Remembering I

Rage, I remember feeling so overwhelmingly angry at them. I wanted to kill them all. I would have, had they not been many many light years away.



It must have been about two or three years ago now, The Grand Pause. Well, it was the beginning of The Pause, anyway.



With the help of my clever and ingenious friends I'd made on this planet, we'd reconstructed the quantum lock communicator on the single remaining room of my ship. I'd crashed it getting here four years before that. My first mission, actually...

Not that it matters now.



I remember the screen flickering on, and it was my cousin Zion who received the call. He was surprised to see me, for sure, but thinking back he wasn't exactly happy either. Nor were the Southeast Squadron commanders, the inky markings on the both of them turned a blinding scarlet for a moment when the call was transferred.



That was when it began.



That was when the truth came out.



I'd been disposed of, sent off to a mutt civillisation with a ship that shouldn't have survived the first 10 clicks, they told me. Once they'd locked onto the frequency of the ghost particle in my communicator, they promptly informed me that I was officially exiled from the species- no inheritance, no further psiogenisis or host development. A moment later the ghost particle had been severed, causing the trace to dissipate and the communicator to die - Permanently this time.



The resulting emotional psionic outburst was.. intense. Some of the furs in the room that day still don't speak to me. Some of the more experienced ones possibly saved my life that day.



The remaining room of my spacecraft was no more. They'd cut ties with me, so I'd cut my ties right back.




I was a wreck for weeks. That kind of thing is just harsh. I had no home, I had no heritage. Just an interstellar nomad; not minding the fact that I had an apartment on this planet and that I no longer had a working spacecraft.



And then, after however long, I started lightening up again.


That was when it really began.

The despair I'd felt, the anger I'd felt, it started just- seeping out around me. It's a psionic and auric thing, there are other species who do this sometimes.
The strange part was the side effect, reality started to slow down, the days became longer and less saturated, the nights became darker. It was a Wednesday when I'd realised it had been sunset for 4 hours. I also realised that all of my friends were gone.



Fortunately, I know now that they had not left but I had. The Pause, a strange localised parallel universe. The direct result from a severe psionic leak compounded with, well, adolescence.



I'd like to tell you how long I was inside The Grand Pause. But once inside, time became meaningless.

It's possible I was there for years. Maybe even a decade, who knows? I can't say.



I can, however, tell you about what I got up to during The Pause.

Hmm..

After you fetch me another cup of coffee?