Original Sin

Original Sin

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My father had a saying, passed down from his father to him. It said, “Time is a paradox. The less you have of it, the more you need it but once you have none left, you no longer have need.” Humanity has lived under this, each generation doing as much as they can in the little time they have in order to give the next generation as much time as possible. I too lived under the heel of time, always rushing and rushing to complete my work as quickly as possible so that I might see the fruits of my labor before my time is up. Now, though? I have Nothing but time, and simultaneously no time at all.

I was 29, once. A researcher, engineer and crew lead. I had a name, but it is no longer relevant. We were a crew of four amongst a team of a thousand, searching for a way to cast off the last shackles tying us down and keeping us from our right of exploration. The stars beyond our own were too distant to visit by any conventional means - the darkness that lay between those brief pockets of light had proven too much for any probe we sent out there. Long before they reached their destination, they were consumed by the icy blackness and left drifting lifelessly for all eternity. And for each failed attempt, nearly a century passed before the inevitable conclusion was reached. Far too long for any manned voyage. We needed a way to drastically reduce this time, and after nearly five hundred years of research, generation after generation passing the torch of inspiration down we finally found something.

The exact science of this is - was - beyond my expertise. From what I understand, the theory was that for every expenditure of energy, there was a plane where that energy was instead generated and vice-versa. And as in our plane more energy is consumed than is generated, this plane would offer a nearly limitless amount of power if we could tap into it. And through small experiments… we did. After confirmation of this theory, all work was focused into creating an engine and a vessel that could use it to reach speeds greater than that of light and to finally break through our final barrier. I’m not sure where it started, but the idea spread that this vessel would be our way of casting light into the darkness, humanity’s great torch flung into the shadows. And so, when the vessel was completed it was unanimously agreed that we would name it the Bearer of Light.

My team was selected to crew the vessel. Myself as captain, a navigator to verify positioning, a medical officer in case of incident and another engineer in case of major mechanical faults. To say we piloted it would be an overstatement, the ship contained an onboard intelligence that was capable of controlling it to a far greater level of accuracy than any of us. We were there to monitor, observe and report back what we saw upon our return, as well as ensuring we arrived where we meant to go. The open secret was that we were to also act as test subjects for the effects this kind of travel could have on the human body. And so, on the day of the test we boarded the Bearer and strapped into place as it was towed into medium Earth orbit and into position. I remember this, as clear as if it was but moments ago and yet it is foggy like an ancient memory dragged out.

“...all systems green, Control.” The engineer spoke into his mouthpiece. “Engine ready to fire on your command.”

“Affirmative, Bearer-4” clicked a voice on the other side. “We’re doing a few last-minute checks down here, shouldn’t be more than a few moments. We’ll raise the flag when we’re ready to bring the nav systems online. Bearer-3, can you verify that the w-axis point is set to -0.6282 and…” I tuned out the details and focused on the doctor finishing her pre-trip vitals check. Taking a few automatic readings, she jotted down the last notes in her clipboard. “Slightly elevated bp, like all of us. Considering the circumstances, that’s to be expected.” She did a final check on my monitoring harness, identical to the ones worn by her and the other two members of my crew. Making sure she was getting the heart rate and temperatures as well, she floated over to the other members to inspect theirs once she was satisfied.

I eyed the lever that was positioned on the side of my arm rest. Once flipped, the onboard navigational systems would come online and in the span of a second would run through the trillions of calculations needed to tap into the other plane and, igniting the engines, would transport us a little over four lightyears away. If this worked, we would be the pioneers of a new age of discovery. If this didn’t work… They’d gone over some of the dangers with us before we put in our names as volunteers, but I hadn’t paid too much attention. If something went wrong, I wouldn’t be around long enough to realize it and so it hadn’t seemed too terribly important.

“Bearer-1,” the voice called out over the comm, breaking me from my thoughts. “We’re good down here. Fire when ready.”

“Affirmative, Control. Alan, Mary, strap back in and give a thumbs up when situated.”

The engineer and the doctor, Alan and Mary respectively, nodded their confirmation and pulled their way back into their seats. After a brief moment of buckling down and tightening straps, their two thumbs went up. I looked down between the legs of my chair at the blue and green ball slowly spinning beneath us. “See you soon…” I whispered, and flipped the switch.

A soft green light filled the cabin signaling that the system was online and functioning properly. A robotic voice called out “Standby” and then we were pulled forward.

We all knew something was wrong immediately, as sparks began flying through the cabin. The entire ship shook violently as panels shattered in explosions of fire before being immediately hosed down by foam. The green light flashed red as klaxons began to scream their alarm. “Control, this is Bearer-1! Abort test! I say again, abort test!” I switched the lever back into the OFF position and all the lights shut off. The violent shaking cut off immediately, as did the sparking panels. There was silence over the radio, and I was pretty sure it had been taken offline as well. “Everyone okay?” I called out. Alan and Yash, the navigator, gave their all-clear. “Mary?” Alan called out. I looked over to her and saw her staring down at the Earth, jaw agape. “What’s happening to it…?” she asked, and I turned down to look.

