With Distance Comes Perspective by Rick Duffy
Retired engineer Janx is investigating a strange cosmic anomaly when a curveball causes him to discover more than he imagined possible.
Falling nearly naked through an asteroid field is not how I envisioned retirement.
I say 'nearly' because that's how it feels with no ship, no pod: just a safe-suit. Masses of drifting rocks covered in sky-wires and transceivers speckle my view, as if I'd sneezed in my helmet. I skitter between two monstrous slabs, like petrified hands waiting to clap.
My com crackles. "Diver 18, status?" That's not for me. I pick it up since the omni-stations echo whatever signals hit them - when they're working. And though I'm millions of clicks from the Zeta anomaly, I'm already seeing its effects: magnetic lines of aurora swirl and weave around the antennas like an electric storm. Someone has to repair the sensors and transmitters when they glitch, but it's not my old engineering career that got me the job. It's because, even at my age, I can still pass a physical and use a screwdriver.
The voice moves on. "Diver 19?"
Diver 19 drones out his progress. They call us divers. We dive the Scour, the outer zones of a region that, by current theories, is not entirely within the flats and folds of spacetime. The closer to the central anomaly, the more electronics fail, so we use simple chemical thrusters to navigate the fields of rock, all held and moved not only by gravity, but by forces beneath or beyond known physical laws.
"Diver 20, status."
"This is 20," I say, and do a quick check of the data flickering across my visor. "Still three clicks from station 11-5-479. Systems nominal. Psychrometer green."
I listen for a Roger or a ten-four or something. There's a suspicious pause.
Then, "Um, 20, this is probably not a big deal... but there's a report of a grav wave."
Crap. Even with mitigations against electronic, photonic, and other outages, gravity waves are hard to guard against. One strong, unexpected ripple through the asteroids, and you're a pancake, or MIA, never to be found.
Command adds, "It's unconfirmed, 20, so I wouldn't -"
"Hey Command, don't rub my thermometer and tell me it's summer. Where?"
"Zone 4, section 12."
I recheck my vectors: Zone 5, section 11. Zone 4 is deeper in, a place for advanced research. More pay down there, but more risks. For me, Zone 5 is the sweet spot between risk and reward. It should keep my tight retirement budget off the backs of my kids - they have families of their own. The income might even add some peaceful beach time to my remaining years. A nice finale before my credits roll.
"Acknowledged," I say. "What's its heading?"
"Passing (static) array (static) and -"
"Say again, Command?"
My heads-up flashes and blinks. Half of my coordinates go negative. I didn't know they had negative signs.
Before I can react, the wave arrives. It's not visible in itself, but the asteroid field around me swells as if it's taking a breath -
And then it does something impossible. Almost dreamlike, the rocks fold and puddle and, without cracking, turn inside out.
I'm having that car-wreck reaction where there's no time to panic, just exist and observe. Around, or past, or through countless asteroids, I see stars shining clear and bright, utterly blocked until now. My last thought is that, while I figured I'd die alone, I had hoped to die with the sun on my face.
Maybe I should have been more specific about which sun I meant.
I awake on my back. Memory of the grav wave returns, and in a delayed panic I struggle to move, but can't. There's no pain, and I don't feel crushed, just heavy as lead. At least my life-support still works. I calm my breathing; hysterics won't help.
While my heads-up is dead, my suit's eerie green emergency chemlights give just enough illumination to brush the walls of a round, rocky cave that stretches up into shadow. And there's a strange noise outside my helmet, some kind of rhythmic undulation.
Have I been enfolded in an asteroid? There must be atmosphere, even if slight, since that sound would be impossible in a vacuum. I'd have to remove my helmet to tell if it's breathable, but I'd rather my final memory not be of what my tomb smells like. If I can open a flap on my wrist, I can access a row of back-up analog gauges and check basic environmentals. Or I could try to reach my toolkit, maybe rig something to ignite. The colors from the combustion would suggest what type of atmosphere is present.
Sure. Right before a volatile gas explosion paints the walls with my spleen.
As I strain to lift an arm - it seems impossibly weighted - something knock-knocks on my helmet.
I jolt, but can't turn.
From behind, leaning upside-down over my face, is another helmet, the visor dark. The figure shifts to my side. It wears a safe-suit like mine, but with bizarre modifications: external wires and coils and glowing tubes. Even some duct tape. I swear it's like Frankenstein's Christmas tree.
I see now I'm on a circular metallic platform. The figure stands beside it and throws a lever.
That undulating sound drops away. So does the weight from my body and I can sit up. A few other objects surround me on my platform: a piece of twisted antenna, a large shard of astroglass, a soda can.
The stranger has stepped to a door and is motioning me to follow. First, I peel back my sleeve flap to view the analog gauges. My suit's life support is nominal. External temperature and pressure, too low. I fold back the flap, ease off the platform and, surprised at what seems like normal gravity, I shuffle over.
We enter an airlock. When the hissing stops, the next door releases, and we step into a large, long cavern, outfitted like a cluttered workshop. There are cabinets overflowing with equipment, tables with oddly arranged reflectors and crystals, pipes snaking up the walls, and everything lit by the never-quite-right glow of chemlights. It's Frankenstein's lab, but in Dracula's catacombs.
The stranger removes his helmet. He doesn't strike me as a diver - most are old and desperate or young and reckless. This man is middle-aged with a studious countenance and sharp eyes. His hair and short beard are out of sorts, but that's typical after a pressure suit. My thinning gray makes helmet-hair the least of my worries.
Tentatively I unsnap my neck lock, press my hands to the sides of my helmet and twist. After a quick sigh of air, I lift it off. I breathe; good enough.
"I gather you are uninjured?" he says, zipping off the rest of his suit. His voice is deep, measured, and confident.
"I think so." I remove mine, too.
"Marvelous. Then welcome, Diver 20, to Astropolis."
I'm still off balance by whatever's happened to me, yet I'm sure we've never met. "You know my designation?"
"I know how to read," he says.
Of course. It was written on my helmet. "Who are you, sir?" I ask. "And where is this place?"
"And the corollary to that: how did you get here?"
I nod.
He crosses to a wall pipe, eyes a valve, turns a dial. A long needle on a gauge shivers. "I am Doctor Salvator Santern, astrophysicist. And you, sir?"
"Janx Farrow, Diver."
"Tea?"
"What?"
"Would you care for tea?"
"Where am -?"
"I heard you the first time." He attends to a table of tubes and beakers. "Don't you find it curious that many equate deep space with endless night? Yet the abundance of stars ensures an eternal daytime. Not that any stars are visible from within the zones, but it's a fine reason for anytime breakfasts. Or tea. Cream?"
I can barely follow what this man is saying, and stare dumbly.
"And to answer your question, we are in Zone 2."
"T-two?" I fumble the word. Zone 2 should not be survivable. I again glance around - for what, I don't know. Signs of the afterlife?
"You were caught in a phase wave," the man says. "That's a dimensionally non-contiguous -"
"I know of them," I say, "but never in the outer zones. Command only warned me of a grav wave."
"The anomaly makes the rules. Janx, was it? Grav waves often develop near phase waves. Incidentally, I expect your heads-up display has gone, shall we say, heads-down?"
"Very."
"Well, without a psychrometer, shouldn't you be asking whether all this is a hallucination?"
I'm an idiot: that should have been my first question, at least to myself. Not only can the anomaly mess with electronics, but with our brain's electrical system. One danger of working in the zones is hallucinations - or if you tread too deep too long, madness. The psychcrometers are our reality check, letting us know if we're going over the rainbow.
He laughs, but not unkindly. "Forgive me, but it's refreshing to see someone experiencing the same uncertainties I once did. However, I've sampled that wine's every vintage, and I assure you we are well shielded from such effects. If you still doubt, try this argument on for size. Are you still breathing?"
"Of course," I say, and inhale to make sure.
"Then even if I am your private fever dream, you're at least alive. Given that, the rest can't be too terrible. And that's the best advice I can give you."
It's hard to argue there.
He brings over two steaming mugs, hands me one. "I was joking about the cream. My diet here is quite limited."
I sip. The taste, like weak, dirty flowers, is real enough.
