Note: I dictated this in one take and hand transcribed the audio. I've edited the transcript lightly. Thanks for the opportunity to practice dictablogging or verbal writing :)

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This system's planets are spaced far apart. Leonis made for an ideal imperial recruit: young, energetic, and unreasonably brave. It is also quite unfortunate for the imperial powers that he allows his head to be filled with vague notions of duty, sacrifice, and commitment to a cause bigger and higher than himself.

And now he finds himself in an orbital station that is nothing but a metallic and glass indictment of the warped monstrosity a false "universal" identity and misplaced zeal can produce. Orbiting around Wrangus, the unnamed station is yet one of the many imperial observatories and way stations legislated from deep within the steel and glassed bowels of the imperial home planet - A Place That Shall Not Be Named.

Days quickly turned into weeks as the young zealot ensured that all terminal panels were clean and floors were shinier than when they first shipped from imperial robotic slave factories somewhere in the vast, barely-charted, exploited waste the empire calls its territory. Days blur into weeks, and weeks fast morph into months.

With fire in his eyes, the young imperial recruit can slowly feel his passionately-held assumptions about service, duty, commitment, and the "Greater Imperial Good," slowly ebbing away into the cold embrace of the void surrounding him. While it's true that Wrangus is not exactly the galactic trade intersection that many other fortunate recruits have been assigned to, the young man held onto a lingering wish for at least some sort of social activity flowing through this empty corner of space, but no chance.

He can only stare out into the void each day as he witnesses the all-too-predictable angry dance between the two bright stars that made the centerpiece of the violet-bluish sky ahead. "Did I make a mistake?" This is the one question he could barely keep himself from asking, yet it claws at him. It baits with every button he pushes daily to ensure that all systems in the station are working.

It baits knowing that today's data will be the same as yesterday's and last month's. He could feel the seconds of his life ticking away. Nobody out there notices, and it will take quite some convincing for him to believe that somebody cares. Yet, he pressed on ensuring all systems were operating, food was being generated, waste recycled, heat repurposed, and energy converted.

As he slumped down in his command console for what seemed to be yet another uneventful and terminally long day, a bright spot on his console caught his eye. It's as if it's blinking quickly in and out of existence. He considers himself lucky to have caught it. Zooming in on his sensor, he quickly runs a chemical and energy assay. The words "all clean" escaped from his lips.

In terms of dimensions, it didn't seem like much. Three units by five units. Quickly doing the mental calculation, of the amount of energy it would require to reconstitute into the station's decompression and decontamination bays, he quickly concludes that this would be an easy job. Carefully listening to his best instincts, he pushes on the retrieval sequence button, and within seconds, this mysterious piece of, from all appearances, space junk appears in the bay.

With a flick of his wrists, the standard imperial energy field encompasses his body as he instantly teleports in front of the object. These imperial suits (for lack of a better term) act as all-around protective gear, virtually guaranteeing its wearers from any harm or danger posed by gravity, decompression, toxic chemicals, or a wide range of radiation. Light, transparent, and requiring very little energy inputs, these suits are part of why the empire arose and continues to exist (much to the pain and suffering of the many species currently under its control.)

Running his hands through the surface, he can't quite help but notice the intricate, almost-syncopated pits and jagged edges interspersed with flat, uneven spaces. It's as if the individual organism or the species that created this object wanted to give off a "primitive" impression. His young mind could not help but conclude that it was very clever. No sooner had he finished running his hands through the front of the object than it started to hum.

Before he fully realizes what's going on, the object bursts into unbearable light. He had seen explosions before during training; they were quite routine. But there is something about the light from this device that pushed him to shield his eyes, something he rarely did during live-fire training. "I am here," a distinctively female voice proclaims.

As he regains the strength in his knees to stand up straight with his chest toward the voice, a wild explosion of pulsating, quickly-changing colors seems to fill the room. No heat, just irresistible light immune to the intimidation of logic or easy explanation. Again, he is forced to cover his eyes. "I am here!" the voice impatiently declared again. Putting down his arms and hands, he defiantly opened his eyes to take in the full image in front of him. It was a female demon.

Demons, of course, come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and energy emanations. It's as if, by definition, they play to our own cultures' understanding of what a terrifyingly powerful and horrifically willful organism should be. The young recruit understood this. At least he had that much mental and spiritual discipline. Within a split second, the demonist shifted through what seemed like a thousand manifestations, each a homage to every different subcultural, anthropological variation of thousands of language groups that made up the empire.

"You are quite hard to pin down," the female voice points out. One can sense from the lilt of her voice that she was impressed at the recruit's mental clarity. "How would you like me to appear?" she finally said, much like a magician losing his patience after running out of tricks. "Appear however you want," the young recruit answered. His answer took time, not because he was afraid but because he wanted to choose his words carefully.

Considering the energy released by the device, the young man's once-crisp imperial standard outfit looked wrinkled and disheveled. One can easily be forgiven that his suit had shrunk a size or two in some places. The demonist looked at the young and disheveled man that summoned her. "Can you keep me company?" he asks. This orbital station is so lonely."

r/tylerwritestheweb