A few seconds later she was sucked out the doors into space and frantically pulling the jet pack onto her shoulders, firing it just in time to avoid falling into the rocket burn of the ship. Along the ship’s hull Francesca flew towards her target, the manual Fulcrum release. Because the ship was still accelerating, the Fulcrum about which the ship normally rotated to provide artificial gravity had been tucked in. If it was released now, it would mix up things inside that ship like shit in a blender. It could be enough to ruin the launch and throw off those impactors from hitting their target. That was the best she could hope for at this point.
Her neurovisor interpreted her thinking into a schematic mapped over the contours of the ship with colors grading towards her target along the spectrum from blue to red. When she confirmed the red blinking target as her destination, her backpack fired her on a least distance trajectory to reach it. As the jets nudged her towards her destination the tutorial began. Near the end of the lesson she became aware that there was another person enrolled. It was Souren.
"What the hell do you think you are doing Francesca?"
Now he knew her name and what she was up to. She declined to answer because she had more urgent things that needed doing. She had just touched down on her target and began prying at the panel she needed to get under, which as not easy with padded fingers.
Souren continued. "I need to tell you what I am doing so you don’t do anything rash. August Bridges has developed a device that punches holes through space-time.”
Yes, that was the one. And she’d been there when it switched on. An alarm in her neuroview beeped, warning her that her time was limited.
"We have credible information that the device is unstable, that it could destroy the Earth."
Yeah. Breathing could kill us too. How many times had atomic particle colliders been accused of the same thing.
"I am here to destroy it before it is used."
If it is so dangerous and their proof is so good, why don't they just stop it through the International Courts then. Blowing it up seemed a bit drastic, but people never wanted to bother with the paperwork.
"If you stop us then you are murdering the planet."
And there it was, the ever-present charge of Gaiacide, the threat used to pull all good children into line. The truth was any change to the status quo upset these ecofreaks. If she was going to take sides it was going to be with her boss, August Bridges, who had given her existence meaning.
As she broached the panel and began unlocking the Fulcrum, guided all the way by the neuro tutorial, Souren lost it.
"Listen you crazy bitch."
His true colors finally shining through.
"Your choice then, the ship or your boyfriend?"
My what?
Francesca peered down the ship and saw a man walking up to her from the airlock. She knew it was Marco because he was advancing like a penguin that had just peed its pants.
"Signore. Please."
"Jesus, what are you doing out here?"
"Please, I have to stop you or that Indian, he'll kill me." Francesca stopped herself from laughing. He was shit scared that was for sure.
"Christ you're an idiot. What are you thinking? I'll just knock your butt right into space. Get back inside before you fry out here for no good reason."
"Francesca, please. I'm afraid."
Francesca knelt to resume her task of working a metal bar underneath the release lever.
"No shit. I don't have time for this. Move your waddling ass inside or you'll be toast that's for sure."
Francesca gave Marco a sympathetic look. She'd kind of gotten to like him. Then she bent over and arced backwards hard, throwing all her weight into forcing the lever open.
The lever gave way. A crack began to open in the ship’s shell about thirty meters away and the sharp blast of the Sun's light on the other side poured through it as the Fulcrum separated and moved away, connected to the ship only by thin nanoalloy cables that would cause it and the ship to begin orbiting around a shared center of gravity.
The Fulcrum cables went tight and then all hell broke loose. The cables strained, and the centre of the world instantly shifted. Francesca was glad she had set a line on the ship so, as she tumbled away, she knew that she could still make it back. As she fell twisting streaks of light arced past away from the ship and into the night. The impactors had been launched. Maybe she had been successful but there was no way of knowing.
As she spun she saw that poor Marco had not made, or been able to make, similar safety provisions. As they fell away in parallel paths Francesca made an incredibly stupid decision. She unlatched herself.
As Batgirl Francesca straightened herself, steeling her nerve, and her bat-jet boosters fired, rapidly depleting limited fuel as she shot through the distance to rescue yet another hapless citizen of Gotham. It was discouraging that they still needed her. Why couldn't they get their little loser lives together and take better care of themselves?
She grabbed onto his belt and glared at his eyes lolling around their sockets in terror. She blasted around to find the rapidly vanishing pinprick of light from the bat-light she had linked to the end of the safety line connecting her abandoned Utility Belt to the spaceship. She dropped all her fuel at once, betting on maximum acceleration to bridge the distance. There would be no second chance.
Stretching her body and hand and fingers as far as she could, Francesca just barely managed to catch the light.
Chapter 21 - August
Venturing forth on the wings of destiny, I face the rising sun. Long the patient and faithful father - the original god from the birth of man. Only so close but not too far away we were nurtured by your brilliance yet bound by your sphere. Now your children have grown, have matured. In this fateful moment, I, your son, will lead your offspring to their destiny among the stars.
