Touch of Creation
Touch of creation.
Part 1: Guests
He ignored it. This time he ignored it. The blinking red light, the signaling of distress, could not be answered. Peter Dove had tried eleven times previously to answer the signal. Always formally and as required by space-faring law, âCivilian merchant vessel 4113, pilot Peter Dove, receiving your distress signal, how may I assist?â Only to receive silence in return. An absolute silence, void of the common clicks and pops and static that bleeds into communication from the hostile environment that is space. Eleven times, he was greeted with pure silence.
Vessel 4113 wasn't a new vessel by any means, but a recent retrofit had replaced most of its aging equipment to include communications and sensor arrays. It had been tested and retested before launch. Dove tested it again and eleven times previously, all functional. It was important that it worked, 4113 was a long-range single crew hauler on what was called the loneliest corridor from Sol Confederate Space to the planet devoid Cygni Binary. The people of Cygni Binary lived in their collection of manmade stations and satellites between the binary stars of Cygni A and uninspiringly named B. There were some things they could not produce or manufacture, so men and women unafraid of isolation made the six-month journey across 11 (or 10, depending on position) light-years across black nothingness, a corridor of space famed for being the epitome and definition of the devoid aspect of space.
Dove lazily rested his head on his arm, settling fully on the console, and triggered the sensor array. Light, radio, and a thousand bursts of every energy filled this void, traveling in immeasurable distances in every direction. No returns, no reflection, no suspected absorption. Nothing was out there. Yet without a source, without a point of origin, the signal light blinked a slow pulse. Sighing, he continued to ignore the flash of the light. For the last 72 hours, this signal pestered with its empty alert. He wondered how long it would signal, and as though on cue, with some connection to the question, it stopped. He drew his eyebrows tight in consideration. One more check of the equipment would hurt nothing, and besides, what else is there in this isolation?
Down in the maintenance access area for the communications maintenance shaft, down two ladders and one ramp from the flight deck, he again checked the equipment by establishing a feedback loop. The system sent a signal and received it via the appropriate channel and equipment. Dove chuckled to himself. It worked, not surprisingly. The sensor array had been the same. He sat back against the wall of the space, no bigger than himself, checking heading and speed from his wrist display. As a single crew ship, he was able to check any system and issue any command remotely. He could fly the ship from anywhere on the ship. Though the areas that could support crew were limited to just a bunk, the flight deck, engineering deck, and a galley area that was configured for cooking and entertainment, three rooms in total that were all clustered tightly together, while the other twenty thousand square feet of the vessel was cargo areas. Sealed without that which was necessary to support life. Is there anything else that can be checked? He sighed again heavily, staring into the middle space between him and the ordered wiring and collection of circuit boards that made up all of the ability to communicate exterior 4113. He had checked the logs, and he had received a signal with an unknown point of origin and lacking the signature used for identifying known equipment. If it were a system error, it was a perfect one, free of the hallmarks of a failure. There was nothing out there, yet something was signaling distress. Dove sat up with the rising of a thought. He had not tried sending a signal, simply answering the one he received. The testing showed he could send a signal in a loop, which was to connect the send and receive together. But he had not simply sent his own signal. Using his wrist device, he punched in the commands to send a general hail to all ships within range. Basically, a âhello, is anyone out there?â burst of digital noise. Transmit complete, listening the wrist device signaled. It would take a moment for any ship within range to receive and answer. If they chose to, there was no rule, no law against ignoring a random non-distress communications burst. No one rarely did, however, even ships carrying crews of more than one, some 10 or more, happily answered. Thrilled to have another soul to talk to. Thrilled to not be alone. But it could take a moment, beyond the hour, for a reply to be received depending on distance. When the wrist device buzzed, physically and audibly, it startled Dove causing him to jerk his arm to full length as if it intended to bite him. He wished it had, as it would have been simpler.
Signal reflection detected, communications burst returned, distance to object 400 meters, signal returned all vectors, 400 meters. Navigational sensors updating.
