The Accident

The light gave way to darkness and that’s the way it would be for a while.

It was unnaturally dark. The crew was already scared. They had no idea where they were however that wasn’t the scariest thing. They had used up all their fuel in one gargantuan error and now they were left stranded, drifting in an inky blackness that had to be space but one without the usual stars that had traditionally guided explorers like them since the beginning of exploration, itself.

Captain Aidan stood front and center, addressing his crew over the loudspeaker. It was in times of utter hopelessness, times just like this one, that a Captain had to be most Captain-like.

“As you’re all aware we’ve made a very long and unscheduled trip forward. We’ve assessed the reason for the massive jump and have determined it was a technical malfunction pure and simple. Not one of you is to blame. As far as any one of us can tell, our crew carried out all the right directives and worked in perfect concert together. I want to make that perfectly clear up front,” he began.

Someone in the crowd shouted. “How far did we go?”

Aidan blinked. He didn’t have an exact number of years to quote. He hadn’t bothered to memorize the gauge – there were more figures than he even knew the ship was capable of counting. ‘Goddamned far, that’s how far’, he wanted to say. But in lieu of being able to speak his free mind and in lieu of exact statistics, Aidan held back.

His heart weighed like an anchor. All these faces he was staring at were supposed to be the survivors of the human race. They had all narrowly escaped the complete destruction of Earth just a few hours ago. He didn’t see the point in telling them that the helming crew hadn’t had time to check things out completely before bringing all systems to go. It probably was someone’s fault, but being a good Captain he knew that blame was no remedy for failure. He had played enough sports in college to know you simply try to recover the ball as quickly and as best you can and keep punting it forward.

“Our time-accelerator was stuck in the forward position for a good hour and a half before it finally ran out of power. The good news is of course we’ve stopped accelerating and we’ve managed to un-jam the accelerator. And, the accelerator is still fully operational. The bad news is our travels have left us without fuel for further time jumps.”

The murmurs and disapproving uproar Aidan was expecting to hear did not come. He took the opportunity to keep talking.

“We’ve come extremely far. We’re approximately ten to the twenty-sixth power years ahead of our start point.”

Perhaps they all still viewed themselves as lucky survivors, he thought. High morale had a way of lasting for a while in the wake of a massive success.

“If my basic astronomy serves me, we’re sometime in what’s called the ‘Degenerate Stage’ of our universe.”

Sandy was standing in the front row of anxious bodies facing Aidan. Mark stood next to her. They had both offered Aidan to stand up there with him. But the Captain told them he felt it might look partisan if he was flanked by first officers, and rather preferred to stand on the bridge alone. He was the Captain, and would address the crowd as such. They stood below him, Sandy with her fists clenched in her pockets; Mark far better at hiding his emotions, Sandy thought to herself.

Sandy couldn’t believe her mind was drifting at a time like this. Guilt took over. She was grateful Captain Aidan hadn’t asked too many questions about her controls over the time-accelerator. She didn’t think anyone would find her out; her track record was near flawless. But then, she’d never been tested under the kind of pressure the last three hours had brought. She was so good when her mind was clear, sometimes bad when it wasn’t. Sandy thought she might have experienced the greatest emotional roller coaster of any human being in history. In one minute she was a key player in the salvation of the last survivors of Earth. In the next, she was the silent trigger finger of mankind’s suicide. And she knew exactly why it had happened. That pride she felt came too early – she was celebrating before the game had been won. She’d jinxed herself, and the whole ship with her. Sandy should have felt sicker than she was feeling, this she new. She felt immense guilt. It could have been anyone in her position. But mostly now she felt sad, staring up at the Captain as he struggled to explain her mistakes to the crew. That should be me up there, she thought. Sandy couldn’t look at the poor man anymore. She glanced in Mark’s direction. Mark’s eyes stayed fixed on Aidan. She realized she was being disrespectful, and set her eyes back where they belonged.

“We’ve arrived at the end of the existence. The reason you don’t see stars outside is because there aren’t any,” Aidan went on. “If there are any stars left they are few and far between. We would be very lucky to find one, and my hope is that we will. We have the ability to harness power. Our rockets do not rely on the same fuel reserves as the time-accelerator. They can carry us a ways yet. If we can get to a star – even a decaying one – it could supply us more than enough energy to completely refuel the ship, and afford us all one more amazing story to tell our grandchildren.”

Respectful silence.

“I’m going to ask you all now to please bear with me while I consult with our navigators,” he concluded. “Thank you.”

Clapping. It started as a trickle, and then got very loud. Captain Aidan wished to God that sound could last but he knew full well there were probably no stars within reach of the ship. He had a vague idea of where the ship was in space, and it was in the opposite direction of where they should have been traveling to keep up with the movement of the ever-expanding stars.

