Pretty Green Eyes
So it was that on 4-222 K-El., Second Cycle, my crew and I were almost smashed to smithereens in deep space.
Only half of us would have been smashed, actually. The hole left in our ship by the rogue artifact would have depressurized the entirety of its tunnel-like corridors, introducing terrifyingly strong forces that would twist and snap the remaining chassis, while the rest of the crew blinked out one by one and rocketed onward through the void. Thank the stars for FTL Predictive scans.
We were awoken from stasis within 1,500,000 kilometers of the artifact, and the ship brought out of jump. The ship’s thermal FTLP detected a signature large enough to warrant the stop, which meant the object had more mass than the occasional tiny asteroids that brush off of our shields. Given that the Pragorthal, named after the large, lumbering land mammal of Yelk, was one of the largest InterGal class ships yet produced, we could instantly estimate the diameter of the object to be between 200 and 300 meters, the size of any small station. Only nobody builds a small station 150 light years from the nearest sun.
I drained the last of my coffee and massaged my forehead with my fingertips. “Kyup-time! Kyup-time! Kyup-time!” came the echoing call of intercom throughout the tunnels, as our bubbly internal com chief encouraged the crew to wake themselves quickly and get to their stations. The fugue of post stasis clings to the brain and body like thick fog, and it can take an ordinary person weeks to return fully to themselves. This, however, was an emergency, as far as we knew, and haste was priority.
My team filtered into the planning room over the course of a half hour and two more thermoses of coffee. The auto-bright lights had dimmed themselves appropriately to avoid the vision glare that so often accompanies post stasis like an unwelcome hangover. I counted names as they floated through the doorway: Stannal, check. Percival, check. Ferok, check. Bedenmayer, check. Operson, check.
Operson. Juliette. A striking woman with soft features that shone despite the fugue; a smile thrown my way as she entered the door as if she were, in fact, happy to be here. I could appreciate that sincerity at a time like this.
“Any chance we could get some grav, chief?” asked one of the men fixed to the north wall. A murmur of consent went through the team, fifteen in all, and I felt the craving too. During fugue the body desires some semblance of normalcy, having just returned from a preservation so alien to it, and core ship workers often complain of a lack of gravity after stasis. It wouldn’t take too long, twenty minutes for clearance, five minutes in transit to the outer ship, thirty minutes to grab a few G’s, and reverse. It would certainly be worth it, but I had a hunch that time was a big factor in what was coming up. FTLP’s scan report was lighting up my desk screen, and something about it made my stomach twist. Could have been the fugue, I’m not sure.
“No. No time.” A groan went through a few of the men and one woman, but the rest were stolid, having expected no less. I threw the report up on the wall front and center. “We were brought out of stasis by FTLP. Rogue artifact, Class C, unrecorded, some thermal activity but no life signs.”
“What the fuck would a Class C being doing out here?” Percival scowled. “We’re still light years from the Navy station, aren’t we?” Class C meant a no-com object. Class A meant receiving and broadcasting information rich radiation, and class B just receiving. Class C, then, is inert with respect to communication, like a drifting rock. Thermals don’t count, of course, unless the thermal signal somehow contains data. Some Class A’s and a very few Class B’s can be found in deep space to coordinate communication between distant colonies, but there’s practically no use for a deep space Class C. Especially an unrecorded one.
“More than a few, P, we’re still in deep.” I replied.
“Maybe an unregistered research station?” Markel chimed in, clinging to the ceiling on a rubber c-grip.
The thought had occurred to me. “It wouldn’t be the first time that a company built an illicit R&D plant in deep, but they usually aren’t this far from light, and they’re usually class B at least.” I pushed back from my desk, drifting back to the wall behind, and punched in the line to coms. “This is Kurto, Engineering. Do we have instructions from Navy One yet?”
Some static, then “Copy Kurto. Ansible response in 5, you will be linked.”
I relaxed then, and bantered with my team. Occasionally in fugue someone will recall a stasis dream vividly enough to share, and this time Operson had a story for us. The crew listened with sleepy half grins as she told us about her dream, an epic one woman journey to the center of the universe, where existence folds in upon itself and becomes one. Her shoulder length hair was the color of smoldering embers, and shifted tones in the dim light as it waved about her head. Her eyes already seemed clear of the bleary fugue state, and when she glanced my way I felt self-conscious of my own wrinkled appearance. But she had such a spirit and kindliness about her that I didn’t mind.
Large, bold faced words suddenly streamed onto the wall front and center, blocking out the FTLP report and interrupting her story. The room became silent as Navy One’s instructions filled the wall top to bottom, and I marveled once again at the miracle of the ansible.
== Navy One to Pragorthal, 4-222 K-El., Second Cycle, 13:44:45
Investigate and obtain full report of Class C unrecorded artifact. Return full report of artifact and wait for further instruction. Maintain bi-hourly contact via ansible. Exercise caution.
Be honorable. Be intelligent. Be swift. ==
The message faded seconds after it finished, and I could hear a mixed response from the team behind me. A full report on an artifact this large could take days, and that means longer to wait until true wakefulness and gravity at Navy One, plus a chance to talk with their families. On the other hand, discovering an illicit automated R&D station in deep could mean a salary bonus for the entire crew. As they say, it’s more work for more pay.
Approaching the artifact on sub-jump burn took a little over an hour, during which the entire crew of the ship, my team included, got a full review of Navy protocol for dealing with unrecorded artifacts in deep. During the centuries following Yelk colonization, multiple artifacts had been found in deep that have no recorded human origin, but they were unfortunately all derelict. Now they are housed in museums on Yelk’s surface, where historical researchers attempt to uncover the secrets of past civilizations that they may hide. Still, others denounce the artifacts as hoaxes.
The one facing us now is small enough to have been missed a million times without incident by jumping InterGal ships, so there’s no way yet of knowing how long it’s been here. The fact that FTLP showed a thermal signature means that there must be an energy source still in operation on the artifact, almost certainly nuclear, as there’s negligible ambient light energy this far from a star. My guess was a fission reactor, sucking in particles of debris from the surrounding void to use as accumulated fuel for fission. It produces a substantial amount of energy, but far less than solar, and is only used when necessary or when energy demands are very modest.
The crew ate and showered after the briefing, and were soon after greeted with holocam images of the artifact, illuminated along our starboard side by enormous floodlights. An imaging drone was released from its cubbyhole near the bridge, and a second video feed appeared next to the first, now belonging to the drone.
Roughly one-third the size of the Pragorthal, the artifact was perfectly spherical with a dull gray finish. The ship’s holocam made it look featureless, but as the drone came closer to begin its 360 degree surface visual report, there appeared small vents and pocketed indentations in the artifact’s surface. This seemed to confirm my energy hypothesis, as most stations with fission reactors will have apparatuses for collecting particles on as much surface area as possible, as well as for releasing heat when energy demands are low or in emergencies.
