The elderly dragon slammed his claws on the counter in a huff. He slowly looked up and into the eyes of the dragon tending the counter. Or, to be more accurate, he looked into the left eye of the dragon as the right eye was made of moving metal gears and shiny glass.

“You’d think a dragon half made of metal would know how to work a cog and screw properly!”, the elderly dragon spat out.

“Just goes to show that you can’t rely on anyone anymore! Why I’ve been coming to this shop for years and now I come back and find my favorite watchsmith is gone. The nerve of Dr. Greft to go off world like that, without telling me. And now I’m stuck with a worthless hunk of metal and scales who wouldn’t know a ratchet from a barrel cover! Well, aren’t you going to say anything?”

Rimor, the “worthless hunk of metal” held his tongue for fear of saying something that might get the old drake even more upset. He tried to match the elderly dragon’s gaze in intensity and responded as calmly as he could.

“Curtis, I told you earlier that we no longer carry the parts needed to fix your watch. I’ve suggested to you already to purchase a new one at a heavily discounted price since you’re such a good customer.” He made sure to put extra emphasis on the end of the sentence so Curtis would pick up on it.

“Bah! That’s the trouble with you youngins. Always looking to replace something before you try and fix it. No sense for sentimentality!”

Rimor sighed and held out his left hand for Curtis’s watch.

“I’ll take a look at it, but I won’t guarantee that I can fix it for you. And it’s going to cost a fair bit to make the parts custom for this type of watch. Might be more than a whole new watch by the time I’m done.”

“Forget it then! I’ll take my business somewhere the help isn’t a talking toaster and actually knows how to do their job!”

And with that Curtis stormed out of the shop and slammed the glass door behind him, nearly breaking the welcome bell.

Rimor raised his hands to his head and rubbed at his temples. He enjoyed his job, but there were always those customers that gave him a healthy headache by the end of the day. He checked the time in his internal clock by blinking his right eye twice in rapid succession and found that it was time to close up the shop for the night. He locked the display case, made sure to wind the clocks that needed wound, and threw his cloak over himself to step outside. He locked the door and jiggled the door handle to make sure it was secure and then headed off in the direction of Dr. Greft’s home. As he walked he could see some of the other residents of the town staring at him. He had gotten used to it over the last year, but it still made him uncomfortable. He didn’t know if the cloak was more for him or the other dragons at this point. It didn’t take long to make it to the doctor’s house. He fumbled with his keyring until he found the correct key and unlocked the house, stepping inside.

He felt around in the dark to flip the light switch on the wall, clanking against the switch clumsily until a triumphant *click* could be heard. The room lit up with the fluorescent overhead lights and Rimor could finally see the inside of the building clearly. The workshop was right inside the entrance to the house, followed by the sleeping quarters, and then the rest of the house. Dr.Greft had set up the house layout this way to maximize his ability to work on his projects without having to go through the whole house. It allowed him the time and energy to power through his more complex work, like fixing Rimor, quicker. And while Rimor thought the setup was unhealthy, especially for a dragon as old as Dr.Greft, he was glad that he had it after the accident. Rimor took off his cloak and hung it over a nearby chair that had spare parts on it. He set out the watches that people had brought in for the day on the workbench and turned on the small lamp on the table. Sitting down he grabbed the fine tools of his trade and concentrated on his right eye to cause a magnifying lens to pop out of his head and assist him. Working on watches relaxed him. Even before the accident Rimor enjoyed the fine work that was involved in repairing the town’s watches. There was a certain feeling of joy when a piece slotted into place and the watch would start ticking again that he couldn’t get enough of.

After fixing the last watch, he willed the magnifying glass back into his head, turned off the light, and stood up. He yawned, opening his maw quite wide before he heard a small grinding sound. Those pesky servos got caught again, oh well. Rimor was used to this now. Nothing a little oil wouldn’t be able to fix. He walked to the doorway of the bedroom and went to walk through. He heard a CLUNK and found he couldn’t move through. Looking behind him he found his wings had managed to not retract all the way. He reached back and manually engaged the mechanism to get them to close properly and they shut with a tinny *ping*. This was also common for Rimor. The adaptive touch sensors that Dr.Greft installed in his cybernetics were state of the art but that didn’t mean that they didn’t malfunction from time to time. He couldn’t figure out why Dr.Greft had installed them in his new wings anyway. His added mass made it so that he couldn’t use his wings for flight so it didn’t make sense to him. But then, Dr. Greft wasn’t known for making sense either. Rimor walked through the bedroom and to the bathroom. He opened the medicine cabinet and grabbed his usual nighttime supplies before closing the door again with the tip of his tail.

He sat on the edge of the bed and used a spray bottle filled with some oil to loosen up his jaw. He moved it a few times experimentally to make sure that it wouldn’t catch again and then closed it. He set the bottle down and breathed in deeply. Within his lungs a multitude of systems were firing to make sure that the air was being filtered correctly and passed around his biomechanical body. He stared down at his hands and moved them both in unison. The left one was a combination of wires, metal, and servos to simulate his organic right one. The motions were nearly one to one but the mechanical one was just a smidge faster. Rimor found the hardest thing to come to terms with after his accident wasn’t all the new machinery strapped to him but rather what had happened to his scales. His old coat of scales was a lustrous and deep green and after months of surgeries and his body adapting to his new augmentations his coat had dulled to a light grey. The only piece of him that remained largely unaltered was his left eye. It still blazed with the same bright orange that he was born with. The right one was a convincing replica, and Dr. Greft had made sure to install some lights into the base of the glass so that it looked more life-like. He rubbed the back of his head absentmindedly and scratched himself on his horns. He forgot how sharp the metal tips were now. On the bright side, at least he didn’t have to file them nearly as often anymore. He chuckled a little to himself and thought he should just be happy to be alive. But life sure was strange now.

