[ WP ] You are an actor , hired by parents to pretend to be a troubled boy 's imaginary friend .

*Shit*, she thought, batting frantically at the control switches that had gone dark. The plasmodic holo-nav screen flickered in and out of focus, but what little she could see showed her exactly what she wished she could n't. *Go see a black hole, they said. It's a perfect vacation. So beautiful. * 
 
 Very beautiful, indeed. So mesmerizing, in fact, that she had steered ever so slightly closer to take a better look. A bang and a pop in the engines below. She looked up; the holo-nav displayed the slow, steady march of the event horizon, an inevitable march towards silence. 
 
 *No*, she thought, *not this way*. The cockpit was spinning. She kicked open the metal hatches beneath the console and ripped out a pulsating bundle of thick, ropelike nanowire. *If I can just rewire this…It's a long shot, but maybe…* She ripped the bundle in two with her teeth. `` Warning,'' the ship's security AI cautioned pleasantly. `` Tampering with the Space-Time Dimensional Transport infrastructure may lead to unpredictable outcomes and will void this spacecraft's warranty. Thank you, and have a stellar journey.'' 
 
 *Piss off! * As the craft groaned and strained under the increasing gravity, she twisted the ends of the wire and jammed them, backwards, into the cold-fusion power source located beneath. She closed her eyes tight and took a deep breath. 
 
 She expected a bang. A flash. A noise. Anything but this. Around her, only darkness. *Fuck. Did I go in? * 
 
 From the blackness, she heard a sob. `` I just wish… oh please, please wo n't someone just… be his friend…'' It sounded like a woman. An awful lot like a woman of her species. *Odd*, she thought. *Maybe I'm dead. Maybe I'm hallucinating. * 
 
 `` Honey, we just need to save up for his surgery. I'm sure the other children wo n't be so afraid of him then. He'll be fine.'' A male voice. *Where am I? * 
 
 The walls of her craft seemed to have faded, somehow. They seemed less solid. With one finger, she poked at the metal. Her hand went straight through. The ship's controls had gone dead. She had shorted out the power supply. *Might as well, * she thought, and walked through her ship's hull. 
 
 She was standing in a room. There seemed to be light coming in from a night sky. *So many stars*, she thought. *That's weird. * 
 
 She heard a rustle and a tiny gasp. Turning, she saw a boy. A child! An actual child. She activated the universal translator implanted in her cortex and said, `` Hello.'' 
 
 `` Who are you?'' The child atop his bed grasped his blanket like a shield, his wide eyes quivering with fear. 
 
 `` I'm a traveler. I got lost, and I think I'm a long way from home.'' 
 
 `` You look…like me.'' The boy stood up and walked over to her. He pointed just above her mouth, where no flesh covered her teeth and a gaping cleft extended into her nose. 
 
 `` Everybody looks like this, do n't they?'' she shrugged. `` All my friends back home sure do.'' 
 
 The boy smiled. `` Will you stay and play with me?'' He tried to take her hand. 
 
 His fist closed as though grasping at air. Walking through walls, flesh that was n't flesh -- *unpredictable outcomes*. 
 
 She was trapped between dimensions. With a dead ship, unable to touch -- or eat. 
 
 Her heart heavy, she looked at the boy, so full of hope, so solid. `` Yes,'' she said. `` I'll stay with you for as long as you want.'' 
 
 ******* 
 
 Apologies for taking a bit of a liberty with the original prompt. I decided to read `` actor'' and `` hire'' rather liberally. 
 Edit: Formatting problems