I was called to outer ship during the surface report, and told to bring along two engineers that needed the experience and that I trusted completely. I asked what kind of experience and the voice that buzzed through the comline said hands-on. I chose Operson and Bedenmayer, a sturdy dark haired youth with a quick head on his shoulders.
We caught an elevator to outer ship through an arm connected to the bridge, and rode the lift gently down into a normal grav zone. Walking was an instant relief, and our shaky limbs quickly gained vigor as we passed through the corridors that led towards the location I was given. Men and woman of various ages scuttled through the curved, low ceilinged passages, on their way to or from some task or another. Conservative architecture of the ship meant that a man of above-average height would come close to brushing his head against the tiled ceiling. You could tell who was new on the ship based on how hunched over they walked; they freshest recruits ran with curved backs, while the veterans strode along without regard. Now that life support systems had switched to waking mode, fresh air streamed through vents on the sides of every corridor, circulating through the ship and back to the core where it was treated. These systems had to be manually checked following every stasis period, leaving no room for error by automation, and the crew members responsible for that task now crowded the corridors with clipboards and radios.
We moved through three link points, then up a short lift to low grav, near command. Bedenmayer and Operson followed single file as we half-walked, half-floated through the doorway of a large office, where a tall, brusque woman sat behind a spotless desk. We saluted, as did she.
“Welcome to grav, Kurto. Good to see you.” She nodded professionally.
“Likewize, Mayawitz. I hope stasis treated you well.”
She laughed and coughed at the same time, a hoarse, dry sound. “Please. If there were any drug I could take to alleviate the post stasis blues I’d be choking it down now. And I can’t say I’m particularly pleased at Navy One’s decision. As thoroughly baffling as this artifact is, I’m less interested in spending two or three days of our entire crew’s time making reports when we could be traveling.”
I looked at her askance. “Baffling? What’s so baffling about an artifact like this? Its location is certainly odd, but otherwise there’s nothing very strange about it. Give me an hour and my team will have this thing detailed out for you, provided there’s no resistance from inside.” I gave her a reassuring smile.
She did not return it, and instead eyed the two younger engineers behind me. “How do you feel about these two, Kurto? I’m not sure what we’re going to find, and I like much better to clean up messes that aren’t polluted with rumors and gossip, as youngsters are known to create.” She gave me a look, and I could tell that the criticism was meant lightly for their ears but heavily for mine.
“They know when to keep their mouths shut, Jean. Remember, they’ve been dealing with me for the last two years, and you know I don’t tolerate that shit.”
She laughed abruptly, a real laugh, coming from the years of familiarity that we had with one another. “Good, excellent, wonderful. Go with these two to 6E, deck B; on the double. Let’s finish this and go home.”
I gave her a genuine smile and salute before leaving the room, but it faded quickly as we hustled to deck B. What could have spooked Mayawitz like that? I don’t know. But it was clear that they wanted us for first contact; 6E was used most often as a briefing room before a launch.
The hall was huge, compared to other rooms on Pragorthal, and could easily fit thirty to forty crew members for briefing. It was also located just down the hall from launch bay, where a variety of shuttles could be launched for stellar or terrestrial flight. However, when we floated in (back in zero grav), I saw only a few figures at the front of the room, clinging to c-grips on the walls. We were quickly briefed on the technical aspects of the artifact; its size, approximate internal structure, etc. Then we were told that it isn’t actually a Class C structure.
“The artifact is, in fact, giving off data rich radiation,” the officer began, “in the form of short-wave radio. Not only is this unusual in a deep space environment, it has virtually no purpose considering how far the artifact is from civilization. In fact, our FTLP discovered the artifact itself before we were even in range of its radio.”
The question hung on everyone’s minds.
“What does the message contain?” I asked.
The officer looked uncertain. “Com reports a simple ID message. T-Ansible, created 8-385 K-Tu., Second Cycle.”
A visible shudder went through the small team, eight in all.
“That’s nearly three centuries in the future,” said Bedenmayer, “how could that even be possible?”
The officer looked hard at him. “Keep in mind that this is just an ID tag. Perhaps this artifact was in the midst of production for release many years in the future, and the ID was simply made in advance of that date.”
“What would take three centuries to make?” returned Bedenmayer.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Operson muttered, but her face was grim.
“Henceforth,” the officer continued, “everything concerning this investigation is confidential, code green and up. Most of the crew will return to stasis within a half day, as we want to keep the number of people knowledgeable about this affair as few as possible.”
My brain was buzzing. What was a T-Ansible? The ansible I was familiar with is an astounding invention, allowing for instantaneous communication over any distance, even light years. Two paired devices are built together, entangled, such that all physical changes to one will also occur on the other. That means everything, even down to atomic structure. So when a user on one end makes an adjustment to the working memory of one ansible, its brother, no matter where it may be, will instantaneously undergo the same change. This has been modified in detail to allow the sharing of everything from simple text to complex computer files, audio, video, and holo. Without such a device, humanity as a single multi-organismal unit would be confined to just one star system, regardless of our ability to travel beyond those bounds.
But the ansible, though it requires a tremendous power supply, is a small object. In fact, the smaller the better. This T-Ansible is monstrous in comparison. What secrets could it be hiding behind its sallow exterior?
Within a half hour we were suited and in the launch pod. I must have looked anxious, because Operson gave me a reassuring pat on the back and told me that she was sure everything would go swimmingly. I looked at her and hid my shock. I was unmarried, but had a daughter by adoption. Somewhere along the course of my life I realized that I didn’t want my inability to find a lifelong mate to prevent me from the joy of raising a child. Truth be told, parenthood suited me well, far better than I think marriage ever would.
Shock then, as I had grown accustomed to being the one to reassure, to attend, to care for. In Operson’s green eyes I saw my daughter’s, and a great longing welled up inside my gut to be home again, to retire early from deep space travel and build a family.
“You’re right, Operson. I’ll wager five hours and we’re out, what do you think?”
She made a noncommittal grunt but smiled. “I think that you should call me Juliette is what I think. I’ve told you no less than nine times.”
“Very well,” I nodded.
Bedenmayer sat on the other side of Juliette, and elbowed her gently in the ribs. “Hey, stop sucking up to the chief, girly. I’m having a hard enough time getting a promotion without your competition!”
“If you think I’m that easy to manipulate,” I replied with a grin, “you’ll never be getting a promotion at all. Now settle down, children, or I swear I’ll turn this shuttle around.”
The shuttle had been packed with diagnostic equipment, but still fell far short from being full, having only nine passengers of its possible twenty-one. Monitors on the back wall showed the Pragorthal fading into the distance, illuminated against the backdrop of pin-pricked void by a number of bright white lights. At the front of the shuttle, past the other crew members, was a real glass viewport, showing our approach to the esoteric T-Ansible. The pilot guided us on a straight path to a dark recess in the sphere’s façade, which as we got closer materialized into a docking bay, equipped with a handful of different ports. My specialty was in internal spacecraft design, not docking paradigms, but I could instantly tell that there were more than a dozen different ports at the bay, half of which I didn’t recognize at all. The pilot, however, seemed to know this in advance, and guided us swiftly to the port that matched our shuttle’s design.
