I had a dream

I had a vivid dream last night (don't worry, not that sort), which for once stayed with me. I dream weirdly in that I tend to dream storylines (strange, I know):

At the time of the first Jovian-Earth wars the Earth defence forces, the Angels, were very much getting beaten by the more powerful Jupiterian ships - the technology required to get out of the gravity well of Jupiter and sustain Jovian life meant that high-speed, high-G manouvres were child's play for them. At the time of the First Incursion, when three of the Jovian fleet dived into the Pacific (a cataclysmic event for the Pacific rim countries, taking an artificially stimulated earthquake to open and swallow them), the Angels' high command had built in deep space a generation ship (the Argo) to explore for a new home in space.

Before even the first generation was born, in the depths of interstellar space, a gigantic old spaceship, apparently lifeless, drifted just off the route of the Argo. The speed of the Argo could not readily be altered, so a small exploration craft was dispatched to discover what it could, with its largely male crew on board. The motivation was clear, if we were getting beaten in our own back yard, we needed any technologies or help we could get.

Exploring the giant hulk was an eye-opener. In the first instance, much of the ship was simply mothballed. We spent days, patching the solid infrastructure and making it airtight and restoring artificial gravity - the hull must have been through an Oort cloud at some point. But as well as the plasteel type components, there were cushioned rooms, strange lenses and long lift shafts with no lifts - it was intriguing and the debate was fierce. We couldn't help feeling that the knowledge represented here was worth our sacrifice to retrieve it.

And then, one day, working on a hatch at the top of a lift-shaft, my harness broke and I fell, slowly at first, but with the ever-increasing speed of an unhindered object - the lift shaft was about a mile high and I hit the bottom at great speed. And was swallowed into the soft padding at the bottom. I thought "I must be dead", but in the darkness I could feel movement, terrifying movement, because I had been working on my own and sparing my colleagues my tuneless singing, had had the radio switched off and no-one could find me. Then I could feel my facemask being removed and then immense pain...

I went unconscious.

Sometime later I awoke and was startled to find that I was in darkness, free of pain and with a great sense of warmth; I remembered falling and realised that the hatchway at the top of the lift shaft was in fact a lightwell access point for when the starship was near a star so that it could collect energy. Rapidly, schematics and knowledge of the organo-plasteel giant spaceship came to mind and also a strange feeling that it was right that I had been attempting to help the ship as a passenger. The ship was grateful.

Slowly I was exuded to the surface of the organic light-collector, with my facemask replaced . I had no concept of time, but when I surfaced I was able to activate my radio and contact my very surprised shipmates.

Woke up at this point, drank some water, went back to sleep...

It turned out that the spaceship was also a generation ship, but of an entirely different star-spanning civilisation; the ship had been built as a partner in the enterprise and its AI was surprisingly organic.

Plot from here: months passed, an idyllic bond with the ship was formed; the giant nuclear furnace still sustaining the ship and us, we gradually got it moving towards the nearest star so it could be re-fuelled.

After a number of years we came across another wreck; two of us explored and returned, acting strangely - we quarantined them and they disappeared into the ship; warfare then broke out in our Utopian home, within the ship itself as the evil intelligences that had subsumed our shipmates migrated to the ship's nervous system... This was a war to the death as the intelligences now knew where we had come from and could backtrack us to Earth.

And I woke up finally for the morning at that point! Mr Blackbird was singing his heart out as he does and it was5.50 am and a sunny morning on Earth... Fortunately free of malign intelligences or giant Jovian spaceships causing havoc in the Pacific!