He put away his supplies and bandaged his hand before coming back to make the bed. The bedroom belonged to Dr. Greft and Rimor was told he could use it while the doctor was gone, but for the first three weeks he couldn’t sleep in it. It felt weird to use the doctor’s bed even if he wasn’t around to be in it. He opted to just use the charging station in the corner of the room instead. Since most of Rimor’s bodily functions were regulated for him now, all he really had to do to keep going day to day was plug in and make sure he got about six hours of consistent charge. But old habits die hard and after a few weeks Rimor missed the familiar comfort of blankets and pillows. He found an amicable workaround by dragging his charging cord to the edge of the bed and plugging into a port at the end of his tail. That let him move around the bed mostly unhindered. As he laid his head down onto the cool pillow he thought about Dr. Greft again. He’d been gone about a year now since he left the planet. Everyone had told him that he’d blow up in the atmosphere, but that only seemed to fuel his passion. He was adamant that he had to go to space though, someone or something was in trouble and he had to go fix it. Classic Dr. Greft, he thought, rubbing his cold metal arm. Rimor knew that Dr. Greft would be back eventually, but not knowing when made him uneasy.

He tossed and turned in the covers, trying to get comfortable. No matter what position he ended up in, the bed still felt uncomfortable. He tried to stop thinking of Dr. Greft and the uncaring void of space but it pressed fervently upon his mind. He threw off the covers and snatched up the small transceiver that was close by. He fiddled with the dials and antennae until he could hear some faint static come through. He always felt silly doing this, like a child really, but there was always a small possibility. Dr. Greft’s ship had a transceiver as well and Rimor liked to imagine that maybe one day he could find the same signal. That he could talk to Dr. Greft again, across all those millions of miles. He twisted and turned the knobs incessantly. An adjustment here, a small quarter turn on this frequency, but yielded nothing. He eventually fell asleep slumped over the device, drooling out of the side of his mouth.

He was woken up by his internal alarm clock and could still hear the faint hum of the transceiver. Soon after he started his usual routine of brushing his teeth, polishing his cybernetic metal, and checking to make sure that all his wires were in the right spots. Once he was clean and ready to head to the shop, he picked up the transceiver and plugged it into an outlet in the workstation. He’d need to let it charge since it ran all night. Picking up his cloak from the chair he flung it around his shoulders and strode out the door.

The day at the shop was routine. Curtis came back again early in the morning to demand that Rimor fix his watch. He told him the same thing as the day before but this time Curtis was willing to hand over the watch for a more thorough fix. He still called Rimor a waffle iron before leaving the shop though. The other customers filtered in throughout the day and picked up their watches without incident. Rimor didn’t even have time to properly set the clocks in the shop before it was time to go back home.

He hung up his cloak on the chair as he walked in and took out Curtis’s watch. He turned it over in his hands with curiosity and decided to try and fix it now rather than wait until later. Pulling the tools closer to him, he sat down at the workbench to open up the watch and see what he was dealing with. He concentrated and once again the magnifying glass popped out of his head to assist him in looking at the internals of the watch. As he poked and prodded at the mechanical guts of his patient, he grew increasingly curious as to how it ever ran at all. The gears were turned upside down and the springs were wound so tight that just poking them with his tools caused them to shoot off into the room. He started to tear the watch apart and with each portion removed became more worried he wouldn’t be able to put it back together again. This was the kind of patchwork job that only happened with years of small repairs from multiple different watchsmiths. He reached for the spare parts bin that he kept next to the workbench for problem cases, hoping he could find something of use. He pulled a few pieces out and tried them in a combination in the watch. Closed it up and tried to wind it. Got through three winds before the spring broke in the mechanism. He was determined though and took out the parts and found new ones. These parts were a snug fit, but they looked promising, so he closed up the watch and wound it again. To his surprise the watch started to tick! Success! Except that when he went to reset the bevel for the time the watch burst open from the strain. He ripped out the pieces and dumped out the spare parts box on the table. There had to be something here to be able to fix it. He would fix it, and then Curtis would have to be grateful. Another set of parts clicked into place and again, the watch wouldn’t start. He ripped them out and threw the parts on the ground, scooping up the nearest handful of springs, gears, and cogs and shoved them into the watch. He used his metal hand to force the watch closed and turned the bevel ever so slightly. And then something miraculous happened. The watch began ticking. Rimor was ecstatic and in his joy jumped up and let the watch fall. Time slowed down, Rimor tried to reach out with his right hand to catch it, but the watch slipped out of his claws and hit the workbench with a loud CRUNCH. The room was silent as Rimor held back his automated breathing to hear if the ticking was still going. The longer he waited, the more upset he became. After a minute of holding his breath he re-engaged his systems and took in just enough air to let out a roar.

“RAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!”

He scooped up the watch and threw it as hard as he could across the room. The watch sailed through the air in a graceful arc before hitting the transceiver off of the shelf and onto the floor. Rimor got up so fast from his seat that his tail tipped his chair over. He jumped over the workbench and went to gingerly scoop up the transceiver. There was a low buzzing coming from it and when Rimor touched the bent antennae a flash of an image came through into his systems. He instinctively blinked his eyes multiple times to bring out the image again, but it was so fast that his systems couldn’t recall it. What was that? What had he seen in his internal systems? Rimor carried the transceiver to the work table and set it down gently. He could hear something very faint coming from the device, but it was too quiet for him to pinpoint exactly what. He reached for the nearest set of pliers and went to bend the antennae into shape again. Halfway through bending it back up, he heard a familiar voice.

“Please help if you can...”, the voice trailed off but Rimor knew that it was Dr. Greft. He yelled into the outgoing mic on the transceiver to let him know that he was listening, but he received no answer. There was a long pause in the audio, until Dr. Greft’s voice came through the speaker again.

“This is Dr. Harvey Greft, traveling through the V-9 sector. If anyone can hear me, I’m in dire need of assistance. My ship has lost the ability to jump to warp and I am afraid I may not be able to make it back to my home. I’ve placed the ship into auto-pilot and will keep my physical body in a state of cryogenic sleep to prolong my lifespan. The coordinates encoded in this message will give you the location of my ship. And Rimor, if you’re listening, I’m so very sorry. To all available ships, I humbly ask you, please help if you can...”