A complex system of electromagnetic pulses drew the craft into the port soundlessly, and we were soon floating into the artifact’s interior. A quick scan at the docking bay showed atmospheric conditions inside to be at normal levels, so we entered with suits on but helmets off for the time being. A bright light would turn on and a buzzer would sound if the suit ever detected conditions outside of a threshold normality.
Two hours were spent mapping the artifact without touching any of its equipment. We split into four pairs, the pilot staying with the shuttle. I worked with Pekov, a grizzled scientist close to my own age, and sent Operson off with Bedenmayer. The structure of the artifact was simple, composed of three concentric spherical layers, spiderwebbed with corridors, and a core. The outer layer was familiar, containing many systems for life support and basic everyday functioning the like of which any space goer becomes accustomed. The middle layer was more mysterious, filled with blank faced consoles connecting to machines that seemed, as far as I could tell, to control the movement and propulsion of the station. What little writing there was was in Universal and entirely legible, but technical and uninteresting.
We met up with the two younger engineers in the innermost layer, passing hand over hand down a white ladder through a tiny trap door. They were smiling and talking, Bedenmayer gesticulating energetically, and I could tell that he fancied her. How could he not? I was happy to see them happy, and once again I thought of my daughter at home. I smiled at Pekov but he didn’t seem to be on the same page.
An hour later I found myself alone, the mapping now complete - short of the core, which seemed inaccessible and probably should be inaccessible. I assumed the center of the artifact was its nuclear fission reactor, putting the final cog into the machine of self-sufficiency for any space station. Only later when I discovered I was wrong would I remember that there had been sufficient space for a reactor on the first layer, and that I may have even passed by it.
I was floating along a corridor on the inner layer when, hands busy with the digital paperwork of the report, a blinking caught the corner of my eye. I swiftly grabbed my helmet, tethered to the suit by a thin, flat cord, and prepared to fix it over my head, but realized the blinking wasn’t coming from the suit at all. I turned, and saw a solitary console display, stark black screen in contrast to the white background of the artifact’s interior. This was the first active console we had yet found on the artifact, and a hunch told me it might be the only one.
Above the blinking cursor was written:
Current Line: 8-386 K-Tu., Second Cycle
The day after the ID tag.
Please Input Date…
I floated there, one hand on a rubber grip behind me, with a profound sense of unease. Cautiously, I pushed off towards the monitor, and set the report in its magnetic sheath at my side. I came to rest in front of the console and instantly the holo keyboard came to life in front of me. I swallowed and began to type.
4-222 K-El., Second Cycle
The response was immediate; premeditated.
Welcome to the T-Ansible, first contact! We’ve been waiting for you.
Reflexively I looked around, dumbfounded as to who might be operating the other end of what I could only assume to be an ansible.
Please give us your name and title, as it will become an important milestone in human history.
My eyes went wide. The hallway was uncomfortably silent as I typed.
Petri Kurto, chief internal engineer for the Pragorthal of Navy One.
It’s good to finally meet you, Mr. Kurto. I am Jey Wothet, primary speaker for T-Ansible Communications Co., est 8-385 K-Tu., Second Cycle.
Is this a trick? How is this possible?
No trick, Mr. Kurto. You are currently using one operating end of the first, and last, Temporal Ansible ever built.
My head reeled. What the hell was this? A variety of emotions rushed to my head, culminating in a mess of anxiousness.
What do you mean? What is a Temporal Ansible?
S-Ansibles, or Spatial Ansibles, were invented before the date you’ve given me, so I assume you understand the principles on which they function. Unlike the S-Ansible, the T-Ansible communicates along the metric of time, a quantifiable dimension just like distance.
Wothet’s typing ceased for a moment, then picked up again.
Mr. Kurto, this may come as a shock to you, but we are all traveling forwards and backwards in time constantly. Just as a stretch of road exists at all points along it simultaneously, so do we too exist at all points in time. The only linearity, in our case, is memory. The function of our brain to create memories operates in one direction of time only.
I began to think rationally.
Then why do I not instantly jump to some point in my future or past?
Wothet’s response was immediate, a practiced answer to what must be a commonly asked question.
You do, Mr. Kurto. To every point in your future and past. Always. You are merely limited to the memories you have at that point in time, so it is impossible to perceive.
The console and man behind it paused to give me time, but I had nothing to say.
The T-Ansible is fixed with respect to Space, and entangled with respect to time. Like you might write on one end of the S-Ansible through time to communicate entanglement across space, you write on one end of the T-Ansible through space to communicate across time. When the T-Ansible was first constructed, its existence immediately came into being at every point in time…to a degree.
What do you mean, to a degree? How could the T-Ansible exist during the formation of the Universe?
As your civilization continues to expand, you will discover that the S-Ansible, while perfect in theory, falls short in practice, and does have limits as to how far it can communicate. Similarly, the T-Ansible is not perfect, and extends only about 12.7 millennia back and forward from the time of its creation. It was also specifically built at a fixed place in the universe where we had 99.8% certainty that, for the extent in time that it would cover, there would be no nearby object with sufficient mass to disrupt it. This also meant that it could not be built near civilization, and would have to be discovered by accident at some point in the past. As you have just done now. Thank you, Mr. Kurto.
I floated in silence. This was unimaginable. Radio chirped in my ear frantically from the other members of the contact team, but I didn’t hear it. I exist tomorrow, now? Yesterday, now? My birth and death are continually occurring, have occurred, will occur, at every point in time?
No, not at every point in time. At one specific point of time, which exists, just like the road Wothet used as an example, simultaneously. I cannot think of time occurring at time, or I will drive myself insane.
The radio continued to buzz, and subconsciously I heard Bedenmayer’s voice as high pitched and frightened, but I did not realize it. I wonder now if I had reacted faster, if I could have reacted faster, if there was anything I could do. Or was it scripted?
One more thing, Mr. Kurto.
I looked back down at the console.
Predestination is not necessarily truth. A malleable timeline, just like the road, could be possible and not mutually exclusive with our current understanding of time. That being said, you should understand that, by our estimation, something is about to happen in your time that will change the T-Ansible. Its functionality will be mostly unchanged, but it will adopt a semblance of Artificial Intelligence that will, having talked to those in the future, baffle our scientists until the final day of the T-Ansible’s existence.
The radio grew louder, and I heard Pekov’s voice alongside Bedenmayer’s.
(You can’t go in there – I don’t know what we can do but you can’t go in there...)
I do not know if you can stop it, Mr. Kurto, nor if you should stop it, but I know that it is about to happen.
(“I didn’t mean to – I don’t understand what’s happening!”)
Be careful.
I raced from the console, pushing off sideways firmly with my legs and sailing along the corridor. The proximeter at my left wrist gave the rough location of all crew members on the station, and I saw two nearly overlapping on the innermost layer, on the other side of the core.
