Solitude: Dimension Space Book One

by Dean M. Cole

  Running her finger across the Soyuz's symbol, she whispered, "Safe flying, boys."

  A moment later, Angela plucked a headset out of the air and slipped it over her head. She pressed the transmit button. "Houston, this is Commander Brown. Come in, over."

  "Roger, Commander," Randal McCree said wearily. "Tracking you on station video. See you in the Cupola now." The gravitas in his voice had somehow deepened. After a long pause, he said, "I'm so sorry, Angela. I—"

  "No, sir," Commander Brown said, cutting him off. "You made the right call. I just screwed it up."

  Another pregnant pause greeted her words. She was about to say more, but then he said, "I'm not so sure about that." His voice sounded strained. "Stand by for a video feed, Commander."

  Several seconds later, the orbital plot disappeared from the Cupola's display, and she saw a shaky image of the director's face. He had opened a private video channel. It appeared the feed was coming from a handheld camera, likely his smartphone. Plaques and photos hung on the wall behind him. Randy had moved into his office. The man's normally tanned face looked ghostly white.

  "Hey, Angela," he said somberly.

  She looked into the small lens above the display. "What the hell is going on, Randy?"

  His pallor shifted another shade whiter. The director shook his head. "I don't know if recalling your crew was the right thing to do," he said, speaking softly. "And you … I don't know if I've saved you or doomed you."

  Shocked by the man's reversal, Angela stared at him for a long, silent moment. Finally, she said, "You know something. What is it, Randy? What have you found out? Have you heard from someone inside the area?"

  "No. I wish." He paused, shaking his head. "We still haven't been able to reach anyone in there." His eyes seemed to stare through her. Distractedly, he said, "It still isn't slowing or weakening. The damn thing has already passed over half of the world's population. Half!" Anguished eyes stared from the display. "That's billions of people!" he said, his voice cracking.

  The raw emotions in the man's voice sent another shiver down her spine, but this one had nothing to do with the temperature of the air or the dampness of her clothes. Angela looked back at him for a long, silent moment. Swallowing hard, she said, "What did you find out, Randy?"

  He stared back at her wordlessly. A lone tear fell from his left eye.

  "What did you see?" she whispered.

  "They're … all gone," he said. "All of them."

  Angela blinked. "What do you mean: gone? Are they all dead?"

  "No," Randy said, shaking his head. "Just … gone."

  "You're not making any sense."

  "It doesn't make sense, Angela," he said. "At first, we only had a couple of commercial satellites over the area. The imagery wasn't very detailed. We couldn't make out anything smaller than a car." He paused, shaking his head. The director looked down for a moment. When he looked up again, the haunted look in his eyes made Angela's blood run cold. He glimpsed off-camera as if to confirm no one was listening. Lowering his voice, he said, "A few minutes ago, a Keyhole spy satellite passed over the region."

  Randy paused. The look in his eyes unnerved her more than had anything else in that strange day.

  "What did you see?" Angela said again.

  "They're all gone," he repeated. Before she could respond, he continued. "People, animals, even the dogs and cats as far as we can tell, all gone."

  "Oh, my God," Angela said with widening eyes. "You are saying they're dead?"

  Fear gripped her soul. Not for family, she'd been an only child, and her parents had both died years ago. Angela had no husband or love interest—she'd been married to her career since finishing her PhD in physics. No, not for herself. Angela's fear was for her friends. Like the one currently staring out of the display.

  Then she realized that said friend was shaking his head.

  "They're gone," the director repeated, emphasizing the second word. "No bodies in cars or on sidewalks, no dead cows in the field, no cats or dogs in the street." He paused, shaking his head again. "It's like every living creature just … vanished."

  It was Angela's turn to stare silently. Her pulse pounded in her ears. She stared at the screen, trying to comprehend the unfathomable. She couldn't wrap her mind around what he was saying. It was too big. The scale of it … So many people just … gone? What was happening to them? What the hell could do that?

  "Everything's gone? What's left? Just raw earth?"

  "No," the director whispered with apparent confusion. "It looks like plant life was left untouched." His eyes took on that distant look. He shook his head again and said, "What could take one and leave the other?"

  She shook her head. "No, Randy. I refuse to accept that. It's simply not possible. There must be something wrong with that satellite."

  The director closed his eyes. "That's what we thought, too." He sighed. "But then we saw it happen live, watched an airplane full of people disappear! In real time!"

  Angela's eyes widened. She pulled back from the monitor. "What?! Where'd they go?" She knew it was a stupid question. Randy couldn't know the answer.

  Still looking mystified, he shook his head. "We have no idea."

  After a moment, his eyes focused. "The President retreated to his bunker. Key personnel from the White House and the Pentagon went underground an hour ago." He gave her a meaningful look and added, "I advised the President and the Joint Chiefs of your situation. They assured me they'll do everything they can to recover you."

  Angela swallowed again, nodding somberly. Then her eyes widened. "What about you, Randy?"

  The director smiled mirthlessly. "We've moved all non-essential personnel into the facility's utility tunnels, although I'm not sure it will help. Considering this thing's apparent power, I doubt a few feet or even a few hundred feet of dirt will diminish its effect, here or in D.C."

