Into The Void

by Ryan Frieda

  “Think about the incredibly harsh world this creature evolved in! For it to put out radiation is incredible. For it to withstand such extreme temperatures at the very core of its being, to be able to easily control states of matter to the point you can change part of something to another state of matter while keeping the rest what it was, and the complexity of it having two solvents working together as one is incredible! There is nothing like this! I can't even begin to think of a realistic planet that would cause such evolution. I can't even think of a model for one.

  “It would have to be subjected to intense periods of heat and extreme radiation to be able to have its body adapt to such conditions. It may have been a genetic mutation at first caused by the radiation then passed down to the next generation. The implications of such possibilities is vast. The planet was probably close to their star, with strong electrical storms and violent, unpredictable weather patterns. The creature would be evolving rapidly for longer than one could think possible. It would be amazing to see what they would have evolved into if they hadn't built that black hole that ruined their galaxy. Sadly, we may never know what,” Jamie said.

  “Wow. I guess I'll not tell you to scan the next finished test. It's the 'Dark Space Dragon' scale. It just finished as well,” Captain Steele said.

  “I think I might die if I see anymore!” Jamie said.

  “Your an AI, how can you die?”

  “My system my overload.”

  “It better not. I need you.”

  “I was being sarcastic, John.”

  “Well fine then, just take my sincerest cares and throw them them down the toilet like it doesn't even matter,” Captain Steele said with a great deal of sarcasm.

  “I'll be glad to.”

  “Hey, I said I was going to destroy you if you destroyed my ship. So you better watch out. You did destroy my ship. Technically you did worse, you almost eradicated it.”

  “But I saved your life John.”

  “Yeah, okay, I will give you that. Is there any chance your not going to remind me of that the rest of the journey?”

  “Nope!” Jamie said.

  “Great...” Captain Steele said, “Now, do you want to read that next test results or do you want me to read it to you?”

  “I would like you to read it to me. I don't think I could contain myself if I read it.”

  “I can't really tell if that was a joke-”

  “It wasn't,” Jamie said.

  “I'll get to reading then,” Captain Steele said before continuing on, “The scan says its composed of dark matter, dark energy, and super heated super condensed plasma. It appears to be in the form of plasma but not in the typical sense that we know. It can also put out lots of energy. Like massive amounts.”

  “How much?” Jamie asked.

  “A level of power which is above the current scales we have. Interesting thing about it is that it puts out a type of energy that is unknown. It says that it appears to be a gravitational, magnetic, elastic, radiant energy, and intrinsic rest energy. It also says 'time dilation error'. Not really sure what all that means,” Captain Steele said.

  “It seems to be several types of energy combined into one. Simply put, it has the power to be gravitational, magnetic, has the type of energy needed to distort objects, is the energy of light, and is the characteristic of the total energy and momentum of an object at different moments of time. The 'time dilation error' is what is really exciting though. It means that time has been distorted and the scanner has not properly done calculations due to a time flux,” Jamie explained.

  “Time flux?”

  “Time flux meaning a split in the space time continuum,” Jamie said.

  “With all the Holographic Space Gorillas, Dark Matter Intergalactic Space Dragons, and things that end up breaking the laws of physics, I didn't think I could ever be surprised at anything anymore. But, this does truly does take the cake. You said a possible tear in the space time continuum?” Captain Steele asked.

  “No. It is a not a 'possible' tear. The scanner says that the object's material doesn't react normally to linear time. This could mean many things, but the most probable is that this material acts as if its on another slope of time. In other words it uses time differently than us. More testing needs to be done to confirm that though,” Jamie said.

  “In other words, all of this is worlds more complicated than that?” Captain Steele asked.

  “Substantially,” Jamie replied, “It's impossible to truly understand the amount of energy that could be harvested from this thing, but a good probable starting ground would be to take the energy that we do understand, outside of any time flux calculations, and add gravitational forces, magnetic forces, elastic forces, light, then the total mass of all of that multiplied by the speed of light squared.”

  “Thank you for keeping it simple. I never did enjoy math. Although it's kinda funny how they send me out here when I loathe math as much as I do,” Captain Steele said.

  “You used it in your career as a soldier though. You loved it then,” Jamie said.

  “Yeah, but that was fun math. It was needed math. That math allowed me to shoot stuff, drive fast, and blow stuff up. This stuff sounds like a bunch of hypothetical math crap,” Captain Steele said.

  “You have such an under appreciation for the finer things in life,” Jamie said.

  “I appreciate lots of finer things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Lots of things.”

  “Like what?” Jamie asked again.

  “Oh, you know, things like nice furniture, good food, and gloating over the dead bodies of my enemies.”

  “My point exactly.”

  “Sarcasm, some get it and others piss themselves over it for no reason,” Captain Steele said, “Continue on with your analysis please.”

  “Very well John. The energy type is one of multiple types and yet of one we have yet to discover making its use and how to harvest it very peculiar and very dangerous. However, because the energy boarders on things we already know it is possible to utilize it for our travels, at an unknown cost of course,” Jamie said.

