Cylinders

 NOTE:  This short story was inspired by the Chris Zabriskie Album "Cylinders" which you can listen to,  here:

She woke up and didn't know where she was. She was reminded of being outside on a spring day, but the walls curved upwards. She didn't recognize the flying animals she saw. They looked like birds, but didn't have beaks. Then she remembered. her spacesuit ran out of air, and she was screaming for help and passed out. Someone had picked her up and saved her life. But what? The first Cylinder was about half a kilometer long. She found a small stone and tossed it in the air, and it spirled away.

"So, the gravity here is from centripital force" she thought to herself. Unsure what to do, she walked toward the other end of the cylinder. She opened the door and walked inside.

The door closed behind her. The second cylinder was rotating much slower, and she felt much less weight in here. She looked up, and saw large, indistinct creatures, like whales with articulable hands and feet. She noticed the humming in the background; the large beasts seemed to be making noises at each other. Smaller, fishlike creatures floated in the air, and made tinkling sounds at each other. It was strange and beautiful. This cylinder was over 2 kilometers long, so she treked to the end, and opened the door, and walked inside the third cylinder.

The Third cylinder was barely lit, and a small machinelike hum permeated the interior. Lights slowly brightened at her entrance, and machines all around activated; their hums contributing to a beautiful song.  As the lights rose, she saw computer consoles and strange chairlike objects in front of them. This looked like a control room of sorts; a bridge. She approached one of the consoles, and strange figures scrolled down holographic screens. She touched one of the consoles, and it flashed red, and shut down. The lights and other machines all followed, quieting down to the original low sound from when she entered. She moved to the next cylinder, and opened the door.

The fourth cylinder was very tall, but quite short. only about 150 meters long. She wasn't sure how tall it was. Gravity in here felt "normal" to her. Large mechanical poles reached up into the center of the cylinder, glowing and pulsing with light and sound. The air smelled of ozone and electricity. She continued down into the next cylinder and opened the door.

The fifth cylinder was extremely cold, and about 500 meters long, with lower gravity inside. She saw hundreds of thousands of boxes giving off vapor from the cold. She walked up to one and examined it.

Each box had similar strange text she saw from the control room, with pictures of different, strange, bipedal creatures, with large heads and small eyes on them.  She felt like she was being watched, so she quickly ran down the length of the cold cylinder, and opened the door to the next one.

The sixth cylinder sang a beautiful but sad song to her. She didn't understand the words, or the music, but she felt a song of loss and hopelessness, with fading optimism; the feeling of being lost without hope. She understood the song better than she realized.

The seventh cylinder had a rotating beacon of light in the center. It reminded her of the old Earth lighthouses, but the light would articulate up and down. A low rumble followed the single light as it rotated around the middle of the cylinder.  The light slowly changed color, and with it, the rumble sang lower. The light stopped on her, suddenly looking her up and down. The room came alive with further song, and more lights appeared from the center, and the rear of the cylinder. The lights and sounds examined her, and the music slowly started to make sense; she could understand it. She raised her arms, so the light could get a better look at her. she articulated her fingers when one spot of deep red light shined on her hands. An orange light, with a beautiful melody, asked her to open her mouth, and the light examined. All the beacons pointed to the next door, which opened for her. "Continue, we need you!" the light-song beckoned, so she followed.

The eighth cylinder had one of those large-head-small-eyed beings in it. Well, it was a hologram anyway. The being's hologram sang to her in it's light-song language. "We are lost." it said, solemnly. 

"The star in this system killed many of us when it blasted radiation at us. we were unprepared." The song of the being rose, hopefully. 

"We saved our cargo of refugees in stasis, they are fine, but we, the engineers and pilots have died.  Can you bring us to our new home?" 

She nodded, and sang her response in their light-song language. The door to the ninth cylinder opened.

She put her hands on the controls, and suddenly she understood. A chorus of voices sang to her. "Thank you." they said. "thank you!" and they went back to sleep.