To Andromeda and Beyond?

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

It was the year 254,051. It was odd, actually, that nobody seemed to care anymore why they started counting form zero 254,051 years ago, or why a “year” was 365 “days” long, or why each day had ten “hours,” or why each hour had 100 “minutes.” Presumably, it had something to do with the periods of revolution and rotation of the original homeworld of humanity, but nobody could remember where that was. It was generally suspected that it was in the spiral arms somewhere, in what was referred to as the “Sirius Sector,” because that’s where archeologists find the oldest artifacts. But dozens of other sectors made similar claims. Unfortunately, no habitable planet could be found that revolved around its luminary in exactly 365 days. This suggested that the original homeworld may have been destroyed, either by war, or because their sun went nova. Ultimately, in the large scheme of things, it really didn’t matter. Mankind had expanded to fill all corners of the Milky Way. Where they actually originated, didn’t matter.

What did matter to scientists, however, was why there were no non-human civilizations in the galaxy. Over 90 billion stars had been explored, containing over 10 billion habitable planets, of which about half harbored at least single cell organisms. Eleven percent of those contained indigenous plant life. Eight percent of those worlds developed animal life. But none on the worlds containing animals ever developed a detectable civilization. To be sure, some of the animal species were able to communicate using a language, but these were always hominids, with DNA very similar to humans. It was concluded that they were humans that had become isolated and had de-evolved over the millennium. Apparently, homo optime-sapiens were the only intelligent species in the galaxy, and perhaps the universe. However, with the recent invention of the Hyperwarp Drive, we had a chance to find out.

The Hyperwarp Drive made intergalactic travel possible. Instead of requiring 250 years to reach Andromeda, it could be done in two. So, when the SS Initiative left space dock and streaked toward Andromeda, its five year mission was to…well, to see if anybody was out there with a respectable IQ.

One year into the mission, just short of the half way point, the Initiative shuddered violently and dropped out of hyperwarp. Half of the inertial dampers instantly overloaded in their effort to keep the crew from becoming wall ornaments. On the bridge, the main viewer displayed a mammoth alien vessel, at least a thousand times larger than the Initiative. “They’re hailing us,” announced the communications officer.

“On speakers,” replied the captain.

“We’ve been monitoring your galaxy since you humans began to spread. Your species was permitted to infest the galaxy you call the Milky Way. However, you may not travel beyond one million light years from your central black hole. Access beyond that is prohibited. Therefore, you are to turn your ship around, or be destroyed.”

“Sounds like they mean business,” noted the first officer.

“I don’t care,” replied the captain. “I need to meet these aliens. Maybe I can reason with them. Prepare a shuttle.” A few minutes later, the captain left the shuttle bay and headed toward the alien spaceship. Half way there, the shuttle simply exploded. No one saw a weapon fired.

“Ensign, turn the ship around, and plot a course for Alpha-base,” ordered the first officer.

“At least we learned something,” injected the science officer. “There are other intelligent species out here.”

“Well, that was our mission, after all,” stated the first officer. “So, I guess we’re done here. Engage.”

 

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Monitor

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

My model number is SAN7-8V/. That’s San-seven, eight-vee-slash. Slashers, they called us. Fierce name for a gang of decorations.

We were the featured models voted ‘best’ and allowed to be built by the birthing factories after that cycle’s design competition sixteen orbits ago. During that time, a neo-aestheticism was taking place. The Great Construction had passed and The War was yet to come. My model was a symbol of that middle era. A symbol of hope and the ability to create something of pure beauty without much utilitarian use. It was a time of peace all over the world, my birth was.

Because of that, I’m white curved polymers spun around plasticable mesh anchored to minimalist jointwork. A sheen of seranano makes sure I’m constantly shiny. I am graceful and pretty to look at.

I can’t lift more than average, I have no factory-issue weaponry other than my few sharp edges, and I am not exceptionally intelligent. My applications for upgrades are granted on a ‘for those according to their need’ basis so I’m rejected more times than not unless it’s related to my job.

My job. I should say my jobs, plural. There have been a lot. I was built to be pretty but not for a purpose. I was too fragile for the reactor floor and I lacked the hull tensile strength for atmospheric re-entry. I worked my way down the chain of importance to here.

I was a snail-catcher. I watched the skies through the telescopes for slower-than-light vehicles of non-silicate origins. So far, there had been none. I had no co-workers. The other models of my year were all destroyed during The War, useless as we were. Bright white makes for horrible camoflauge and dumbness equals death.

So now I watched the skies for snails. Sometimes, I didn’t log my findings for milliseconds, hoping for a bit of punishment to liven things up. Nothing. I powered down for three cycles once just to see what would happen. Nothing.

