by Ryan Frieda
“Now imagine that those ripples are gravity and the pebble is a black hole. Now imagine that pebble becoming bigger and bigger and bigger until it consumes the entire size of ripple number 1. All the ripples further away are still moving further and further away, but the pebble is growing bigger and bigger and over taking some of those smaller ripples. Now imagine that somewhere just beyond the pebble is the point of no return. Everything that falls in and passes through the point of no return falls into the pebble making the pebble larger but everything that touches the pebble stops, including time, energy, and temperature but the pebble keeps getting bigger and bigger because more things touch it causing more to be added into it.
“Ripple 1, which is originally gravity reaching out away from the black hole, was created and then consumed as the black hole grew, but ripple 50 hasn't been consumed yet, but eventually it will be. When the pebble gets big enough it will consume ripple number 25 but ripple number 50 is still moving further away from the pebble but eventually the pebble with will catch up to it and consume it. Gravity is still moving away from the black hole, but gravity is also pulling anything it touches towards the black hole.
“In summery, the point of no return is really a length just outside the core of the black hole. It is also the growth of the black hole that distorts space and time. As the black hole grows, it grows faster than the ripples and the ripples get pulled into the point of no return, which in turn, causes the ripple to become part of the black hole. The point of no return, which is really called the schwarzchild radius, is really just the part of the black hole that is growing and changing objects to become part of the black hole. You could say that it's what turns objects into what becomes the core of the black hole.
“All the processes of how a black hole works is really going on in the point of no return,” Jamie said.
“Okay, I think I got it. Basically there are three parts of a black hole, the core, the point of no return, and the space outside the black hole. The core, is the black hole itself, the point of no return is what is becoming the core of the black hole and that is where the change to become the core of the black hole happens, and then the space outside the point of no return which is where objects that interact with the black hole's gravity is. If that's the case then where are we now?”
“That scale you threw into the engine did something. Do you remember exactly what our analysis said about it?” Jamie asked.
“Sort of. Something about it putting out massive amounts of energy. Composed of dark matter and dark energy and some weird type of plasma. The level of power that we can't really understand and a type of weird combination energy,” Captain Steele said.
“Correct,” Jamie replied, “It uses gravity, magnetic, elastic, radiant energy, and intrinsic rest energy. This means that it has energy that works with gravity, is some how magnetic, is the energy that light uses, and basically has the characteristic of total energy and momentum of an object in all frames of reference. It also probably acts on its own plane of time. It also had some super heated condensed form of unknown plasma. When you threw that scale in the engines it did something I'm not sure can even be explained.”
“Try it,” Captain Steele said.
“I'm not sure I can.”
“Alright. So then give me the basics,” Captain Steele said.
“I'm not really sure I can.”
“Try anyway.”
“Alright,” Jamie said taking a deep breath, “The engines over clocked to a level of energy unknown to any race including those on the derelict ship, we violated every law known to science, we 'warped', and are now we are stuck in a dimensional rift.”
“Huh,” Captain Steele said.
“Huh?” Jamie asked.
“Huh.”
“Huh? Is that a good thing or bad thing?” Jamie asked.
“Dimensional rift...?” Captain Steele asked.
“Yes. Dimensional rift,” Jamie replied.
“Dimensional rift?”
“Dimensional rift.”
“Hmm...” Captain Steele said, “Let me get this straight. We were traveling at speeds faster than light trying to fly out of the deep gravity well of a black hole that was pulling us in at speeds faster than light when we over clocked the engines with some kind of super heated dark energy induced super plasma, that just so happened to some how and in some way, have the power to effect time and gravity in ways so completely contradictory to what we know that we could seriously question the laws of science while also possibly coming to a complete stand still in everything which caused us to 'teleport' from the pebble you call a black hole?”
“Yes. You also forgot the dimensional rift,” Jamie replied.
“Right, because that's the most important part of this whole thing. It's an incredibly absurd theory but, if its what we got to go off of then let's roll with it. So, what's the plan?”
“Well, the engines need to be fixed. You destroyed them. That would be the first step. I'm not sure what the second would be. Quite frankly, I'm not even sure where or even when we are. Time seems to be frozen which makes it rather tricky because there really is no way to say where or what we are in and how to get out.”
“Well, for us to go faster than light our engines use Tachyon particles, which then propel the rest of the ship forward. So is it possible that we just activate the engines and we go right out this rift?” Captain Steele asked.
“Highly unlikely. There are so many theorized types of dimensional rifts and we don't know which one we are in or the precise way we even got here. If we knew which theorized type of rift we were in or how we got here it would be much easier to figure that out. The types of rifts are far too numerous and are all theoretical and have never been proven to even exist. We could be caught up in some part of the string theory or we could be caught up in something completely else. Without any basis for knowing anything about where we are or how we got here, or what kind of rift, or anything else about what this is, we can only guess,” Jamie said.
“Well, we are out of parts for the engine.”