August stood proudly at the stern of his vessel, Icarus, as it passed through the wormhole. He was amazed by how uneventful the passage was. The hole, or rather the glare of sunlight passing through it, had slowly grown in the distance until it just exceeded the diameter of his ship. The only difference on the other side was that radiation from the now imminent Sun had triggered the protective shield to block off the forward portal.
This disappointed him. August’s speech, composed on his journey up from the Moon, had prepared his imagination for a poetic confrontation with The Celestial Father. Now his moment to represent Humanity in this ultimate coming of age was marred by a technical oversight.
August repressed his impulse to indignation. Now was not the time for any emotion other than to appreciate this propitious moment in history - his moment of immortality. August steered the ship wide of the wormhole portal, happy to feel the helm turn under his command. The engineers had wanted to do the whole maneuver on auto-pilot, as if August Bridges were just along for the ride like some test monkey. August was happy he had insisted on performing the honors himself. This was his triumph, the culmination of his vision. A god must, after all, fly under his own power.
His thoughts activated the mneme in his neuroview that would send his carefully chosen words back to Earth where they would echo for posterity. The idea of racing his own words back home was a stroke of genius that he was pleased to have thought of. In one gesture he would prove mankind’s mastery, not only of Space but also of Time.
As he cleared his voice, August thought of the preparations for a welcoming parade that had started even before he boarded the Icarus at the Luna Orbital Station. He had been training for weeks to build up the muscle mass to prepare himself for this moment. August Bridges would surprise everyone by leaping out of his limo and striding confidently down the street.
He was already savouring the moment of his re-entry into the world, the triumphant return from exile - the bastard son of Zeus freed from Hera’s curse.
The ghosts stood out amongst the cheering crowd. Illya, the giant, towering above the people around him. And Anya and Gregori were there as
well. They just stood there looking irritated, as if nothing was happening and August the Conqueror, with all his glory, was only a lack of breeze on a muggy day.
August cleared his voice and practiced his address. It would be broadcast live within minutes.
“I speak to you from Mercury, the God of Story, and I am here to tell you the strangest of stories. Where I stand is an impossible place for a man to be. With the radiation of the Sun so high out here, I would have been destroyed by cosmic radiation before I returned. And yet here I stand to bring a story from the Gods - a story of freedom and of passion.”
Now that the ship had turned with its back to the Sun the forward shields began to open again. August smiled at the sight of the blue planet seen through the hole in space where a tiny blue dot should be instead.
“The time has come for a new beginning of time. Until this moment we have counted the weeks, the months, the years by our captive journey around a single star. Since the beginning of our species, the beginning of our form of life, time has been a circle always running into itself until, for each of us, it runs out.”
August noticed a change from the direction of the Earth. Two small pricks of light appeared to the left of it.
“From this moment on, time will move like an arrow piercing space to connect the most impossibly distant points in our galaxy and eventually our universe.”
The small points of light were diverging slowly from the Earth as they grew brighter. August was annoyed at the strange phenomena distracting from his speech.
“We will ride on these arrows, penetrating the impossible distances with our Dreams.”
August lost his train of thought. The lights seemed to be pulsing as they grew bigger. What were they? An alarm glowed.
“Mr. Bridges. We are live in one minute,” a producer’s voice reminded him.
“Yes. I have my speech ready. There is no need.”
The lights flared, now much larger than anything else in the sky.
“What the Hell?”
Calvin30’s panicked face came into his neuroview.
“Boss. You have to get out of there!”
“What?” The clone’s command so contradicted the sanctified moment that August’s first impulse was to tell him to go to hell.
“Get off the line.”
“Boss, Kaliyuga has locked missiles on your mission. They will arrive in five. You have to steer clear.”
“How?”
“You have scant seconds to escape. The cockpit doubles as the lifeboat. The rotation from the Fulcrum should fling you to a safe radius. The latch is on the deck next to the pilot’s webbing. Pull off the panel and push the flashing button.”
The clones warning was accurate.
As his lifeboat fell away, The Icarus main ship dissolved behind a brilliant flash of light that August watched in dismay. Then there was a second flash, much closer, blinding him for a moment, violently shaking his escape craft. When he recovered from the shock, Calvin30 had dissolved into static. August froze, paralysed by disbelief. This couldn’t be happening. He must be dreaming. He tried to wake up. Nothing changed. August impassively regarded the glowing remains of his ship flaring and evaporating into darkness. It couldn’t be happening.
Adrenaline kicked in, and his body began to shiver. He grabbed his arms to keep them under control and laughed. Finally regaining his composure, August realised he had little time remaining and he had to act. He tried to open a channel to Calvin30.
“Okay. I survived. I’ll come back through the portal. Just give me a homing signal.”
There was no response. Communications must be down now that he had fallen out of range from the hole.
“Icarus. Re-activate autopilot. Return through the wormhole.”
“Mr. Bridges. I do not have those coordinates.”