(“Why isn’t she moving? Why is she frozen?”)
I dove neatly from handhold to handhold, modifying my trajectory gently along the curvature of the path. My heart kept trying to jump up into my throat, and my gut seized with an unspoken dread. I check my proximeter again, and found that I was 90 degrees from their position. For a brief moment, the display lit up with another suit, nearby, directly to my left. My pulse quickened. To my right was outward from the station, to my left inward.
(“Clearly we don’t understand what this is, Private,stay calm!”)
I rounded the final stretch of corridor and found Bedenmayer tightly wrapped in Pekov’s arms. The older scientist was holding him back, his feet firmly hooked under c-grips in the ceiling of the inner layer, while Bedenmayer struggled to escape towards the core. His face was clotting with tears, big globs of them stuck to his skin and floated about his head as he writhed.
I deftly came to rest near the pair. Pekov met my gaze and started to speak, but Bedenmayer didn’t notice me at all. I followed his gaze.
A port hole was open, through which a short ladder extended before ending abruptly in an enormous spherical room. The core. What hung at the center of the room was a pitch black orb, roughly one meter in diameter, held perfectly still by some unseen force. A soft humming filled the air.
And Bedenmayer’s outstretched, flexed hand was reaching towards Juliette, the red haired youth, who floated wide eyed halfway between the wall of the core chamber and the core itself. She seemed to be frozen, completely and unnervingly still, but as I watched her hair drifted ever so slightly and her body moved ever so slowly towards the core.
My face flushed and panic rose up through my chest to my head like a flood. Pekov’s voice called to me twice, chirping through the headset and echoing off of the corridor walls, but I had already pushed off towards the port hole. My hands clawed at the ladder rungs, and I pulled hard to send myself into the chamber, towards the girl.
WHAM.
It was like hitting a brick wall made of thick tar. As my head passed through the porthole, all sound reaching my ears immediately dropped in pitch several octaves, and proceeded to crawl even further downwards. I became aware that I was moving slowly, incredibly slow, unbelievably slow, and I felt a unique disconnection from my body. I tried to turn my eyes forward to meet those of Juliette, but I found that my eyes, instead of a split second flitting between targets, took minutes to shift.
I proceeded further into the core room.
Things were stopped now. Everything. Not truly stopped, but painfully slow. I made the mistake of blinking, and spent fifteen minutes in darkness. When my eyes reopened, I began to see the flickering of phosphorescent lights coming from the corridor behind me. I took a breath, and the air filled my lungs over the course of an hour. Exhaling took two. My foot came into contact with a rung of the ladder behind me, and several minutes went by before I could feel it.
Operson seemed to be moving more slowly than I. Even now her face was just beginning to register a new expression, as if she was just now noticing that I was here. But my mind was working at normal speed – I noticed the passage of time as slowed down, and I could see in her expression that her mind, too, was unchanged.
If we exist at all points in time simultaneously, then memory formation is what gives us a direction in time. Memory formation is driven by perception, the ability of the mind to observe its environment and think internally. What then, is the rate that time passes but a measure of how quickly we form memories? Time is slow here, but slow in our heads. And the closer to the core we get, the stronger the dilation becomes.
It was unbearable from then on. Afterwards I would recall weeks in that chamber, perhaps months. Months gazing into Juliette’s green eyes. Each breath became longer, by the worst of it, it may have taken a full week to draw air. At some point, I can’t remember when, my perception of light became staggered. I was thinking faster than the movement of photons bombarding the room, and the result was an incomplete wave of visual information. I would see darkness, then an uneven attack of photons striking and exciting my retina, then dying off, giving the impression of a submarine’s intermittent sonar display. Every few seconds I would get a flash and a picture of Juliette would appear, slightly closer now to the core than she was weeks ago, then a second wave of reflected light from the other side of the core room, then repeat. Each picture a portrait of confusion, sadness, and loss. Maybe Wothet was right, maybe there was nothing I could have done. All I know is that, while I spent months in that sleepy unmoving, she must have spent centuries. Millennia. Eternity.
I saw eternity in her pretty green eyes.
At some point I felt a hand around my ankle, and then things reversed. Another few weeks as I drifted backwards, eventually regaining normal sight, and at some point later sound, steadily rising in pitch from the depths of low frequencies. Breaths became quicker, I blinked without losing days at a time, and finally I was out. It is hard to communicate the deep seated desire and craving for the human mind to return to the normal speed of time, but it is enormous. I spent minutes afterwards relishing quick breaths, turning my head this way and that, stretching my limbs (although they were not sore, my peripheral nervous system had been unaffected). Bedenmayer had me by the leg and wouldn’t let go, saying over and over again that he wasn’t going to lose me too, he wasn’t going to lose me too. Later on, Pekov told me that he had entered the chamber as well, just slightly, enough to understand what it was doing to Juliette, and almost lost control of himself before the older scientist could stop him.
And there we floated, watching our friend drift ever so slowly towards the core that she might never meet. She would not age, grow hungry, or grow tired, no more so than she would have in the span of the ten seconds it would normally take to travel such a distance, but she would experience that eternity in her mind.
Navy One gave the crew of the Pragorthal instructions to leave a team behind with the artifact, equipped with tools, supplies, and an S-Ansible of their own for communication. The coordinates of the station, fixed as they were, were catalogued in the final report submitted, and instantaneously a new field of research was given birth.
The rest of us returned to Navy One, in orbit around Yelk, for a brief leave. Bedenmayer and Pekov and I were debriefed, given a salary bonus from the Military branch, and sent home for an extended leave with our families. I was heralded as the discoverer of communication across time (and chronologically, I was), and received a plethora of invitations to appear on tech talk shows and scientific conventions, all of which I politely turned down. I had been too long from home, and it was about time to rescue my daughter from her grandmother’s flat in the suburbs of Yelk. Real gravity felt good – extremely good – and driving home in a land car brought a flood of physical comfort and rewarded nostalgia. Spend too long floating around in-between planets, and you appreciate even more our evolutionary beginnings.
It was ninth day, and Uli was home from school. I drove down the long, black paved road in the gathering twilight and pulled up to the front lawn, full of freshly trimmed blue-green grass. Even before I set foot out of the car I heard the house door slam, and little footsteps racing off the porch and down the driveway. A stream nearby gurgled steadily, contributing a pleasant undertone to the Spring evening. My mother’s house rested on the side of a hill, and as Uli ran her short legs had to pump in large strides to keep up with her acceleration. Her blond hair flowed wildly behind her, and her face was pure childish delight. I stepped out from behind the car, smiling, and she slammed into me at full speed, her arms wrapped tightly around my legs. Mother waved from the porch, and I grinned back. I scooped Uli up in my arms and held her little body high in the air like an airplane, and she laughed down at me, her pretty green eyes sparkling. I set her down and she screwed her face up in mock seriousness, then said to me:
“I’m glad you’re back Daddy, but don’t leave for so long next time. It feels like you’ve been gone forever.”