"Of course, you could just as well be my own hallucination," Santern says. "But I no longer split those hairs. I'm still breathing, so I'll keep doing what I'm doing." Besides the tea, he offers a plate of crumbly biscuits. "Amazing what you can do with lichen."
Like the tea, they're odd but edible, and I'm feeling more settled. "Astropolis?" I say.
"Named it myself, from the Greek. City of Stars. My research base."
"How long have you been here?"
"Oh, nearly five years."
My eyes must have widened because he adds, "More or less. In here, out there, time and space, the effects of the Zeta anomaly - who knows? But I collect what detritus I find, grow what I can, synthesize the rest." He sips his tea, pinky out.
"I didn't think there were research bases this deep into the zones," I say. "Is it classified?"
"Purely commercial, meant to study the anomaly for potential product applications. This station was set up in Zone 4. But same as you, we were caught in a phase wave."
"We?"
"My assistants. After our first order of business - survival - we searched for a way to return, or at least energize the transmitters to call for help. And while we did, we continued our original work." He puts down his tea. "Until sickness and anomaly madness took the others."
"I'm sorry," I say, and decide not to press for details. It's always tragic to hear of such losses in the zones, and I feel an additional wave of sadness for this man, who's had to bear such personal ones, then was left to survive alone.
He brightens a bit. "However, we made several remarkable discoveries. Since being trapped within Zone 2, this base has three times orbited the anomaly. I've tracked debris, mapped the asteroids, and most critically, studied the Zone 1 spectral clouds."
"You've seen them?" I ask. Considering the layers upon layers of asteroids, and the strange and debilitating effects of the anomaly, few surviving drones, or people, had managed even a glimpse of Zone 1.
"Seen and measured," he says with some pride. "At times the clouds enter periods of thinning strata, revealing those beneath and multiplying the anomaly's effects. The phase wave that brought you confirms we're entering such a period. If my calculus is correct, these conditions may allow a specially fitted data pod to puncture the inmost layers and give us a direct view of Zone Zero. Of the anomaly itself."
For several heartbeats I'm dumbstruck. No one had ever managed that, not with deep spectral imaging, not with drones. "Survival in Zone 2 is impressive enough, Doctor. What happens with direct exposure, through Zone 1, to the very core?"
His eyes brighten further, almost as if within his brain someone switched on a light. "That is the question, is it not? And I for one, Janx Farrow, am determined to find out."
I'm drowning in questions - one being whether Doctor Santern might have a touch of anomaly madness.
He studies me for a moment, then gestures toward a darkened end of the workshop. "Let me show you something."
Still trying to wrap my head around all this, I leave my tea and follow. We approach a row of metal panels hanging on the rough rock like blank portraits. A step back from those stands a rack of small, opaque tubes.
"Data vials," he says, "for recording the anomaly's effects."
"This close, you've managed to use electronics?"
"Chemical memory, not electronic." He turns to the panels. "Would you mind? These stick."
We muscle one sideways; it squeals but slides. In the wall is a horizontal shaft, as if carved to look out a deep castle window. Something glistens partway in.
"Mirrors," he says, and fiddles with a lever underneath. The mirror inside tilts.
And with that, I see the clearest view anyone has ever gotten of Zone 1. I can only stare, speechless and mesmerized. In the distance, at the very heart of the asteroid zones, roils a massive egg-shaped... something. Bands of strata burn and swirl in fantastic patterns, their shifting colors pulling my eyes right off the spectrum. And there's depth: shredding, onion-like layers reveal those beneath. Without more references, I can't begin to judge its size.
"Beautiful," he says, with the same awe that's taken me.
"What do you think's inside?" I manage to ask. There were theories: a nested star spinning at relativistic speeds; a quantum rip; a relic of our ancient universe, or another universe entirely; the end of the road, of time - or a beginning. But not even the hardiest ballistic spacecraft has returned from Zone 1.
"My best hypothesis? Nothing... and everything."
I find little meaning in his answer, so I continue to gaze upon this violent cosmic marvel.
Santern seems to read my silence. "Well," he says, "why would we have a word to describe it? But I deduce a region so deep, so true and transcendental, that anything experiencing its direct, unfiltered effects would become forever part of it."
"A black hole?" I say, somewhat disappointed. "No escape? Crushed or spaghettified?"
"A better word is, entangled."
"Whatever you call it, if your data pod is successful in creating a puncture to Zone Zero, will this base survive any blowback?"
I am also thinking, will we?
He leans in for a better view. "I've taken precautions. And yet," his voice becomes wistful, "to experience that entanglement, to be both here and there, one foot in the river of time, one on the shores of infinity... The first to know its secrets, Janx. Tempting, is it not?"
As an engineer, even if past my prime, I understand his enthusiasm. But I tear my gaze from the clouds and face him. "Doctor, its power reached me in Zone 5. What kind of precautions can stand against it here? Considering the potential effects of a direct perspective -"
"With distance comes perspective," he says, and smiles like a patient teacher. "We are near enough for our needs, yet far enough to avoid entanglement. Remember the platform where you arrived?"
"Yes, and I've been wondering what force held me down. Magnetism?"
"Gravitons."
"You've harnessed gravitons?" I say with unshadowed skepticism.
"It's my research specialty, and why I came to the zones. In point of fact, gravitons have been harnessed by humanity for ages."
"Now you're having a laugh at me."
His dark eyebrows peak. "But Janx, have you never heard of the inclined plane? Irrigation and plumbing? The catapult? The arch?"
I can't avoid a smirk. "Fair enough: they each take advantage of gravity. But you know that's not what I meant. Gravitons are a billion billion billion times less detectable than electrons. How -"
"As you experienced firsthand, the anomaly creates grav and phase waves. An associated effect is a type of lensing. It's enabled me to conduct research under unique conditions, and I've taken advantage of what I've learned. For example, it's why we ourselves aren't floating around like balloons. You heard the thrum of my machines?"
"Generators?"
"Collectors. Focusing devices. Particle guides. Besides the best shielding imaginable, graviton flow induces the energy I need for pressure, temperature, and kinetics. The platform where you arrived, which I designed, collimates a graviton vortex to retrieve passing debris."
"And the occasional lost diver," I say. "I haven't thanked you for that, sir."
"Not at all. In fact, your arrival is fortuitous. I have much to prepare before the next deep alignment of the Zone 1 clouds. Help me close this."
We shove the panel back into place and return to his tables and experiments. I'm astonished at his accomplishments, and say so.
"I'm glad you appreciate it," he says. "While I'm unable to operate a computer or standard transmitter with gravitons, I've otherwise made do."
"Then there's no way to contact home? Send an SOS? Warn Command of when the next alignment is to occur, and its expected effects?"
Santern sighs. "Sadly not, though I believe that after the pod returns its data, I will finally have what I need to develop a way of sending a communication up through the other zones."
"If that's our best chance," I say sincerely, "how can I help?"
And he answers as sincerely. "As a diver, I assume you have some technical skill?"
"Yes, sir. I'm an engineer. Retired, but performing diagnostics, repairs, that sort of thing, in the antenna fields."
"Ah, retired. That explains your age." He pauses. "No offense."
"None taken."
He continues, undisturbed, "I've noticed that the elderly reflect more on their relationship with fate. Perhaps that's why bingo is so popular."
Personally, I'm not much for games. But I don't interrupt.
"I myself," he goes on, "am well familiar with the engineering arts. I would not presume you have read any of my papers?"
"Any outside a paywall?"
"The most critical project I must complete," he says, apparently not getting my little joke, "is the data collection pod." He nods to what I had assumed was just another cabinet, but I now notice has unusual protrusions poking out the top and sides: small antennas, coils, and other devices I can't name.
He adds, "My previous pods were unsuccessful, but I've since improved the shielding. It will launch via a graviton beam from the platform I used to rescue you, and as it flies, it will propagate that beam to break the clouds further. Let me show you around, and then we can get to work. Time is of the essence if we are to meet the next window, which are few and far between."
Though Santern radiates a certain impatience, I sense that he paces our tour to help me digest my circumstances. I see rooms that were once crew quarters, repurposed for his needs. Areas below include an experimental garden, expanded now for sustenance. Another hosts Santern's graviton collectors: large, bulbous things with conduits running into the ceiling and walls. Through a viewport near a maintenance hatch, I get a glimpse outside. As I suspected, we are within an asteroid. Transceivers and dishes, many smashed and twisted, rise from craters like the ruins of a lost civilization. A few intact groups have been arranged into strange circlets.
