by Tim Reed
‘I don’t want to die. Obo 1…help me!’
Obo 1 didn’t answer; he was gone, like everything else remotely human and civilised. All that was left was space, vast, impregnable, and the violent, cancerous anomaly of the Pulsar.
Incredibly, he entered the star-fragment’s atmosphere, circling like an eagle as he zoned towards its surface. His suit was gone; he was naked – a speck of flotsam, cold and alone. But he felt wonder too at being so near, and strangely, it came from his surroundings, not the Pulsar itself.
‘What’s going on?’
As his feet touched the surface, an immense, suffocating pressure crashed into him, and he felt his ribs crack. Woefully, he tried to breathe, but couldn’t. Was he dead? Unconscious? A small, cruel voice answered, telling him the pressure was but a fingertip’s strength of the whole hand, and that soon – not soon enough! – its full power would be unleashed, squashing him flat against the ground.
Death would be swift…and excruciating.
Vision failing, he blinked, but when he re-opened his eyes, space had transformed into a glorious vista, alive with purple luminescence, moving like a vast, sparkling tide. It seemed to engulf space, yet added nothing to it – no matter, no anti-matter, nothing.
Down by his feet, more of the stuff coalesced, rising up from the Pulsar’s depths and then drifting back down. The surface didn’t affect it, and the spectral shapes it took were like wraiths, but ‘geometric’ wraiths.
His mind swirled, unable to take it in.
Two words formed in his head, derived from Oretech exams and a myriad of space programs.
‘Dark Matter’.
The stuff above, flowing through space was something else – a dark energy, pushing at galaxies, bullying stars apart. Together, everything was whole, complete, and he knew death had removed space’s valves, that he could see the invisible and visible as one, incredible whole.
There was a final, reverberating crack, thundering through space like the Big Bang…and then he was crushed.
Oretech waited a year before sending reconnaissance through the worm-hole. What they found was a ghost ship, crewed only by the pod’s robot, Obo 1. The captain was gone, the log incomplete, and when asked about his disappearance, all the little robot would say was;
“Duke. Gone. Space. Madness. Obo 1. Sad.”
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If you enjoyed Neurton Star look for Tim Reeds other story Running Free:
Running Free
A light came on in a nearby house, followed by movement across the window. An indistinct shape passed by, vaguely human but strangely eerie as a spidery silhouette. John shivered as the shape stopped momentarily before passing on – no doubt on some mundane, early-morning errand, but creepy all the same.
Around the corner came a courtyard housing communal garages, but there were no cars, just locked doors, or ones bent in their frames – as if a monster had pounded them from the inside. John stopped, looking around him. Everything was locked, safe, lifeless. It was a twilight world alien to humans, and he didn’t like it.
Unnerved, he forced himself back into a jog, but he hadn’t gone two paces when something caught his eye. He saw a flash of orange in someone’s garden, and then a moment later a large fox trotted out into the road, fixing him with a steady glare.
For a moment they both stood there, staring, and the golden, vulpine eyes seemed to pass into John’s soul, haughtily demanding a reason for his presence. John had none. He was the interloper, the overweight fool staggering around at dawn – noisy and graceless. This fox, on the other hand, was in its element, and languid confidence exuded from every flick of its tail.
It was in no hurry to leave.
“You going to stand there, eh, like some damn statue?” said John, somehow feeling the need to speak.
The fox continued staring, and then it did something a bit chilling – it cocked its head.
“Yip!”
John took a step backwards, not expecting the sound, but the fox bounded towards him, stopping a few feet away.