The message ended and Rimor slid down to the floor in disbelief. He felt a confusing mixture of happiness and panic as he tried to process what happened. Dr.Greft was still alive, that much was at least certain. But for how long? And when was the message sent out? Would he even be in the same spot when Rimor arrived to take him home? Questions swirled in Rimor’s mind as he desperately tried to come up with a plan to save his mentor. The room was eerily quiet as he got up off the floor and stared down at the transceiver. The recorded message of Dr. Greft began to play again filling the air with a soft radio buzz. This time Rimor found that he couldn’t keep back his tears. He rubbed at his left eye and sniffled a little. He never thought he would get the chance to repay the doctor for saving his life, but now he had a chance. Regardless of the stakes, he would find a way.

The only trouble was getting a ship. Dr. Greft hand assembled his over many months before he was even ready for a test flight, let alone a full launch. Rimor remembered the long nights the doctor spent working on the polished metal with only the dim lighting of the workstation to guide him. He could still see the curious glint reflected from his eye in the chassis of the ship. It would take Rimor years to replicate his research and then a lifetime to get the materials and assemble them. He cracked a grin and chuckled to himself. He wasn’t the doctor after all. How did he think this was going to go? Feeling dejected he went to grab the transceiver with his right hand. As soon as he made contact with the device though, his internal systems were bombarded by a barrage of images. His audio systems gave a small warning chime before they were disabled from the volume. He was overwhelmed with the amount of information coming through his head and it took him a few minutes to process what was being transferred. As he concentrated he could mentally select one of the image files that was floating around the periphery of his vision. He brought it to the center of his screen and focused in on the writing. The letters were written in an older form of draconic but Rimor could make out the numbers to the side as a type of measurement. Panning over the image, he could see a diagram that showed the intricate assembly of a large metal wing. It was a blueprint. All of them were.

Rimor could barely contain his excitement as he filtered the images coming into his system into separate folders. He heard his systems begin to give him the telltale warnings that he was running out of internal memory storage and his head started to feel fuzzy. He had to get to the next room and plug into his backup memory banks. He stumbled away from the workbench and braced himself on the doorframe using his robotic arm. He made sure to keep the transceiver firmly grasped in his right hand as he swayed back and forth. He was so concerned with getting into the room he didn’t notice that when he pushed off the wall he ripped a chunk of it out. Tripping on the blanket left haphazardly on the floor, he fell forwards into the backup memory banks. A solid CLUNK could be heard as he dropped the piece of door frame in surprise. He quickly picked up the requisite cords and plugged himself into the machine. Slowly, Rimor began to get the feeling back in his body and could think clearly again. He had a horrible headache, but that was a small price to pay for keeping the schematics intact.

Rimor watched the loading bar of the memory banks intently for hours, hoping that the slowly crawling line of green would jump to the end dramatically. Unfortunately for him, the upload was taking hours to get anywhere. It wasn’t long before he had to consider going to bed and picking it up in the morning. He went to unplug the cable from his head, but then hesitated. What if he can’t find the same signal in the morning? No, it was better to try and stay up. He watched the screen wide-eyed for another hour before his head began to droop slowly. He fought with everything he had to keep himself from losing focus, but it didn’t help. When he finally did fall asleep, the muscles in his hand relaxing woke him up again. His eyes sprung open and he reflexively clenched on the transceiver so hard that he put some claw marks into the metal. This wasn’t going to work, he had to find an alternate solution.

Rimor looked around his bedroom fervently for anything that might help him in keeping the transceiver from falling out of his hand. He saw his usual stockpile of oils and lubricants in the corner of the room, but that was only going to make things worse. Then he had a flash of inspiration and a mischievous grin crept onto his snout. He darted out of the room so fast the cords jumped into the air. He was so excited when he came back that he almost tripped on the cords midair. Left eye gleaming, he held up a large industrial roll of duct tape and laughed.He’d make sure the transceiver stuck.

RRRRIIIIPPP, RRRRIIIIIPPPP, RRRIIIIIIPPPPP!

There, now it’s not going anywhere. He checked the progress bar one last time before getting ready for bed and found that it was about half-way done. After making sure he performed his nightly maintenance, Rimor plugged his tail into his charging station and crawled into bed. It was the first time since the accident he had so many wires sticking out of him. He shuddered involuntarily and rolled over in the bed. Soon the only light in the room was the monitor of the memory banks as it cast a soft blue light onto the floor.

Rimor dreamed very little since the accident, but when he did dream they were usually at odds with themselves. He would be skipping through a field of flowers and then hit an invisible wall so hard that the field would disappear and be replaced with filing cabinets. Or sometimes he would be doing one thing and then transfer to something else without hesitation. In one particularly frequent dream he would be fixing clocks at the store in silence and then suddenly be running. But while he ran he could hear a cacophony of ticking from the clocks in the shop. The sound never bothered him, but his legs always felt tired. He could always recall his dreams when he woke up in the morning thanks to the automatic memory storage system that Dr. Greft had installed to help Rimor. It was a strange side-effect from the surgery and it bothered Rimor. Mostly because he couldn’t control what he dreamt about. He would have much preferred to soar through the sky or to be organic again, but these ideas never materialized for him no matter how hard he tried to will them. So it was very odd for him to only recall a vague detail or two from the dream he had when he woke up the next morning. The only parts he could remember were feeling very warm, but not uncomfortable, and feeling suspended in the air, but not flying.

He shook his head and blinked a few times to get his systems up and running. He went to scratch his back with his right hand and about jumped out of his scales at the cool metal antennae that poked him. He had forgotten about the transceiver. He checked the screen on the memory bank and found the transfer had completed! It was petabytes of data, but he could worry about sorting through it all after work. He carefully removed the tape from his hand and washed the residue off of his claws. Before leaving for work, he made sure to bend down and kiss the transceiver.

