by Richard Leru
“It’s just, I don’t know. What if you don’t want to come back? Here, it’s just a small one bedroom apartment in a college town, out there, you will be living your dream.” Alex’s eyes lowered. He wasn’t afraid of her not coming back to this city; he wanted to rid himself of this college town, too. Alex was terrified of being alone, of Angela abandoning him.
“Alex,” Angela crouched down slightly looking up into Alex’s eyes. “I promised you that you wouldn’t be alone ever again. No matter what, we will be together, and I will email you and call you whenever I can.” Angela saw through Alex into his heart and knew his real concern.
Alex looked up, taking in the sight of Angela. Her body was almost ready to burst with energy. Looking into Angela’s eyes, all his fears melted away. “When does it start?”
“Right after graduation. I fly to Miami then we set sail for a group of islands in the Caribbean, then who knows where we go next? I’ve heard there are new species being discovered in Burma every day.”
Alex smiled. If Angela truly wanted something, he would never be able to say no. The discussion was over. For two years, Angela would be travelling the world in her passion, exploring lost jungles and unique ecosystems. She would learn about how life, both plant and animal, grew and adapted to environments. Then, they could get back to their regular lives, maybe. Alex knew deep in his heart that when she left, something was going to happen. That long in your dream changes a person. He only hoped that the new Angela would still want him when she came back.
THE MORING SHE left was one of the hardest Alex had ever experienced. Saying goodbye to her was something he had never done, not for more than a week at a time at least.
He closed the car door. He could hear the announcement over the loudspeaker, “The white zone is for loading and unloading of passengers only.” Today was the day he had been both dreading and looking forward to. Angela was leaving to chase a dream. He pulled the suitcases out of the back of his car and set them down. Angela was standing in front of him, unsure what to say. Instead, she just gave him the biggest hug she could. He felt her comfort and security melt into his body. They leaned back slightly and kissed each other. The last kiss they would be able to share for two years. After exchanging “I love you” and a few more kisses, she was gone. One moment, they were hugging and kissing, and the next, she was disappearing down a long escalator through the airport. Two years and counting started now.
“Welcome. Welcome back to the loneliness.” Alex jeered at himself.
ALEX QUICKLY LEARNED how much he had changed over the years. When he was young, being alone was not difficult, now it was torture. He could not remember how to function as a lone entity. He had become used to living with someone else there to challenge and love him.
Soon, Alex had a job, a small apartment, and a pattern. He would wake up, go to work, come home, check his emails to see if Angela had written, watch movies, and go to bed, dreaming of what a better life would be like.
Wake up, work, home, emails, movies, dream, again and again, and again. This was his life now. Day after day, week after week, month after month.
His only respite was the arrival of amazing pictures and postcards from around the globe, and emails full of love and hope. He could feel her joy from the words alone. Angela was living the life they had always dreamed about. What was he doing? Living in a terrible merry-go-round, waiting, just waiting until she came back. He didn’t want her to come back, not to this. This was hell on Earth. There had to be something better.
It was a Thursday night around 2:00 am, when Alex realized what he had to do. It scared him more than anything ever before, but he knew it was right. He was getting off the merry-go-round.
Friday afternoon, Alex was unemployed. He had quit, he didn’t know why or what he was going to do, only that the pattern had to be broken.
By the end of the weekend, Alex had become obsessed. Whether it was by a stroke of luck, genius, or holy inspiration, Alex had stumbled upon an idea. One that would not only change his life, but change the world.
SINCE HE WAS a child, Alex had wondered what else was out there beyond this world. He had learned the history of Earth in its entirety in his family’s travels. He had grown bored of the failure of man, doomed to repeat the same mistakes again and again. Perhaps somewhere out there was a different world, where these mistakes had not yet occurred or were perhaps even avoided. This made science fiction a favorite past time of his. It just so happened, that very weekend was a comic con, meant to entertain the masses of people who dreamt of more than normality.
Alex went, simply hoping to have a good time, to take his mind off his chaotic, jobless plight in life. However, what he received was so much more.
There, Alex sat in a crowded room of the Convention Center, looking for a distraction from the unemployed and uninspired state he found himself in. Row after row of interlocking folding chairs formed two large sections of spectators with an open row down the middle. Nearly two hundred people had crammed themselves in this room, all for a chance to ask a question of the top minds in science fiction. On the stage were four men and one woman dressed in business clothes, sitting behind a long table. Each had a microphone and nameplate, although for this crowd, the nameplates really weren’t necessary. The spectators were here to listen to their heroes describe how they formed the ideas that had become some of the most influential science fiction characters of all time.
