Singularity Read online

  By

  Vincent Berg

  Singularity

  Copyright © 2014 Vincent Berg. All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-941498-05-7

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  Product names, brands, and other trademarks referred to within this book are the property of their respective trademark holders. Unless otherwise specified, no association between the author and any trademark holder is expressed or implied. Nor does it express any endorsement by them, or of them. Use of a term in this book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark, registered trademark, or service mark.

  As always, I’d like to thank all of those who’ve put up with me during the highs and lows of this story’s creation. It’s hard supporting temperamental authors, and the rewards aren’t always as clear cut as more time and attention.

  I’ve got a long line of people who’ve helped with the story, but I’d like to thank:

  • My editors: Gary Bywater, Michael Martin, Mike Omelanuk and Robert Grimmett.

  • The cover astronaut image is courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech.

  • Cover and chapter fonts is Colo Pro Black, by S. Simov of ColoPro® fonts.

  • Internal graphics (chapter header and line breaks) are:

  “Set of text separator line” by Narong Jongsirikui of fotolia.

  "Decorative elements, border and page rules" by 100ker of fotolia.

  • I’d also like to thank Cindy Capatani for her personal guidance in energy medicine practices.

  Unknown Visitors

  Unexpected visitors always upset a household, no matter everyone's intentions. But when the visitors are another species from a distant galaxy, all bets are off. This is a series of related stories describing the clash within humanity as they deal with the unknown, and how they either rise to the challenge or are destroyed by it.

  1) Stranded in a Foreign Land

  2) The Lad Who Poked the Devil in the Eye

  The Great Death

  An apocalypse/post-apocalypse series which attempts to take a fresh look at an established genre. Instead of the survivors waking up to find everyone gone and then fighting amongst themselves, this series examines what it’s like to suffer through a mass-extinction event, and then how the people react to having experienced it afterwards.

  1) Love and Family During the Great Death

  2) Grappling with Survival

  3) Seeding Hope Among the Ashes

  The Catalyst

  The story of a young man who finds himself cast into the role of a leader of a religious movement through no actions of his own. Finding some people drawn to him, and others repelled, he and his sister struggle for explanations:

  1) An Unknown Attraction

  2) Trying To Be Normal

  3) Normalcy Is Harder Than It Looks

  4) Racing the Clock

  5) Touring Under Pressure

  6) Building a Legacy

  A House in Disarray

  (To be published in April 1016)

  Detective Emma rules investigates a crime which threatens the entire New York Police Department, even as her home life is thrown upside down by family seeking her protection. The NYPD police commissioner is the prime suspect, and he assigns her the task of either finding him innocent, or sending him to jail.

  Not-Quite Human

  A group of misfits, drifting through life, discover they have more in common than they do with their families and the rest of humanity. They set out to learn more about where they came from, and end up searching for their ancestral home, or at least somewhere they can call their own.

  1) The Cuckoo’s Progeny (in development)

  2) Lost with Nothing to Lose

  3) Building a New Nest

  Books and new stories can be found at:

  www.vincentberg.net

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by the Author

  01: On a World Stage

  02: Otherworldly Catastrophes

  03: Unanswered Questions

  04: It’s Hard to Hide When Everyone Knows You

  05: Internal Interrogation

  06: Head Games

  07: It’s Not as Easy Being a Passenger

  08: Inquiry or Inquisition

  09: Visitors

  10: Three Blind Mice

  11: Revealing Personalities

  12: The Last Straw

  13: Advice from One Who’s Seen the Light

  14: In the Wind

  15: Charity

  16: On-the-Job Training

  17: One Last Appeal

  Epilogue

  Preview

  About the Author

  Contacts

  Eric Morgan clutched his harness, his breath falling silent as the final countdown began. The hair on his hands stood on end and the tension was a palpable essence. He was equally amazed at what was about to occur and terrified at what it entailed.

  A senior NASA pilot, Eric was aboard a much heralded initial test of a new technology which promised to revolutionize space flight. It could also change human history forever. He stood to travel farther in a few seconds than every other person since they climbed from the primordial ooze combined. Instead of traveling miles above the Earth to the now defunct Space Station, hundreds of thousands to the Moon, or millions to the nearby planets, this would throw him light years into the unknown, without any forward momentum. Best of all, without tons of fuel, there’s no chance of his ship blowing up under him.

  The technology to accomplish this, the Interstellar Spatial Displacement Device (ISSDD), is a fancy term for teleportation. It’s not as sexy as it appears in the movies, requiring a huge infrastructure. Yet it would transport him from a stationary position inside an enclosed NASA laboratory ten light-years from where he now sat.