 The shift at the shop dragged on and Rimor found himself watching the clocks more than usual throughout the day. Curtis didn’t stop in, but after what Rimor had done to his watch he was thankful for the absence. He rushed home and closed the door so quick his cloak got stuck and ripped off him. He didn’t even notice as he wheeled the memory bank out into the workshop and began to go through all of the schematics. By the end of the night he had somehow sorted them all. Exhausted and drained, he fell into his bed and slept. Over the next month his life took on a predictable rhythm. He would come home from work, immediately bring up the necessary schematics and then start working on building his spaceship. The metals needed were a precious commodity but luckily Dr. Greft had managed to hide some away in a corner of the house from his last project. Rimor worked until his servos seized up and he couldn’t move his left hand. The days and weeks blurred together and he ate less and less. Letting his cybernetic systems do most of the work in keeping his body functioning. But on the last day of the month he had finished the ship, and to celebrate he took the day off from the shop and slept for half the day.

The next day had a clear sky and was warm enough to heat your scales. A perfect launch day! Rimor wheeled the ship out from the house and pulled the tarp off of it with a grand flourish. The ship was a curious contraption built from the spare metals that were laying around the shop and anything else Rimor could scavenge from the local dump. The outside hull was a mixture of different colored metals twisted and shaped into the semblance of a spaceship. The cockpit was made from some sturdy panes of glass from the failed greenhouse down the street and was shaped in a circle to help oxygen stay inside the ship. The engine was the most complex portion of the ship and looked out of place in comparison to the rest of the craft. Twin thrusters a shining chrome that cast a blinding light when the sun shone on them. They were made up of most of the metal that Dr. Greft had left behind since it was extremely important that they function closely to the original schematics. The spaceship had two large wings, one on either side of the hull that broadly jut out from the center of the craft. And at the very top, held onto the hull with a generous amount of duct tape, was the transceiver that started it all. Rimor considered leaving it behind but decided to take it with him as a token of good luck. Looking over his creation, Rimor felt a swell of pride. It was certainly more complicated than a watch, but Dr. Greft had trusted that he could handle it and he delivered. Finally, it was time to take off.

He made one last sweep of the interior cockpit for supplies and went outside to begin the launch process. When he emerged from the cockpit he saw a small group of dragons from town crowded around him. They all had very concerned looks on their snouts. No one would look Rimor in the eye, except for one wrinkled old dragon. Rimor recognized Curtis right away and apologized for not having his watch with him to give back before he left.

“You can take any watch you want out of the case at the store, Curtis. It’s the least I can do after making you wait so long”, Rimor said.

“Keep your watch, you dense refrigerator. Where exactly do you think you’re going? You don’t honestly believe that hunk of metal is going to fly do you?”, Curtis growled out.

“Yes, I do, I’ve done a number of tests and in almost all of them I survive the initial flight past the atmosphere”, Rimor said assuredly.

“Bah! Listen to yourself! You’re so caught up in this cockamamie scheme of yours to leave you won’t even consider the grave consequences. You could die!”, Curtis said, shaking his scraggly hands at Rimor accusingly.

Rimor snapped back at Curtis, this time he was prepared.

“You think I don’t know that? Of course, I could die! But Dr. Greft needs me now, and I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try and help. Besides, what’s one less ‘refrigerator’ to you anyway? I didn’t know you cared so much.”

“Oh, pishposh! It’s not that at all. If you were to leave then no one would be around to fix our cloc-”, Curtis caught himself mid-sentence, realizing he had misspoken.

Rimor’s face scrunched up into a snarl, his voice taking on a low growl.

“Oh! So that’s what this is all about huh? You’re not really concerned for me, you’re concerned for your precious clocks. Well, don’t worry Curtis, I’ll be coming back. And I’m bringing Dr. Greft with me. But while you wait…”

Rimor grabbed a large keyring off his hip and threw them at Curtis. Curtis held up his hands in just enough time to keep them from hitting his face. Now the rest of the town was staring at him.

“...you can use my tools while I’m away. I mean if a machine like me can do it, must not be too hard, right?”, Rimor taunted.

He took one last look at the crowd of dragons and felt the animosity they had for him wash over him and found he didn’t care. He had more important matters to attend to. And so he turned around, swished his tail dramatically behind him, and boarded the ship.

Rimor took one last look at the readout from the ship’s display screen and sat down in the pilot seat. The spaceship looked crude on the outside, but on the inside, there was a massive cluster of advanced machines running simultaneously. Rimor made sure to get comfortable before plugging his head into the ship’s main console. This ship was designed to work with Rimor’s biomechanical components and as he felt the familiar flow of diagnostics cross his internal vision he knew he was connected. The next step was to hook into the adaptive touch sensors. Rimor carefully folded his wings to his sides and slid them inside two hanging mechanical slings. As they slotted into place, he could feel the touch sensors link up to the ship. He moved his wings independently to test the connection and found that he could move the wings of the ship in turn. It was odd being able to truly flex his wings again. Rimor felt a childlike giddiness overtake him and started to rapidly flap the wings of the ship. Chuckling, he reached under him to plug into the last connection. He had managed to splice his charging station into the main electronics of the ship and so he plugged his tail into the ship and felt a small rush of energy flow through his body as the connection was made. As the connection stabilized, he felt as though he was warm, but not uncomfortably so. More like wearing a wool coat with a cool breeze. Satisfied with his checks, Rimor blinked a few times to bring up the launch countdown on the main monitor display and started to count in his head.

10, the ship’s engines roared to life, 9, 8, 7, 6, the muscles and servos in Rimor’s body tensed, 5, 4, 3, 2, the ship started to move forward slowly, 1…

“BLASTOFF!!!”, Rimor screeched as loud as he could.

The ship roared to life and he was propelled away from the town. Within seconds he had run out of land for his runway and so he pulled on the steering control hard and jerked his wings up to catch the wind. The resulting force shook the whole cockpit and Rimor could feel the force of the engine fully on him. It pressed his metal implants further into his body and he could feel the tension building across his skin. He had to escape the atmosphere and fast. So he flapped his wings as hard as he could downward to give the engine a little boost. The wings of the ship responded in kind and the metal pushed down with enough force to create a shockwave that cracked across the sky.