"Those are part of my graviton collection architecture," he says with obvious pride, a pride he deserves.
After our tour, he brings me back to the lab. "Well, that's home. Now, are you recovered enough to help with a few tasks? There is no time to waste."
My body and mind feel serviceable - and eager - so we return to his data pod. It's nearly stuffed with curious devices, most light-years beyond my skillset. I tell him so.
"It's beyond most skillsets," he replies. "I will handle any tasks concerning the pod. And to be frank, I prefer to work alone. But there are dozens of other jobs for which a retired engineer may be qualified. I've had to deprioritize routine base maintenance. That is where your skills would be most welcome."
Doubtless a polite way of saying I'll only get in his way. He may be right. "Home sweet home could certainly use some WD-40," I say. Though his entire vision and plan is still vague to me, I'm comfortable with his division of labor, comfortable enough to be humble about my own potential contributions. So he starts me on simple upkeep: leaking tubes, loose connectors, and yes, oiling things.
By the looks of the base, his crew had been talented technicians. Yet there are also patches, quick fixes, and impatient jury-rigging. My appreciation of this base drops a notch. I know firsthand the pressures of schedules and deadlines, of funding and office politics, yet the foundations must be solid. I rectify what I can.
That is to say, I work my old-man ass off.
We keep at our labors for the next few days. As Santern's confidence in me grows, he assigns me more complex tasks, even adding finishing touches to his data pod. My job queue never shrinks, yet I can't help adding my own modest improvements: modular connections for easier reconfiguration or replacement; resilient, flexible conduits; test points for troubleshooting. Despite the urgency and the unknowns, I enjoy getting elbow-deep again in projects that test my skills.
But when I try to establish any kind of friendship or rapport with Santern, he returns the topic to the base, the work, the science; he only initiates conversation when he's dissatisfied with my progress, reminding me that with sufficient data we can develop a way to communicate back to the upper zones, warn them of upcoming grav waves, perhaps even ride one out of here. I don't need the reminder, though I let him have his say. He's at the peak of his career, brilliant and driven, and his zeal reminds me of how, as my life prospects have wound down, my own patience has become too comfortable. Still, I discover we have one thing in common: while I have family back home and I have learnt he has none, we have both wound up essentially on our own. I find myself thinking more of my life before coming to the zones, of my kids and their families, how I've traded my time with them for a paycheck. People say that time is money; it's clear to me now that time is everything.
At last Santern announces the data collection pod is near completion and it's time to move it to the gravity platform. With that chamber's overhead aperture closed, the area can be pressurized, so we work there without suits.
As I tinker with assigned modifications to a heat sink - for which I don't understand the need - he calls me to the pod. I tuck away my screwdriver and head over.
"I tried to create a means of automated maneuverability," he says, reaching inside the pod to fiddle with something, "but without standard electronics, I've found that impossible. Instead, I've developed a transceiver-gravitator for communication. We can course-correct the pod from here and receive its data via a modulated graviton wave."
"And all I got for you is a heat-sink," I say, offering it out.
He glances at it. "Yes, fine. Please continue with its installation."
"Sure."
We change places. "Where?" I ask.
"Atop the second flow exchanger."
That isn't very helpful. I peer into a mad-scientist's paradise, crammed with god-knows-what, everything fastened and arranged in a thick mess. It reminds me of wire closets maintained by inexperienced technicians. "And where's that?"
"Straight in front of you."
Stifling an urge to reorganize this nightmare, I push aside a tangle and squeeze inside the pod. Suddenly my weight doubles, triples. My knees buckle and I collapse as if under a ton of bricks.
"Help -" is all I can manage. Behind me, the hatch closes. As I'm struggling to move and breathe, the weight evaporates. Through a viewport I see Santern has exited the chamber and watches from the airlock. A voice crackles from somewhere inside the pod. "Sorry, Janx. But my measurements must include the anomaly's effect on a conscious being."
"Cut the joke, Doctor." I recover my breath. "Let me out."
"No joke, I'm afraid. I tried to give you sufficient room - there wasn't much to begin with - but there is enough life support for the data collection phase. So get comfy. It's launch time."
I pound the door. "Damn you, Santern!" Before I find some better profanity, the pod jolts and is thrust upward. I stagger and brace myself as it speeds through the chamber's high aperture and flies from the asteroid. The viewport shows the antennas and transceivers and circlets shrinking in the distance, among the other asteroids, among the blackness.
Santern's voice returns. "You'll be pleased to know all systems are nominal. Congratulations to us."
"Stop this, Santern! Bring me back!"
"Take it easy, Janx. The Zone 1 clouds are thinning, just as I had predicted. Let me help you see."
The pod rotates. I'm seething with fury and a growing fear, but I continue to stare out the viewport. I've cleared the last of the Zone 2 asteroids, and before me loom the violent spectral clouds of Zone 1, churning, swirling - except straight ahead where they've pulled apart, like a phantasmic sunset. And within, a deeper rift is forming.
"Isn't it marvelous?" Santern says. "The pod is propagating the graviton beam and pushing aside the substrate, just as I designed."
I squeeze shut my eyes, steady my voice. "Santern, listen. You're suffering from anomaly madness. Bring me back. We can work together on a rescue plan. The discoveries you've made, the technologies alone, are enough to make you famous."
"I've never been more sane, Janx. Or my work nearer to immortality."
There's little time for rational discussion, so before my fear becomes paralyzing, I take a quick look around the pod and grab a bundle of cables. "I won't help you, Santern. I'll rip these components out by their roots."
"Do that, and you'll disable life support."
That could be true. I slacken my sweaty grip.
"With my improved shield generator," he continues, "you are safe for now. But consider, Janx. You will soon be the first to observe the heart of the Zeta anomaly. Your name will join mine in the annals of history."
"I won't look at it, Santern. You can't make me observe it."
This, to be honest, might be a bluff. If I'm to die, can I resist glimpsing the face of the Medusa? And it occurs to me that ending my long life here, at the limit of space and time, is somehow grimly poetic.
"Perhaps you don't understand what 'observer' means in physics," he says. "Your atoms can't turn away. However, your decision may have interesting impacts on your sanity or consciousness. I'll leave that up to you."
My capsule shoots onward, a bullet aimed at the clouds of Zone 1. The peripheral blackness blurs with spectral mists - signs I'm entering its outermost edge. I have little time. "Was this your plan from the start, Santern? Ever since you rescued me?" I return my attention to the inside of the pod, to the waveguides, the connections, the odd mechanisms I worked on for him.
"Rescued you? Janx, I myself took you from Zone 5."
I freeze. "What... What did you say?"
"As I learned how to take advantage of the anomaly's dynamics, I've been able to redirect phase waves to the outer zones, casting a net, so to speak, fishing for whatever I could reach and use. As luck would have it, I caught you."
I can't begin to express my horror at what he's telling me, but then a new realization hits. "Santern, if you can control those forces, why can't you rescue yourself?" I think I already know the answer.
"Of course I can, and my coworkers demanded we do just that. But as you must understand, this opportunity is too unique, too important to abandon. When they became violent, I recognized their behavior as anomaly madness. You can't blame me for defending myself. It pained me, but the most merciful thing to do was space the poor wretches."
I can't find any words.
He continues, "In a way, I feel the anomaly judged them unworthy. Those so-called scientists were stationed here through funding compromises, political favors, nepotism. They didn't deserve this opportunity, and their deaths, while regrettable, were no great loss to my efforts. But I must admit, you've earned your keep."
At last I say, "You won't be remembered as a genius, Santern, but as a murderer."
"You disappoint me, Janx. Advancing the boundaries of science always requires sacrifice. I've given my life to the search for knowledge, five years of it here. And honestly, do you really believe you have five years left? Compared to me, you are a ruin."
A sudden dizziness washes over me, and not from this man's words. A component I'm examining, a cube, wavers in shape. For a moment, four perfect corners become five, though each remains ninety degrees. That's impossible, unless I'm hallucinating... or the space here is becoming dimensionally non-contiguous. The phenomenon does not seem to affect me otherwise, yet I dare not look out the viewport again: whatever I see might drag me into madness.