Dove felt his face tightening as he ran back to the flight deck, landing solidly in the control chair, drawing up the various displays on the thin semi-translucent screens that now surrounded him. The screens flashed with readouts for speed, heading, and the recent navigation plot and chart. A burst of LIDAR and RADAR sensors flooded the surrounding space, returning in less than a second if an object was within 400 meters. An object entering his space-compression envelope at this point, or an obstruction already compressed, would create enough drag to trigger a shearing event as the compression field unwound uncontrollably. He could be dead by now, and reality has not caught up. In the off chance that maybe it was possible his mind raced to probable solutions. The thought died as navigation updated: no obstruction, safe to proceed flashed upon the screen. There was nothing out there. He repeated the action, communication burst, reflection, and navigational scan. It was the same. Maybe he'd missed something? Contemplating, he could issue a drone but at this speed the drone would disintegrate the moment it left the bay, dissolved to dust by the shearing forces as the ship leaped from point of origin to destination, compressing and crossing segments of space. An effect wholly invisible to a passenger except for the sudden streaking of visible stars and reflective objects in a space that was less void of anything than the corridor to Cygni Binary. Dove ran his hand across his clean-shaven cheek and chin. Routines were important to the isolated. The absurdity puzzled Dove, reflection at 400 meters from all vectors, and his hello world was returned to him from all directions. 4113 was essentially surrounded by nothing. True, he thought, but nothing doesnât reflect. He brought up the momentum controls and gave the command to decelerate to conventional speeds. Braking initiated, discharging drive systems, and engaging origin anchors. Cycle complete in thirty minutes. Dove made notes in the ship's log, disengaging the compression drive with the intent to deploy a maintenance drone to review the communications tower and to log the recent silent distress signals and signal reflections. With two taps of his fingers, a final look of puzzled focus at the now dark signal light Dove raised himself from the chair.
The horror stories of things out there, where things other haulers told each other at the hubs between worlds while they waited for refueling and resupply and hoping to wait long and grateful to be around others whether isolated or trapped with the same ten. One codger of a hauler was adamant that there was something out there. Something that shouldnât be on account of the astonishing amount of evil it was capable of, or so he proclaimed. âI tell you, without doubts and without hope of rebirth, the mist is there. Wandering through space, chasing ships from port to port. Catching them. Consuming them.â He was a Juno named Joseph; his speech and dress reflected the strict eloquence stereotypical of the theocratically governed Juno. His consonants sharply crisped, and the vowels almost nonexistent, creating a rapid-fire speech pattern that for anyone unacquainted with the culture dazed by the onslaught. Dove, a spaceborn, had met a diversity of people and only needed a moment to become proficient at holding a conversation at a pace. âOutside of asteroid fleas, there is nothing alive in space proper.â Dove replied as a stereotype himself. The spaceborn were not a superstitious people. Prayer doesnât stop a hull rupture, repair a drive failure, or stop a ship-wide plague. Intentional action based on experience and knowledge does. âI tell you again, truly, sir Dove, there is a thing in space that is beyond all understanding. An evil not created of the heavens or of hell, but born here in space.â Joseph again pressed, holding his coffee in both hands and his chin up. âAlright, alright, Iâll buy that space has further weirdness we havenât seen, and even the best of us has seen little, but what is this thing you're selling?â Dove laughed as he spoke. He had heard of things as well, sirens living planets, and rejected them all. Joseph turned his head, deflecting the rejection. âIt is called the mist, sir, the mist. It is as black as the space itself, but it moves like the mist of any planet with a vapor content enough to support a weather pattern. Haulers find it in cargo spaces, or creeping along the haul at relative speeds would tear away any such thing.â Joseph was convinced, his voice and language strong in belief. Doveâs face was unabashedly quizzical. Joseph pushed on. âVessel 2154 encountered it, found it creeping along the drive housing, stopped him dead, and anchored him in space for three months.â
Dove considered these things, the superstitions of Joseph. They had kept in touch through long-range communication messages, Joseph sharing stories and Dove sharing advice on system maintenance. Dove still considered it to be juvenile, but entertaining. However, at that moment, his mind wandered to this specific conversation. Why? Dove stripped off his overalls down to the emergency suit that fitted the form of nearly every space-fairing professional that intended to live longer than a few years, and replaced the clothing with the heavy expedition-class suit he used for repairs and anything that might require the shielding necessary to ensure that all his limbs remain attached and his DNA unscathed. While performing the start-up on the suit-mounted wrist display and running a diagnostic on the suit's life-supporting systems the origin anchor cycle completed, and the ship groaned nearly imperceptible shifting. Doveâs eyes grew. Ships donât groan, not like a great weight settled onto them. Like the groan of a wagon assuming a great burden. They also do not shift. When the origin anchor was active, a ship could not be moved, and the anchor would remain active for the first 12 seconds to prevent the ship from drifting, given the associated dangers of drifting when exiting the compression field.
