I Don’t Own My Likeness 5

Read from the beginning at I Don’t Own My Likeness 1.

Alone on the Bridge

He wasn’t supposed to be there. 

The studio lot, usually a hive of motion and caffeine-fueled logistics, had settled into an off-season hush. Only one gate was open after hours now, guarded by a prefab security shack and a bored-looking man in mirrored sunglasses scrolling through a phone. 

Vince hadn’t thought about his ID badge. He reached for it out of habit, half aware it was clipped to his belt loop, and only remembered its uselessness when the scanner chirped red. The guard looked up, unmoved. 

“Expired.” 

“Yeah, I know,” Vince said, already stepping back from the reader with both hands raised in mock guilt. “I’m not talent anymore. I’m just…” He paused, grinned slightly, and let the voice drop into that familiar register. Commanding, but casual. That easy Vesta cadence. “I thought I’d make one last visit to the bridge.” 

The guard stared at him, unreadable behind mirrored lenses. Vince gave him a little smirk, half flirt, half apology, and added, “They’re tearing the last of her down this week, and, you know how it is. Captain goes down with the ship, right? I can’t let them dismantle her hyperspace nexus without paying my respects one last time.” 

There was a beat. Then the guard, not smiling, but not resisting, either, reached over and buzzed the gate open. 

“Ten minutes.” 

Vince offered a crisp, two-fingered salute. “Aye, sir.” 

The gate clattered open. Vince slipped through. Now, crossing the lot, the silence grew thicker. Everything looked unfamiliar in the dark. The big production trailers had been hauled off weeks ago, replaced by parked delivery trucks and a few stacked crates. The giant aluminum walls of Stage 18 loomed to his left, a hollowed-out echo chamber where they’d once filmed the docking bay scenes. The backlot air had a plastic tang to it, a mix of old coffee, fresh paint, and ozone from whatever was being power washed on the far end. 

Vince walked toward Stage 20. The one with the bridge. He entered the code to the back door and breathed a sigh of relief when the lock panel flashed green. He’d rightly guessed they hadn’t changed it yet. Maybe they assumed no one would come back. 

Inside, the air was cool and dry. The lights were off, but emergency LEDs along the floor gave the corridor a dull amber glow, like the ship’s yellow alert status during the Floxian War story arc in season six. The smell hit him immediately—foam latex, matte paint, and aging electronics. The scent of one hundred adults playing pretend as their full-time job. 

He walked slowly, as if he were underwater. The set had been mothballed but not dismantled. Yet. The studio would strike it soon, sell off what they could, and repurpose the rest. But for now, it remained somewhat intact, unlit and waiting. 

Vince stood just outside the main entry doors to the bridge, his hand resting against the black-painted plywood. His fingers curled around them. The sliding tracks let out a soft squeak as he pulled the doors apart. Beyond them lay the bridge, a shadow of its former glory, but still perfect in its artificial stillness. 

The consoles, little more than off-brand LCDs inset into faux metal frames, had all been stripped and hauled away, leaving the workstations a mess of tangled wire. The few railings left standing gleamed under the dim emergency lights, and the captain’s chair at the center of it all had been unmounted and lay haphazardly on its side. 

Vince stepped inside. The quiet was profound and instantly made him self conscious about the sound of his own breathing. He moved slowly between the workstations—engineering, security, science—brushing a hand along the cavity where the navigation display used to be. His fingertips found the same groove he’d always leaned into during tense scenes. He hadn’t noticed the unconscious tic until midway through season two, but by then, muscle memory had taken over, and the gesture had become a Vesta trademark. 

Everything still smelled faintly of glue and sawdust. He could hear the muffled hum of the HVAC system somewhere behind the walls. If he squinted, he could almost imagine the bridge in its prime. 

He circled the room, touching every surface and basking in sense memories of the past. The weapons station, where a rogue admiral took control in season three. The floor panel he’d tripped over in season four. The wall he’d punched during a scene from season six that ended up on the cutting room floor. 

The whole time, he’d avoided the captain’s chair. The sight of it, the indignity of its discarding, sent a bolt of emotion through his chest. He approached it, letting each footstep echo in the empty space. His back cracked as he heaved it upright and placed it in its proper place. 

Then he sat. 

The chair welcomed him like it remembered him. His hands found the armrests automatically. He leaned back, spine aligning to the old Vesta posture. The floor beneath him felt solid. The room looked different from this angle. Smaller. Sadder. 

The bridge had changed. So had he. 

He sat there a long time. The stillness pressed in, intimate and absolute. There was no one to call “action,” no script, and no lighting. But Vince felt the residual charge in the air anyway. He felt the phantom heartbeat of the production, like the captain’s chair itself still expected something from him. 

His hand drifted toward the edge of the command console, fingers hovering just above the sensor pad. On cue. 

He hesitated. Then softly, without preamble, without drama, he spoke. 

“Captain’s log.” 

The words settled in the dark like a dying star. 

“No mission briefing. No objective.” 

He shifted slightly in the chair, grounding himself in the voice, the posture, and the memory of Derek Vesta. 

“We made it home. Or… somewhere that looks enough like home.” 

His eyes scanned the empty space in front of him. The missing viewscreen. The shadowed bulkheads. The quiet. 

“The crew is gone. The ship’s powered down. But I find myself back here anyway.” 

He let the silence stretch. 

“There’s a version of me,” he said, “that doesn’t know how to exist anywhere else.” 

The words hung there, stripped of theatricality. No performance. No modulation. Just truth. 

He let out a breath. His chest felt heavy. 

“End log,” he said. 

No beep followed. No synthetic voice confirmed the entry. Just the sound of him exhaling, and the soft hum of a production that had used him up. 

For a moment, he didn’t move. 

Then he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He stared down at the floor. At the boots he wasn’t wearing. The uniform he no longer had. The audience that wasn’t watching. 

“You’re a fucking idiot, Karros.” 

He stood. He imagined the dramatic sting followed by the orchestral swell. But all he heard was the soft creak of his half-dismantled captain’s chair and the quiet shift of his weight returning to his heels. Stepping down from the platform, he let his fingertips graze the back of the captain’s chair as he passed one last time. He paused for a half second, then he let go. 

He moved through the skeleton bridge slowly but did not look back. Past the never-used medical console, past the wall where they used to hang the green screen backdrops, and past the paint scuff marks from the dolly tracks, barely visible beneath layers of black paint and gaff tape. He slid the fake doors closed behind him. 

The corridor outside felt claustrophobic now. Maybe it always had been. The amber emergency lights still traced the edges of the floor, casting long shadows ahead of his footsteps. By the time he reached the exit, he no longer smelled latex and paint in the air. The whole place just smelled of dust and static electricity now. Spacedock Omega was well and truly dead. 

He stepped out into the lot. Night had deepened. The security shack was empty, probably due to a shift change. The gate hung slightly open. He kept a steady pace as he passed through it. 

His car waited where he’d left it, parked beneath a flickering floodlight. The badge still sat clipped to his belt loop. He removed it as he walked, held it in his palm, and after a moment of consideration, dropped it into the first trash bin he passed. 

Vince got into the car. The studio lot behind him was just another cluster of buildings now. No different from any other business park. Offices, gates, trash bins, ghost stories. He turned the key. The engine sputtered, then turned over. The lot vanished behind him without fanfare. No lights faded. No gates closed. The world did not mark his departure. 

Just another captain, dismissed. 

Keep reading: I Don’t Own My Likeness 6