“Look out the bridge windows John,” Jamie said as she opened the bulkhead doors so he could.
“What the...”
As Captain Steele looked out the windows he saw debris everywhere. It was of all colors, shapes, and sizes. Many of them he didn't recognize but looked beyond age.
“What exactly is this place Jamie?”
“It is unknown. What ever it is it's a rift of some sort. Some how these things ended up here. The vast majority of these don't even match any known ships. What ever it is, there seem to be ships from species else where in the universe. How they got here could be in a similar manner or they could have been brought here by some unknown entity. It is unknown but it is a treasure trove of unfathomable knowledge. We could spend a billion years in here and probably only learn a minuscule bit of what there is to learn.”
“We don't have that time unfortunately. I'll head out there to see what I can find. I don't really know what to look for or even where to begin looking,” Captain Steele said as he looked at the atomic clock and saw it wasn't ticking.
“It's possible time is frozen here but is moving normally out in the universe and when we emerge we could have aged as much as the universe has or we could have not aged a second while the universe aged normally. What ever the case may be, we need to hurry. Also, please make sure to take your suit with you. While this rift doesn't seem to have an environment or even be without one, you don't know what environments those ships have. You might be perfectly fine outside the ships without your DSSM until you step into one of those ships. Who knows whats out there,” Jamie said.
“Can you put out a scan for something?”
“I've already tried. Nothing seems to be working when scanning for comparable parts.”
“I need to fix some of these DSSMs first. This one I'm wearing has taken a lot of damage. I'll have to try and salvage it. It could take hours to properly salvage all of them to fi
x the damages to this one.”
Captain Steele worked for what he though would have been several hours until he had properly restored one of his DSSM suits. It didn't really feel like hours though. He wasn't sure what it felt like but he knew it just didn't feel like hours.
“Alright, I'm off,” Captain Steele said as he suited up and left the portside airlock.
As Captain Steele stepped out the port side air lock he noticed there was no gravity in the dimensional rift but he did feel as if he was flying through space.
“I feel as if I'm flying through space at incredible speeds but it certainly doesn't look like it. It might be nice to make a note of it Jamie.”
Captain Steele floated close to the object that was next to his ship and grabbed hold of it. The debris out in the dimensional rift were incredible. He had no idea of where to begin looking. There were shadows that were cast by a strange green ambient light. He looked up into the sky and didn't see a single source of light but instead the entire area had a ambient green light coming from all directions yet there were no shadows being cast on the outside of objects but the light difference on the surface of ships was so different than the space between them. He also couldn't see an edge to the rift where the light could be emitting from.
Captain Steele climbed around the outside of a very long cylinder in shape object. He wasn't really sure what is was, but it wasn't very tall. He stood up and walked over the top of it when one end of it started to point downward like a piece of wood sinking in water. He quickly backed up. He wasn't looked forward to falling down into a dimensional rift, if that was even possible. He climbed down a side until he saw an opening. He peeked inside but it was too dark to see into. He looked back at the surrounding ambient light that was coming in equally from all directions. He wondered why the lightning was so much different inside a ship than outside, despite an equal amount of light moving into the ship through the hole. It was so different that it was like shadows were only being cast inside a ship but not outside it.
Captain Steele saw the hole was just big enough to climb into and climbed into it. As he did he felt gravity pull on him and he fell 10 feet and hit the floor hard. His suit said that the gravity inside the ship was at 5.4 times Earth's gravity. He smiled knowing he had been surprised by worse and that this was a walk in the park. He carefully raised his rifle to the high ready and started to make his way around the object. The object was made of some kind of metal but he wasn't sure what kind. He quickly picked up a sample and made his way to what he thought to be the back of the ship careful not to tip it downward again. After moving several yards it didn't tip downward like it did when he was outside and on the top of it.
“Is it possible any of those dimensional rifts that have been theorized could have physics that don't work normally?” Captain Steele asked.
“Lots don't have physics working under normal conditions because dimensional rifts are not normal conditions,” Jamie said.
“Noted,” Captain Steele said moving ahead.
Captain Steele moved ahead carefully. He would come to spots where there were holes twice the length he was and would carefully navigate his away around. He finally got to the end of the ship when he found something that resembled an engine.
“Will this work Jamie?”
“No. That looks to be using technology several centuries old but its not from any known race. It's not compatible with ours. Interesting, I wonder how it got here. I would love to run some tests on it. If you could be so kind as to bring back part of it I would greatly appreciate it,” Jamie said.
“Will do.”
Captain Steele collected a sample and made his way back to the hole he first climbed in. He decided that he needed to be careful and be able to keep track of where his ship was in all this clutter. It would be easy to loose track of it. He used his DSSM's navigation interface to make a navigation point so he could always find it. He jumped up and climbed back out the hole and climbed to bottom of the object before seeing a ship below him. It was about a 50 foot drop and he let go and pushed himself towards it by using his legs to push off from the object he was just holding onto. As he did the object he was just holding on to was pushed away.
