Heartless (first-sentence exercise)

He saw them, vaporized in an instant, and knew the trajectory—the path of the corpuscle that served as his ship—had to be altered immediately.

By injecting a stream of microionized particulates into the corpuscle's nucleus, the captain was able to pilot the madly careening corpuscle back into the Carrier's vena cava and away from the pounding, frothing aorta. The captain waited until the pounding of his own heart had subsided before he sat down. The colorless darkness returned and so did the silence, punctuated by the vibration of the Carrier's pulse, a sensation so familiar it governed the rhythm of the captain's steps, the drumming of his fingertips on the console, the ebb and flow of his dreams. He held his breath and listened into the darkness, an old habit rewarded only by the ghosts of memory.

The captain had heard no voice but his own for fifteen years. For fifteen years he had navigated the Carrier's circulatory system; a solitary voyage that, he now knew, would be an eternal one. There would be no rescue. He had undertaken a fool's mission—to explore the mysteries of the human heart, journey to the very source of love and bring it back to a cold and loveless world. As a young man the captain had readily accepted the mission. What choice was there? The world outside the Carriers, though still bright with sunlight, was drained of warmth and meaning, the hearts of the human race as empty of love as the skies had been emptied of birds.