  “You destroyed my ship once, I don't want it happening again. This sample needs to be preserved anyway because were not going to be finding another one anytime soon, if ever,” Captain Steele said.

  “I agree,” Jame replied.

  Five planets out from the sun was a very large gas giant. It was about 25 times the size of Jupiter: a little over 1,075,000 miles in diameter. Jamie flew the ship into its orbit and Captain Steele noticed several large objects floating in the sky then float lower toward the core of the planet. Jamie sent a scan downward towards it and found nothing. Captain Steele did a visual scan one more time and thought he saw something glowing rise slightly above the clouds. He looked closer and saw what he thought was a set of giant glowing objects sink beneath the clouds.

  “There are giant land masses inside the planet's atmosphere John. This is... strange,” Jamie said.

  “How so?” Captain Steele asked.

  “The clouds are moving around the land masses. The clouds are a giant storm that should be tearing apart the land masses. The land masses don't appear to be connected to the core of the planet making them very strange.”

  “I am NOT going down there. Those clouds will shear me in half,” Captain Steele said.

  “If I drop you onto a land mass you should be fine,” Jamie said.

  “No Jamie. Let's just move on please.”

  “What's the matter John? You are always wanting to leave the ship.”

  “I just... don't want to,” Captain Steele said, “Besides, we have lost enough time. What could possibly be down there anyway?”

  “Let's go check it out anyway. If there is something, mankind may need the information you recover,” Jamie said.

  “Then they can come here themselves,” Captain Steele replied.

  Jamie paused for a second.

  “We are several decades into mission at f
aster than light speeds. They probably won't come here for ages, if at all. It could be too late then,” Jamie said.

  Captain Steele thought about it for a while. He didn't want to do any more of these secondary missions. The only thing he wanted was to do the primary mission. These secondary missions are the ones going to get him killed. He was torn because as a soldier he knew he needed to do both if possible, and both are possible right now. However, he knew that if he went down there the mission as a whole could fail. If that happens everything fails. Only he could build the Instant Teleportation Device well enough for it to last a long time. They weren't cheap, and they were hard to build. An unstable one would have catastrophic problems and could only be used a few times before it collapsed. Last time that happened, a nearby planet was destroyed. If this one wasn't built properly its anyone's guess as to how many ships will get through, if any. He knew he needed to go down there, but he just couldn't.

  “Are you afraid John?” Jamie asked.

  “No Jamie I-”

  “It's perfectly okay.”

  “I'm not afraid Jamie.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “It's just the whole device building thing.”

  “It's never stopped you before John.”

  “Yeah but... after last time I just think it's too dangerous.”

  “When have you ever been afraid of dangerous? You have always done it anyway, despite even my wishes,” Jamie asked.

  Captain Steele didn't have an answer to that.

  “It's the fear of dying, isn't it John?” Jamie asked.

  “No it's...” Captain Steele started to say. He paused for a minutes before continuing, “Yes...” he whispered.

  “It's perfectly okay John.”

  “No it's not! I'm the best the galaxy has. I can't be paralyzed in fear of death.”

  “John, after a life and death encounter its perfectly natural to-”

  “I'm a soldier, it doesn't happen! I'm better than that. I have survived thousands of life and death encounters.”

  “John...”

  “I've been in so many close to death situations before. Why now?” Captain Steele asked.

  “Your body has a natural reaction to such things after a life and death encounter happens.”

  “But why now?”

  Jamie paused a minute before speaking.

  “John, you practically died on that last planet. No one should have survived that. You took more abuse than the DSSM suit was designed to sustain. You survived the death of a planet and all that went along with it. Somehow you survived. The creature you killed that is hanging up in your room did less damage to you than the planet did. No one survives what you have. I have run the odds based off of what you told me and what your suit's damage interface said. Your chance of survival was 0%. Your suit took so much damage that the neutron star fiber and carbon nano aggravated diamond parts of the suit were completely gone in most areas of the suit. Such trauma was considered extremely deadly.

  “Some how, I was able to bring you back in this med bay. This med bay isn't the most standard one. This one was designed for combat injuries, not complete human reconstruction. I had to reconstruct most of your body, which is beyond the capabilities of this med bay. I had to do some very clever things to do that. However you should not have been able to survive. I saw the images saved in your DSSM's data hard banks. You should have been paralyzed if you survived yet here you stand. I am not sure who, or what, you really are John. You are very strong John; physically, mentally, and emotionally. You are so strong in all three of those categories that one could conclude that you are not human, yet you clearly are. What I know is that you appear to be human, the exact same human that I started this mission with, and that human has a complete history of life as a human and nothing to state otherwise.