So it was that on 4-222 K-El., Second Cycle, my crew and I were almost smashed to smithereens in deep space.
Only half of us would have been smashed, actually. The hole left in our ship by the rogue artifact would have depressurized the entirety of its tunnel-like corridors, introducing terrifyingly strong forces that would twist and snap the remaining chassis, while the rest of the crew blinked out one by one and rocketed onward through the void. Thank the stars for FTL Predictive scans.
We were awoken from stasis within 1,500,000 kilometers of the artifact, and the ship brought out of jump. The ship’s thermal FTLP detected a signature large enough to warrant the stop, which meant the object had more mass than the occasional tiny asteroids that brush off of our shields. Given that the Pragorthal, named after the large, lumbering land mammal of Yelk, was one of the largest InterGal class ships yet produced, we could instantly estimate the diameter of the object to be between 200 and 300 meters, the size of any small station. Only nobody builds a small station 150 light years from the nearest sun.
I drained the last of my coffee and massaged my forehead with my fingertips. “Kyup-time! Kyup-time! Kyup-time!” came the echoing call of intercom throughout the tunnels, as our bubbly internal com chief encouraged the crew to wake themselves quickly and get to their stations. The fugue of post stasis clings to the brain and body like thick fog, and it can take an ordinary person weeks to return fully to themselves. This, however, was an emergency, as far as we knew, and haste was priority.
My team filtered into the planning room over the course of a half hour and two more thermoses of coffee. The auto-bright lights had dimmed themselves appropriately to avoid the vision glare that so often accompanies post stasis like an unwelcome hangover. I counted names as they floated through the doorway: Stannal, check. Percival, check. Ferok, check. Bedenmayer, check. Operson, check.
Operson. Juliette. A striking woman with soft features that shone despite the fugue; a smile thrown my way as she entered the door as if she were, in fact, happy to be here. I could appreciate that sincerity at a time like this.
“Any chance we could get some grav, chief?” asked one of the men fixed to the north wall. A murmur of consent went through the team, fifteen in all, and I felt the craving too. During fugue the body desires some semblance of normalcy, having just returned from a preservation so alien to it, and core ship workers often complain of a lack of gravity after stasis. It wouldn’t take too long, twenty minutes for clearance, five minutes in transit to the outer ship, thirty minutes to grab a few G’s, and reverse. It would certainly be worth it, but I had a hunch that time was a big factor in what was coming up. FTLP’s scan report was lighting up my desk screen, and something about it made my stomach twist. Could have been the fugue, I’m not sure.
“No. No time.” A groan went through a few of the men and one woman, but the rest were stolid, having expected no less. I threw the report up on the wall front and center. “We were brought out of stasis by FTLP. Rogue artifact, Class C, unrecorded, some thermal activity but no life signs.”
“What the fuck would a Class C being doing out here?” Percival scowled. “We’re still light years from the Navy station, aren’t we?” Class C meant a no-com object. Class A meant receiving and broadcasting information rich radiation, and class B just receiving. Class C, then, is inert with respect to communication, like a drifting rock. Thermals don’t count, of course, unless the thermal signal somehow contains data. Some Class A’s and a very few Class B’s can be found in deep space to coordinate communication between distant colonies, but there’s practically no use for a deep space Class C. Especially an unrecorded one.
“More than a few, P, we’re still in deep.” I replied.
“Maybe an unregistered research station?” Markel chimed in, clinging to the ceiling on a rubber c-grip.
The thought had occurred to me. “It wouldn’t be the first time that a company built an illicit R&D plant in deep, but they usually aren’t this far from light, and they’re usually class B at least.” I pushed back from my desk, drifting back to the wall behind, and punched in the line to coms. “This is Kurto, Engineering. Do we have instructions from Navy One yet?”
Some static, then “Copy Kurto. Ansible response in 5, you will be linked.”
I relaxed then, and bantered with my team. Occasionally in fugue someone will recall a stasis dream vividly enough to share, and this time Operson had a story for us. The crew listened with sleepy half grins as she told us about her dream, an epic one woman journey to the center of the universe, where existence folds in upon itself and becomes one. Her shoulder length hair was the color of smoldering embers, and shifted tones in the dim light as it waved about her head. Her eyes already seemed clear of the bleary fugue state, and when she glanced my way I felt self-conscious of my own wrinkled appearance. But she had such a spirit and kindliness about her that I didn’t mind.
Large, bold faced words suddenly streamed onto the wall front and center, blocking out the FTLP report and interrupting her story. The room became silent as Navy One’s instructions filled the wall top to bottom, and I marveled once again at the miracle of the ansible.
== Navy One to Pragorthal, 4-222 K-El., Second Cycle, 13:44:45
Investigate and obtain full report of Class C unrecorded artifact. Return full report of artifact and wait for further instruction. Maintain bi-hourly contact via ansible. Exercise caution.
Be honorable. Be intelligent. Be swift. ==
The message faded seconds after it finished, and I could hear a mixed response from the team behind me. A full report on an artifact this large could take days, and that means longer to wait until true wakefulness and gravity at Navy One, plus a chance to talk with their families. On the other hand, discovering an illicit automated R&D station in deep could mean a salary bonus for the entire crew. As they say, it’s more work for more pay.
Approaching the artifact on sub-jump burn took a little over an hour, during which the entire crew of the ship, my team included, got a full review of Navy protocol for dealing with unrecorded artifacts in deep. During the centuries following Yelk colonization, multiple artifacts had been found in deep that have no recorded human origin, but they were unfortunately all derelict. Now they are housed in museums on Yelk’s surface, where historical researchers attempt to uncover the secrets of past civilizations that they may hide. Still, others denounce the artifacts as hoaxes.
The one facing us now is small enough to have been missed a million times without incident by jumping InterGal ships, so there’s no way yet of knowing how long it’s been here. The fact that FTLP showed a thermal signature means that there must be an energy source still in operation on the artifact, almost certainly nuclear, as there’s negligible ambient light energy this far from a star. My guess was a fission reactor, sucking in particles of debris from the surrounding void to use as accumulated fuel for fission. It produces a substantial amount of energy, but far less than solar, and is only used when necessary or when energy demands are very modest.
The crew ate and showered after the briefing, and were soon after greeted with holocam images of the artifact, illuminated along our starboard side by enormous floodlights. An imaging drone was released from its cubbyhole near the bridge, and a second video feed appeared next to the first, now belonging to the drone.
Roughly one-third the size of the Pragorthal, the artifact was perfectly spherical with a dull gray finish. The ship’s holocam made it look featureless, but as the drone came closer to begin its 360 degree surface visual report, there appeared small vents and pocketed indentations in the artifact’s surface. This seemed to confirm my energy hypothesis, as most stations with fission reactors will have apparatuses for collecting particles on as much surface area as possible, as well as for releasing heat when energy demands are low or in emergencies.