Back in the Captain’s quarters, Sandy and Mark sat across from Aidan. Aidan poured three glasses of whisky from a crystal decanter, handing two out. Mark and Sandy took them without hesitation. The three sipped in silence. Aidan took a belabored breath.

“Navigation tells me the nearest star is about forty times the distance this ship is capable of traveling on its current reserves. Even if she drifted for a while after, we would long die off before reaching it.”

Sandy felt her hands clam with cold sweat. Too much for her to bear as she now felt personally responsible. A tear rolled down her cheek and her body wracked.

“It’s my fault,” she whimpered. “I was moving too fast. I was trying to be efficient,” she choked in hard gasps that interrupted her speech. Aidan leaned across his desk. Sandy felt him apply pressure under the crystal tumbler, bringing it up to her lips. She stared down into the caramel liquid, allowing him to make her drink, her tears running down her red cheeks into the glass.

Aidan settled back down into his chair, not quite finished with his thought.

“There is something in reach.”

Mark’s voice was clinical. “What is it?”

“Navigation’s pretty sure it’s a black hole.”

“Why do you bring it up?” Mark continued.

Aidan raised a stressed eyebrow. “Because it’s the only thing left out there for us, Mark, besides cold, dead space. It’s energy.”

“Do you think we can use it?” Mark wasn’t being cynical. He never was cynical. Aidan always felt bad when he got short with Mark. The man was smart, well-meaning and quite warm in the center which was easy for Aidan to forget sometimes. A large part of Mark’s strength was his hard shell. Aidan simply had a different style. He often struggled to keep that fact in perspective. Now was especially trying.

“Probably not, but we may as well go. If for no other reason than to give the crew some hope and keep everybody busy. You know me, I hate doing nothing.”

Aidan hoped for a smile from Mark but he got only an acknowledging nod. Aidan wondered if, deep down, Mark was afraid of him. Aidan looked into his whisky tumbler, setting it down and pushing it aside.

“Please, Mark. Sandy, you too. Both of you. Tell me if you disagree. We’ll be using up all our resources on this. I realize the final decision will be mine and I plan to take full responsibility for this and everything that’s transpired thus far.

Sandy stiffened. Was that meant for her? It didn’t seem so.

Aidan went on. “I just want to know your opinions because I’m afraid our opinions are all we have left.”

A pause, then,

“I think it’s a great idea,” Mark said.

Sandy felt the eyes on her. She was glad Mark had volunteered his opinion first. She daren’t look a gift horse in the mouth by disagreeing now. She tried to emulate Mark’s strength of conviction.

“I agree,” she delivered.

The crew took direction without a single protest. Aidan considered himself too lucky. If they had rebelled on him, if mutiny had taken place, he might have had a reason to think they were somehow deserved of their fate. Other perspectives entered his mind. He couldn’t help but feel proud – this was how the human race was behaving at the end? Calm, cool, and collected? It looked as if the last of them would go out, not by warring upon one another but rather they would go out in cooperation. The nice guys would finish last, he mused. Better than the spiteful assholes who had destroyed each other back on Earth. These, that were left, were truly the finest, and they were his crew. Aidan allowed himself to feel a special pride in that thought. During the long journey ahead he would need to remember it, and reference often.

* * *

They reached their destination.

The journey took six months to complete and they had traveled quite a significant distance. They had gone against the grain, heading in the exact opposite direction of where everything seemed to be moving. It was the universe’s ‘dead zone’.

The crew gathered on the bridge to stare at the black hole. It wasn’t much to look at. It was barely visible and many admitted they couldn’t see it at all.

Sandy and Mark were with Captain Aidan on the bridge when Smith approached Aidan. Smith, a bespectacled astronomer with blonde hair always seemed to be sweating. He was excited. “Captain, you’re never going to believe this!” Aidan silenced Smith, pulling him aside, beckoning for Sandy and Mark to follow. Aidan never liked his crew to overhear information for the first time before he had heard it first himself.

In Smith’s quarters, Aidan, Sandy and Mark listened as Smith explained, waving his hands wildly as he spoke. “This is very strange. That thing out there is no ordinary black hole. There’s something on the other side of it, that somehow… exists! And we’re able to detect it!”

“Slow down,” said Aidan. “Is it or isn’t it a black hole?”

“It is a black hole as far as I can tell but it’s like we’ve found a new species of black hole. It’s impossible to put it in a category because, well frankly sir we’ve never seen anything like it before!”

Smith looked stark raving mad.

Mark cut in. “Can we harness any energy from it?”

Smith gritted his teeth, shrugging. “In theory, it’s got what we need on the other side. But I wouldn’t necessarily advise steering the ship into it just yet. We need to see if we can send an object into it and pull it out again. That’s the unlikely part. We also simply need to see what’s inside.”