The planet was framed in a purple glow, with lightning shooting out of it into space. Rapidly, the lightning converged over the planet until it was glowing like a purple star. Several bolts shot straight through us, but passed through as if we weren’t there.

And then, like a glass pane hitting the ground, it shattered. It was as if the Earth had been painted onto a window and broken, each shard carrying a piece of the image. Where the earth had been was a black void, beyond which nothing could be seen. The sun, the moon, the stars were all absent in this space. All that was left was us and the shattered remnants of the planetary pane.

All we could do is stare in silence. For several moments, none of us dared to speak. “Look…” Yash said, weakly. The shards that once were Earth had begun to stop and settle into place, and where they stopped they started to grow. A new Earth sprung into existence, then another and another until before us laid an endless flat field of Earths, each with a faintly glowing purple bubble around it. The bubbles of each earth made contact with each other but never did they intersect.

“I don’t understand, what are we-” Mary was cut off as a shard that had flown past us in the initial breaking flew through us as it sped its way into an open spot amongst the planets. Like the lightning, it seemed to pass through us with no effect. Or, so I had assumed. Where moments ago Mary had once sat, now there was nothing. No seat, no straps, not even holes where they had been bolted to the floor. She was simply gone.

“MARY!” Alan yelled, unbuckling himself and floating over to where she was supposed to be. He scrambled, feeling around for something… anything that would give a clue as to what had happened to her. Yash unbuckled as well, and began messing with the few remaining panels in the cabin. And I continued to stare out at the earths below. Finally, I broke out of my stupor. I unbuckled and floated over to Alan. I couldn’t see anything that indicated there was a person there before, it looked to be a curiously open spot in an otherwise cramped cabin. Alan looked over to me. “What happened to her?”

“I don’t know…” I whispered out, in fear and awe. “But we need to see if we can’t get back.”

I half expected Alan to remain in place and need more convincing - he and Mary had become close friends over the years - but he took only a moment more before looking up. “You’re right. We need to get power back, first of all. We don’t have much in reserve air and if we can’t get the CO2 scrubbers online, it won’t be long before there’s none left.” He floated over to one of the shattered panels and began to fuss with the wires inside. Before long, the soft light of a nearby undamaged panel came on and he drifted over to inspect it. Another panel came up, over near where Mary had been and I went over to investigate.

“Alright, the good news is that while we have a lot of damage to the cabin, the conduits themselves seem to be mostly fine. I should be able to reroute most of the damaged panels to the operational ones.”

“Guys…” I called out.

“The bad news,” Alan continued, “is that our generator is offline and we’re going to run out of reserve power very quickly.”

“Guys…” I called out again.

“I’ll have to get down there, but I might be able to get it back up. I’ve no way of knowing what kind of damage there is along the way, but based on the atmospheric readings there at least aren’t any hull brea-”

“Mary’s harness is still reading her vitals.”

That got their attention.

They floated over as quickly as they could, looking at the same panel I was. The reading from the harness were still coming in, though without any medical knowledge the most we could do is confirm that there was something there. We at least could tell that her heartbeat was racing, pounding away at over 136 beats per minute. Alan moved closer, inspecting the panel as much as he could without taking it apart. “This doesn’t make sense. This is a hardwire connection, it needs to be physically connected to the harness to get information.”

“Is it broken? Giving off false readings?” I asked the engineer.

“From what I can tell - no. It’s one of the few things here that looks untouched. What we’re seeing IS Mary’s readings, but somehow they’re coming in remotely.”

“So she’s still alive out there, somehow? We just can’t see her?”

“Or feel her - if she were still strapped in here, we’d be floating in her chest about right now. She’s here enough for the readings, but… I don’t know, not here at the same time? This doesn’t make any sense.”

“If the monitor can pick her up, maybe there’s still a way we can get her back here with us. Can you see if-”

I was cut off as purple sparks exploded from the console. The readings on the monitor went wild, jumping from high peaks to low valleys before the screen itself shattered.

“What now?” Yash asked. “Does that mean she’s…”

“It means Nothing until we can confirm one way or the other.” Alan said back, sharply. “We need to get power back, then we can figure out how to get her back.” He headed over to the bulkhead separating the cabin from the hall leading to the utility parts of the ship. “I’m headed down there.”

“Wait up.” I said, floating over. “I’m coming too. Yash, stay here and see if you can’t make some sense of where we are. If we get the main power back online, the radio might start working again and I need you to listen and call for help if it does.”