I was called to outer ship during the surface report, and told to bring along two engineers that needed the experience and that I trusted completely. I asked what kind of experience and the voice that buzzed through the comline said hands-on. I chose Operson and Bedenmayer, a sturdy dark haired youth with a quick head on his shoulders.
We caught an elevator to outer ship through an arm connected to the bridge, and rode the lift gently down into a normal grav zone. Walking was an instant relief, and our shaky limbs quickly gained vigor as we passed through the corridors that led towards the location I was given. Men and woman of various ages scuttled through the curved, low ceilinged passages, on their way to or from some task or another. Conservative architecture of the ship meant that a man of above-average height would come close to brushing his head against the tiled ceiling. You could tell who was new on the ship based on how hunched over they walked; they freshest recruits ran with curved backs, while the veterans strode along without regard. Now that life support systems had switched to waking mode, fresh air streamed through vents on the sides of every corridor, circulating through the ship and back to the core where it was treated. These systems had to be manually checked following every stasis period, leaving no room for error by automation, and the crew members responsible for that task now crowded the corridors with clipboards and radios.
We moved through three link points, then up a short lift to low grav, near command. Bedenmayer and Operson followed single file as we half-walked, half-floated through the doorway of a large office, where a tall, brusque woman sat behind a spotless desk. We saluted, as did she.
“Welcome to grav, Kurto. Good to see you.” She nodded professionally.
“Likewize, Mayawitz. I hope stasis treated you well.”
She laughed and coughed at the same time, a hoarse, dry sound. “Please. If there were any drug I could take to alleviate the post stasis blues I’d be choking it down now. And I can’t say I’m particularly pleased at Navy One’s decision. As thoroughly baffling as this artifact is, I’m less interested in spending two or three days of our entire crew’s time making reports when we could be traveling.”
I looked at her askance. “Baffling? What’s so baffling about an artifact like this? Its location is certainly odd, but otherwise there’s nothing very strange about it. Give me an hour and my team will have this thing detailed out for you, provided there’s no resistance from inside.” I gave her a reassuring smile.
She did not return it, and instead eyed the two younger engineers behind me. “How do you feel about these two, Kurto? I’m not sure what we’re going to find, and I like much better to clean up messes that aren’t polluted with rumors and gossip, as youngsters are known to create.” She gave me a look, and I could tell that the criticism was meant lightly for their ears but heavily for mine.
“They know when to keep their mouths shut, Jean. Remember, they’ve been dealing with me for the last two years, and you know I don’t tolerate that shit.”
She laughed abruptly, a real laugh, coming from the years of familiarity that we had with one another. “Good, excellent, wonderful. Go with these two to 6E, deck B; on the double. Let’s finish this and go home.”
I gave her a genuine smile and salute before leaving the room, but it faded quickly as we hustled to deck B. What could have spooked Mayawitz like that? I don’t know. But it was clear that they wanted us for first contact; 6E was used most often as a briefing room before a launch.
The hall was huge, compared to other rooms on Pragorthal, and could easily fit thirty to forty crew members for briefing. It was also located just down the hall from launch bay, where a variety of shuttles could be launched for stellar or terrestrial flight. However, when we floated in (back in zero grav), I saw only a few figures at the front of the room, clinging to c-grips on the walls. We were quickly briefed on the technical aspects of the artifact; its size, approximate internal structure, etc. Then we were told that it isn’t actually a Class C structure.
“The artifact is, in fact, giving off data rich radiation,” the officer began, “in the form of short-wave radio. Not only is this unusual in a deep space environment, it has virtually no purpose considering how far the artifact is from civilization. In fact, our FTLP discovered the artifact itself before we were even in range of its radio.”
The question hung on everyone’s minds.
“What does the message contain?” I asked.
The officer looked uncertain. “Com reports a simple ID message. T-Ansible, created 8-385 K-Tu., Second Cycle.”
A visible shudder went through the small team, eight in all.
“That’s nearly three centuries in the future,” said Bedenmayer, “how could that even be possible?”
The officer looked hard at him. “Keep in mind that this is just an ID tag. Perhaps this artifact was in the midst of production for release many years in the future, and the ID was simply made in advance of that date.”
“What would take three centuries to make?” returned Bedenmayer.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Operson muttered, but her face was grim.
“Henceforth,” the officer continued, “everything concerning this investigation is confidential, code green and up. Most of the crew will return to stasis within a half day, as we want to keep the number of people knowledgeable about this affair as few as possible.”
My brain was buzzing. What was a T-Ansible? The ansible I was familiar with is an astounding invention, allowing for instantaneous communication over any distance, even light years. Two paired devices are built together, entangled, such that all physical changes to one will also occur on the other. That means everything, even down to atomic structure. So when a user on one end makes an adjustment to the working memory of one ansible, its brother, no matter where it may be, will instantaneously undergo the same change. This has been modified in detail to allow the sharing of everything from simple text to complex computer files, audio, video, and holo. Without such a device, humanity as a single multi-organismal unit would be confined to just one star system, regardless of our ability to travel beyond those bounds.
But the ansible, though it requires a tremendous power supply, is a small object. In fact, the smaller the better. This T-Ansible is monstrous in comparison. What secrets could it be hiding behind its sallow exterior?
Within a half hour we were suited and in the launch pod. I must have looked anxious, because Operson gave me a reassuring pat on the back and told me that she was sure everything would go swimmingly. I looked at her and hid my shock. I was unmarried, but had a daughter by adoption. Somewhere along the course of my life I realized that I didn’t want my inability to find a lifelong mate to prevent me from the joy of raising a child. Truth be told, parenthood suited me well, far better than I think marriage ever would.
Shock then, as I had grown accustomed to being the one to reassure, to attend, to care for. In Operson’s green eyes I saw my daughter’s, and a great longing welled up inside my gut to be home again, to retire early from deep space travel and build a family.
“You’re right, Operson. I’ll wager five hours and we’re out, what do you think?”
She made a noncommittal grunt but smiled. “I think that you should call me Juliette is what I think. I’ve told you no less than nine times.”
“Very well,” I nodded.
Bedenmayer sat on the other side of Juliette, and elbowed her gently in the ribs. “Hey, stop sucking up to the chief, girly. I’m having a hard enough time getting a promotion without your competition!”
“If you think I’m that easy to manipulate,” I replied with a grin, “you’ll never be getting a promotion at all. Now settle down, children, or I swear I’ll turn this shuttle around.”
The shuttle had been packed with diagnostic equipment, but still fell far short from being full, having only nine passengers of its possible twenty-one. Monitors on the back wall showed the Pragorthal fading into the distance, illuminated against the backdrop of pin-pricked void by a number of bright white lights. At the front of the shuttle, past the other crew members, was a real glass viewport, showing our approach to the esoteric T-Ansible. The pilot guided us on a straight path to a dark recess in the sphere’s façade, which as we got closer materialized into a docking bay, equipped with a handful of different ports. My specialty was in internal spacecraft design, not docking paradigms, but I could instantly tell that there were more than a dozen different ports at the bay, half of which I didn’t recognize at all. The pilot, however, seemed to know this in advance, and guided us swiftly to the port that matched our shuttle’s design.