Dove returned to the control deck, fully suited and helmeted, and he again addressed the various displays. Position was .0012 degrees in parallel on a negative y-axis to the expected arrival point. The ship had drifted, but only slightly, indicating that it had come out of cruising speed at a greater mass than the computer had calculated for. Moving to the drone deployment bay off the control deck, he initiated another scan, and again, nothing. Windows were rare, meant for specific operations where sight was required. Mainly confined to the flight deck for docking and in-flight refueling mechanisms. They were small and singular in their view. The sensor equipment was the only reliable way to see anything beyond the hull. Windows were a structural weakness. Glass and plastic, no matter the thickness, were a risk. Luxury liners for those with incredible amounts of discretionary funding were available with massive bay-style windows exposing the vision to the awesomeness of space. Also available were stories of lives lost due to rapid decompression from a ruptured window. From the drone deployment window, he could view the exterior hull through the thick transparent medium. He could see the drone hatch, and from the angle, he could not see the communication tower, not more than 200 feet from his viewing point. He triggered the exterior lighting. Every scorch and scratch mark left from hundreds of journeys through the most difficult medium was clearly visible on the gray and silver paneling of 4113. The light created an oblong glaze over the hatch with a perfect and distinct line terminating the dark. For a moment, a singular third of a breath, Dove felt more than saw a flicker. For that barely perceptible moment the shadow violated reason, pushing across that terminal between light and dark. Reason reestablished itself, and he denied that it had happened. It was only a trick of the brain or simply an object passing through the light. The rarity of an object passing through the light was only made possible by the impossibility of the shadow having will and mobility. Dove physically shrugged the unease that had been building in the place between his shoulder blades, dislodging not the unease but a comment made by Joseph: âIt is a foul thing never touched by creation.â Dove moved while thinking. Checking and readying the drone for deployment, there was no creator, just a massive energy blasting out of the center of the galaxy in a stupendous and violent release. That touch gave the universe the energy necessary for its own creation.
Dove finished the inspection of the drone and backed up out of the small chute that the drone would deploy up and out of through the hatch. Like everything else in the ship, it was designed to have only enough space to complete a task. He pulled the heavy door close and turned the locking bar. The system hissed as it sealed the threshold.
Bay ready, drone online. Ensure the bay is clear before opening the hatch.
Dove watched the bay through a camera feed on the wrist display as he triggered the airlock cycle. He could hear the rapid evacuation of the atmosphere as it was pumped out of the bay, so as not to let it go to waste being vented into space. With a buzz, the wrist display announced that the bay was voided, and the hatch began to open. The camera, with its high-definition and slightly scratched lens, focused on the drone, providing a wide-angle view of the entire lower half of the bay. Dove felt his heart rate increase as a tendril or vapor, as black as the backdrop of space, drifted down into the bay from the out-of-view hatch. The tendril grew into a steady stream, matching the steady increase in Doveâs heart rate. This makes no sense, the thought ricocheted across his mind. He aborted the deployment and initiated the sequence to close the hatch.
Obstruction detected in Drone Bay hatch. Please address immediately
Part 2: Never by creation, coming soon.