And still, Santern goes on. "You might be interested to know that I first designed the pod to be unoccupied - and not only because I couldn't risk my safety piloting it. The truth is, I'm rather claustrophobic. Even on the open sea I have a sense of being trapped, sealed in, no escape. Does that make sense? I suppose we've each got our personal anomalies."
The dizziness lifts and my thoughts sharpen. Maybe he's right; maybe I am a ruin. But I still have a few good bricks left standing. Before panic sets in, I start tracing wires and connections.
"What will it be like for you, Janx?" he says. "My guess is it will resemble a kind of eternity. There's a certain horror about eternity, don't you agree? Philosophers say life is full of eternities when you stop counting the seconds."
I may not be as smart as Santern, but I understand transceivers, and I've identified an instrument I believe is for communication. Maybe I should yank that first - it might shut him up. But I trace the feeds to devices resembling the ones Santern had shown me on our tour. Other conduits exit those; one to the capsule's nose, another toward my feet. Shielding and thrust? Santern never claimed to create gravitons, only collect and focus them, so this architecture must largely modulate the beam coming from his base.
"Are you experiencing any temporal effects, Janx? Any tenseness? Present tense? Past or future tense?"
I ignore him. Even if I disconnect some of these systems, I'll still have ballistic momentum. Yet it occurs to me that while the graviton beam is providing the pod's thrust, Santern had pulled me from Zone 5. The beam must be reversible.
There are too many variables to predict the extent of my tampering, not to mention the dimensional non-congruities and other effects of the anomaly, which must be increasing by the second. But I understand antennas and their propagation of energy. As I muster every drop of my experience, the modular connections I had added come to my aid. I choose the most promising parts of the architecture, trace its inputs and outputs, all while Santern rambles on. I catch snatches as I work.
"Even if you lose consciousness, Janx, consider that unconsciousness is our most natural state. We only become conscious to ensure our survival and reproduce. In a perfect world, we'd never awaken."
Whether it was his long isolation, or the extended effects of the anomaly, or just his own sociopathic ego, I don't need a psychrometer to tell me Santern is quite mad.
When I have a rough mental map of the pod's layout, it's time to get old-school. Using my screwdriver, I work as fast as I dare, disconnecting and reconfiguring several minor subsystems, one of which I gather is life support. But I need its patch cable for something else. Besides, if my plan doesn't work, I won't need life support much longer.
As I ready my last hack, Santern speaks again. "Think what your sacrifice will contribute to the knowledge of humankind, Janx."
"Call it what it is, Santern. Another murder."
"Don't be so dramatic. In some ways, I envy you in that pod."
At that, I use the cable to dead-short the thruster graviton port to the shielding arrays.
The statcom squeals, blasts static. The capsule lurches and bucks, and I'm slammed against the side, my senses rattled. Did I go too far with my tampering?
But everything stills; all is silent as my head clears. Out the viewport, the Zone 1 clouds are open deeper than ever, but come no closer. As far as I can tell, I've stopped.
Santern's voice crackles over the statcom. "...interfering! You don't know what you're doing! You're ruining my work!"
I force words past my hammering heart. "No - you ruined it when you killed your crew. I've reversed the beam. I won't move from this point. If you want to save this pod, your only choice is to bring me back."
He's silent for several seconds. When he speaks again, his words are grave and cold. "You have indeed stopped. But you are now pulling my entire base forward."
"Nice try, Santern, but that's impossible."
"It's the truth, Janx. I am now the one accelerating. And you are in my path."
"If that's true," I said, uncertain now, "disable your beam."
"Janx," he says, "you reversed not the beam but the collectors, and therefore the source. I don't know why you weren't obliterated, but the pod is now being powered from the anomaly itself. And with the increased effects -"
A shudder runs through the pod. The speaker cuts off again. The changes I made flash through my mind. Is he right? In this strange region of space, with so much unfamiliar technology...
I again notice violations of normal dimensionality: depth vacillates, solid items twist and warp without breaking. I can now see through the other walls of my capsule, as if a seam has disjoined and exposed me to vacuum, yet I don't lose atmospheric pressure.
And in the distance I spot the base, untold megatons of rock, growing.
A last crackle, "Janx! You old fool!"
Frantically, I scan the pod for any way to avoid a collision. I grasp for a connector. My hand passes through it. Another does the same.
I peer again at the base. It's halved the distance. With a strange jump, it halves it again.
I feel a cable within my fingers. I yank, and the blackening numbness as I was stolen from Zone 5 hits me again, but I retain consciousness.
Then a rush of... reality?
It's impossible to tell whether it's the base that jumps next or my pod, but I'm upon the asteroid. And within it. Everything melts like a horror-house mirror. I can see 360 degrees around me with my eyes. With my brain.
For an instant I'm face to face with a terrified Santern - right before I pass through him.
My vision spreads and divides. I see the massive, burning, swirling Zone 1 clouds from every angle at once. And I see down, and through, and look upon the core of the anomaly itself.
That's when my ability to sense, think, or exist, stops.
A diver found my pod drifting in the Scour. So they tell me. They also say I wept a great deal before regaining normal consciousness. After countless scans of my outsides and insides - with special attention to my brain - the questions began: from the doctors, the engineers, management, the government. And then the lawyers.
As my memory pieced itself back together, I told them what I could. They wondered if I had contracted anomaly madness - I wondered that myself - until I mentioned Doctor Santern. Command knew of the long-missing research base. Who knows how much of my story was fact or delusion?
I fell: my pod, my body, or just my mind, I don't know. At first I saw... nothing. A true, terrible nothing, a void waiting to be born. The horror I felt at such ultimate emptiness I can only describe as primal. Yet my fright lessened when I perceived a gentle, growing glimmer.
A rescue ship?
The glimmer gained color and resolved into vague shapes. My hope for rescue fled as the images sharpened into moons and planets, yet not sane ones. These were in constant change, forming, melting, reforming. New images rose from the void: stars and supernova, born and dying. Galaxies and nebulae blooming and ripping apart. And when I thought my brain could grasp no more, I saw the cosmic web, knotting and warping, creating and devouring itself like an Ouroboros. Everything that ever was, here and gone and here; an infinity of emptiness and fullness. The anomaly was a perfect hole, and a perfect wholeness. I have no words for the images that arose after that. No understanding. What comes after awe? Worship?
The last thing I remember was being created and devoured, as timelessly as anything within those enigmatic depths.
Command sent more data probes to Zone 2. They've found nothing. The ones sent in deeper, into Zone 1, never come out.
When they let me go, I returned to Earth. Financially I did quite well, no thanks to the hazard bonus. It's true that current salvage law is another thing beyond my skillset, except for the parts that allow pocketing small, unclaimed space junk or asteroid chips for the grandkids. But according to the lawyers, one interpretation of its twists and turns is that Santern's pod, which no longer functions, is mine to keep, as well as the on-board data vials. So rather than drag the issue through the courts and risk other claimants (and after I signed a rather draconian non-disclosure agreement), they paid me handsomely for it all - except my screwdriver, which I damn well kept. The money is enough for me to retire on a sunny tropical beach. They even offered me a consulting position at Command because of my time with Santern.
But I didn't retire on a beach, nor did I accept their offer. I found a nice place with a pool close to my kids and grandkids. They visit. That brings me more pleasure than anything from the lawyers.
Still... something else has changed, something in my memory, or that I'd assumed was a memory. Santern was right that the anomaly is more than a mirror or recorder of spacetime, as some scientists speculate, capturing any light that has ever fallen on it - or ever will. It embodies what it sees. Entangles it. Now, except for that blissful forgetfulness between sleep and waking, part of me still falls there. Even in my dreams.
Yet I've come to realize I have always been falling: born on a planet falling around the sun; the sun falling around the Milky Way; that falling through the cosmic web; and all falling through, or toward, who knows what abysses.
And aging is a kind of falling, too, each second a graviton, often unnoticed but always there, pulling us through life from end to end. I've discovered that when I fall with fear, I see my future as an abyss. So now I try to fall with grace.