A complex system of electromagnetic pulses drew the craft into the port soundlessly, and we were soon floating into the artifact’s interior. A quick scan at the docking bay showed atmospheric conditions inside to be at normal levels, so we entered with suits on but helmets off for the time being. A bright light would turn on and a buzzer would sound if the suit ever detected conditions outside of a threshold normality.
Two hours were spent mapping the artifact without touching any of its equipment. We split into four pairs, the pilot staying with the shuttle. I worked with Pekov, a grizzled scientist close to my own age, and sent Operson off with Bedenmayer. The structure of the artifact was simple, composed of three concentric spherical layers, spiderwebbed with corridors, and a core. The outer layer was familiar, containing many systems for life support and basic everyday functioning the like of which any space goer becomes accustomed. The middle layer was more mysterious, filled with blank faced consoles connecting to machines that seemed, as far as I could tell, to control the movement and propulsion of the station. What little writing there was was in Universal and entirely legible, but technical and uninteresting.
We met up with the two younger engineers in the innermost layer, passing hand over hand down a white ladder through a tiny trap door. They were smiling and talking, Bedenmayer gesticulating energetically, and I could tell that he fancied her. How could he not? I was happy to see them happy, and once again I thought of my daughter at home. I smiled at Pekov but he didn’t seem to be on the same page.
An hour later I found myself alone, the mapping now complete - short of the core, which seemed inaccessible and probably should be inaccessible. I assumed the center of the artifact was its nuclear fission reactor, putting the final cog into the machine of self-sufficiency for any space station. Only later when I discovered I was wrong would I remember that there had been sufficient space for a reactor on the first layer, and that I may have even passed by it.
I was floating along a corridor on the inner layer when, hands busy with the digital paperwork of the report, a blinking caught the corner of my eye. I swiftly grabbed my helmet, tethered to the suit by a thin, flat cord, and prepared to fix it over my head, but realized the blinking wasn’t coming from the suit at all. I turned, and saw a solitary console display, stark black screen in contrast to the white background of the artifact’s interior. This was the first active console we had yet found on the artifact, and a hunch told me it might be the only one.
Above the blinking cursor was written:
Current Line: 8-386 K-Tu., Second Cycle
The day after the ID tag.
Please Input Date…
I floated there, one hand on a rubber grip behind me, with a profound sense of unease. Cautiously, I pushed off towards the monitor, and set the report in its magnetic sheath at my side. I came to rest in front of the console and instantly the holo keyboard came to life in front of me. I swallowed and began to type.
4-222 K-El., Second Cycle
The response was immediate; premeditated.
Welcome to the T-Ansible, first contact! We’ve been waiting for you.
Reflexively I looked around, dumbfounded as to who might be operating the other end of what I could only assume to be an ansible.
Please give us your name and title, as it will become an important milestone in human history.
My eyes went wide. The hallway was uncomfortably silent as I typed.
Petri Kurto, chief internal engineer for the Pragorthal of Navy One.
It’s good to finally meet you, Mr. Kurto. I am Jey Wothet, primary speaker for T-Ansible Communications Co., est 8-385 K-Tu., Second Cycle.
Is this a trick? How is this possible?
No trick, Mr. Kurto. You are currently using one operating end of the first, and last, Temporal Ansible ever built.
My head reeled. What the hell was this? A variety of emotions rushed to my head, culminating in a mess of anxiousness.
What do you mean? What is a Temporal Ansible?
S-Ansibles, or Spatial Ansibles, were invented before the date you’ve given me, so I assume you understand the principles on which they function. Unlike the S-Ansible, the T-Ansible communicates along the metric of time, a quantifiable dimension just like distance.
Wothet’s typing ceased for a moment, then picked up again.
Mr. Kurto, this may come as a shock to you, but we are all traveling forwards and backwards in time constantly. Just as a stretch of road exists at all points along it simultaneously, so do we too exist at all points in time. The only linearity, in our case, is memory. The function of our brain to create memories operates in one direction of time only.
I began to think rationally.
Then why do I not instantly jump to some point in my future or past?
Wothet’s response was immediate, a practiced answer to what must be a commonly asked question.
You do, Mr. Kurto. To every point in your future and past. Always. You are merely limited to the memories you have at that point in time, so it is impossible to perceive.
The console and man behind it paused to give me time, but I had nothing to say.
The T-Ansible is fixed with respect to Space, and entangled with respect to time. Like you might write on one end of the S-Ansible through time to communicate entanglement across space, you write on one end of the T-Ansible through space to communicate across time. When the T-Ansible was first constructed, its existence immediately came into being at every point in time…to a degree.
What do you mean, to a degree? How could the T-Ansible exist during the formation of the Universe?
As your civilization continues to expand, you will discover that the S-Ansible, while perfect in theory, falls short in practice, and does have limits as to how far it can communicate. Similarly, the T-Ansible is not perfect, and extends only about 12.7 millennia back and forward from the time of its creation. It was also specifically built at a fixed place in the universe where we had 99.8% certainty that, for the extent in time that it would cover, there would be no nearby object with sufficient mass to disrupt it. This also meant that it could not be built near civilization, and would have to be discovered by accident at some point in the past. As you have just done now. Thank you, Mr. Kurto.
I floated in silence. This was unimaginable. Radio chirped in my ear frantically from the other members of the contact team, but I didn’t hear it. I exist tomorrow, now? Yesterday, now? My birth and death are continually occurring, have occurred, will occur, at every point in time?
No, not at every point in time. At one specific point of time, which exists, just like the road Wothet used as an example, simultaneously. I cannot think of time occurring at time, or I will drive myself insane.
The radio continued to buzz, and subconsciously I heard Bedenmayer’s voice as high pitched and frightened, but I did not realize it. I wonder now if I had reacted faster, if I could have reacted faster, if there was anything I could do. Or was it scripted?
One more thing, Mr. Kurto.
I looked back down at the console.
Predestination is not necessarily truth. A malleable timeline, just like the road, could be possible and not mutually exclusive with our current understanding of time. That being said, you should understand that, by our estimation, something is about to happen in your time that will change the T-Ansible. Its functionality will be mostly unchanged, but it will adopt a semblance of Artificial Intelligence that will, having talked to those in the future, baffle our scientists until the final day of the T-Ansible’s existence.
The radio grew louder, and I heard Pekov’s voice alongside Bedenmayer’s.
(You can’t go in there – I don’t know what we can do but you can’t go in there...)
I do not know if you can stop it, Mr. Kurto, nor if you should stop it, but I know that it is about to happen.
(“I didn’t mean to – I don’t understand what’s happening!”)
Be careful.
I raced from the console, pushing off sideways firmly with my legs and sailing along the corridor. The proximeter at my left wrist gave the rough location of all crew members on the station, and I saw two nearly overlapping on the innermost layer, on the other side of the core.