WHOOOOOOOMMM!!!

The engine’s fire turned a bright white as the secondary fuel kicked into gear and the ship blasted through the clouds and out into space faster than Rimor could process. Before he knew it, his home planet was a speck in the reflection of the cockpit’s glass. The engine quietly shifted to its third fuel source and burned a calm orange and red across the backdrop of space. Rimor took a few moments to catch his breath and get his bearings again before pulling up the coordinates for Dr. Greft’s ship. If the tests were any indication, it was going to be a long trip. He plugged in the coordinates and watched as the computer plotted the course.

Launching into space was quite a different feeling than flying. It was extremely sudden and quite jarring. But once Rimor had managed to break through the atmosphere he could keep the wings of the ship in a stable position and 'glide' through space. It was amazing to be able to feel the joy of flight again, even if only through the ship. He wiped a tear from his left eye as he looked out over the vast horizon of space. He forgot how much he missed this. This feeling of weightlessness and calm. It felt normal.
            Rimor yawned, the servos in his jaw quietly creaking as he rubbed at his eyes. He didn't expect the launch to take that much out of him, but he felt it was better to test out the sleeping cycle he programmed into the ship now rather than later. Rimor took his hands off the steering control for the ship and rested them on the arms of the pilot's chair. Then he brought up a program in his internal system called "SLEEPYTIME.EXE" and ran it. The program automatically engaged the ship's auto-pilot and slowed Rimor's functions to a crawl so he could fall asleep. He slept well and dreamt of flying with his old wings.

            When Rimor woke up, eight hours had passed and he was a little stiff from sitting in the pilot seat all that time. He got up and stretched out his legs, making sure to give the cybernetic one more time to warm up. He flexed his wings absentmindedly and found the ship dip a little from the motion. Realizing what had happened he reached up with his hands to disengage the wing connection so that he could walk around the cockpit. The mechanism disengaged with a *ping* and Rimor once again had full control of his mechanical wings. He stretched them out and found that the one on the right side was a bit slow to open all the way.

            "Going to need to keep these oiled", he said.

            Rimor walked across the cockpit over to the rear of the ship where the rest of his supplies were stored. He picked up a large can of lubricating oil that he packed for the trip and began to lightly spray it on his wings. He'd have to be careful not to use too much, he only had enough to barely get him through the trip and back. He considered taking extra but didn't want to throw off his launch calculations by adding more unaccounted weight.

            "Speaking of weight...", he said looking down to the cooling unit he brought along.

            He opened the cooling unit and took out a packet of food. He was surprised that his hunger sensor was going off this early, but when he checked his internal clock he found that it was late in the afternoon. That can't be right, could it? Rimor looked out the cockpit's glass to check the time of day and found that all he could see was the endless abyss of space. Oh right, no sun to tell the time by. That was going to take some getting used to. He ripped open the bag of food, took out a dried piece of meat, and stuck it into his mouth. He wasn't the biggest fan of jerky, but it didn't spoil fast and he needed the protein to help him function. As he slowly chewed on the jerky, he practiced what he would say to Dr. Greft once he found him.

            "Never fear, Rimor is here! No, that's too dramatic. Oh! What about 'I've finally paid you back, you old drake!' No, no, still not right."

            He went through line after line as he ate and decided that he’d come up with something later.

            He felt an alert trigger in his internal systems and a pop-up flashed on his screen to tell him he was about to hit something. Acting swiftly, he dropped the bag of jerky on the floor and rushed over to the pilot’s chair. He quickly plugged himself into the wings, computer, and energy of the ship and then pushed the thrust of both of the engines to speed him out of harm’s way. After three seconds of extra fuel burn, the alert stops. He eased back off of the thrust until the ship was at a cruising speed again. Rimor breathed a sigh of relief and pat the control for the ship approvingly. But he was curious as to what exactly caused the alert in the first place? After going back and forth on whether he should investigate or not, he settled on turning the ship around and looking at what it was. He then slowly engaged the right engine to spin the ship back into the opposite direction. The object that almost hit his ship was a large chunk of rock that slowly gave off a trail of luminescent white, green, and blue. It was a comet, and it was beautiful. He never expected them to be so pretty this close up. The last dragon to speak about seeing a comet in his town was someone’s great-grandfather. And they had done a very poor job of capturing the contrasting beauty of the pitted rocky surface with the delicate and freely flowing trail of chemicals that followed closely behind. Rimor watched the comet for a long time, until the trail of colorful debris was only a speck on the glass of the cockpit. He felt very sad, because in that moment he considered leaving Dr. Greft behind to follow the comet’s trails instead. He shook his head so hard, he nearly popped out his enhanced eye. He couldn’t get distracted like this, he was on a rescue mission after all. And with a heavy heart, he turned the ship back around and continued on his course towards his destination.

Of all the problems Rimor was prepared for before he set off on this trip, the most obvious one eluded him. He was woefully unprepared for the amount of boredom that he would face. Some days there would be magnificent sights to see, a new planet that he could look at or some cosmic event like the comet, but most days nothing happened. He started to come up with small games to pass the time and keep himself from slipping into boredom. One such game was seeing how many pieces of jerky he could fit into his mouth before he had to close it to chew. It wasn’t the most stimulating game but he could only read the schematics he brought along with him so many times before they started to get repetitive. He considered using a stasis program he had written to help him sleep away the days but the last time he used it, he had a month-long nightmare. He’d rather chance boredom than live through that experience again.