Someone once told me that with distance comes perspective. That the proper distance protects you from entanglement.
But some entanglements are good. And the grace is not to fall alone.
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I say 'nearly' because that's how it feels with no ship, no pod: just a safe-suit. Masses of drifting rocks covered in sky-wires and transceivers speckle my view, as if I'd sneezed in my helmet. I skitter between two monstrous slabs, like petrified hands waiting to clap.
My com crackles. "Diver 18, status?" That's not for me. I pick it up since the omni-stations echo whatever signals hit them - when they're working. And though I'm millions of clicks from the Zeta anomaly, I'm already seeing its effects: magnetic lines of aurora swirl and weave around the antennas like an electric storm. Someone has to repair the sensors and transmitters when they glitch, but it's not my old engineering career that got me the job. It's because, even at my age, I can still pass a physical and use a screwdriver.
The voice moves on. "Diver 19?"
Diver 19 drones out his progress. They call us divers. We dive the Scour, the outer zones of a region that, by current theories, is not entirely within the flats and folds of spacetime. The closer to the central anomaly, the more electronics fail, so we use simple chemical thrusters to navigate the fields of rock, all held and moved not only by gravity, but by forces beneath or beyond known physical laws.
"Diver 20, status."
"This is 20," I say, and do a quick check of the data flickering across my visor. "Still three clicks from station 11-5-479. Systems nominal. Psychrometer green."
I listen for a Roger or a ten-four or something. There's a suspicious pause.
Then, "Um, 20, this is probably not a big deal... but there's a report of a grav wave."
Crap. Even with mitigations against electronic, photonic, and other outages, gravity waves are hard to guard against. One strong, unexpected ripple through the asteroids, and you're a pancake, or MIA, never to be found.
Command adds, "It's unconfirmed, 20, so I wouldn't -"
"Hey Command, don't rub my thermometer and tell me it's summer. Where?"
"Zone 4, section 12."
I recheck my vectors: Zone 5, section 11. Zone 4 is deeper in, a place for advanced research. More pay down there, but more risks. For me, Zone 5 is the sweet spot between risk and reward. It should keep my tight retirement budget off the backs of my kids - they have families of their own. The income might even add some peaceful beach time to my remaining years. A nice finale before my credits roll.
"Acknowledged," I say. "What's its heading?"
"Passing (static) array (static) and -"
"Say again, Command?"
My heads-up flashes and blinks. Half of my coordinates go negative. I didn't know they had negative signs.
Before I can react, the wave arrives. It's not visible in itself, but the asteroid field around me swells as if it's taking a breath -
And then it does something impossible. Almost dreamlike, the rocks fold and puddle and, without cracking, turn inside out.
I'm having that car-wreck reaction where there's no time to panic, just exist and observe. Around, or past, or through countless asteroids, I see stars shining clear and bright, utterly blocked until now. My last thought is that, while I figured I'd die alone, I had hoped to die with the sun on my face.
Maybe I should have been more specific about which sun I meant.
I awake on my back. Memory of the grav wave returns, and in a delayed panic I struggle to move, but can't. There's no pain, and I don't feel crushed, just heavy as lead. At least my life-support still works. I calm my breathing; hysterics won't help.
While my heads-up is dead, my suit's eerie green emergency chemlights give just enough illumination to brush the walls of a round, rocky cave that stretches up into shadow. And there's a strange noise outside my helmet, some kind of rhythmic undulation.
Have I been enfolded in an asteroid? There must be atmosphere, even if slight, since that sound would be impossible in a vacuum. I'd have to remove my helmet to tell if it's breathable, but I'd rather my final memory not be of what my tomb smells like. If I can open a flap on my wrist, I can access a row of back-up analog gauges and check basic environmentals. Or I could try to reach my toolkit, maybe rig something to ignite. The colors from the combustion would suggest what type of atmosphere is present.
Sure. Right before a volatile gas explosion paints the walls with my spleen.
As I strain to lift an arm - it seems impossibly weighted - something knock-knocks on my helmet.
I jolt, but can't turn.
From behind, leaning upside-down over my face, is another helmet, the visor dark. The figure shifts to my side. It wears a safe-suit like mine, but with bizarre modifications: external wires and coils and glowing tubes. Even some duct tape. I swear it's like Frankenstein's Christmas tree.
I see now I'm on a circular metallic platform. The figure stands beside it and throws a lever.
That undulating sound drops away. So does the weight from my body and I can sit up. A few other objects surround me on my platform: a piece of twisted antenna, a large shard of astroglass, a soda can.
The stranger has stepped to a door and is motioning me to follow. First, I peel back my sleeve flap to view the analog gauges. My suit's life support is nominal. External temperature and pressure, too low. I fold back the flap, ease off the platform and, surprised at what seems like normal gravity, I shuffle over.
We enter an airlock. When the hissing stops, the next door releases, and we step into a large, long cavern, outfitted like a cluttered workshop. There are cabinets overflowing with equipment, tables with oddly arranged reflectors and crystals, pipes snaking up the walls, and everything lit by the never-quite-right glow of chemlights. It's Frankenstein's lab, but in Dracula's catacombs.
The stranger removes his helmet. He doesn't strike me as a diver - most are old and desperate or young and reckless. This man is middle-aged with a studious countenance and sharp eyes. His hair and short beard are out of sorts, but that's typical after a pressure suit. My thinning gray makes helmet-hair the least of my worries.
Tentatively I unsnap my neck lock, press my hands to the sides of my helmet and twist. After a quick sigh of air, I lift it off. I breathe; good enough.
"I gather you are uninjured?" he says, zipping off the rest of his suit. His voice is deep, measured, and confident.
"I think so." I remove mine, too.
"Marvelous. Then welcome, Diver 20, to Astropolis."
I'm still off balance by whatever's happened to me, yet I'm sure we've never met. "You know my designation?"
"I know how to read," he says.
Of course. It was written on my helmet. "Who are you, sir?" I ask. "And where is this place?"
"And the corollary to that: how did you get here?"
I nod.
He crosses to a wall pipe, eyes a valve, turns a dial. A long needle on a gauge shivers. "I am Doctor Salvator Santern, astrophysicist. And you, sir?"
"Janx Farrow, Diver."
"Tea?"
"What?"
"Would you care for tea?"
"Where am -?"
"I heard you the first time." He attends to a table of tubes and beakers. "Don't you find it curious that many equate deep space with endless night? Yet the abundance of stars ensures an eternal daytime. Not that any stars are visible from within the zones, but it's a fine reason for anytime breakfasts. Or tea. Cream?"
I can barely follow what this man is saying, and stare dumbly.
"And to answer your question, we are in Zone 2."
"T-two?" I fumble the word. Zone 2 should not be survivable. I again glance around - for what, I don't know. Signs of the afterlife?
"You were caught in a phase wave," the man says. "That's a dimensionally non-contiguous -"
"I know of them," I say, "but never in the outer zones. Command only warned me of a grav wave."
"The anomaly makes the rules. Janx, was it? Grav waves often develop near phase waves. Incidentally, I expect your heads-up display has gone, shall we say, heads-down?"
"Very."
"Well, without a psychrometer, shouldn't you be asking whether all this is a hallucination?"
I'm an idiot: that should have been my first question, at least to myself. Not only can the anomaly mess with electronics, but with our brain's electrical system. One danger of working in the zones is hallucinations - or if you tread too deep too long, madness. The psychcrometers are our reality check, letting us know if we're going over the rainbow.
He laughs, but not unkindly. "Forgive me, but it's refreshing to see someone experiencing the same uncertainties I once did. However, I've sampled that wine's every vintage, and I assure you we are well shielded from such effects. If you still doubt, try this argument on for size. Are you still breathing?"
"Of course," I say, and inhale to make sure.
"Then even if I am your private fever dream, you're at least alive. Given that, the rest can't be too terrible. And that's the best advice I can give you."
It's hard to argue there.
He brings over two steaming mugs, hands me one. "I was joking about the cream. My diet here is quite limited."
I sip. The taste, like weak, dirty flowers, is real enough.
"Of course, you could just as well be my own hallucination," Santern says. "But I no longer split those hairs. I'm still breathing, so I'll keep doing what I'm doing." Besides the tea, he offers a plate of crumbly biscuits. "Amazing what you can do with lichen."