Mark turned to Aidan. “We need a probe.”

Aidan looked bleak.

“There’s a very subtle chance someone could safely pass in and back out,” Smith continued. “The fact that we’re getting a reading of positive energy from inside the hole could mean it has a stable portal. It might be safe to passage through.”

Sandy found herself stepping forward. This was the moment she had been waiting for. “You could send me in. Tie a tether to me. I’ll go.”

Before Aidan could react, Smith interjected. “I wouldn’t recommend a tether. You could pull the whole ship in with you. If it is safe to pass through you should take your chances with a rocket pack. If there’s equilibrium you shouldn’t have a problem. And if there isn’t there’s no way a ship even this size is going to be able to fight against the force of a black hole, no matter how mild.”

* * *

The next thing Sandy realized, she was listening to the loud sound of her breathing through the space helmet. She was standing at the gaping mouth of the ship’s hangar, staring out into impossible nothing. She turned to the crew behind her, giving a clunky wave.

Sandy stepped off the platform. The whole experience felt like it could be an electronic simulator game. Rather surreal.

She heard Aidan’s static voice buzz over the radio intercom.

“Doing okay so far?”

“So far so good,” she answered back. Sandy was unnerved that she couldn’t see the enemy. The idea of the black hole was worse, she thought, than if she were able to see it. It was like the shark in that great film classic, “Jaws”.

“Still with us?” Aidan’s voice again.

“You bet,” she replied.

There was no sense of movement. It was like waiting for the boogey man to appear out of the dark, claws bared, ready to devour you whole.

Sandy hovered there for a time, watching in her rear video monitor as the ship got further and further away, until it was nothing but a tiny speck to her. It had to stay far away. It couldn’t risk the crew.

Sandy suddenly felt the need to talk to Aidan. He hadn’t said anything for several minutes. “Aidan?… Captain?”

Static.

She must be getting close.

This was it.

Sandy wanted to close her eyes but her sense of responsibility and need to set right her mistakes wouldn’t let her. That ship back there was, once again, depending on her. Maybe she had a chance here and now. Even if the group were successful they’d have to find a planet in some place, space, and time that would support them. Could they? Who knew? Perhaps the human race was doomed whether or not she had screwed up the time-accelerator. Perhaps they had been screwed from the moment the bombs had gone off and the Earth had been covered in those ugly charcoal clouds, she wished she could erase from her memory forever, somehow.

Perhaps they had been screwed since the beginning. Sandy found herself sick again, and realized she must shake off these negative thoughts. It was thoughts like these that had probably pitted man against man in the first place.

Then, something strange began to happen. Her suit began to shake. It felt like she had been grabbed by something. It was gentle. It sure had to be, she reckoned, if she had any chance of surviving this ride.

An explosion.

White.

White.

White.

Blinding her.

Her eyes adjusted.

Sandy was hovering in a sea of brilliant glowing orbs the size of basketballs and baseballs. They floated all around her. One bounced off her leg, dinging away, propelled along, bouncing against several others and knocking them all in different directions. They wouldn’t go too far before slowing. It was as if they were traveling in cooking oil. There was something graceful – and peaceful – about them.

It was a beautiful and strange sight. One orb passed by her face. It seemed to possess enormous detail inside of it.

Sandy tried her radio.

“Captain? Are you copying?”

She wasn’t surprised when silence came back. She didn’t want the burden of complete responsibility again. She wasn’t sure she could handle another mess up being her fault, twice. Of course if there was going to be an encore, Sandy at least felt reassured she would likely not be living long to worry about it.

What to do?

“Sandy?” It was Mark.

“Mark! Can you hear me?!’

“I can.” Mark – so matter of fact.

“I’m inside. It’s very bright in here. I’m surrounded by white… globes? Spheres? Most of them are hand sized. I could almost reach out and grab one.”

“Hold on…” Mark’s voice fizzled out. A moment later it came back.

“Do you feel comfortable making contact?” He asked.

“I already have – one just bounced off my leg. Mark, does Smith know what it is? Does he have any idea?”

“Hold on.”

She wished she could talk directly with Smith.

“Sandy? This is Smith. Sandy, can you try to pick up one of whatever it is you’re seeing?”

One floated past. The size of a volleyball. Sandy grabbed it. She held it in her hands. It was soft. Incredibly dense feeling too.

“I’ve got one in my hands now. It’s the size of a volleyball.”

Aidan’s voice came back. “Sandy.”

“Yes?”

“We want you to try to take it out of there. Can you do that?”

“Yes, of course. I’ll come now.”

