Waiting

When limbo is where you find yourself

Created on Midjourney

I had no idea where I was or why. Maybe that’s not true. Not exactly, anyway. I was in a space-train station waiting for my connection. But, other than the name Epsilon station, I didn’t know which planet I was on or where my connecting train would be taking me.

All I knew for sure, was that Captain Lewell had shoved a chip with enough credits to last me a lifetime and a ticket with no destination on it into my hands right as the enemy was about to descend on our colony.

He bodily pushed me onto the last space-train likely to escape their attack. I resisted. I was no coward. I wanted to fight with my unit.

“Lieutenant!” He barked.

I stopped fighting.

“This is a vital mission,” he whispered, low enough that only I could hear. “You must get the information I’m about to encode in your brain to safety. It may be the only chance of survival for the human race.”

That stopped me cold. “But…”

“No time.” A jackhammer connected with my consciousness, leaving me reeling. The information packet. Only the right codes would release it from my brain.

“There’s one stop on your route. Make sure you make your connection. I can’t emphasize how important that is.” He grasped my shoulder. Squeezed. “I can’t tell you more.”

“But what connection?”

“You’ll know,” was his only answer. He turned and strode back toward my unit to fight with them. Likely to die with them. While I ran.

I sighed. I had gotten off the last deep-space train into this hub three days ago. There hadn’t been another one since. How would I know when the right one came? Was that information hiding in my brain as well? What if I missed the connection? Or got on the wrong train?

A million permutations of disaster ran around and around my brain. But no. Captain Lewell would not have sent me on a hopeless mission. He had said I would know when my connection arrived. I only hoped it wouldn’t be too late.

I stared at the local trains pulling up and leaving the station. I knew none of them was the right one. They weren’t heading out of system. Besides. They didn’t feel right. There wasn’t another inbound or outbound train scheduled for another month. The wait was killing me.

Suddenly, a tear rent the sky above, a train coming through from the void. It wasn’t scheduled, but it had my name on it. I felt the rightness of it. Captain Lewell hadn’t let me down and I wouldn’t let him down. I still didn’t know my destination, but wherever that train was headed, I intended to be on it.

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My dear friend, Laura, had stopped giving me prompts. I didn’t know why, but the other day, she told me she thought I had stopped wanting them. when I disabused her of that notion, she promptly (pun intended) provided a prompt.

I plugged the entire prompt into Midjourney to create a science fiction (suggested by Laura) concept art piece. I love the image I used for this story. Between it and Laura’s words, the story was easy to write.

For those who might comment that I need to finish this story—the point of it is that the main character is in limbo. She’s waiting. She doesn’t know for what, but she’s ready for it when it comes. This is the complete story arc. What came before and what comes after are both other arcs in her life.

Here’s the prompt as Laura provided it to me:

I got off the last train and I have a ticket for the next one, but I don’t know when it’s coming or where it’s going. But I know it’s coming and so I wait.

I love to receive prompts from readers. Please drop one into the comments below and I’ll start percolating images and story ideas.