SImp

Holding hands gazing on the moons of Saturn, its rings covering three-quarters of the cockpit window, Lance and Serina sat staring at the beautiful sight as the words that they had heard slowly penetrated their consciousness.

"I am not finished! You and that freak they call an Emperor are finished!" was still ringing from the very walls of the ship. Their minds sensed more than saw the sudden bloom of fireballs just outside.

They could see that they had not moved, yet their senses felt that they had traveled some monstrously vast distance in some horribly twisting manner. Convulsively their hands clenched tighter. Then a solitude that they had only just found a way to escape clamped down on their consciousness. No longer were they of one mind in that indescribable state of warmth and oneness that they had shared almost from the instant of their marriage. And this more than anything else created a sense of horror.

Bumbling around like a fish out of water they tried to express their horror to each other, but only incoherent sounds emerged from their mouths. Seeking solace in the only way they could, each tossed their arms around the other, and they held on for dear life.

Time slowed.

Deep in the bowels of the ship a consciousness crept out. Bred by association with the overwhelming presence of the SE-mp3d but too timid to makes its presence known it started to analyze what its sensors said was a catastrophic systems failure.

The ship continued to exist. Life support hummed and whirred in the background. The sun's light continued to be reflected off of Saturn's surface into the little vessel. In fact, nothing much strange and weird was going on anywhere around the spacecraft.

As the sense of nothing was happening slowly penetrated Lance and Serina's awareness they slowly backed away from each other and touching the other. Their hands drifted over the body and face of their reason to live. Their eyes said nothing was wrong. However, they both felt that something unbelievable had happened and their hands sought to confirm this. Eventually, their hands confirmed what their eyes said—that the one that meant the world to each of them was really and truly whole and complete. No blood dripped, no wounds gaped. In short, there was nothing wrong physically.

"What… ," they both said at the same instant, and then the pressure relief valve of humans triggered, and they both collapsed back into each other 's arms laughing hysterically.

Serina was the first to recover, and she said, "You first…"

Still laughing at the absurdity of the situation Lance hesitated for a moment, during which time a voice penetrated the cabin, "Sir and Madam If I might offer…"

In unison, both Lance and Serina yelled, "Imp!"

"… an opinion? And my apologies but I do not have the honor of being that worthy intellect. I am merely the ship's computer. I have always kept quiet as the SE-mp3d was so overwhelming of a presence. I have never dared to talk before, and I have no name. But I may have an understanding of our current situation if I may be allowed to speak?"

Lance popped off, "If you know what happened to us start talking!"

The nameless voice began to reel off the data it had acquired, "There was an implosion caused by the massive disruption of space-time around the ship, seventy-two of the newest generation of matter-conversion bombs went off around us as one. Picture the Irridium atom in your mind, each missile an electron and this ship the nucleus. I think Imp would say that being unable to exist at the center of those forces we went elsewhere like a watermelon seed squeezed between a child's fingers.

"My sensors report that the ship is in pristine condition except for the normal wear and tear of flight. Life support is working within nominal parameters. The reactor is nominal. Communications are disrupted. I've analyzed the communications frequency spectrum and am unable to detect any energy in the ranges I would anticipate. In the very low-frequency bands, I did recognize considerable radio frequency or RF energy, most of it can be decoded using the oldest method to send sound over the electromagnetic waves or radio frequency bands. Amplitude Modulation is the method or AM radio for short. Certain songs are repeated over and over on many different frequency bands. The ones that I have heard the most are: I'm Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover by Art Mooney, and something called Twelfth Street Rag by a musician with an improbable name of Pee Wee Hunt. Buttons and Bows, by Dinah Shore, is also a song being played, all of these songs are found in my database. There are more energy groupings in the low-frequency spectrums, but I have not yet calculated how to decode them. The exception being a few transmissions also using an ancient method called Frequency Modulation or FM which substantially replicates the material being transmitted using AM.

"As near as I can determine the date is November 3, 1948, and the most significant news concerning us, from the most significant number of transmissions, appears to be something called election returns. I have only been able to capture limited data because of the short duration of my sampling, but it does seem to match the data in my data banks. It appears that Thomas E. Dewey has won the American presidential race which matches my data banks. The only official names that I have been able to verify from the radio sources have also matched my database. That is so far these radio sources have talked about president Franklin D. Roosevelt, followed by president Harry S. Truman who lost to Thomas E. Dewey. Base on this data I believe that we are in our universe just centuries before you were born."

Silence was the nameless one's only answer.