(“Why isn’t she moving? Why is she frozen?”)
I dove neatly from handhold to handhold, modifying my trajectory gently along the curvature of the path. My heart kept trying to jump up into my throat, and my gut seized with an unspoken dread. I check my proximeter again, and found that I was 90 degrees from their position. For a brief moment, the display lit up with another suit, nearby, directly to my left. My pulse quickened. To my right was outward from the station, to my left inward.
(“Clearly we don’t understand what this is, Private,stay calm!”)
I rounded the final stretch of corridor and found Bedenmayer tightly wrapped in Pekov’s arms. The older scientist was holding him back, his feet firmly hooked under c-grips in the ceiling of the inner layer, while Bedenmayer struggled to escape towards the core. His face was clotting with tears, big globs of them stuck to his skin and floated about his head as he writhed.
I deftly came to rest near the pair. Pekov met my gaze and started to speak, but Bedenmayer didn’t notice me at all. I followed his gaze.
A port hole was open, through which a short ladder extended before ending abruptly in an enormous spherical room. The core. What hung at the center of the room was a pitch black orb, roughly one meter in diameter, held perfectly still by some unseen force. A soft humming filled the air.
And Bedenmayer’s outstretched, flexed hand was reaching towards Juliette, the red haired youth, who floated wide eyed halfway between the wall of the core chamber and the core itself. She seemed to be frozen, completely and unnervingly still, but as I watched her hair drifted ever so slightly and her body moved ever so slowly towards the core.
My face flushed and panic rose up through my chest to my head like a flood. Pekov’s voice called to me twice, chirping through the headset and echoing off of the corridor walls, but I had already pushed off towards the port hole. My hands clawed at the ladder rungs, and I pulled hard to send myself into the chamber, towards the girl.
WHAM.
It was like hitting a brick wall made of thick tar. As my head passed through the porthole, all sound reaching my ears immediately dropped in pitch several octaves, and proceeded to crawl even further downwards. I became aware that I was moving slowly, incredibly slow, unbelievably slow, and I felt a unique disconnection from my body. I tried to turn my eyes forward to meet those of Juliette, but I found that my eyes, instead of a split second flitting between targets, took minutes to shift.
I proceeded further into the core room.
Things were stopped now. Everything. Not truly stopped, but painfully slow. I made the mistake of blinking, and spent fifteen minutes in darkness. When my eyes reopened, I began to see the flickering of phosphorescent lights coming from the corridor behind me. I took a breath, and the air filled my lungs over the course of an hour. Exhaling took two. My foot came into contact with a rung of the ladder behind me, and several minutes went by before I could feel it.
Operson seemed to be moving more slowly than I. Even now her face was just beginning to register a new expression, as if she was just now noticing that I was here. But my mind was working at normal speed – I noticed the passage of time as slowed down, and I could see in her expression that her mind, too, was unchanged.
If we exist at all points in time simultaneously, then memory formation is what gives us a direction in time. Memory formation is driven by perception, the ability of the mind to observe its environment and think internally. What then, is the rate that time passes but a measure of how quickly we form memories? Time is slow here, but slow in our heads. And the closer to the core we get, the stronger the dilation becomes.
It was unbearable from then on. Afterwards I would recall weeks in that chamber, perhaps months. Months gazing into Juliette’s green eyes. Each breath became longer, by the worst of it, it may have taken a full week to draw air. At some point, I can’t remember when, my perception of light became staggered. I was thinking faster than the movement of photons bombarding the room, and the result was an incomplete wave of visual information. I would see darkness, then an uneven attack of photons striking and exciting my retina, then dying off, giving the impression of a submarine’s intermittent sonar display. Every few seconds I would get a flash and a picture of Juliette would appear, slightly closer now to the core than she was weeks ago, then a second wave of reflected light from the other side of the core room, then repeat. Each picture a portrait of confusion, sadness, and loss. Maybe Wothet was right, maybe there was nothing I could have done. All I know is that, while I spent months in that sleepy unmoving, she must have spent centuries. Millennia. Eternity.
I saw eternity in her pretty green eyes.
At some point I felt a hand around my ankle, and then things reversed. Another few weeks as I drifted backwards, eventually regaining normal sight, and at some point later sound, steadily rising in pitch from the depths of low frequencies. Breaths became quicker, I blinked without losing days at a time, and finally I was out. It is hard to communicate the deep seated desire and craving for the human mind to return to the normal speed of time, but it is enormous. I spent minutes afterwards relishing quick breaths, turning my head this way and that, stretching my limbs (although they were not sore, my peripheral nervous system had been unaffected). Bedenmayer had me by the leg and wouldn’t let go, saying over and over again that he wasn’t going to lose me too, he wasn’t going to lose me too. Later on, Pekov told me that he had entered the chamber as well, just slightly, enough to understand what it was doing to Juliette, and almost lost control of himself before the older scientist could stop him.
And there we floated, watching our friend drift ever so slowly towards the core that she might never meet. She would not age, grow hungry, or grow tired, no more so than she would have in the span of the ten seconds it would normally take to travel such a distance, but she would experience that eternity in her mind.
Navy One gave the crew of the Pragorthal instructions to leave a team behind with the artifact, equipped with tools, supplies, and an S-Ansible of their own for communication. The coordinates of the station, fixed as they were, were catalogued in the final report submitted, and instantaneously a new field of research was given birth.
The rest of us returned to Navy One, in orbit around Yelk, for a brief leave. Bedenmayer and Pekov and I were debriefed, given a salary bonus from the Military branch, and sent home for an extended leave with our families. I was heralded as the discoverer of communication across time (and chronologically, I was), and received a plethora of invitations to appear on tech talk shows and scientific conventions, all of which I politely turned down. I had been too long from home, and it was about time to rescue my daughter from her grandmother’s flat in the suburbs of Yelk. Real gravity felt good – extremely good – and driving home in a land car brought a flood of physical comfort and rewarded nostalgia. Spend too long floating around in-between planets, and you appreciate even more our evolutionary beginnings.
It was ninth day, and Uli was home from school. I drove down the long, black paved road in the gathering twilight and pulled up to the front lawn, full of freshly trimmed blue-green grass. Even before I set foot out of the car I heard the house door slam, and little footsteps racing off the porch and down the driveway. A stream nearby gurgled steadily, contributing a pleasant undertone to the Spring evening. My mother’s house rested on the side of a hill, and as Uli ran her short legs had to pump in large strides to keep up with her acceleration. Her blond hair flowed wildly behind her, and her face was pure childish delight. I stepped out from behind the car, smiling, and she slammed into me at full speed, her arms wrapped tightly around my legs. Mother waved from the porch, and I grinned back. I scooped Uli up in my arms and held her little body high in the air like an airplane, and she laughed down at me, her pretty green eyes sparkling. I set her down and she screwed her face up in mock seriousness, then said to me:
“I’m glad you’re back Daddy, but don’t leave for so long next time. It feels like you’ve been gone forever.”