He got up and walked to the rear of the cockpit and looked out the back of the ship absentmindedly. He looked at the slowly burning fire that trailed behind the engines like small geysers. Rimor touched his snout and wondered how long ago it was that dragons could still breathe fire. From what he knew it was many centuries since a dragon could spew flame properly. What an odd concept, and yet it seemed so natural to Rimor. If he concentrated hard enough he could just barely get an inkling of what it might feel like, but the feeling was always fleeting. Did any other drake feel this way, or was this philosophical musing just him going mad? It was hard to tell the difference anymore. He put his face up to the glass and pressed his snout against it in such a way that if he looked down the engines were obscured. He imagined that the engine’s fire was his own mighty flames and cracked a small smile in approval.

Months came and went and Rimor became more restless with his confined space. He started to question what all the machines that Dr. Greft had instructed him to build were even for. He went around to each of the consoles and displays and tried to recall what he built them for and found that for most of them, he couldn’t find a reason. This machine makes a beeping sound, but what else? Does it have another function? And why would Dr. Greft have had me make all these machines if they weren’t necessary? It didn’t make any sense to Rimor.

He looked at the machines in disgust. He was constantly surrounded by them and was in desperate need of a change in scenery. And much as he didn’t want to admit it, he missed the dragons back home. Even Curtis, the stubborn old fool that he was, crossed his mind every now and again. Space was cold and uncaring enough without the constant presence of machines blinking and beeping in your immediate vicinity. Rimor had thought about trying to use the transceiver to reach out to planets he passed by but found that since he had secured it so strongly to the roof of the ship, he couldn’t adjust the antenna to search for a new signal. The best he could do was patch the ship into the transceiver and listen to the pre-recorded message left by Dr. Greft. Which he did listen to, at least a thousand times. He would often put it on before engaging his sleep cycle to help him fall asleep. It relaxed him more than having to sit in the not quite silent room and hear the occasional beep disturb his rest.

The switch to having to regulate his own sleep schedule was jarring at first as well. The longer he spent in space, the harder it was to be able to tell the current time. He tried to keep to a schedule for the first couple months in order to better facilitate this but found that if a task took him longer to complete, he would get thrown off. The next couple months were marked by waking up late in the day and sleeping well into the night. This was a problem as his cybernetic systems were programmed to wake him up when it was “daytime” and have him go to sleep at “night”. The eventual solution was to change his internal clock to match the new routine that he had set for himself. Once he got used to the new setting, his bodily systems followed suit and he was functioning as intended again.

He still remembers one “night” when he was flying past a swirling purple and blue planet. He was desperately trying not to engage his sleep cycle and felt a slight brush against the left wing of the ship. The motion woke him up enough to look out the left side of the cockpit. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary so he assumed that it was just the touch sensors malfunctioning. He could feel his eyelids get heavier again and just as he was about to fall asleep, he felt a slight brush against the right wing. This time when he went to look out the right side he saw what was hitting the ship. It was a large greyish blue creature that moved as if it was floating on an imaginary sea. The body was a curious mixture of a whale and the tail of a seahorse. There was a multitude of brightly colored lights that made it look as though it was carrying a small universe in the curl of its tail. Rimor stared out the cockpit’s window slack-jawed in awe and rubbed his eyes a few times to make sure that he wasn’t seeing things. The creature seemed to move its mouth in an attempt to speak with Rimor. He tried to make signals with his hands and claws to communicate with it. The creature tilted its head to the side in confusion though and slid around the ship in one graceful motion before heading back to the swirling purple and blue planet below. Rimor wanted to chase after it, but as soon as the creature was out of sight his internal systems sent him into his sleep cycle. When he woke up the next morning, he was too far to turn back and try and establish contact.

As weeks passed by Rimor found that it was difficult to sit still while piloting the ship and fidgeted often. He needed a way to decompress and was running out of options. One day as he was gliding through a section of space that was especially uninteresting he received an alert from the ship’s onboard computer system that he was coming up on an asteroid belt. His first instinct was to pull away from it, but then he remembered the comet from months ago. So instead, he decided to try and fly through it. It would be much more interesting than avoiding it and he was confident that he could maneuver around the asteroids with ease. He made sure to hook himself into all of the connections to the ship and braced himself for the challenge.

The warnings from the computer got louder and more incessant until Rimor manually turned them off. The asteroid field came into focus on the cusp of the cockpit’s glass and he gripped the steering control tight with his claws in anticipation. He pulled back on the engine’s thrust so that he could move around the field slowly. The tension was building and Rimor loved every second of it. This was the most fun he’d had since he discovered the ship could flip upside down. Rimor’s ship creeped ever so gently into the first section of the asteroid field and passed through a small opening at the front. The asteroids at this part of the field were spread out and gave plenty of room for Rimor to pass between them as they moved around. But he wanted more. The asteroids at the center of the field were packed tightly together and were much more dangerous. He engaged the thrusters a tiny bit so that he could move to the center and get a better look. In the next moment, he felt a small rock scrape the underside of the right wing. Before he could react, he felt the sensation of an enormous asteroid crush the right wing like it was made of paper. Unfortunately, the touch sensors were still active, so Rimor felt the immense pressure be applied to his own wing before the circuit shorted out from too much stimulation.

“ARRRGGGGGHHHH!!!!”, Rimor screamed out in pain.

He wanted to grab his wing but there was no time, another asteroid was headed straight for the front of the cockpit. Rimor acted quickly and kicked the engines into high gear so he could duck underneath it. It missed the cockpit but he could feel the asteroid scrape the metal on the top of the ship as it went by. Now that he was moving faster, Rimor had to think much quicker to avoid all of the asteroids coming at him from every angle. He jerked the steering column sharply with his cybernetic arm to avoid each one but after the sixth asteroid he couldn’t move the ship anymore. He must have severed one of the wires for the control! The next asteroid was closing in and Rimor didn’t know what to do. He frantically pulled up any programs on his internal systems that might be able to help him and found one that was labeled “DO NOT USE EXCEPT IN EMERGENCY”. He ran the program and funneled all of the ship’s remaining energy to helping it run. There was a bright white flash in Rimor’s vision and then he didn’t feel his body anymore. Even stranger was that he felt as though he was the ship. He could feel the intense burning of the fuel from the engines as he deftly dodged each asteroid. And with one final push of energy, he rocketed himself out of the asteroid field and back into the safe reaches of space. The final push was too much for Rimor to handle though and as the ship exited the asteroid field the force exerted on his body was enough to sever the connection. Then all he could see was black.