“It seems physics work differently inside an object than outside the object,” Jamie said as Captain Steele landed on the new object passing by several pieces of debris from other objects.
Captain Steele looked up and saw the object he was just touching run into another object pushing that object away. It set off a chain reaction of objects colliding together. The ship he landed on moved downward slightly as he landed. He walked over the top of it for a while until he came to a massive hole in it. He looked down and he could see all the way through it to another hole at the bottom. The ambient light was entering the hole and but not lighting up the inside of the ship.
The ship had a massive room with a small rod running the entire length of the room and what appeared to be catwalks running along its length. Captain Steele thought it looked promising and jumped into it. He landed on one of the catwalks close to 500 feet below the hole. He looked down the length of the entire ship. He could see way off in the distance about 5 miles in one direction and it had a large opening. He looked back in the opposite direction and couldn't see all the way to the back. He was curious as to what this ship was. He started walking down the length of it towards where he thought the bridge, and the opening he saw, would be.
When Captain Steele made it to the bridge near the massive opening he found what he thought would be a console. He tried to activated it but without any luck. He then kicked it and a screen flickered on. He quickly set up a link to Jamie so she could download the information and try to make use of it.
“You getting anything?”
“It's a jumbled mess and hard to pick up but it looks like you are on a floating warship. This ship is incredible. This thing appears to be about one astronomical unit in length. That's the distance from the sun to earth, or roughly 93 million miles. I would only imagine that it was used to harness the power of a star and shoot it out away. I'm not sure how it could do that.”
Captain Steele walked back to the hole and used his suits DSSM thrusters to overcome the gravity the object had inside it and then left through the hole. He reached the top of the object and went to his right. He looked over the edge and found another object and jumped to it. When he landed he was going to be about 1,000 feet below his ship and at about at the 2 o'clock from his ship. He moved past several other objects carefully looking at them to see if they could be what he needed. He looked carefully but none of them looked to be what they needed. He could spend a millennium looking for the parts he needed if he looked everywhere so he had to be selective.
Captain Steele landed on the object and the object started moving off in the direction opposite he was coming from. As it did, he looked up and saw that it was going to hit another object and he ducked as the object he was on struck the second object causing the second object to fly right over his head.
“Possible incoming debris Jamie, make sure your on the alert,” Captain Steele said as he looked back toward his ship.
“Will do.”
Captain Steele decided to jump from the object he was on as there was no telling when it would stop moving. He saw a ship a bit above him and jumped to it causing the object he was just on to propel downward. He was quickly learning that he would end up destroying lots of things just trying to get the parts they needed. He decided to check on Jamie to make sure the debris didn't hit their ship.
“You alright there Jamie?”
“Yeah.... I'm okay.”
“Everything alright?”
“Yeah. It just came close and I have no thrusters to dodge stuff here. Please be more careful John.”
“I'll make sure to be. Sorry about that.”
“It's perfectly alright John.”
Captain Steele slowly landed on the ship he was aiming for. He carefully walked across the surface of it until he
found a hole to climb though. This ship was a cube that was broken up into many rooms. He carefully searched each room for the engine room. He finally came across it and knew instantly that it was far too damaged to be salvaged. The entire room looked like it had been engulfed in flames. He carefully searched for the bridge.
“Any idea why there are no corpses here Jamie?”
“No.”
Captain Steele found it incredibly eerie that there were thousands of ships here and not a single body. He finally found the bridge and looked for anything that would resemble a console. He looked and failed to find anything so he started to walk around the bridge. The bridge was the only room that wasn't square. Every other room was a perfect square. The bridge was more of a trapezoid. This meant there was wasted space. He quickly tried looking for what was in this extra space. He found what appeared to be a latch in one of the corners of the rooms. He pulled it and shocked by what he found.
Chapter 21
Veiled Kismet
Captain Steele pulled the latch and a pile of weapons piled out onto the floor from the behind the door.
“Weapons? If the weapons were stored up like this it means they weren't expecting to be attacked. This mean that it was an accident that they got here or at least not by their own choice. Something either brought them here or they accidentally stumbled here as well,” Captain Steele said.
“I agree,” Jamie said.
“You be careful up there Jamie. There's enough weapons here for a several squads.”
“You do the same John.”
Captain Steele carefully picked up the weapons and examined them. It was two circles that overlapped at about 1/3 of the way into each other. They looked a lot like a three dimensional Venn Diagram. He wasn't even really sure how to hold them or where the barrel was. They were so foreign to him that he carefully bagged two of them and moved on to the other wasted space. He looked for the latch, found it, then pulled it. When he did what looked like grenades poured out. He carefully bagged some of those and moved on. He found his way out of a hole in the cube when he noticed another object in the distance. He carefully jumped over there. He really had to be careful what objects he picked because there were so many of them and he could spend forever in here. Also if he wasn't careful he could get lost in all the debris despite the navigation interface.