“What the hell?”
“Mr. Bridges. I do not understand what-the-hell.” Would you like me to perform a search for what-the-hell?”
“No. No!” August pounded on a wall before pulling himself together.
“Icarus. What are the coordinates for the wormhole?”
“Mr. Bridges. I do not have access to that information. My communication links have not been restored. Can you focus your eyes on the area of space you wish to return to?”
“August looked out the blast screens and then the outside cameras, trying to locate the lights on the wormhole, or even some embers from the rest of his ship. It seemed that he might have been flung away from the Sun so that the apparatus had been swallowed up by its fierce glare.”
“Icarus. Locate any man-made items in space.”
“There are 149,137 man-made items in space. Would you like me to provide you with a list?”
“Not in space. In my vicinity.”
“I cannot locate any such items.”
“Towards the Sun?”
“My instruments cannot detect anomalies within the solar interference. Can you suggest another approach?”
August switched communication with the Icarus over from vocal mode to thought mode to speed things up but met with no more success.
“Can’t you do anything to help me?” he pleaded.
“I am fully stocked with a range of provisions to allow survival for four months. I also have a full range of entertainment and personal development solutions. However, I must warn you that radiation limits will be exceeded before then.”
“Damn you.”
August’s mind raced through possible scenarios. He brought up the recorded images of the ship being hit by the missiles.
“Icarus. Compare the constellations from this shot and project coordinates based on the current position of the constellations.”
“Done.”
“Return to those coordinates.”
“Returning to most probable location.” Which didn’t mean they were returning to the right location. August wandered lost in a soup of probable locations while the Icarus informed him of the increasing improbability.
August was watching the rerun of his ship exploding for the hundredth time when his rage began to ignite. This was too professional to be pulled off by mere Revs. This thuggery smacked of Gudanko. He had overestimated the pig. He had presumed that the fat slob would be honorable in defeat and would never stoop to such underhanded tactics. August roared out at his rival for daring to mar this sacred occasion.
Do you hear me Vlad you sack of shit? You better hide.
August became increasingly hysterical as he realised that there was a diminishing hope of escape. The blast furnace of the Sun at this proximity would wear down his radiation shields before he was a fraction of the way back to Earth. The blood drained from his face as the realisation sunk in. August Bridges was going to die. He might be remembered forever but, the fact was that very soon, he was going to die. He tried to call home, to complete his speech, to reassure the world and to leave an impression of dignity and bravery that would last for all time.
“Hello. This is August Bridges. Can you hear me?”
There was no answer to this question.
The same question repeated for hours.
The same absence of answer repeated for days.
August lay in the pilot’s webbing, mouthing a vitabar and mumbling into the static in his mind, revising a speech that would never be delivered.
It was clear that the communication systems had been wired only for proprietary laser link, which required an exact knowledge of his location, given that there was no micro-satellite relay in this region of the solar system. August Bridges was going to die, sometime soon, and no one would know the moment or manner of his passing.
It was absurd. Impossibly absurd.
And more maddening than that he did not know how his loss would play out in the media. Would his passage be considered a success, or would the technology be branded unstable? Was it possible, for all these years of sacrifice to come to nothing.
At the edge of dreams in the random times when sleep overcame him,
August could see the crowd waiting for him. The waves of adulation carrying him away. The victory that he alone had accomplished. The totality of his vision coming to fruition, but the ghosts were always there too, spoiling the scene with their presence, and then he would wake to nothing.
He called out into the static for many more days, each time with an ever-shrinking expectation of an impossible rescue.
Then he saw the ship flaring its jets. As it slowed it decelerated passing over him and towards the sun, a manifestation of divine grace so improbable that he burst into tears.
OCEAN OF STORMS
‘The ocean of suffering is
immense, but if you turn around,
you can see the land.’
Thich Nhat Hanh, 20th Century Vietnam
Chapter 22 - Kalsang
In the beginning there was no beginning, only a mere moment when the impossible density of potentials squeezed out of nothing and the universe opened like a lotus blossom. Between now and then lies only a sequence of such moments, each one running out into the other. The lotus blossom opens still.
The realm of stars lies beyond the furthest distance of our imaginations but does not exceed our reality. Each quantum of our existence is inseparable from all that has arisen and all that may arise. Ten directions and three times are insufficient to contain it.
Somewhere, perhaps in the middle of a wormhole linking two planets in an inconsequential star on the rim of an unremarkable galaxy in a cluster of many, all comes back together as the forces of physics and being align. Unending beginnings, exploded stars, lost things, rain, and broken hearts. All there, reflected in a perfect mirror, an exposed neuron in the mind of God.
The small circumstances of our lives continue, scrambled by the inevitable decay of memory into lonely parcels - like misdirected love letters cherished more for what they represent than for what they were. Yet, despite our faulty memories, we do not achieve our escape. We remain imprisoned within these moments.
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