The planet spun slowly in an elegant ellipse around the dying sun, the only remaining witnesses possessing neural nets so primitive they would never register the beauty of the dance.
As Petra and her crew shunted their ship across a million paper-thin quantum universes, she fought a loneliness that permeated her being. She had left three of her crew behind; frozen bodies buried in shallow graves, each topped with a marker no one would ever read. She had disobeyed orders which, had she carried them out, would have left more behind.
What troubled her most was what she would do next. Her orders from Starmada were explicit, and if she failed they would cancel not only her life, but those of everyone under her command. Then they would find some other heartless bastard to carry them out anyway.
Safely ensconced in her own quantum universe, she prepared to activate the Superstring Engine; a heinous device which would collapse every other parallel universe to a quantum singularity. Starmada had enough enemies to contend with; they would brook no trouble from elsewhere.
As Petra contemplated the horrific and unforgivable crime against the Universe she was about to commit, a thought presented itself: What if a Petra from another continuum was about to do the same? She smiled quietly to herself, deactivated the Superstring Engine, and reengaged the Shunt Drive.
She may end up dead in another universe, but she didn’t care.
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