The Shape of Elsewhere

Posted on 04 Jan 2026 @ 5:00am by Captain Sabrina Corbin

1,160 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: The Displaced
Location: USS Arawyn Bridge

The first reports came from Medical.

They were clinical in structure, restrained in language, and increasingly difficult to ignore. Dizziness. Disorientation. Nausea. Episodes of visual and auditory hallucination. No clear pattern of onset. No clear resolution. Symptoms rising and falling in waves rather than progressing along a linear curve.

Captain Sabrina Corbin stood at the center of the bridge as the information filtered in, her posture unchanged, her attention divided between the data scrolling across auxiliary displays and the corridor of light holding steady beyond the viewscreen. Amberlyn’s preliminary assessments ruled out the usual culprits quickly. No airborne toxins. No contamination of life support. No systemic failure. Sickbay was already responding, treating symptoms, stabilizing those most affected.

The absence of an internal cause narrowed the field more effectively than any single diagnosis could have.

Sabrina listened. She did not interrupt. She did not rush the process. She had learned, over years of command, that the first answer was rarely the right one and that uncertainty, handled properly, was not weakness.

When the report concluded, she acknowledged it with a nod and shifted her attention outward.

“Science,” she said, voice even. “Correlation.”

Lieutenant Commander Sorvak’s reply came after only a brief pause. Temporal variance across the ship had been rising steadily, subtle but measurable, ever since the corridor had stabilized. Phase drift remained within acceptable margins, but the harmonics tied the phenomenon directly to the rift. The overlap between reported symptoms and fluctuations in subspace resonance was too precise to dismiss as coincidence.

It was not proof. It was alignment.

Sabrina clasped her hands behind her back and drew a slow breath. The corridor no longer behaved like an injury to space. It behaved like a structure. Structures exerted pressure. Sometimes in ways that were not immediately visible.

“Log this as subspace-induced temporal perception variance,” she said. “Medical continues treating symptoms. Science tracks causation. Engineering maintains containment parameters. No speculation beyond that.”

Acknowledgements rippled across the bridge.

The deck beneath her feet felt steady. Inertial dampeners nominal. Structural integrity uncompromised. Every instrument that mattered agreed on that point.

And yet.

The sensation rose anyway. A subtle imbalance at first, barely enough to register. Sabrina had felt worse during long watches and sleepless rotations. She dismissed it out of habit and focus, keeping her gaze fixed on the viewscreen.

The nausea deepened.

Not sharply. Not violently. It rolled through her with slow persistence, as though gravity itself had tilted a fraction off true. She adjusted her stance without thinking, redistributing her weight. The bridge lights seemed a touch too bright. Sound thinned at the edges, voices flattening into something distant and indistinct.

She drew another breath, slower this time, and lifted one hand slightly. Not in alarm. Just long enough to steady herself.

The smell reached her before the image did.

Tea.

Her brow furrowed.

That was impossible.

The bridge dissolved.

She stood in a small kitchen bathed in warm, late-afternoon light. The transition was so complete that it did not feel like a vision at first. It felt like an arrival. As though she had stepped into a space that had been waiting for her.

A kettle sat on the stove, steam whispering softly from its spout. Not boiling. Not yet. The sound was intimate, domestic, entirely out of place.

Sabrina realized she was holding a mug.

Ceramic. Warm. The weight of it sat easily in her hand, familiar in a way that bypassed memory and went straight to instinct. Her fingers rested against the handle as if they had always done so. She turned it slightly without thinking, aligning it just so on the counter.

There was another mug beside it.

Identical.

She stared at the second mug for a long moment, a faint crease forming between her brows. It did not feel intrusive. It did not feel wrong. It belonged there. That certainty settled uncomfortably in her chest.

She adjusted the kettle by a fraction, a small correction she did not remember deciding to make. Her body simply knew how. The kettle responded with a soft shift of sound, but never crossed the threshold into a boil.

Time hovered in that almost-moment. Suspended. Unhurried.

Behind her, there was the sense of someone else in the room.

Not close enough to startle her. Not distant enough to dismiss.

Present.

Sabrina did not turn right away. The presence carried no urgency, no demand. It felt patient. As though it had always been there and would remain whether she acknowledged it or not.

When she did glance toward the doorway, the figure stood half in shadow.

Too tall to be a child.

Too still to be an adult.

The light refused to reach their face, leaving only posture and outline. A quiet solidity. A sense of belonging that tightened something behind her ribs without warning. The figure did not speak. Did not move closer. It simply existed, as though this moment had been expected.

As though she had been expected.

The kettle clicked softly.

Not boiling. Just enough sound to break the stillness.

Pain exploded behind her eyes.

The kitchen shattered.

Sabrina cried out as the bridge slammed back into place around her. Light flared too bright. Sound rushed in all at once. The nausea surged violently, pitching her back into the command chair before she could catch herself.

Figures around her moved to intercept her fall, but paused as she landed in the chair. The bridge felt solid again, brutally so, every sensation magnified. Her vision swam, spots dancing at the edges as a severe headache bloomed, immediate and unforgiving.

She pressed her fingers hard against her temple and forced herself to breathe through the wave of sickness threatening to overwhelm her.

The rift still pulsed on the viewscreen. Unchanged. Impassive.

Concern radiated from the bridge crew in tight, controlled movements. No panic. Just readiness. Someone else moved closer, careful not to crowd her.

Sabrina straightened with effort, lowering her hand as the worst of the nausea receded. The headache remained, a dull, insistent pressure that refused to be ignored.

“I’m fine,” she said, clipped and steady. “It passed.”

The words were an assertion, not a reassurance. The bridge accepted them by habit as much as trust.

She waved them off with a sharp motion and reclaimed her stance at the center of the bridge, posture immaculate despite the lingering tremor in her hands. The scent of tea lingered faintly at the edge of her awareness, impossible and unmistakable.

This was not an anomaly to be dismissed. It was confirmation.

She turned her attention back to the data, to the corridor, to the steady hum of a ship holding itself together under strain. The temporal variance they had been tracking was no longer abstract. It had reached into her, bypassed training and discipline, and shown her something that had nothing to do with duty.

Footsteps approached quickly from the medical station.

Captain Sabrina Corbin
Commanding Officer
USS Arawyn

 

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