  Randy's face wavered as tears muddled Angela's vision. In microgravity, they didn't fall; they just piled up in her eyes. "Your family …?" she started to say, but her voice cracked. She couldn't finish the question. Angela dabbed the puddled tears from her eyes with her sleeve.

  Randy nodded. "Betty and the twins are on their way here." He looked down. The back of his hand batted away another tear. The director took a deep breath. "Everyone will head into the tunnels before the wave gets here, but I'm not going until my family arrives."

  Suddenly, the look in his eyes changed. "But we haven't given up, Commander. There's a plan in the works."

  "A plan?" Angela said dubiously. She'd seen the immensity of the light wave. The scale of it was beyond comprehension. "What can we possibly do against something that powerful?"

  "You turn off its source," Randy said. "We can't figure out what in the hell could do this." He looked up with raised eyebrows. "But we think we know where it came from."

  Angela blinked, but then she nodded and said, "It has to be the Super Collider. I don't think it's a coincidence that CERN sits right in the middle of this thing's starting point."

  The thought had first occurred to Angela when the director had told her that she was over the wave's epicenter, back when the ISS had crossed over the border between France and Switzerland. The underground complex known as the Large Hadron Collider, or CERN when referred to by its French acronym, sat under the border region west of Geneva.

  On the screen, the director nodded again. "The Joint Chiefs came to the same conclusion an hour ago."

  As a theoretical physicist, Angela hadn't wanted to believe that her colleagues had somehow caused this, but since she'd made the association, the thought had taken root. There was another reason to make the link. Last week, the scientists operating the seventeen-mile-wide collider had initiated a new experimental run. Dubbed the High Luminosity LHC, the major upgrade to the Large Hadron Collider had increased the strength and quantity of atomic collisions by an order of magnitude. Around the world, theoretical physicists—like Commander Brown—anxiously awaited the anticipated tenfol
d increase in data.

  Angela chewed her lip for a moment. Finally, she nodded. "What's in the works?"

  Randy checked his surroundings again and then, speaking softly, said, "The President authorized a full-scale nuclear attack."

  "Holy shit," Angela said in a whisper. Then she raised her voice. "We're going to nuke Europe?!"

  Randy gave a curt nod.

  Anger coupled with a wave of nausea passed over Commander Brown. "That's crazy!" she screamed. "How can they fire nuclear weapons at France and Switzerland?"

  "We don't have a choice, Commander," Randy said. "Every minute that wave continues its march across the planet, we're losing millions of people."

  Angela shook her head so vigorously she lost her grip and started floating away from the monitor. She grabbed onto a bar and pulled herself back to the screen. Glaring into the camera lens, she said, "What if we're wrong? What if it's some kind of glitch with the satellite? We'd be killing millions of people ourselves."

  Randy shook his head. "It's not a glitch, Angela."

  "How can you know—?"

  The director held up a hand. "This wasn't the President's first choice. He ordered a quick reaction force into the area. They were to go in and shut down CERN, kill its power." McCree's face darkened. "The commandos were flying through a mountain range. The pilots timed it so that the airplane passed through a canyon when they hit the wave. But when their aircraft flew through it, everyone on-board disappeared. The plane continued on a straight line for a mile or two, but then it slammed into a mountain."

  Angela shook her head. "No, no, no. They can't do this! Listen, Randy. That's tragic. I'm sorry that we lost the commandos, but just because the plane crashed doesn't mean the people inside disappeared."

  "Remember the video I mentioned? The President and the Joint Chiefs were watching a live feed from inside the plane, Angela. When they hit the line, everyone just vanished."

  "Oh, my God," she whispered as her indignation boiled away. She looked outside to see the lights of Australia's northwest coast glide into view. She chewed her lip for a moment, thinking of all the people sleeping under those lights, likely unaware of the coming wave.

  Angela closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Finally, she let it out in a long exhalation and then looked at the director. "When do they launch?"

  Randy moved the camera closer. Now his face filled the display. "They already did," he said softly.

  "But the collider is five hundred feet underground," Angela said.

  The director nodded. "The President is taking no chances. There are enough nukes headed that way to crack the planet's crust. They'll have no trouble punching through."

  As Angela absorbed the information, Randy glanced at his watch. Then his face disappeared from the display. The image of his office rocked and spun. When the background stabilized, she was looking at the director from his side. A flat plane of swirled, dark brown woodgrain filled the lower third of the image. Randy had propped up the smartphone on his desk with its camera pointed at his left side. With both hands freed, he began typing commands into his computer. Seen from an oblique angle, a new image popped up on his monitor.

  "Satellite feed?" Angela guessed.

  Without turning toward her, the director nodded. "Yeah, we have one passing over the area right now. It doesn't have the acuity of a spy satellite. We won't even be able to see the missiles, but that won't matter. This light show should be visible from the Moon."

  Angela swallowed. Her dry throat clicked audibly. Then her eyes widened. "Is that the countdown?"