Like the tea, they're odd but edible, and I'm feeling more settled. "Astropolis?" I say.
"Named it myself, from the Greek. City of Stars. My research base."
"How long have you been here?"
"Oh, nearly five years."
My eyes must have widened because he adds, "More or less. In here, out there, time and space, the effects of the Zeta anomaly - who knows? But I collect what detritus I find, grow what I can, synthesize the rest." He sips his tea, pinky out.
"I didn't think there were research bases this deep into the zones," I say. "Is it classified?"
"Purely commercial, meant to study the anomaly for potential product applications. This station was set up in Zone 4. But same as you, we were caught in a phase wave."
"We?"
"My assistants. After our first order of business - survival - we searched for a way to return, or at least energize the transmitters to call for help. And while we did, we continued our original work." He puts down his tea. "Until sickness and anomaly madness took the others."
"I'm sorry," I say, and decide not to press for details. It's always tragic to hear of such losses in the zones, and I feel an additional wave of sadness for this man, who's had to bear such personal ones, then was left to survive alone.
He brightens a bit. "However, we made several remarkable discoveries. Since being trapped within Zone 2, this base has three times orbited the anomaly. I've tracked debris, mapped the asteroids, and most critically, studied the Zone 1 spectral clouds."
"You've seen them?" I ask. Considering the layers upon layers of asteroids, and the strange and debilitating effects of the anomaly, few surviving drones, or people, had managed even a glimpse of Zone 1.
"Seen and measured," he says with some pride. "At times the clouds enter periods of thinning strata, revealing those beneath and multiplying the anomaly's effects. The phase wave that brought you confirms we're entering such a period. If my calculus is correct, these conditions may allow a specially fitted data pod to puncture the inmost layers and give us a direct view of Zone Zero. Of the anomaly itself."
For several heartbeats I'm dumbstruck. No one had ever managed that, not with deep spectral imaging, not with drones. "Survival in Zone 2 is impressive enough, Doctor. What happens with direct exposure, through Zone 1, to the very core?"
His eyes brighten further, almost as if within his brain someone switched on a light. "That is the question, is it not? And I for one, Janx Farrow, am determined to find out."
I'm drowning in questions - one being whether Doctor Santern might have a touch of anomaly madness.
He studies me for a moment, then gestures toward a darkened end of the workshop. "Let me show you something."
Still trying to wrap my head around all this, I leave my tea and follow. We approach a row of metal panels hanging on the rough rock like blank portraits. A step back from those stands a rack of small, opaque tubes.
"Data vials," he says, "for recording the anomaly's effects."
"This close, you've managed to use electronics?"
"Chemical memory, not electronic." He turns to the panels. "Would you mind? These stick."
We muscle one sideways; it squeals but slides. In the wall is a horizontal shaft, as if carved to look out a deep castle window. Something glistens partway in.
"Mirrors," he says, and fiddles with a lever underneath. The mirror inside tilts.
And with that, I see the clearest view anyone has ever gotten of Zone 1. I can only stare, speechless and mesmerized. In the distance, at the very heart of the asteroid zones, roils a massive egg-shaped... something. Bands of strata burn and swirl in fantastic patterns, their shifting colors pulling my eyes right off the spectrum. And there's depth: shredding, onion-like layers reveal those beneath. Without more references, I can't begin to judge its size.
"Beautiful," he says, with the same awe that's taken me.
"What do you think's inside?" I manage to ask. There were theories: a nested star spinning at relativistic speeds; a quantum rip; a relic of our ancient universe, or another universe entirely; the end of the road, of time - or a beginning. But not even the hardiest ballistic spacecraft has returned from Zone 1.
"My best hypothesis? Nothing... and everything."
I find little meaning in his answer, so I continue to gaze upon this violent cosmic marvel.
Santern seems to read my silence. "Well," he says, "why would we have a word to describe it? But I deduce a region so deep, so true and transcendental, that anything experiencing its direct, unfiltered effects would become forever part of it."
"A black hole?" I say, somewhat disappointed. "No escape? Crushed or spaghettified?"
"A better word is, entangled."
"Whatever you call it, if your data pod is successful in creating a puncture to Zone Zero, will this base survive any blowback?"
I am also thinking, will we?
He leans in for a better view. "I've taken precautions. And yet," his voice becomes wistful, "to experience that entanglement, to be both here and there, one foot in the river of time, one on the shores of infinity... The first to know its secrets, Janx. Tempting, is it not?"
As an engineer, even if past my prime, I understand his enthusiasm. But I tear my gaze from the clouds and face him. "Doctor, its power reached me in Zone 5. What kind of precautions can stand against it here? Considering the potential effects of a direct perspective -"
"With distance comes perspective," he says, and smiles like a patient teacher. "We are near enough for our needs, yet far enough to avoid entanglement. Remember the platform where you arrived?"
"Yes, and I've been wondering what force held me down. Magnetism?"
"Gravitons."
"You've harnessed gravitons?" I say with unshadowed skepticism.
"It's my research specialty, and why I came to the zones. In point of fact, gravitons have been harnessed by humanity for ages."
"Now you're having a laugh at me."
His dark eyebrows peak. "But Janx, have you never heard of the inclined plane? Irrigation and plumbing? The catapult? The arch?"
I can't avoid a smirk. "Fair enough: they each take advantage of gravity. But you know that's not what I meant. Gravitons are a billion billion billion times less detectable than electrons. How -"
"As you experienced firsthand, the anomaly creates grav and phase waves. An associated effect is a type of lensing. It's enabled me to conduct research under unique conditions, and I've taken advantage of what I've learned. For example, it's why we ourselves aren't floating around like balloons. You heard the thrum of my machines?"
"Generators?"
"Collectors. Focusing devices. Particle guides. Besides the best shielding imaginable, graviton flow induces the energy I need for pressure, temperature, and kinetics. The platform where you arrived, which I designed, collimates a graviton vortex to retrieve passing debris."
"And the occasional lost diver," I say. "I haven't thanked you for that, sir."
"Not at all. In fact, your arrival is fortuitous. I have much to prepare before the next deep alignment of the Zone 1 clouds. Help me close this."
We shove the panel back into place and return to his tables and experiments. I'm astonished at his accomplishments, and say so.
"I'm glad you appreciate it," he says. "While I'm unable to operate a computer or standard transmitter with gravitons, I've otherwise made do."
"Then there's no way to contact home? Send an SOS? Warn Command of when the next alignment is to occur, and its expected effects?"
Santern sighs. "Sadly not, though I believe that after the pod returns its data, I will finally have what I need to develop a way of sending a communication up through the other zones."
"If that's our best chance," I say sincerely, "how can I help?"
And he answers as sincerely. "As a diver, I assume you have some technical skill?"
"Yes, sir. I'm an engineer. Retired, but performing diagnostics, repairs, that sort of thing, in the antenna fields."
"Ah, retired. That explains your age." He pauses. "No offense."
"None taken."
He continues, undisturbed, "I've noticed that the elderly reflect more on their relationship with fate. Perhaps that's why bingo is so popular."
Personally, I'm not much for games. But I don't interrupt.
"I myself," he goes on, "am well familiar with the engineering arts. I would not presume you have read any of my papers?"
"Any outside a paywall?"
"The most critical project I must complete," he says, apparently not getting my little joke, "is the data collection pod." He nods to what I had assumed was just another cabinet, but I now notice has unusual protrusions poking out the top and sides: small antennas, coils, and other devices I can't name.
He adds, "My previous pods were unsuccessful, but I've since improved the shielding. It will launch via a graviton beam from the platform I used to rescue you, and as it flies, it will propagate that beam to break the clouds further. Let me show you around, and then we can get to work. Time is of the essence if we are to meet the next window, which are few and far between."
Though Santern radiates a certain impatience, I sense that he paces our tour to help me digest my circumstances. I see rooms that were once crew quarters, repurposed for his needs. Areas below include an experimental garden, expanded now for sustenance. Another hosts Santern's graviton collectors: large, bulbous things with conduits running into the ceiling and walls. Through a viewport near a maintenance hatch, I get a glimpse outside. As I suspected, we are within an asteroid. Transceivers and dishes, many smashed and twisted, rise from craters like the ruins of a lost civilization. A few intact groups have been arranged into strange circlets.