I wondered if there are searchers like me out there, eyes and ears pointed towards the skies, just waiting.

I wondered that until three days ago.

I noticed something. It was definitely STL and it was headed close to our planet. Scans said it was ferro-class 2 but hollow. It was spewing smoke of its propulsion core. I saw no cognitive arrays but I did sense a spray of radio waves coming off of it. I called up my communicator viewscreen, floated it in front of me and set it to two-way.

A pink thing blocked the screen from the metal life I could see in the background. It was making sonic noises that were being amplified by the array. That was the radio noise. I spoke to the metal but heard nothing back, just the barking of the pink thing. I didn’t know how the life-form was supposed to hear me above that thing’s noise.

Smoke filled the screen. The pink thing stopped making noises. The radio waves stopped.

I continued to send messages to the metal but it drifted aimlessly now. It was going to miss our planet and continue past. I issued a request for retrieval from space command but they classified it as a meteorite and deemed it unnecessary.

That was three days ago. I am haunted by the experience but I no longer feel bad.

There is life out there more useless than me.

 

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It Takes a Certain Type

Author : Clint Wilson

It started when I was just a preschooler. “Who wants to one day fly up into space?” asked the instructor.

They gauge the reactions of children who get enthusiastic when it comes to questions of science and space travel. By the time I was in my twelfth year I had been selected for the long-range program.

I have always been a loner, more comfortable to remain in my own thoughts than in the company of others. And my love for space and space exploration has pushed my ambitions easily in this direction. Now here I finally am, on the first leg of my solo journey to another star.

The solar sails, now open to their full two and a half kilometer extent, glisten less and less in the fading light of Sol. Soon their gossamer sheen will be nothing but an ink black shadow against the backdrop of cold space. I cross Neptune’s orbit without incident, and head for the ort cloud.

I report back to Earth Base regularly, but it’s all scientific data and business as I have no family with whom to share well wishes.

I sip my morning coffee, freeze dried grounds from the massive provisions hull, enough to last me seventy years. I stare out the forward bay window, gazing at the distant speck that is my eventual destination.

Wolf 359, less than eight light years distant will still take far longer than this many years to reach. Considering acceleration and deceleration I will be a much older man when I finally arrive at this system where once no satellite was thought to orbit, the young red dwarf harbors a small solid body, most likely too primitive to contain life, but nevertheless, an actual planet orbiting a star besides our own, my ultimate dream destination. And I am to be its first Earthly visitor.

I have understood from a young age that since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the technology has already existed to do away with actual human participation in extraplanetary exploration. Why risk lives when robots can get us everything we need? But can they really? All the rock samples and data in the world mean nothing compared with mankind experiencing new worlds through the eyes of one of their own. This is why I now sail into the void.

I am one of many who dream of traveling into space and visiting far away worlds, but one of few actually prepared to receive this blessed one way ticket into ultimate discovery and wonder.

I am thirty now. I will be more than twice this age when I drop into orbit around Wolf 359’s little satellite. That leaves me with up to a possible thirty years or so for telescope exploration and data collection. And if potential conditions prove risk-free enough I then have the resources for a total of three actual landings with three-day excursions attached to each. This will be a challenge to my physical toughness when I am in my seventies or greater. But I am more than up for it. Of this I have no doubt whatsoever.

And then if I manage to live to the ripe old age of one-hundred out there circling that tiny rock and my food and fuel finally runs out? Well providing I haven’t miraculously discovered something else to eat, then I have a pill that will work quickly in assisting me to avoid painful starvation. But this is neither here nor there, because I am on my way… and I am ready.

 

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The Way Finder

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

The captain struggled to stand up. His dislocated left arm hung uselessly at his side. In the dim red light of emergency power, he could see his bridge crew climbing back to their assigned stations. “Does anybody know what the hell just happened?”

“We entered an uncharted wormhole,” answered the crewman monitoring the Opts Station. “Main power is off line. Possible hull breaches on decks 41 through 45. Emergency bulkhead doors have automatically deployed.”

“Any damage to the passengers sections?” asked the Captain, suddenly focused on his 6,214 passengers.

“The damage to primary structure appears to be limited to the crew sections. However, there must be injuries above deck 38. The ship experienced more than 20 gees when we returned to normal space.”

“Okay, Mister Hichens, you’re in charge of search and rescue. Take all non-essential crewmembers. Move the seriously injured to sickbay. For the rest, set up triages in cargo bays 1, 2, and 3. Mister Jessop, your top priority is life support. I want a briefing by all department heads in two hours. Now get going.”

* * *

“Hold still,” protested the nurse as she tried in vain to put the captain’s reset arm into a sling.

“Report,” barked the Captain to his department heads, as he pointed the nurse toward the exit.