After listening for nearly two hours of stories from the panelists, Alex was beginning to think this was a waste of time. His inner voice still rang out loud, accosting him, reminding him of the current dreg of his life. It was at this moment that grace stepped in. A short man stepped forward to the microphone set up in front of the stage for spectators to ask questions. He was dressed in tattered clothes and covered in fake blood and bite marks. The zombie genre had recently had a major rebirth in popularity.
“Hello, uh, my question is for all of you. Before you got famous and rich from your love of science fiction, I’m sure you had people tell you it was a waste of time or you needed to grow up.” The panel all smiled, clearly having heard that sentiment before. “How did you keep going? What did you say to yourself that helped you not feel like you were wasting time on something?”
Alex looked closer at the man asking the question. The zombie face paint hid some of his features but at closer look, one could see lines of frustration and age. Alex could almost see this man sitting at the kitchen table being told by his wife that he needed to take life more seriously. He needed to stop wasting time and money on toys and comic books. It was time to grow up. This man was barely holding on to his love for science fiction. He was searching for someone to tell him it was alright, someone to validate who he was.
The woman panelist, a writer whose characters had become the source of movies, action figures, and backpacks, spoke for the entire panel.
“Thank you for that question, it took real courage to ask it in front of all these people. It’s true, there were times when friends and family spoke out against what I was doing. To them, what I was doing wasn’t ‘real’, it was only a hobby. They didn’t understand, they couldn’t. They didn’t know what it felt like to bring life to a character or to shape the future merely with an idea. One idea can change everything. I remember when I first thought of the REM Squad. This group of mind warriors who fought for humanity in the realm of dreams was an idea I formed one night after waking from a nightmare. I wished there was a way to save others and myself from the terror of a bad dream. We all should not have to have nightmares. Do you know what happened after I published that idea? Harvard took that idea and discovered a way to avoid nightmares all together. That’s why we now have the Soma Sounds music files today that keep night terrors out of our minds. A professor agreed with the belief that we should be free of bad dreams, and now we are. It’s that ability, to create and inspire, that drives me forward. Yes, now I make money and build acclaim for my writing, but before that happene
d, I had only hope and ideas.” The speaker had been looking at the man who asked the question, but now looked out into the crowd. Her gaze settled on Alex as if the next words were meant only for him. “When all else in my life felt broken, when I didn’t know what to do next, the only thing that remained was my ideas. Follow your ideas and you will find the path for your future.”
The crowd erupted with a cheer of applause. She had inspired them all. Who knows how many people went home that night and started writing stories of their own.
In that room, Alex recalled an idea he had from childhood. One that he had told his parents about, while looking at an ancient cave painting of waves surrounding the Earth. Alex would listen to the science fiction writer who had given him such amazing advice; he would follow his idea, no matter what.
This idea soon became his life. The ability to study and learn from books had come back. He spent every hour he could teaching himself advanced mathematics, astrophysics, and electro physics. He ate, slept, and breathed it. This passion had taken him over. No more pity, no more self-hate, only the burning desire to prove his idea correct.
FOUR SHORT MONTHS later, Alex published his paper on the theory of Particle Electro-Magnetic Variable Gravitation, or PEMG for short. Alex had mathematically proven that the force of gravity was not universal. Gravity was, in fact, the electromagnetic pull resulting from the vibrations in the atoms of a substance. The gravitational pull, therefore, changed with each substance depending on two things, mass, as previously believed, but also synchronization. If an object were more in tune with the frequency of the pull an object, it would be attracted to the said object. What this meant was one could tune in to objects or tune out with objects by changing the vibrational pattern of the atoms surrounding it.
Alex proved this by building the world’s first anti-gravity device. Made up of a simple small motor, two arms, and a platform, the device “waved” its stick like arms up and down. The device was built on a principle devised by Einstein. The thought was that small waves could be used to combine and create much larger waves. It was said that Einstein himself had built a device about the size of one’s hand that could topple the Golden Gate Bridge. Using this same principle, the arms waved at an increasing and decreasing rate, building the vibration in the whole device. Soon, the whole thing was shaking at a frequency opposite that of Earth, to the degree, it began floating. When he debuted the machine at a scientific conference, he was nearly trampled by companies wishing to hire his services.
Alex began working with a company called Inspiracorp to test applications for the formula and device. What they found was amazing. When fully tuned into an object, the device would travel so fast that it would create a slipstream affect and arrive nearly instantaneously at its target.
Luckily, for the sake of peace, the formula for how to decipher the vibrational signature of an object was one Alex did not release. He knew that only by keeping some things locked in his head, could he protect countries from using science for war. Soon, the world of the future that scientists had always predicted would arrive. Flying cars, floating homes, the uses were endless.