"Those are part of my graviton collection architecture," he says with obvious pride, a pride he deserves.
After our tour, he brings me back to the lab. "Well, that's home. Now, are you recovered enough to help with a few tasks? There is no time to waste."
My body and mind feel serviceable - and eager - so we return to his data pod. It's nearly stuffed with curious devices, most light-years beyond my skillset. I tell him so.
"It's beyond most skillsets," he replies. "I will handle any tasks concerning the pod. And to be frank, I prefer to work alone. But there are dozens of other jobs for which a retired engineer may be qualified. I've had to deprioritize routine base maintenance. That is where your skills would be most welcome."
Doubtless a polite way of saying I'll only get in his way. He may be right. "Home sweet home could certainly use some WD-40," I say. Though his entire vision and plan is still vague to me, I'm comfortable with his division of labor, comfortable enough to be humble about my own potential contributions. So he starts me on simple upkeep: leaking tubes, loose connectors, and yes, oiling things.
By the looks of the base, his crew had been talented technicians. Yet there are also patches, quick fixes, and impatient jury-rigging. My appreciation of this base drops a notch. I know firsthand the pressures of schedules and deadlines, of funding and office politics, yet the foundations must be solid. I rectify what I can.
That is to say, I work my old-man ass off.
We keep at our labors for the next few days. As Santern's confidence in me grows, he assigns me more complex tasks, even adding finishing touches to his data pod. My job queue never shrinks, yet I can't help adding my own modest improvements: modular connections for easier reconfiguration or replacement; resilient, flexible conduits; test points for troubleshooting. Despite the urgency and the unknowns, I enjoy getting elbow-deep again in projects that test my skills.
But when I try to establish any kind of friendship or rapport with Santern, he returns the topic to the base, the work, the science; he only initiates conversation when he's dissatisfied with my progress, reminding me that with sufficient data we can develop a way to communicate back to the upper zones, warn them of upcoming grav waves, perhaps even ride one out of here. I don't need the reminder, though I let him have his say. He's at the peak of his career, brilliant and driven, and his zeal reminds me of how, as my life prospects have wound down, my own patience has become too comfortable. Still, I discover we have one thing in common: while I have family back home and I have learnt he has none, we have both wound up essentially on our own. I find myself thinking more of my life before coming to the zones, of my kids and their families, how I've traded my time with them for a paycheck. People say that time is money; it's clear to me now that time is everything.
At last Santern announces the data collection pod is near completion and it's time to move it to the gravity platform. With that chamber's overhead aperture closed, the area can be pressurized, so we work there without suits.
As I tinker with assigned modifications to a heat sink - for which I don't understand the need - he calls me to the pod. I tuck away my screwdriver and head over.
"I tried to create a means of automated maneuverability," he says, reaching inside the pod to fiddle with something, "but without standard electronics, I've found that impossible. Instead, I've developed a transceiver-gravitator for communication. We can course-correct the pod from here and receive its data via a modulated graviton wave."
"And all I got for you is a heat-sink," I say, offering it out.
He glances at it. "Yes, fine. Please continue with its installation."
"Sure."
We change places. "Where?" I ask.
"Atop the second flow exchanger."
That isn't very helpful. I peer into a mad-scientist's paradise, crammed with god-knows-what, everything fastened and arranged in a thick mess. It reminds me of wire closets maintained by inexperienced technicians. "And where's that?"
"Straight in front of you."
Stifling an urge to reorganize this nightmare, I push aside a tangle and squeeze inside the pod. Suddenly my weight doubles, triples. My knees buckle and I collapse as if under a ton of bricks.
"Help -" is all I can manage. Behind me, the hatch closes. As I'm struggling to move and breathe, the weight evaporates. Through a viewport I see Santern has exited the chamber and watches from the airlock. A voice crackles from somewhere inside the pod. "Sorry, Janx. But my measurements must include the anomaly's effect on a conscious being."
"Cut the joke, Doctor." I recover my breath. "Let me out."
"No joke, I'm afraid. I tried to give you sufficient room - there wasn't much to begin with - but there is enough life support for the data collection phase. So get comfy. It's launch time."
I pound the door. "Damn you, Santern!" Before I find some better profanity, the pod jolts and is thrust upward. I stagger and brace myself as it speeds through the chamber's high aperture and flies from the asteroid. The viewport shows the antennas and transceivers and circlets shrinking in the distance, among the other asteroids, among the blackness.
Santern's voice returns. "You'll be pleased to know all systems are nominal. Congratulations to us."
"Stop this, Santern! Bring me back!"
"Take it easy, Janx. The Zone 1 clouds are thinning, just as I had predicted. Let me help you see."
The pod rotates. I'm seething with fury and a growing fear, but I continue to stare out the viewport. I've cleared the last of the Zone 2 asteroids, and before me loom the violent spectral clouds of Zone 1, churning, swirling - except straight ahead where they've pulled apart, like a phantasmic sunset. And within, a deeper rift is forming.
"Isn't it marvelous?" Santern says. "The pod is propagating the graviton beam and pushing aside the substrate, just as I designed."
I squeeze shut my eyes, steady my voice. "Santern, listen. You're suffering from anomaly madness. Bring me back. We can work together on a rescue plan. The discoveries you've made, the technologies alone, are enough to make you famous."
"I've never been more sane, Janx. Or my work nearer to immortality."
There's little time for rational discussion, so before my fear becomes paralyzing, I take a quick look around the pod and grab a bundle of cables. "I won't help you, Santern. I'll rip these components out by their roots."
"Do that, and you'll disable life support."
That could be true. I slacken my sweaty grip.
"With my improved shield generator," he continues, "you are safe for now. But consider, Janx. You will soon be the first to observe the heart of the Zeta anomaly. Your name will join mine in the annals of history."
"I won't look at it, Santern. You can't make me observe it."
This, to be honest, might be a bluff. If I'm to die, can I resist glimpsing the face of the Medusa? And it occurs to me that ending my long life here, at the limit of space and time, is somehow grimly poetic.
"Perhaps you don't understand what 'observer' means in physics," he says. "Your atoms can't turn away. However, your decision may have interesting impacts on your sanity or consciousness. I'll leave that up to you."
My capsule shoots onward, a bullet aimed at the clouds of Zone 1. The peripheral blackness blurs with spectral mists - signs I'm entering its outermost edge. I have little time. "Was this your plan from the start, Santern? Ever since you rescued me?" I return my attention to the inside of the pod, to the waveguides, the connections, the odd mechanisms I worked on for him.
"Rescued you? Janx, I myself took you from Zone 5."
I freeze. "What... What did you say?"
"As I learned how to take advantage of the anomaly's dynamics, I've been able to redirect phase waves to the outer zones, casting a net, so to speak, fishing for whatever I could reach and use. As luck would have it, I caught you."
I can't begin to express my horror at what he's telling me, but then a new realization hits. "Santern, if you can control those forces, why can't you rescue yourself?" I think I already know the answer.
"Of course I can, and my coworkers demanded we do just that. But as you must understand, this opportunity is too unique, too important to abandon. When they became violent, I recognized their behavior as anomaly madness. You can't blame me for defending myself. It pained me, but the most merciful thing to do was space the poor wretches."
I can't find any words.
He continues, "In a way, I feel the anomaly judged them unworthy. Those so-called scientists were stationed here through funding compromises, political favors, nepotism. They didn't deserve this opportunity, and their deaths, while regrettable, were no great loss to my efforts. But I must admit, you've earned your keep."
At last I say, "You won't be remembered as a genius, Santern, but as a murderer."
"You disappoint me, Janx. Advancing the boundaries of science always requires sacrifice. I've given my life to the search for knowledge, five years of it here. And honestly, do you really believe you have five years left? Compared to me, you are a ruin."
A sudden dizziness washes over me, and not from this man's words. A component I'm examining, a cube, wavers in shape. For a moment, four perfect corners become five, though each remains ninety degrees. That's impossible, unless I'm hallucinating... or the space here is becoming dimensionally non-contiguous. The phenomenon does not seem to affect me otherwise, yet I dare not look out the viewport again: whatever I see might drag me into madness.