“Limited power has been restored,” said the chief engineer. “We have enough power for two hyperspace jumps, maybe three. However, long range sensors and subspace communications cannot be repaired until we get to a space dock. In essence, we have some mobility, but we’re blind, deaf, and dumb. Until we get a fix on our position, a jump would be foolhardy.”

“Options?”

“I have the ships navigators in the passenger observatory,” replied Jessop. “They are trying to locate Cepheid Variables. If we can identify the spectrum and frequency of three of them, we can get our bearings. But to be honest, it’s a long shot, Captain. The equipment installed on cruise ships wasn’t designed for the kind of precision we need. Rescue isn’t likely either. Who knows where the wormhole dumped us.”

“Does anybody else have an idea?”

“Excuse me, Captain,” offered the timid Cruise Director, “but I think I may have something?”

“I’m listening, Mrs. Cartright.”

“I was reviewing the passenger manifest, sir, and I noticed that we have over 100 Extra-Terrestrials on board. One of them is an Eridani, sir. A Way Finder.”

“Whoa, a Way Finder,” replied the captain with a smile. “I’ve never met one of them before. Have him escorted to the bridge, immediately.”

* * *

The short Eridani stood in the center of the Bridge with his hands spread wide above his head. He chanted and mumbled for several minutes, as the ship’s translator and navigator worked furiously at a computer terminal. Then he lowered his arms, bowed toward the captain, and left the bridge.

“Give us a second, Captain. The Eridani use a log cylindrical coordinate system, and we use a spherical coordinate system. We’re doing the conversion now.” A few minutes later, he announced, “Got the direction, but does anyone know how far a ‘merdeft’ is?”

“A light-year or a parsec?” suggest the first officer.

“I think ‘defteros’ means ‘second’,” suggested the translator.

“I’ll look up Eridani’s AU, and do the parallax calculation,” said the navigator. Twenty minutes later he announced, “Ready, Captain.”

The captain mulled over the risks, but finally committed. “Let’s hope the Eridani are using standard galactic time. Make the jump, Mister Elliot.”

A few minutes later, the bridge crew cheered as the image of Saturn appeared on the main viewscreen.

 

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In The Void, The Answer

Author : Pete Clark

In the vast, senseless void of space, a new star appeared.

Darin watched from the observatory with wide eyed wonder at the glowing orb, reflecting on the War, the unknown enemy. The unseen enemy. He trained his telescopes and tapped keys to optimise magnification. His hands shook, then steadied as he increased his adrenaline levels with a thought to a hormone implant at the base of his skull, inserted painlessly into his spinal cord. He maximised magnification and shut his nictitating eyelids, minimising glare.

It was innumerable miles away, this orb. Its light came in steady pulses, of every known wavelength and, Darin noted, searching the databases, some new. His excitement grew with each pulse, and as he watched, it moved subtly in his viewfinder. Impossible. He looked again, using a thought-controlled drone to connect more computer power. He gained another power of magnification and the orb filled the viewfinder, strange swirling clouds scudding across its surface. Instantly, Darin knew this was no star. He chilled.

He quickly patched into the communications network and tapped a message out on the keyboard that lit up on telescope’s base unit. Its soft glow illuminated his fingers, and turned the complex recognition circuitry embedded in their tips into a sparkle of fingerprint fireworks.

His message read, simply:

UNKNOWN STAR / CRAFT. CO-ORDINATES 1955:1565 b-SECTION. MOBILITY LOW ALTHOUGH MEASURABLE. SIZE INCALCULABLE. SUGGEST SENDING CRITICAL RESPONSE TEAMS 4 AND 6. WILL CONTINUE MONITORING AND REPORT AS NECESSARY.

He tapped the key that added his details. He paused before hitting send. He re-read his message and thought of the panic that might ensue. It was war time, sure enough, but to add to the confusion? He could be hailed for securing the nation and for doing so without causing panic or fear. He sent his message to one of the numerous storage files that he had secreted around the communications network, and gathered data.

The final pulse of energy that Darin registered was not light as known to him, but rather its inverse, invisible dark energy that reached Earth in a stream about as wide as a human hair. It punched through the focusing lens, taking microseconds to travel through the length of the telescope and out of the eye piece. Darin grunted in surprise as the energy pulse seared a path through his brain, cauterising a worming scar through his tissues. He fell from his chair, his final thought not of love or family, but only a nagging regret that he should have risked the panic of the nation and released his message from its secure folder after all.

Innumerable miles away, against the textured velvet backdrop of space, the orb winked out of existence, appearing seconds later, to those who cared to look, light years closer to Earth. Its surface boiled with energy, as if it was alive and the taste of death on its tongue had piqued its curiosity just enough for it to want to try again, perhaps on a larger scale.

 

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