Sandy stared into the orb. It was hypnotizing. For an elongated moment she was transfixed. Colonies of energy seemed to flow past each other all along its surface. This was a sight to behold.

She looked away, dizzy. The world around her was so blinding it was becoming overwhelming. She actually looked forward to getting back to the endless dark void that awaited her just outside. That is if she could indeed go back out.

Sandy turned on her rocket thrusters. They carried her. Sandy moved in a slow, steady straight line, cradling the glowing orb in her hands.

The light finally gave way, turning to grey. Sandy could see the ship, tiny in the distance as the haze of light lifted effortlessly away.

“Sandy!” The radio bleeped on. It was Aidan again.

“Yeah?” She replied.

“Sandy, put it back! Go back and put it back!!!”

Sandy tried turning off the rockets, throwing them in reverse to stop, but it seemed too late; something kept her moving forward.

“Why? I’m sorry, I don’t understand. I can’t turn around now for some reason. Cap-“

Sandy looked down. The detail in the orb, she realized, was so much more apparent now, contrasted against the blackness of this terrible abyss. She knew the little white ball was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

What came next was instantaneous. Sandy and the ship were consumed in a great BIG BANG. The little white orb expanded, blowing apart in her hands like a cosmic grenade, shattering into infinite, fiery fragments. Fragments that tore outward in clusters of varying sizes. Out, out, out… into the black. Turning on some much needed light in the universe.

Mercifully, Sandy and the crew were spared any pain. The last thing any of them saw was that tremendous light that gave them all hope.

And Then, There Was Light...

This was it – the cure for cancer.

Ryan hadn’t even graduated from med school. Just a mere six months ago the young twenty-six year old had dropped out of UCLA to pursue other interests. He had nearly forgotten all about his former studies, but now it came rushing back in a flash of lightning-quick inspiration.

It was appropriate, he thought; breakthrough discoveries like these always tended to happen by accident in unexpected settings, didn’t they? Take that guy who invented Post It notes. It’s a famous legend, surely you’ve heard the story: some inventor had set out to concoct a new super glue stew but produced, instead, the weakest and most useless of all adhesive substances known to mankind. Or so it seemed, insofar as the latter adjective anyway. Somehow, before the formula could be crumpled up and tossed into the wastebasket, to be forgotten for all eternity, it was thought that the stick-um might just have a purpose after all. The theory was put to the test and from that point afterward office workers ‘round the globe had their dismal lives changed profoundly forever (we need not mention the inventor’s).

This was much bigger than that, clearly.

Ryan couldn’t believe how simple the logic went. Like a lot of breakthrough ideas this one hadn’t come delivered to him in a single package, wrapped up with a pretty red ribbon – no. Rather, it came about by a magical combination of two odd ideas that somehow shot off in the opposite hemispheres of his brain at the same fortuitous moment, and were lucky enough to collide together to form an epiphany so reasonable and basic it was scary that no one working on the front lines of cancer research had ever before considered it.

Ryan grabbed at his pockets. He had never been so desperate for a pen and paper – no human had, he was already boasting to himself. It was by further serendipity he happened to pull out a square of yellow Post Its. Providence. He had stuffed those in there earlier that day, for upon the top sheet was written the address of the location he had come to on this fine Summer evening.

He ripped the top sheet away, twisting his trusty Waterman ballpoint to protrusion, and began scribbling furiously.

His hands were sweaty. He raced to keep up with his thoughts. When he finally got it all down, Ryan flipped through the twenty-six squares, densely packed with ink – one for every year of his life he realized.

Woah, dude.

He tried reading it back to himself, but beyond his natural, messy hen scratch it was too goddamn dark to see in this place – the greatest and most important discovery of our modern age and here was Ryan who didn’t have adequate light to see.

But – the stars – they remained locked in their magnificent alignment and nothing could stop Man’s next giant leap ahead:

Just then, the lights shined on for Ryan. Darkness was lifted and the pounding in his ear-drums subsided. He looked down into the translucent plastic cup tucked under his arm.

He had finished his beer. All that was left were soapy suds and two squeezed out limes. Ryan’s head felt like it had been out by the pool all day in the hot sun. His ears were ringing. It was a small shame his mind had drifted there at the last minute, away from what was easily the single-greatest concert going experience of his entire life.

He flipped through the pages of Post It under the harsh house lights of the auditorium.

“What’s all that?”

Ryan looked up at Barney. His good friend was staring at him with a curious semi-grin. Barney, himself, looked pretty much the way Ryan felt at that moment, albeit less preoccupied.

Shaking his wobbly head, Ryan stuffed the note pad into his jeans, deciding that here was not the place or now the time to utter the words that might change the world forever. An important theory like this must be tested first.

Besides, he would hate to get poor Barney’s hopes up over nothing.