By the time Angela returned, Alex was a rock star, the youngest ever to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics. He was being called the “Father of the Neo-modern age of physics.” Everyone knew his name.
When she arrived in L.A., there was a limo waiting to pick her up, inside were flowers and a note saying, “I’ll see you tonight.”
IT WAS 8:10 PM. Alex was late. He came bounding up the stairs to the rooftop patio of his new California beachside townhome, and immediately ran to her. Alex grabbed Angela and gave her a hug and kiss, spinning her around, almost losing his balance out of excitement.
“Sorry I’m late and sorry I couldn’t pick you up at the airport. I was meeting with Inspiracorp’s space division, but I’m all yours now. I want to hear everything about your travels.”
For hours, they went back and forth, telling each other all the growth they had experienced, the things they learned and places they had visited. Angela regaled Alex with stories of all the different animals and places she had seen, always coming back to the point of how amazing it was that life always seemed to continue on. Alex, in turn, told her how Inspiracorp, the leading aeronautical engineering company, wanted his help in mounting a deep space mission to the nearest star. The two of them were happy and the conversation flowed effortlessly, like it always had. No length of time could effect that.
When the laughter and conversation ended, he leaned in saying, “I love you.” With that, they went inside for the most passionate night of love they had ever had.
Inspiracorp Space had big dreams, and they needed Alex Runner to make them come true. Not long after their first meeting, Alex understood they didn’t just want him to program the mission into the computers, they wanted him to come along, to be there in case something went wrong. Alex would only go if Angela came, too. She was the one thing he cared more about than his formulas. It took some convincing but finally, the prospect of exploring ecosystems of outer space became enticing enough for her to sign on.
So Alex would spend his days working his formula, preparing for the mission and Angela was right by his side. She was busy designing her own experiments, to test the feasibility for creatures to survive in the major pressure differences of space. Angela had also recruited her good friend, Jo Taylor, who had spent the past two years with her and Dr. Korran. This was going to be a trip of amazing friends doing amazing things together.
So they prepared, waiting for their destiny to come true.
5.Launch
“Unanswered questions drive us forward.”
Alex had been staring at the sign, draped over the red carpet covering the path to the loading doors on the Erebus. Today was the day. After two years of coding and preparation, finally, tonight, they would be launching. Tonight, they would be taking the biggest leap of faith in the history of man. Looking back at his oval shaped ship, Alex laughed. Never would he have thought that his dream spaceship would look more like a balloon that the U.S.S. Enterprise, but the shape did allow the vibrational waves to be amplified throughout the hull of the ship. It was the optimum shape for travelling using the PEMG engine. Now there was only one thing left, one essential piece missing for this quest into space, Angela.
This journey to the depths of space was not just the inaugural flight, but also the first full-blown mission. Automated probes had already proven the soundness of the technology and taken dogs and monkeys into orbit around Mars and brought them home safely. Now was time for a real leap into the dark. Ten years exploring the reaches of space would be a long time. That would be an eternity to be separated from his parents, who had moved up to California during the build to be closer. Thankfully, though, this time of separation from Earth and family would be much easier with Angela by his side.
Alex had come a month earlier to oversee the final construction on the ship. Now he was waiting for her, with a surprise. He didn’t know why he hadn’t done it sooner. Maybe it was the workload or his fear, but it didn’t matter, now was the time. He reached in his pocket letting his fingers play with the small gold band and princess cut diamond. The first marriage in space, it seemed fitting.
As people and vehicles passed Alex, to the loading doors, they would nod and shake his hand, then disappear into the dark recess of the Erebus loading bay. Alex looked at the drawing of the schematics next to him.
The Erebus was ten levels, the bottom two both loading bays with retractable doors. Levels 3 and 4 were where the research labs and medical bays were located. Level 5 was the staging runway for the shuttlecraft, repurposed NASA shuttles equipped with portable PEMG engines, as well as the main PEMG engine room. The shuttles had been altered slightly. Rather than having the open compartment in the center of the fuselage open it’s roof, it had been changed to allow the entire side to open, creating a ramp to the ground. Level 6 was the main storage facilities, several rooms lined with ma
ssive aisles of stored mission gear. Levels 7 and 8 were the crew living quarters, with level 9 being the security floor and level 10 being command central. The drawing clearly showed the 10-foot gap from each hull side to the end of the habitable areas and simply labeled it “no-man’s land.” In reality, it was a complex maze of springs and dampeners that allowed the inside of the ship to stay motionless as the entire outer hull shook. This “shaking” was what would allow for them to propel into deep space using Alex’s PEMG formula. The hull would first vibrate in the opposite frequency to Earth, repelling them from its surface into space. From there, the vibrational frequency would be used to pull them toward their destination.