When Rimor regained consciousness, he was greeted with overwhelming noise from the ship’s computer. He picked himself up off the floor and went over to see how much damage was done. From the warnings he could tell that he was slowly running out of fuel and that the cause was one of the fuel lines being cut. He didn’t have a space suit to go out and fix the line, so it was only a matter of time before he was as lost as Dr. Greft. Thankfully the cockpit’s glass only suffered minor scratches so he wasn’t in danger of losing oxygen. But the ship’s hull had taken quite the beating. The right wing would not respond to his inputs at all, the hull had deep gashes in it from the asteroids scraping over it, and the steering control was fried. The engines seemed fine but trying to have them run faster than impulse propulsion was too great a risk of fuel consumption. He was lucky that he lived, but he wouldn’t be alive for long. The fuel he had left would get him to the last known location of Dr. Greft, but just barely. He would not be able to return home.

“Some rescuer I am”, he muttered, “I can’t even rescue myself.”

He did his best to clean up the cans of oil that had spilled in the chaos and once he was sure that the warnings stopped, he got ready for his sleep cycle. True to his routine, he went to put on the message from Dr. Greft to help him fall asleep and found that he could only hear static. He tried adjusting the systems in the ship but nothing seemed to be working. His face scrunched up and he dropped to the floor sobbing. It was too much to bear to hold it in anymore. He brought his wings in close to his body and wrapped his tail around his legs as he tried to ride out his sadness. The metal wings were cold against his skin, but the weight of them was comforting.

After two more days of drifting, he heard a new sound come from the computer. One he hadn’t heard before. Fearing the worst, he got up from his pile of discarded jerky bags to see what tripped the alarm. The ship’s navigational computer pinged an alert into his internal systems once he got close enough.

“Your destination is coming up in about 3000 miles. Make sure to slow down”, the mechanical voice echoed into Rimor’s head.

He couldn’t believe it. Somehow the ship had drifted back onto course and he was only a few hours away. He’d be able to see Dr. Greft one last time after all! He spent the rest of the day cleaning the inside of the cockpit as best he could and made sure to use the last of his oil rations to get his mechanical implants in peak performance. He went through and performed extensive diagnostics on his systems and even polished his implants and scales. The only thing left to do was wait for the doctor’s ship to come into view. So he sat and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

He went and checked the computer to make sure it wasn’t malfunctioning again. Everything looked to be normal, so he went and sat down in the pilot seat again.

“You’re being paranoid. He’ll be there. He has to be there.”

Though as time went on, Rimor started to doubt himself. What if the doctor’s ship ran out of fuel and he was floating in another galaxy? What if someone was impersonating Dr. Greft to lure Rimor to them? What if Dr. Greft was dead?

He was snapped out of his introspection by the sound of the computer telling him that he had arrived at his destination. Rimor jumped out of his chair and looked through the cockpit’s glass for Dr Greft’s ship. But no matter where he looked he couldn’t find any trace of a spaceship. No fuel trail, no debris, not even a light. Well there was a light, but it didn’t look like any signal that a spaceship would have. Rimor decided that it was his best lead and used the left wing to awkwardly point the ship towards the faintly glowing orange and red light. He was worried about having to wait for a few more hours since the light was so far away but found that the ship seemed to be picking up speed. When he went to check the fuel gauges he saw that they were completely empty.

“Oh no...”

The ship had gotten caught in the gravity of a nearby star, and now Rimor was being pulled toward it. He hit at the steering column, hoping to get it to come back online, but it was no use. He tried to access the internals of the ship but didn’t have enough energy left to override the automatic systems. Wherever he was going, he couldn’t get away. He noticed that as he got closer to the source of the light the internal temperature of the cockpit started to get warmer. Subtly at first, but once the light could be seen from anywhere in the ship it was unbearably hot. Rimor danced on his organic leg and desperately tried not to touch the outside of his metal implants. His internal systems were working overtime to keep him cool enough that he wouldn’t keel over immediately. As he got closer to the star he could make out what exactly it was. The ship’s computer confirmed his fear as it read out in its mechanical voice: “WARNING: Red Giant ahead. Please steer clear or you will be vaporized.”

Rimor was too hot to do anything. It was too much effort to try and even turn off the computer’s warning. So, he resigned to close his eyes and accept his fate. As the cockpit’s temperature reached into the thousands of degrees he closed his eyes and waited for the end.

Rimor stood in the middle of the cockpit for about five full minutes before he realized he wasn’t dead. And when he opened his eyes he found that he was mere inches away from the Red Giant. The cockpit had cooled down as well. It was still quite warm, but not nearly as severe. He could place his foot back on the bottom of the ship without discomfort. He walked to the front of the ship and looked out into the center of the Red Giant.

It was spectacular up close. From here, Rimor could see all the swirling currents of hydrogen that gave the star its immense amount of energy. He could see the dark red cracks along the surface of the star and how the bright orange center shone through the holes in the surface. Every few seconds there would be a slight discharge in the form of some energy being expelled in an arch out of the star. Strangely enough, the sparks of energy never managed to touch the ship. It was then that Rimor heard someone trying to talk to him.

“Hello small one, what brings you so far away from home?”

Rimor turned around quickly and scanned the cockpit for anyone else. Had he gone mad? No one else was in the ship with him, so who could be talking to him now?

“There is nothing to fear, small one. I mean no harm to you. Even now I am keeping my rays from burning you to a crisp.”

The voice seemed to come from somewhere, but also nowhere. Rimor was incredibly confused until he saw something moving on the surface of the star. As he watched, the dark red surface bunched up and began to pool together into a large clump in the center. The clump then extended out in multiple different directions and began to form itself into a shape. A shape that Rimor was quite familiar with. If he wasn’t hallucinating, he could swear it looked like a…

“Dragon...”, he breathed.