  “What I mean John, is that you are a human, have always been one, and always will be. You do what others can not do through sheer determination. You are so successful because of that determination, and that determination has kept you alive and fighting this entire time. You are human John, an incredible human who defies the odds and makes his own. You have been a complete statistical oddity to me this entire time, and today, for the first time in your life have you succumbed to the weak part of human nature. No matter what the odds, you never broke down in fear. You never gave up and pushed on, weak human nature or not. All of this just means that your determination has allowed you to bypass all the other times that you should have been paralyzed in fear. Last time was just too great for your determination. Even you know you should have died and that should have been the end of you. You were stuck frozen in rock hard mercury for well over a decade. You know that you should have died and you believe that with all that you are. You finally met your match and you know and believe it. Your human nature is finally showing.”

  Jamie paused for a minute before continuing.

  “I'm really really glad. It was bound to happen sometime,” Jamie said.

  Captain Steele sat down on the floor of his ship. He broke down and cried. He knew he has better than this, and yet he knew Jamie was right.

  “I'm better than this,” he said.

  “Much better,” Jamie replied.

  Captain Steele continued to cry for several minutes. He knew that she was right. That's one thing he's seen soldiers go through time and time again, yet he never experienced it until now.

  “Thank you Jamie,” he whispered.

  “Your welcome.”

  Captain Steele knew that he had a mission to do, and that no matter the odds he was going to press forward. He had never once been so afraid he refused to complete a part of the mission. No matter how dangerous, he wasn't going to start now. He grabbed a DSSM suit, suited up, and prepared for the decent into the clouds.

  Jamie brought the ship into the atmosphere and when she did the ship was hit with winds with speeds of close to 90,000 miles per hour. At sea level on Earth the speeds of the wind would be equal to mach 118 but because the speed of sound changes at different heights and due to the ambient temperature of the air, this causes the speed of sound to be different at different locations. The mach number was much more. Because of this the real mach speed was equivalent to 156 on Earth, or close to 118,476 miles per hour. This would cause many problems with the ship and Captain Steele's DSSM.

  “I'm not so sure this is a good idea Jamie. I'm picking up some serious problems with my suit. It wasn't designed for this. How do you know you will be able to pick me up?” Captain Steele said.

  “I can land on the landmass because the air goes around it. I will pick you up and drop you off there. Stand by in the portside airlock, I'll be upwind of the blowing wind and move in from there,” Jamie said.

  Captain Steele grabbed a rifle, some extra supplies and stepped into the portside air lock as he let Jamie know he was good to leave the ship. Considering the portside airlock was facing away from the storm he opened the outer airlock door where he could get a view of the landing zone while being shielded by the ship from the wind. He opened the outer airlock door and looked at the island floating in the clouds. He could see that there wasn't anything that initially appeared dangerous. He kept view of the landing zone when a strong burst of wind hit the ship tilting it and throwing him off spiraling toward the ground. He was falling 2 miles toward the ground while being shoved by winds at 118,476 miles per hour.

  Captain Steele used the DSSM suit's zero g's stabilizer to try and correct his path and slow his decent but the wind was causing significant problems. The air was propelling him around and causing him pain as well.

  “Jamie, give me cover!” Captain Steele yelled.

  Jamie threw the ship between Captain Steele and the winds giving him time to correct his path and slow his decent. He was still having trouble keeping his path orientated and Jamie flew the ship in closer to try and get him back on board. Just as he was close to the ship the winds suddenly stopped around him and he knew he was in the atmosphere of th
e island.

  “That could have been really really bad. I probably should have strapped myself into the ship,” Captain Steele said.

  “You really think so? You should have thought that one through a little better John,” Jamie said.

  “Your right,” Captain Steele replied

  Captain Steele landed on the island. He immediately scanned to see if the air is breathable and found out it was. He had his helmet break down into his suit and took a deep breath of fresh air. It was so wonderful and it reminded him of Earth. It smelt like summer. He also noticed the area was very similar to Earth. He looked up and saw stars and colorful nebula over head yet it was as bright as the middle of a summer day. There was green grass and trees, some with a yellow tint as if they were dying like they would in summer. The air was warm, probably 82 degrees Fahrenheit, with humidity at about 15 percent. The were sounds that even sounded like summer, with a gentle breeze running through the trees and grass and birds chirping.

  “Incredible! Jamie, there are birds here!”

  “Amazing,” Jamie replied.

  Captain Steele looked around and found a small stream. He looked down into it and saw it was as clear as crystal. He scanned it for anything abnormal or poisonous. The scan came back completely clear. He stuck both hands into the stream and drank from it. He felt a rush as he tasted clean water that wasn't recycled for the first time in decades. It was clear the island had its own atmosphere that was different from the planet it was on.

  “Jamie this is the best water I have ever tasted!” Captain Steele said.

  Captain Steele quickly filled up a canister and ran to his ship that was on the ground not too far from him and grabbed several drums to fill them up. He knew that it was going to be impossible to get new water after leaving this island. He also knew that filling up the drums with the water and keeping it in storage would make the recycled water taste very bland. The clean water would make the recycled water taste as different as the difference between soda and water, but deep down he knew it was worth it.