Galactic Metal

Tully and Carl puttered across the Gutierrez Star River in their salvager starship, named The Santa Maria, scavenging for valuable space junk. They had been married for twenty-four years. When Carl asked for Tully’s hand in marriage all those years ago, he didn’t think he’d make it this far. He marveled at Tully’s innate beauty to this day. She was a buxom blonde with amber eyes and soft, pillowy lips. Tully had a beautiful figure and a personality to match. She had always played by her own rules. She had traveled all over the universe at this point and had taken on the role of a glamorous space truckin’ goddess quite seamlessly. She didn’t mind getting dirt or grease under her nails. Tully was admired by the whole scavenging community for her work ethic, renowned beauty, and tenacity. Tully and Carl had pulled many great hauls just because Tully wanted to say she had. Looking at her now, Carl reminisced on diving in the Horsehead Nebula sometime back. They had found an old starship from an undateable timeline filled with a golden money neither knew anything about, but had proved to be worthy to some collector somewhere and ended up buying them the upgrades they needed to take The Santa Maria even further out into space. To places like this one. Carl was proud of his wife in all ways. No one alive across the infinite galaxies was as good a team as Tully and Carl Sp’zkan, of that Carl was very sure.

They were out in the Aldora Nine galaxy looking for treasure rumored to be hiding in a black hole or near one. Treasure hunting was by far their favorite activity to do, but Carl still wasn’t sure how he felt about black holes. Tully seemed no worse for wear over the matter. Carl admired her bravado. Looking on the monitors, there were no signs of black holes around them.

“I ain’t seein’ anythin’ jus’ yet.” He muttered more to himself than to Tully who remained quiet.

The monitors stayed quiet. The radar, sonar, and doppler screens all remained blank. Carl had begun to feel like things might be too quiet.

“There’s gotta be somethin’ we’re missin’. It’s too calm.” Carl observed and Tully nodded in agreement.

*

Murder Rock could agree on nothing as a band except that they could agree on nothing. Not that they ever had time to talk with each other. As a member of Murder Rock, you were rocking or you were dead. The group of nine raging aliens from different parts of the Aldora Nine galaxy were brought together by two things, a curse planted on them from the treasure that had recently floated its way out to the Gutierrez Star River, and a desire to play heavy metal for the rest of their lives, living on as almost literal rock gods. They would play forever. Cursed by their own wishes, the nine were made to play on a rock that hurled through the galaxy at a very high velocity. Thus, the band was known, galaxy wide, as Murder Rock.

They could only play, there was no stopping. Their hands were bewitched in such a way that they could not stop playing even if they wanted to. Their voices shredded, their fingers bled, their palms poured blood, sweat, and smoke onto their hurtling space rock stage. The group members of Murder Rock felt the torture their bodies were going through with the rigidity of the curse laid upon them, but there was nothing they could do. Be careful what you wish for. Who would have known that so many creatures desire to be rock gods?

They were one of the first interplanetary bands in the Aldora Nine Solar System. Metal lovers on nine of the twenty planets that inhabited Aldora Nine were very passionate about Murder Rock, hailing them as legendary. The greatest metal band of all time. If only they could see them play live. The torture they must feel in their bodies was so evident in their songs. No one was this fast and mathematically gifted when it came to sound, let alone a group of nine hurtling through space on a rock. What wasn’t to love?

*

Tully loved Murder Rock and when they came across the airwaves she always turned them up. Murder Rock just kept playing, never stopping, not even for bathroom breaks. Rock gods did not need bathroom breaks! The item they had wished upon was the very same gemstone that Tully and Carl were looking for, not to wish upon, but to sell. If only that was how these things worked. Imagine an object with enough power to force men of all kinds to play metal on a comet hurtling through the galaxy with no protection or breaks allowing anyone to just simply pick it up and sell it. Things like that don’t happen. The object hid around dark matter intentionally, but when someone got too greedy and found it, if it didn’t like the cut of their jib (read: felt threatened in any way) it would opt to just end the life of whomever had picked it up. It’s not like the Jewel of Infinite Depths was really an item one truly wanted to add to their collection. It’s owners were either cursed or killed. Rumors of it granting your wildest dreams spread throughout the solar system by chaotic evil types. Tully couldn’t remember where she had first heard of the Jewel of Infinite Depths, but she was enamored with the beautiful red stone about the size of a petite woman’s fist. Carl was wary of it, but would give his wife whatever she wanted so they set out for the edges of the Aldora Nine galaxy in hopes of finding it simply floating where it was last said to be seen.