And still, Santern goes on. "You might be interested to know that I first designed the pod to be unoccupied - and not only because I couldn't risk my safety piloting it. The truth is, I'm rather claustrophobic. Even on the open sea I have a sense of being trapped, sealed in, no escape. Does that make sense? I suppose we've each got our personal anomalies."
The dizziness lifts and my thoughts sharpen. Maybe he's right; maybe I am a ruin. But I still have a few good bricks left standing. Before panic sets in, I start tracing wires and connections.
"What will it be like for you, Janx?" he says. "My guess is it will resemble a kind of eternity. There's a certain horror about eternity, don't you agree? Philosophers say life is full of eternities when you stop counting the seconds."
I may not be as smart as Santern, but I understand transceivers, and I've identified an instrument I believe is for communication. Maybe I should yank that first - it might shut him up. But I trace the feeds to devices resembling the ones Santern had shown me on our tour. Other conduits exit those; one to the capsule's nose, another toward my feet. Shielding and thrust? Santern never claimed to create gravitons, only collect and focus them, so this architecture must largely modulate the beam coming from his base.
"Are you experiencing any temporal effects, Janx? Any tenseness? Present tense? Past or future tense?"
I ignore him. Even if I disconnect some of these systems, I'll still have ballistic momentum. Yet it occurs to me that while the graviton beam is providing the pod's thrust, Santern had pulled me from Zone 5. The beam must be reversible.
There are too many variables to predict the extent of my tampering, not to mention the dimensional non-congruities and other effects of the anomaly, which must be increasing by the second. But I understand antennas and their propagation of energy. As I muster every drop of my experience, the modular connections I had added come to my aid. I choose the most promising parts of the architecture, trace its inputs and outputs, all while Santern rambles on. I catch snatches as I work.
"Even if you lose consciousness, Janx, consider that unconsciousness is our most natural state. We only become conscious to ensure our survival and reproduce. In a perfect world, we'd never awaken."
Whether it was his long isolation, or the extended effects of the anomaly, or just his own sociopathic ego, I don't need a psychrometer to tell me Santern is quite mad.
When I have a rough mental map of the pod's layout, it's time to get old-school. Using my screwdriver, I work as fast as I dare, disconnecting and reconfiguring several minor subsystems, one of which I gather is life support. But I need its patch cable for something else. Besides, if my plan doesn't work, I won't need life support much longer.
As I ready my last hack, Santern speaks again. "Think what your sacrifice will contribute to the knowledge of humankind, Janx."
"Call it what it is, Santern. Another murder."
"Don't be so dramatic. In some ways, I envy you in that pod."
At that, I use the cable to dead-short the thruster graviton port to the shielding arrays.
The statcom squeals, blasts static. The capsule lurches and bucks, and I'm slammed against the side, my senses rattled. Did I go too far with my tampering?
But everything stills; all is silent as my head clears. Out the viewport, the Zone 1 clouds are open deeper than ever, but come no closer. As far as I can tell, I've stopped.
Santern's voice crackles over the statcom. "...interfering! You don't know what you're doing! You're ruining my work!"
I force words past my hammering heart. "No - you ruined it when you killed your crew. I've reversed the beam. I won't move from this point. If you want to save this pod, your only choice is to bring me back."
He's silent for several seconds. When he speaks again, his words are grave and cold. "You have indeed stopped. But you are now pulling my entire base forward."
"Nice try, Santern, but that's impossible."
"It's the truth, Janx. I am now the one accelerating. And you are in my path."
"If that's true," I said, uncertain now, "disable your beam."
"Janx," he says, "you reversed not the beam but the collectors, and therefore the source. I don't know why you weren't obliterated, but the pod is now being powered from the anomaly itself. And with the increased effects -"
A shudder runs through the pod. The speaker cuts off again. The changes I made flash through my mind. Is he right? In this strange region of space, with so much unfamiliar technology...
I again notice violations of normal dimensionality: depth vacillates, solid items twist and warp without breaking. I can now see through the other walls of my capsule, as if a seam has disjoined and exposed me to vacuum, yet I don't lose atmospheric pressure.
And in the distance I spot the base, untold megatons of rock, growing.
A last crackle, "Janx! You old fool!"
Frantically, I scan the pod for any way to avoid a collision. I grasp for a connector. My hand passes through it. Another does the same.
I peer again at the base. It's halved the distance. With a strange jump, it halves it again.
I feel a cable within my fingers. I yank, and the blackening numbness as I was stolen from Zone 5 hits me again, but I retain consciousness.
Then a rush of... reality?
It's impossible to tell whether it's the base that jumps next or my pod, but I'm upon the asteroid. And within it. Everything melts like a horror-house mirror. I can see 360 degrees around me with my eyes. With my brain.
For an instant I'm face to face with a terrified Santern - right before I pass through him.
My vision spreads and divides. I see the massive, burning, swirling Zone 1 clouds from every angle at once. And I see down, and through, and look upon the core of the anomaly itself.
That's when my ability to sense, think, or exist, stops.
A diver found my pod drifting in the Scour. So they tell me. They also say I wept a great deal before regaining normal consciousness. After countless scans of my outsides and insides - with special attention to my brain - the questions began: from the doctors, the engineers, management, the government. And then the lawyers.
As my memory pieced itself back together, I told them what I could. They wondered if I had contracted anomaly madness - I wondered that myself - until I mentioned Doctor Santern. Command knew of the long-missing research base. Who knows how much of my story was fact or delusion?
I fell: my pod, my body, or just my mind, I don't know. At first I saw... nothing. A true, terrible nothing, a void waiting to be born. The horror I felt at such ultimate emptiness I can only describe as primal. Yet my fright lessened when I perceived a gentle, growing glimmer.
A rescue ship?
The glimmer gained color and resolved into vague shapes. My hope for rescue fled as the images sharpened into moons and planets, yet not sane ones. These were in constant change, forming, melting, reforming. New images rose from the void: stars and supernova, born and dying. Galaxies and nebulae blooming and ripping apart. And when I thought my brain could grasp no more, I saw the cosmic web, knotting and warping, creating and devouring itself like an Ouroboros. Everything that ever was, here and gone and here; an infinity of emptiness and fullness. The anomaly was a perfect hole, and a perfect wholeness. I have no words for the images that arose after that. No understanding. What comes after awe? Worship?
The last thing I remember was being created and devoured, as timelessly as anything within those enigmatic depths.
Command sent more data probes to Zone 2. They've found nothing. The ones sent in deeper, into Zone 1, never come out.
When they let me go, I returned to Earth. Financially I did quite well, no thanks to the hazard bonus. It's true that current salvage law is another thing beyond my skillset, except for the parts that allow pocketing small, unclaimed space junk or asteroid chips for the grandkids. But according to the lawyers, one interpretation of its twists and turns is that Santern's pod, which no longer functions, is mine to keep, as well as the on-board data vials. So rather than drag the issue through the courts and risk other claimants (and after I signed a rather draconian non-disclosure agreement), they paid me handsomely for it all - except my screwdriver, which I damn well kept. The money is enough for me to retire on a sunny tropical beach. They even offered me a consulting position at Command because of my time with Santern.
But I didn't retire on a beach, nor did I accept their offer. I found a nice place with a pool close to my kids and grandkids. They visit. That brings me more pleasure than anything from the lawyers.
Still... something else has changed, something in my memory, or that I'd assumed was a memory. Santern was right that the anomaly is more than a mirror or recorder of spacetime, as some scientists speculate, capturing any light that has ever fallen on it - or ever will. It embodies what it sees. Entangles it. Now, except for that blissful forgetfulness between sleep and waking, part of me still falls there. Even in my dreams.
Yet I've come to realize I have always been falling: born on a planet falling around the sun; the sun falling around the Milky Way; that falling through the cosmic web; and all falling through, or toward, who knows what abysses.
And aging is a kind of falling, too, each second a graviton, often unnoticed but always there, pulling us through life from end to end. I've discovered that when I fall with fear, I see my future as an abyss. So now I try to fall with grace.
Someone once told me that with distance comes perspective. That the proper distance protects you from entanglement.
But some entanglements are good. And the grace is not to fall alone.
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