“Help?” Yash looked at me. “What help can there be? Did you not just see the whole planet break into tiny pieces?”

“What I saw - what we all saw - doesn’t make sense. At all. So I’m operating under the assumption that it’s some kind of illusion or hallucination until we get this figured out.”

Yash looked down at the field of soft purple light and countless earths, some still radiating lightning. “Some illusion…”

—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The engineering section was completely blocked off by a solid wall of pure black. Alan and I stopped outside of it. “What the…” I muttered. I took out a flashlight from my belt and tried to shine through it, but it was like the Void was a physical barrier stopping the light from going any further. “Add this to the list of things that don’t make sense.”

Alan tapped at a panel on the wall beside us. “There’s no way I can fix the generator without getting to it.” A few more taps. “The ship is still reading everything on the other side of this, there’s no detected breaches, leaks or anything else. Atmospheric pressure looks good, temp is stable.” He took a deep sigh. “There’s no other way. I have to take the chance, and trust the readings.”. He walked right up to the edge of the solid darkness and put a hand on the wall, pushing slightly into it before pulling it back out. He braced himself, said “here goes nothing” and stepped inside. Immediately, the lights that hadn’t broken in the chaos came back on at full intensity, and I could feel the fans beginning to circulate the air and refill the oxygen. “We’re running!” I heard Yash call from the cabin.

“Alan!” I called out. “Alan, you can come back, it’s all turned on again!”

Nothing returned my calls. “Alan?”

“What’s going on down there” Yash yelled out. I didn’t respond, I just waited there for a while but Alan never came back out or responded. Worse, the Void seemed to grow and started creeping forward towards the door. I stepped back out of it and back towards the cabin and Yash.

“Where’s Alan?” Yash asked, seeing me re-enter alone. “What happened?”

I ignored him, floating over to the radio. “Control, this is Bearer-1. Control, do you read me?” Nothing responded, not even static. “Control, do you copy?”

This time, there was a response. Or rather, it seemed like there were a thousand responses overlapping each other for a brief second before the radio shorted out.

“Where is Alan?!” Yash demanded.

“I don’t know!” I yelled back. “There was something blocking the way, he stepped into it and now he’s gone.”

“What does that mean for us?!” Yash panicked. “Are we both just going to disappear too?”

“No!” I calmed myself. “No. I don’t know if it was him or something else that brought the power back but we’re not going to waste time. Can you get us back to earth?”

“Which earth?” He asked incredulously.

“It doesn’t matter. Any of them.”

Yash stared for a moment, then floated over to his console. Half of it was broken but the remaining half responded to his commands. “I can get us close, but we’re not designed for reentry.”

“We don’t have to be - the ship that towed us out should still be in place to tow us back. If we can link up with them, we can find out what happened and get help.”

“...Okay. I’ll try.”

Yash used what parts of the cabin he could, and eventually I felt the ship lurch as it started slowly drifting towards the closest orb. “There, we should be on a path to link back up with the tow ship. I’ve got the retrograde engines set to circularize our orbit once we get into position, then it’ll just be a matter of waiting for it to come back around and we can burn to rendezvous.”

We both watched nervously as the planets below us got closer and closer. The faint purple glow started to dim, and I hoped that meant we were getting out of whatever danger we had found ourselves in.

About an hour later, I felt the front-facing engines kick in as we began to slow down. “Okay, we should be in place in about ten seconds, then it’s just a wait.”

I breathed a small sigh of relief. I may not know what happened to Mary or Alan, but hopefully control will be able to figure it out and bring them back. In any case, it was clear that we still had some bugs to work out bef-

Suddenly, the planet started to glow an intense, violent purple. Lightning started shooting out from around it and sparks of the same color starting popping out the remaining few lights in the ship.

“Back us out! Yash, back us out!”

Yash was frantically messing with his console. “I’m trying! Retrograde engines on full, but we’re getting p-”

A bright flash emanated from his console and enveloped him. I could see him scream as he started to glow the same purple, but no sound escaped before he disappeared in a bright flash. Where he was before, the same Darkness from the engineering room formed a ball, floating in the air. “Wh-” I was cut short as well, as the ball rapidly expanded to fill the entire ship and sucked me into it.

That’s the last I remember before I blacked out.

—-------------------------

When I came to, I understood. I was not where I was supposed to be, but I was where I am. Years of experiences not yet had filled my memories, and the knowledge of ages past that were yet to come. I awoke in a white room I had not yet built, with doors I had opened long into the future and markings that I had yet to write.

I realize this does not make sense to you yet, but I know from memory of a future where it will. In time, you will understand, and I envy that of you. That you still have a lack of time, and thus the need for it.

All you must know is this:

My reality had rules. I broke them. You are going to help me put things right. Your time is coming, and with luck…

So is mine.