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Mar 14, 2023 01:06
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| # ¿ Sep 15, 2024 11:18 |
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Only A Week Away 1772 words prompt: What a Horrible Week to Have a Curse (week 343) "I've come to the conclusion that we're cursed," Chen grumbled. "Your curse is being a smart-rear end who can't help doing things the wrong way. My curse is being your friend." To be fair to him, I had relied on some pretty gross emotional manipulation to get him to come out with me. A week-long round trip to the Kuiper Belt for automated scans is a hard sell, but the alternative of complete solitude made remorse an even more difficult ask. "Look, I'm going to make it up to you. I said I would, and I will, and then you'll remember that you love me." Growing up together, I’d learned myriad ways of handling Chen. He's an inflexible guy, and it turns out that inflexibility can be manipulable. If I were a monster I'd say part of Chen enjoyed being manipulated, but he was just so socially selective that his loyalty would allow for all kinds of annoyances. "Besides, it's not my fault. You know how feckless these grant requirements can be. I've gathered more than enough data to support our theses but because I'm competent, I did it in far fewer trips than the administration pricks predicted and so in order to 'do good science'," flailing my arms as wildly as the confines would allow, "We have to fly all the way out here and run meaningless scans and waste some fuel. I'm very much not the rear end in a top hat here." "You're the one in the ship with me, so as far as I'm aware, that makes you the rear end in a top hat. The only rear end in a top hat." I shrugged, and he retorted, "Omega rear end in a top hat." "I do not like Omega rear end in a top hat." Without looking, I could tell he was shaking his head. "You could have doctored your flight data, your scan logs, over the last few trips. You should have realized that you weren't going to meet the minima." I’d done a poor job of managing Chen's mood these last couple days. The Archaios is cramped. Small in-system research vessels don't cater to frivolity and fun. Generally, the work has a stupefying effect. Looking out and seeing Neptune on one side and on the other an unimaginably vast field of debris is, literally, awe-inspiring. There was also the typical benefit of being on the frontier of science. Fortunately we'd be heading back to the station in an hour or so. I tried one last ditch effort to lift Chen’s mood. In an awful British Science-Presenter voice I began, "It IS believe-d that the Kie-pur Belt contains moh than one trillion comet nyu-clei." Chen was stone-faced. "Tha' is nearleh as many cavite's as ah found in Bri'ish mouths each yeah." Looking back up at Chen I saw him grimace, but I decided I found a hint of a smirk before he suggested we start preparing for the return trip. Chen was warming up the engines and plotting while I went through the checklist for saving the gratuitous data and securing everything. "You ever think about how when we were little it’d take like a decade for NASA to send a satellite out this far?" Chen was tapping at his console, and softly replied, "If we were doing this back then I’d have killed you." "But then you'd go to Hell, Chen. You'd burn forever for killing one of God's Children, Chen." Chen's family were, relative to most people, pretty religious. I knew he wasn't a genuine believer, though he did appreciate the ritualism and faux sense of community it provided. "I think a decade alone in a spaceship I could probably pray my way back into Purgatory, bare minimum. Domine miserare mei and all that." As I was about to retort he added, “Shut up a second.” Chen activated the recording for our departure. "This is Archaios, date two-oh-five-five, oh four, twenty one. Flight-time, one-two-nine hours, twenty-seven minutes... mark. Departing Research Point two-seven-alpha-three for return to Al-Sufi station. Archaios out." "Strapped in?" Chen asked. I raised my hand and provided a confirmation with my middle finger directly in his field of view. "Okay. Engine's warm, and we are go." In the silence we heard each other brace for the punch, our seats squeaking in anticipation. "Did you miss the button? Probably labeled as 'go' or 'vroom'." "I hit the button. Panel says... ignition good, there's flow in the fuel lines." "How could the engines be running without us experiencing any force, Chen? Obviously the engines aren't running." Ignoring me, Chen brought up the feed of one of the external cameras. It slowly crept across the hull until the stern was in sight. Clearly visible against the empty blackness was the blue-purple haze of the engines. My skin tingled and I felt a wave of cold as we sat there, burning billions of atoms into bits and yet accomplishing nothing. Chen helpfully pointed out: "That's not possible." Looking up to see if any of the backup diagnostic panels on the ceiling could reveal anything, I saw it. In no time it filled the window over our seats. A miasma of dark purple waves, cresting into extremely thin lines of yellow white electric foam. Then Chen saw it too, and it started slowly filling up the forward