  A series of numbers occupied the near corner of the display. The leftmost digits already sat on zero, but those on the right still streamed through descending values.

  Randy pointed to them. "Yeah. First impacts in fifteen seconds."

  "Oh, my God," Angela whispered as a mixture of hope and dread gripped her. In spite of her disgust with the idea, she now found herself almost rooting for the nukes, but at the same time she couldn't help but worry for her friends that worked on the project. Many of her classmates and professors from MIT frequented CERN.

  Were they about to die? Were they already dead?

  Emotionally hollowed-out and speechless, Angela clung to one of the observatory's grab bars. Floating weightlessly, she looked at her bloodless nail beds. The underlying fingers dug into the padded bar.

  Movement drew her eyes back to the monitor. Randy had picked up the camera and turned it so that the satellite image and its countdown to destruction dominated the video feed.

  A moment later, the last seconds, and possibly the lives of millions, drained from the timer.

  Nothing happened.

  The zeroed-out string of numbers sat motionlessly at the bottom corner of the underlying image. No flashes of light blossomed over the European countryside. Angela began to think the video had frozen, that it was buffering, but then the silvery surface of Lake Geneva drifted into view. Further proving the video's live nature, the director's quickened breaths rasped from the speakers, and the entire scene quivered slightly as the man's unsteady hand kept the smartphone trained on the display.

  "What the hell?" he whispered between gasps.

  The image swirled and spun again. It stabilized with a clunk. The director had laid the phone down this time. Ceiling tiles now filled the image. Randy leaned into the field of view. Angela saw him hold a handset to his ear. "What happened?"

  As Randy listened to the person on the other end, the color drained from his face again. The ghostly pallor returned, washing back across his visage. Finally, he nodded and wordlessly dropped the handset back into its cradle.

  Ash-white, he stared mutely ahead.

  Angela's throat clicked in her ears. In a hoarse whisper, she said, "What is it, Randy? What happened?"

  His head slowly shook from side to side. "We lost them."

  Angela opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but the director continued.

  "They had telemetry on over a hundred missiles, but each of them disappeared an instant before their programmed detonation."

  "Did they lose power?" Commander Brown said.

  On the display, she saw the director shake his head again.

  "No. They just … disappeared." He picked up the smartphone and looked at her with confused, haunted eyes. "They were tracking the missiles with radar. When the telemetry died, so did their radar returns."

  In the background, the now receding French-Swiss border region still filled the director's computer screen. Somewhere down there, things had gone catastrophically wrong. What had the scientists done? Angela shook her head. She was at a loss, couldn't imagine any scenario where their actions could generate a globe-spanning effect. If they had produced a micro black hole, it would have quickly evaporated in a flash of Hawking radiation—an event they'd actually hoped to capture in the coming weeks, given the LHC's new capabilities. But even at those upgraded power levels, the force of the proton collisions paled when compared to the energy levels of the cosmic rays that constantly bombarded our atmosphere. Mother Nature had been running these experiments for billions of years, yet here we were, unfazed.

  Until today.

  A disembodied voice came through the connection. McCree looked off-screen. "What?"

  The unintelligible feminine voice spoke again.

  McCree's eyes widened. "Who?!" he asked with a fresh tinge of excitement. He stood and shouted, "Where?!"

  After receiving an equally excited yet still unintelligible reply, Randy, now running, looked back into the camera. "I have to go, Angela. We've heard from some people inside the zone! I'll call you back!"

  She threw up a hand. "Wait!"

  The connection died.

  "No," Angela whispered through a constricting throat. Her fingers touched the suddenly black screen.

  "Come back."

  Chapter 4

  Vaughn tried to blink the blue spots from his vision. He looked at Mark. Barely discernible through the flash's after-image
, the astronaut appeared to suffer from the same affliction. Blinking and squinting, the two men stared at one another in shocked silence.

  "What the hell was that?!" Vaughn said. He swallowed hard. "Did the thruster explode?"

  Mark shook his head. "No. That was new," he said distractedly. "I think something shorted out." He paused, appearing to consider his own words. Then he nodded. "Yeah. Maybe they had an electrical fire in Control … a cascading failure that burned out a circuit in here." With raised eyebrows, he added, "That could've been what they were yelling about."

  The astronaut toggled the radio. "Sandusky, this is Team Sigma." Still blinking, he scanned the instrument panel. Finally spotting his quarry, Mark leaned closer to the console and squinted his eyes. "We landed at … uh … zero seven-forty."

  No response.

  He keyed the radio again. "Sandusky, everything alright in there?"

  Still no response.

  Mark shook his head again. "What the hell?!"

  "You're asking me?" Vaughn said.

  Mark grinned and cocked an eyebrow. "Yeah, you're right. Don't know what I was thinking." He paused and then added, "Whatever the problem is, I'm sure they'll get it worked out in a minute."

  The after-image of the fluorescing wall's brilliance still obscured most of Vaughn's field of view. Trying to discern his surroundings was like trying to see the world while looking through the holes of an electric blue sieve. Blinking his eyes furiously, Vaughn started wheezing again. "I can't clear these spots from my eyes!"