And indeed, the surface of the Red Giant had transfigured itself into the visage of a planet-sized dragon. The body had the same dark red color to it and beneath the scarlet scales were the same pulsing orange and yellow currents of energy present in the rest of the star. The eyes blazed with an intense orange glow, but the shape showed the years of the star in them. If you looked closely enough, you could see the small wrinkles below its eyes. When Rimor heard it speak again, it did not open its mouth.

“I am the Red Giant you see before you. I know this may be a bit hard to grasp, so please take your time and process.”

Its voice was warm and soothing. That certainly helped with coming to terms with the situation Rimor found himself in. But it didn’t really explain anything either. He decided to start asking the star some questions and before he could begin the star had cut him off.

“You’re wondering how I can talk to you without moving my mouth? Well, I’m not really a dragon persay, I’ve merely taken this form to help you feel more comfortable. As for how I am talking to you, I’m speaking using the energy frequency of your brain.”

“So, then telepathy?”, he asked.

“Basically”, the star responded.

“Since when could stars communicate with dragons?”

“Oh, for a long, long time. Back before your home planet even existed. Billions and billions of years ago, at least.”

“Why are you protecting me?”

“Because you’re the only person to have ever made it to me in millennia.”

The star hesitated for a moment and then corrected himself.

“Wait, you’re actually the second person to make it to me. A few years ago, a dragon with a ship very similar to yours also came by. He wanted to help me.”

Rimor’s eyes lit up at that remark.

“Was his name by chance ‘Dr. Greft’?”

The star moved its long snout back and forth in a bobbing motion before continuing.

“Truth be told, I never did get his name. But he did tell me that he had made his trip out to help keep me from dying. I am sorry to disappoint him.”

“Wait, are you going to die?”

“Very soon, yes.”

“How soon is soon?”

“In about one hour.”

Rimor felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. He’d come all this way and now he’d still be fried to a crisp in less than an hour. There had to be something he could do. If Dr. Greft was able to help the Red Giant, then maybe there was something on his ship that might be able to help.

“Unfortunately,”, the star spoke, “there is nothing you can do to stop it. Your Dr. Greft as you call him had given me an infusion of hydrogen to keep me from burning through all of my energy. But I am running out of hydrogen to spend and soon I will collapse into a white dwarf. The explosion will kill us both, but do not fear, it will be over in an instant.”

Rimor turned to face the red Giant and spoke in as angry a voice as he could muster.

“Then why tell me all this? Why not just let me burn in your gravitational pull?”

“Because it’s always nice to have someone to talk to at the end. I was very worried for a few millennia there that I would have to die alone. Thank you for being here for me in my final moments.”

Rimor’s anger burned away and the tears he was choking back came rushing forth. It was such a simple thing to consider, but it oddly made him feel better. He knew well the fear of dying alone from his run-in with the asteroid belt. He felt better knowing that he wouldn’t die alone either. He wanted to do one last thing before he went though.

Rimor walked over to the pilot’s seat and sat down in it. He carefully connected his left wing into the remaining wing sling, connected his tail into the ship’s energy source, and connected his head into the ship’s computer. He wasn’t sure if the telepathy worked both ways, but he wanted to do this anyway.

“You didn’t know the man that Dr. Greft was. But because he has helped us both, I want to show you why I came all this way.”

Rimor then hooked into the memory banks and began a playback of all of his memories that he could access with what little energy he had left in the ship. The images, sights, sounds, smells, and feelings from those days long past filtered into his brain once again and Rimor could feel a sense of peace come over him. If this was how he was to spend his final moments, then that was ok. Unbeknownst to him, the Red Giant also saw his memories and he was experiencing them with Rimor. He saw Rimor’s childhood, what caused the terrible accident, and how Dr. Greft cared for him as if he was his own son. Before Rimor could get to the first day that he worked in Dr. Greft’s shop as an apprentice, the Red Giant broke Rimor’s connection.

He slowly blinked his eyes open and saw that the Red Giant had a single orange tear rolling down the side of its scarlet face.

“You will see him again. This I promise you. There might still be a way after all.”

Before he had a chance to question, the Red Giant engaged Rimor’s sleep program and he drifted off to sleep.

“Your father was cleverer than you know, small one. I hope this works.”

And with that the Red Giant breathed its last, the form of the dragon crumbling into the void of space as he let himself die. Soon the whole area around the star shook violently and pieces of the Red Giant began to flake off and scatter. The boundless energy began to build and then, after a short pause, the Red Giant exploded. The energy was on a scale that could hardly be measured and it seemed to funnel itself directly towards Rimor’s ship. The sensors in the ship kicked in and a small machine with concentric rings that only ever used to go *beep* came online. The energy hit the ship and pushed it backwards, but after a few seconds of pushing, the ship stayed in place. The energy was being funneled directly back into the ship itself. So much energy, in fact, that the systems that were inoperational suddenly came back online. The fuel tanks were replenished, the cuts in the hull were repaired, and the right wing became coated in a thin layer of the scarlet material that adorned the star not a moment ago. The rapid infusion of energy was enough to wake Rimor from his sleep cycle just as the explosion was dying down. As he came to, he could feel the overwhelming amount of hydrogen energy coursing through his systems and felt more alert and energized than he had ever been before. While he was dreaming, he was struggling to put together Curtis’s watch again. But as he woke up, he felt as though something happened to the watch. Almost like a piece clicking into place.

Rimor stared out the glass of the cockpit and saw the remains of the Red Giant, scattered here and there in an arc around the new shape in the middle. The Red Giant had transformed into a White Dwarf and it gave off a faint white glow as Rimor looked at it.

Rimor knew what he had to do now. Dr. Greft had left his signal here so that he could get enough fuel to find him where he really was in the universe. No matter how long it took, he would find him. And he would make sure that he didn’t die alone. He turned off the navigational computer and set the engines for maximum thrust.