Designed
By: Tim King
Tags: Technology, Future, Fiction, Microfiction, SciFi

‘It fits… I can’t believe it fits’

Long forgotten dust stirred, gloved hands wiped and prodded at dark controls. The cabin was cool, rebreather masks visibly fogging with each breath in the torchlight.

‘What do you mean it fits? What fits?’

‘My phone, it… this is going to sound completely stupid, it actually fits into this console.’

She crouched to get a better look at her phone which fit snugly into a cradle on the forward console. Its edges seemed to match perfectly, as if it was designed for her specific device.

‘That’s a bit absurd isn’t it?”

He came to a rest beside her, aiming his wrist torch at the phone. He ran a gloved finger across the device, expecting to find an uneven surface, but she was right… it fit perfectly.

‘Strange huh?’ She said, examining it even closer.

‘This has to be a classic example of convergent technology development, given that the cabin is roughly average sized for a human we can theorise that whoever built this craft was much like us. Bipedal, around five to six feet in height, and they may have developed devices of a similar size and shape.’ he said, rapidly tapping the underside of his wrist as he logged an entry into his journal.

‘Sure, I can believe that, but… here look, I didn’t notice it before but there is a sliding switch that exposes a plug… a plug that would fit my phone.’ She’d slipped the device out of the cradle and was playing with the switch, sliding it back and forth, the little plug moving in time with her hand.

‘Coincidence, nothing more, a thousand different objects would fit into the charging socket of your phone… this just happens to be one of them.’ He said looking up momentarily.

She slid her phone back into the cradle, it clipped in tightly again, this time pushing the switch and connecting the plug to her phone. The small screen of her device lit up, recognising the plug.

‘Er, not to be alarmed… but my phone is charging.’ She said turning slowly around to face her counterpart.

‘What!? So that plug actually fits? You were right?’

‘Seems that way, it’s charging just like in its cradle at home, hang on, a prompt just came up on the screen.’ She looked closer at the device, a small box was displayed along with a yes/no prompt.

‘It’s asking me if I’d like to install an app.’

‘You’re kidding me… I’ve got to see this.’ He stopped typing and crouched, all of his attention turned to the phone, its glow reflected sharply in his rebreathers visor. ‘Well I’ll be… so… you going to install it?’

‘I suppose, might as well gather as much intel we can while here.’ She motioned her hand toward the device.

‘Wait… lets think about this for a second, we are in a craft two-hundred feet below the surface, we’ve dated the vessel at approximately seven-thousand six-hundred years old… and it wants to install an app on your phone…’

‘Yes? and?’ She looked back at him with a blank stare.

‘That doesn’t seem a bit odd to you?’ He asked in monotone.

‘Sure, its strange, but this is what we came here for isn’t it? The intrigue, the mystery of it all? No point turning back now.’ Extending her index finger she lightly pressed her phone screen with the conductive tip of her glove. The message disappeared, replaced with a progress bar that quickly filled.

‘It’s done, my phone has installed the app.’

‘Well that was fast, open it then, no sense waiting.’

She tapped the screen again, the display dimmed and turned black, soon it was quickly filled with orange text blurring past at an ever increasing rate. Buttons on the console began to illuminate, flashing in eerie concert, driven by an unknown power source.

‘It’s booting up, I have no idea how this is even remotely possible, but it’s doing it.’ He said, shaking his head in wide-eyed disbelief. His fingers furiously adding to his journal, trying to keep up with the events unfolding.

Slots opened up on the console, triangular shapes unfolded and met at comfortable angles in front of the two forward seats, they both sat down. Information streamed across the new displays, it seemed to be floating in the air a few inches away.

‘This is just bizarre, it’s English, everything is written in modern English.’ He said, reaching out to grab at the ethereal imagery before him.

‘What did you expect? Klingon?’

‘Not bloody English that’s for sure!’ He said, turning to her with a scowl.

Their feet sensed a low vibration resonating through the cabin deck plates as unseen machinery wound into life, the displays still flooding the space with light and data. A chart filled the left screen, a cross hair picking out specific points on a map of stars.

‘That’s a star chart, look there is Antares, wait it’s showing us the Andromeda cluster.’ he said.

‘It’s showing us more than that, look at the calculations! Trajectory, spacial position, and… is that describing a quantum slipstream?’ she asked, trying to make sense of the display.

‘No…’ he said, his voice going cold. ‘those are temporal mechanics… it’s plotting a course using gravity folds… apparently this craft can navigate through higher dimensions.’

She stared for a moment at him, then turned back to the data. Thoughts of beings, worm holes and space travel from a thousand different television shows filling her mind. She shook her head for a moment, a bewildered look spread rapidly across her face.

‘Dimensions, you said dimensions yes?’ she asked.

He nodded, tightening his lips, left eyebrow raising slightly.

The craft hummed louder, the very air felt like it was vibrating around them, a fleeting smell of ozone filled their masks for a moment. She held her hand out, he caught the movement from the corner of his eye and placed her hand in his.

‘Well, it’s one small step for…’

She interrupted him.

‘Just shut up and hold on.’ she said, gripping his hand tighter.