screen. It must have been kilometers across. It just kept going, its rear nowhere in sight. The rolling purple miasma made it impossible to determine its surface or shape. Then, as if it were held within a galactic elastic, it snapped forward, towards the center of the solar system. The next instant, we were crunched hard into our seats. Eventually we realized that momentum had caught up with us, and we were in fact moving. Chen reacted and throttled down the engines so that we could gather ourselves. "What was that?" Chen said. It wasn't a question as much as a statement of dumbfounded wonder. Straining awkwardly against the straps to face him I asked, "How the gently caress should I know? You think I forgot to reveal to you that I'm an expert in alie– holy poo poo. That was definitely an alien ship wasn't it?" "Probably." After a moment of silence he added, "Should we file a report? That seems like, the kind of thing you do in these scenarios." "I guess that's – Yeah, okay," I stumbled while Chen tapped away. "Wait, you noticed how fast that thing shot off, right?" He exhaled an exasperated affirmation. "It'll take three odd hours for anybody home to receive a transmission from out here. That thing is... maybe that thing's faster than light?" If something as wide as Manhattan could fling itself away from us and escape our sight in only a couple seconds, it seemed ridiculous to limit the possibilities to things we understood. "It held us here." he whispered. "What, to get a head start?" "No. Who knows if it even noticed us, maybe it thought we were just another rock. Think about how fast it shot off. It's probably manipulating space around it." "And we got caught in whatever fields it generates to do the manipulation for itself," I said. Despite sounding insane, it felt like it made sense. "Right. And now it's heading towards the center of the system at faster than light speed," he said, seemingly devoid of judgment on the implications of this fact. "There are a lot of things that I like in that direction. Most of them, to be honest." Chen punched the engines back to full. A few hours into the two day trip we were receiving transmissions. Evidently it was decided to cast a wide spread of messages for the coming object. We didn't pay much attention to them. We were more interested in what They would say. Abruptly the shotgun blast of signals ceased transmission, and shortly after a different spread was being emitted by the object. Across the spectrum were dozens of languages and dialects thereof, all presumably stating the same message: DO NOT FEAR. WE HAVE RETURNED TO OUR CHILDREN. WE KNOW YOU WILL BE WARY, BUT YOU WILL FIND US BENEVOLENT AND LOVING. OUR FLOCK IS TO BE BROUGHT BACK TOGETHER, FOLDED IN. THOUGH THESE MANY EONS YOU HAVE BEEN SEPARATED NOW YOU SHALL BE RESTORED. WE WILL BE MADE WHOLE. MANY IN YOUR TIME HAVE SPOKEN OF US, SOME GIFTED HAVE EVEN COME TO KNOW US THROUGH CHANNELS YOU STILL CANNOT COMPREHEND. THEY HAD THEIR OWN NAMES, BUT THEIR COMMONALITY WAS OUR LOVE. PROPHETS, GODS, MESSIAHS. ALL WILL BE EXPLAINED AND UNDERSTOOD, BUT WE MUST LEAVE. WE ARE RETURNING TO OUR HOME, AND YOU MUST DECIDE FOR YOURSELVES WHETHER YOU WILL COME WITH US, OR STAY HERE. THOSE WHO STAY WILL BE LEFT ALONE, AND THEY WILL NEVER KNOW OTHERS, FOR THERE ARE NONE. YOU WILL BE ALONE, UNTIL THE END OF ALL THINGS. WE WILL SHARE THAT WHICH YOU CAN UNDERSTAND: WHERE WE ARE HEADED, WHY WE PLANTED YOU HERE. THOSE WHO WISH TO JOIN WILL WANT FOR NOTHING. WE WILL PROVIDE. WE DEPART IN 48 HOURS. We saw news feeds from Earth. Images from Al-Sufi showed an unimaginably large rectangular prism, a channel through its center running the entire length. Somehow it was projecting imagery and maps and information of all kinds over the atmosphere. Apparently it was also flooding the internet with more information still. Over only a few hours a general consensus settled in. These aliens, originating millions of years ago, foresaw the infinite expansion of the universe. They failed to find advanced life anywhere, and given the timescale, realized that none other would flourish by the time everything got too far apart to matter. They began a project, seeding thousands of star systems with life, allowing them to grow on their own, so that eventually everyone could be brought back together to exist in some sort of semi-physical reality for eternity. At some point the next day, people started disappearing. Apparently, it was able to somehow distinguish people who had agreed to go, and they were being scooped out of reality. I couldn't reach my parents. Still a few hours out, I asked Chen, "Any word from your family?" "No." We finished our deceleration and came upon Al-Sufi. The ship was gone. Almost no one was broadcasting anything. Only a couple news outlets were still operating. Social media sites were practically dead besides the bots. Nearly everyone had to have gone. We missed it. Silence settled on us for a few minutes. I had no idea what to do. My stomach felt like it was full of rocks, my chest was heavy, I felt like crying. Completely dead, Chen quietly let out: "I guess we'll always have each other."
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Mar 19, 2023 01:28
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