The paradox of playing metal in space is that no one can hear you play. You are moving your fingers, hurtling on this giant rock, possibly about to be blown away by some other giant rock or gas related explosion, and there is no sound resonating in the air around you. Space swallows sound. Possibly by design, none of the musicians were Terran and hurtling on a comet did not mean they were automatically dead. The vocalist stood, drooped, and lamenting over the sparkling, iridescent microphone. He belted into it continuously, but there was no sound to be heard. He had gone mad long ago and now he played the part. He could hear them and that is what mattered. It didn’t matter if what he heard was real or fake. It only mattered that he heard them and they sounded great. Occasionally, something would happen behind him. Possibly, a rock would collide somewhere beyond him and take away his band members, he could never be sure. If that happened, more always appeared. Everyone wants to be a rock god unless they don’t.

Tully noticed the blip first on the sonar detector. She squirmed in her seat and when Carl returned from the bathroom, she put him on it.

“Carl, look over there!” She pointed at the sonar screen. Carl gasped. He actually had not expected to find anything.

“Well I’ll be dipped!” He exclaimed. Tully nodded.

“I knew it was out here somewhere!” She was so excited. Carl loved when she beamed this way. That smile of hers was megawatts.

“We just gotta pinpoint exactly where…” She reasoned, looking over the sonar field one more time before setting her sights on the star stream before them. Stars rushed past them on Gutierrez Star River at such a high speed sometimes it was hard to see how many were out there. It was also hard to spot anything among the stars. They illuminated an impossibly black existence around them and that was fairly hard to do on it’s own without being blindingly bright. It took a bit of time, but Tully saw the glinting red of something beyond the star river.

“It’s on the other side of the river!” Astonished, Tully felt her heart beating rapidly.

“Well then, that’s where we need to go!” Carl responded and began to steer The Santa Maria through a gap in the rushing stream of falling stars. Once Carl saw the jewel floating eternally out in the middle of a deep black void on the other side of the illuminated star river, he gasped. No one would ever find it in usual circumstances. He was very glad he had Tully with him. There was no one as good at finding things as she was. Carl looked at his wife with staunch admiration.

“Hey,” He said, grabbing her and kissing her.

“How do we get it?” He asked after a moment, but Tully was already ahead of him. Murder Rock played vividly on the radio as Tully put on her space suit, she would be the one to retrieve the gem as she had been the reason they had even ventured out this far in the first place. Tully’s heart raced, but she told herself it was excitement and not nerves even though she hated deep space diving.

“Be careful.” Carl kissed his wife right before she went through the decontamination field doors and then out into the deep black void of space. Carl hated this as much as she did and wondered if he should have volunteered. Tully made her way to the gem methodically, reminding herself that she was tethered to the ship.

As she came upon the Jewel of Infinite Depths, the comet hurtling through the Aldora Nine galaxy made its presence known. Carl’s mouth was agape. It was moving so fast through space it had not registered on any of their detectors. He had never seen anything fly that fast through space in his whole life and he had seen plenty of fast flying things in his fifty years. The rock smashed into Tully, exploding her body part through the black depths that precluded the scavenger ship’s field of vision. Carl, mouth still agape, began to wail as what he saw set in before him. Carl had seen the different galactic creatures playing their instruments, singing their songs, but he had never truly listened to them until tonight. You didn’t hear them coming. You couldn’t hear them because it was space. Tully had loved them, though. As Carl watched his wife’s exploded body twirl and fly apart, he listened to Murder Rock on the radio waves.