  While the researchers tested the technology and felt confident that it worked, they encountered problems during testing. They could send things from one end of a lab to another, but faced complications they hadn’t anticipated. There was the obvious problem with moving two things into the same space, but there were ‘displacement’ issues too. In short, transmitting something to a stationary target caused it to fall into the object as gravity affected it before it completely materialized. This also determined how molecules in the air would shift on both ends of the teleportation. The only solution to the displacement factor was to utilize areas with no stray elements.

  Open space was the simple fix, but there were tremendous amounts of random junk within their solar system. The gravity of the sun and the surrounding planets attracted passing comets. That meant there were numerous miniscule objects traveling through the otherwise empty vacuum of space. Transporting into another object would have unpleasant effects.

  That’s why they chose an area free of potential obstructions, a particularly dark region where they’d never detected any celestial bodies. The hope was, while only there for a few minutes, they could determine where the universe’s missing mass was hidden. Since the estimated mass of visible objects didn’t account for the acceleration of the universe, scientists understood there was huge amounts of unobserved matter. There were several theories concerning ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’, but being unable to detect, it has always been difficult to observe.

  They speculated that the gravity which attracts objects to large bodies—such as stars—also disrupts dark matter. Seeking an area with no such dynamic, they were sending Eric’s ship to a region where they could detect no physical presences. He s
tood to witness entities never before observed. What he learned would inform future research into the nature of both time and space.

  The biggest issue wasn’t technical or theoretical, it was practical. Without any earth-breaking projects in decades, NASA had steadily lost the interest and enthusiasm of the public, and more precisely, the legislators they relied on for funding. With the Space Station abandoned and Congress questioning the negligible benefits of manned missions to the other planets, NASA depended on this solitary initial flight to spark the public’s interest.

  The idea was intriguing. They could transport a fully staffed crew near a foreign solar system, and set up facilities for the future. They’d record all the details not otherwise possible, and return to plan the next stage of the endeavor. There were still numerous issues with getting someone close enough to land on a planet. Yet the concept of jumping from one observatory position to another whet the most hardened skeptic’s enthusiasm.

  The problem with space travel is that our fastest rockets can only travel a fraction of the speed of light. With any meaningful destination hundreds of light years distant, it would take hundreds to thousands of years to travel there. What’s more, the resources required to maintain a sustainable crew were unrealistic. They’d have to recycle everything they consumed. They’d need to create a complete viable ecosystem which could survive for at least a hundred years with no room to expand. The idea you could do so without complications, when putting a few people in orbit in a closed container and not compromise their physical and mental health, was preposterous.

  Making space travel into a series of jumps, from one safe location to another where we could build facilities to allow us to undertake the next stage, was encouraging. Especially if we can do so for a fraction of the cost of flying a manned voyage to Mars.

  To generate the enthusiasm needed to get the necessary funding, this solitary trip had become a media circus. Live video cameras were mounted around the ISSDD capsule, and they’d record his disappearing and reappearance. To commemorate the event, part of the mission was to flash a light bright enough to reach the Earth in another ten years. That would prove, in a visceral way, the massive distances they’d crossed in the blink of an eye.

  Essentially, the entire future of space travel rested on Eric’s narrow shoulders. Seeing there was little he could do to affect the journey, it left him feeling frustrated, anxious and uneasy. He’d return in couple minutes an international hero of unimagined significance. This initial test was being watched by millions, with schools across the globe halting their daily lessons to witness the unfolding events.

  “Final countdown initiating,” a faceless voice announced over his earphones. He let out a long, calming breath, forcing him to relax. While nervous, it wasn’t as if this process hadn’t been tested. They sent robots on short excursions, revealing the technique worked by photographing the surrounding stars and correlating them to existing star charts. They transferred small animals—mostly mice, since PETA raised a stink about resuming testing on primates—but this was their first time sending a human. As a result, he already had a whirlwind schedule of speaking engagements once this enterprise was completed. In fact, it would take longer to release him from his tiny capsule than for the entire 60 Trillion mile journey! No matter how many times he heard the figure, it still boggled Eric’s mind.

  As the disembodied announcer counted down the seconds before launch, Eric tried to prepare for the unknowable. To distract himself, he thought about the processes instead.

  NASA achieved the teleportation process by capitalizing on advances in string theory research. Since these ‘strings’ connected multiple places huge distances apart, they’d found a way of forcing the strings open. That provided a way to access any of the way points touched by any one string. It was a controversial premise when first proposed, and many detractors threatened it might cause the annihilation of the Earth if attempted. Those warnings proved baseless, as various experiments revealed no such danger.

  Since you could only visit locations devoid of matter, they traced these strings, settling on a number of destinations. The final selections were based on isolation, a lack of nearby objects, but near enough to Earth to correlate where the end result was. Once they’d done the initial research, and found many of these waypoints, they learned how to calculate where each point resided in physical space.

  “3 ...” the voice called out, bringing Eric’s attention back to the present. With his launch only seconds away, it didn’t make sense concentrating on other topics. He checked the vast array of sensors, ensuring each operated properly.

