr was hovering beside the waffle station, eagerly pointing out the myriad toppings.“No chocolate,” they said sadly.“We ran out.”
Was that a sidelong gesture from the tall Elnd chef toward the ship’s owner?Mr.Evens—also something of an oddity, name-wise, Mariah mused—was apparently the resident expert on the resonark and had secretly accompanied this inaugural cruise to study the anomaly.
Despite Mr.Evens’s rank, Mariah had the clear impression that Captain Nehivar also had no love for his boss, and the Earther man sat alone at one of the corner booths meant for intimate conversation.Not that she’d signed up with the IDA to fret about other people’s relationships, but… They were still very far off course to be fighting amongst themselves.
Mariah accepted a waffle with a waggle of her cupped fingers—the closest she could approximate the Elnd gesture of gratitude.
Chef waggled their phonoplasts back at her.“I hope you enjoy your waffle as much as I loved creating it.”