  “2 …”

  He glanced around the small cabin, looking for anything out of place. Since he’d only be gone for five minutes total, there wasn’t a need for much inside the tiny metallic capsule. Besides, if something did go wrong, and he was stranded a trillion miles from Earth, an extra few hours of oxygen or a spare suit wouldn’t buy him much. Either the machinery to make the return jump worked or it didn’t.

  “1 …”

  This time Eric did hold his breath. He realized it was silly and wouldn’t affect anything, but he was used to planning where he jumped. Having flown test aircraft and shuttle missions for years, he was experienced with facing the unknown, but he’d always watched what was coming. This time, he was going in with no idea where he was diving, relying on emotionless machines to decide which spot in the pool was safest.

  “BLAST OFF!”

  The various readings on his display jumped and a hum enveloped the entire craft as it created the linkage to the imaginary strings linking worlds together. It took a few moments to generate the energy to create the opening for the ship to slip into. Eric once again grasped his safety harness as he waited for it to launch. There was a building whine, increasing and growing more blaring, and then he was gone. Simply no longer there, screens across the world revealed an empty platform where his tiny craft once stood.

  The transition, while transparent to Eric Morgan, left him dazed. Before he was even aware he’d successfully jumped trillions of miles, the ship’s alarms blared, alerting him that something was wrong.

  Scrambling, he checked the various displays. Despite being largely automated, the capsule was arrayed with a variety of sensors to record this region to correlate where he’d ended up with their observations of the nearby galaxies. He scanned down a list of problems with the craft: “Structural Integrity Compromised”, “Unexpected Forces Affecting Craft Performance”, “Unable to Stabilize”. As he wrestled with what was happening, he was blinded as the interior was bathed in brilliant lights from outside.

  If he wasn’t distracted by the alarms—necessitating immediate action—he’d have remembered to close his eyes to avoid this problem. As he groped for the display he couldn’t see, squeezing his eyes closed too late to do any good, he recalled what happened. In order to record the success of the trip, the ship was equipped with a massive array of lights to shine in a direct beam for home. The idea was, after he returned, the Earth would receive visual confirmation in another ten years when the signal, a series of high-energy lasers, reached Earth. It was designed to reinforce for everyone how phenomenal the distances were.

  The majority of his ship was dedicated to the massive beacon and the batteries to operate it. There wasn’t much need for life support, since he was only expected to be gone a matter of minutes, but generating enough illumination to be visible ten light years out required a tremendous power outlay. Most of his remaining time here was waiting for the systems to regenerate the energy needed to return.

  The lights which blinded him clicked off, though his vision was slower to recover. Meanwhile, the clarion calls of multiple alarms continued. Eric was desperate to discover what was wrong. From what he’d read, there was a systematic failure and he was understandably anxious about taking corrective action before something terrible occurred. However, the ship wasn’t constructed to facilitate repairs, only with getting him there and back for
an extremely short period. Glancing at his oversized gloves, there wasn’t much he could do even if he had tools.

  They’d assured him it would be a safe journey. While teleportation was a risky venture, since two physical objects can’t occupy the same space, NASA patiently informed him about the multiple test drones they’d sent. Each separated by millions of miles and taking images of the region, so they felt secure the area was free of obstructions. Clearly they were wrong. Deadly wrong!

  Cursing, he opened his eyes to almost complete darkness, his pupils not yet constricted. The dimly lit interior was obscured by floating dots obscuring his limited vision. Like most electronic devices, there was a switch to make the display read its output audibly, designed so he could get updates while doing other things. However, he couldn’t see enough to find the damn thing.

  The ship lurched, jarring him. He squinted, trying to force his eyes to adjust—which they did—just not fast enough to do much good.

  Another terrible groan echoed as the entire craft shuddered, and he felt himself stretched backwards. Not yanked or pulled, but elongated, as if space itself was stretching in some weird relativity demonstration. He remained firmly strapped into his seat, but the monitor was now farther away than it had been. When he reached out for it, his limbs seemed to be more distant than they were moments before.

  Eric had no idea what was occurring. No one ever warned him of this, since it had never been encountered before. He wondered what unknown hell he’d been thrown into. There was some unforeseen phenomenon here which was not only ripping his ship apart, but affecting the physics which maintained the vessel’s molecular structure.

  The capsule’s whine increased in pitch and he heard a couple loud pops, announcing the outer seals bursting. He realized the craft’s limited oxygen content would be sucked from the ship. He reached up to turn on his suit’s oxygen, but his elongated body wouldn’t respond. His arm took an extremely long time to move, appearing to be moving great distances. His vision cleared, but the display was too far away to read. His arms were moving as quickly as humanly possible, so he pitched forward to bring the suit’s controls to his gloves.