They had clearly just created a miniature version of an area of space, and they stopped its progression at a calculated point, and carried out a series of basic experiments, and they decreased its size and form.
It was like an altered projection of reality magically spinning around them, in patterns of light, like a light show.
“We were not able to carry out our original plan,” Mitchel announced to all the scientists, who stood gasping.
“Basically speaking! We were going to detect the alien and throw it out the universe, where it would not bother us again.”
Kruger gasped, and wondered what he meant outside the universe!
“We have to do something before the alien, which has just entered the control center, deactivates the spacecraft’s energy shield, as it will not only destroy everyone here, it will be able to find our worlds and destroy them. It is crazy enough already!
“The outer entity, in the surrounding void, is too powerful. It could destroy whole galaxies.”
“So what is your answer to that then?” Kruger asked.
“We only have the one answer, and the first part of it is that we leave the universe!”
Mitchel started activating controls, and the other scientist joined in, until they had completed all their procedures, and Kruger felt something leaving him, and the essence of the universe vanishing away, and realized the earlier stuff was just rehearsals for the real stuff, and that they were now leaving the universe.
There were sudden explosions of movement, of everything around them, as space and time altered, and the universe shrank away, and Kruger felt like losing consciousness.
He had feelings of being alone, and he realized that his mind was not able to function in different ways.
Everything about him turned transparent, and he saw the darkness outside. The voyager about him was disappearing, and turning into an energy state, and he watched his body fade into nothingness.
They were going beyond reality to what? It was as though he were dreaming in an altered state of existence.
Kruger sensed telepathic thoughts of the alien, and that it could not handle not existing in the universe, and he heard its last gasps before it died, and he wondered if they would die too, or if they were going to enter he universe again.
He realized then that they had invented something to keep them and the voyager existing.
However, Kruger could not realize what would happen if they could not enter the universe again, as there clearly was nothing outside it.
He sensed that there was power there though, and it was more than anything that he had ever thought existed, and he wondered what the hell it was, and why it was hidden away from him.
Light from it shone over him, and entities in the form of large bright globes appeared, and he recognized that they had some features, and that they really had the appearances of ghosts, and he lost consciousness, with the others.
II
Beyond the Universe
Chapter 1
The Mind-Bending Black Hole
A bright explosion of radiance exploded out stunning Kruger as he came to. An immense whirlpool of shifting outlines of globes magically shifted by, and he studied it for a long time and realized that he had no body or proper presence, and was some form of force formation, and he was swirling out into a vortex of reshaping energy patterns that replaced reality, in a surreal splendor of transforming elements and that the mind-bending display of displacements were altering to something that he could not recognize.
Why he was there mesmerized him! Was he even classified as being alive?
He gave a vague gasp as reality magically spun around him in different patterns while he wondered how worse the situation could become. He could be trapped there for all eternity!
So when he saw a white blur in a miniature central region of darkness emerge ahead, as he swirled around, he grew interested, and he started to recognize more and more detail as it grew, and shifted he into it, and within its depths he saw magnificent distant stars, within a haze, blending into his surrounding brilliant colors.
Spectacular white beams exploded out, and stars shot to him, and he realized the tremendous speed that he was traveling at.
Space was expanding all across his front, and he floated into it.
Gradually he felt feelings and saw a transparent view of his body emerge as it transformed and became solid again, and he saw the others appear as ghost images, in the swirling brightness.
The voyager appeared and grew solid about him in stages, as it entered space and time, and magnificent bright white and golden lights filled his entire vision everywhere, as if he were floating into a form of cartoon universe.
The stars became dazzling, which he could not recognize! Their density filled space everywhere, and he was staggered that they could even exist in their state, without being pulled together into an immense explosion.
He exploded with excitement as he looked back and saw the biggest black hole that he had ever seen stretching across space, and he wondered why he was being thrown out of it, and he realized the immense speed that he had been traveling at.
The size of it looked close to the size of a small galaxy, and the vision staggered him and stuck in his mind as he watched it vanish out of view and the spacecraft become solid around him.
Chapter 2
The Monster’s Death
The monster/entity had turned mad in the end, especially when it had attacked the control center of the GX1 spacecraft.
The last shreds of its plan had been instantly ruined when the scientists at the other side of the spacecraft had activated a field that had thrown the whole spacecraft out of space and time, to kill it and escape with their lives.
It had been crazy, but it was all that they could do!
It had been hideous beyond anything anyone had seen, and resembled the devil itself! Not only had it been an entity/monster, altering from one form to another again, the G1 explosions had damaged it and its mind beyond repair, and it continued with only the one goal to kill every life form aboard, and take down the energy shield around the whole voyager to give it to the outer entity, and have it to repair the damage done to it.
Its last moments had been a chaos of killing and destroying everywhere, to gain control of the outer energy shield, but it was unable to think properly and realize how to remove the energy shield, and near the end had even realized that it was close to death and would not survive if it never.
Its last thoughts had been screams of agony, and it watched its existence in all the dimensions become annihilated.
The outer entity had monitored what it could, and had detected its madness with some fascination, as it had never known it!
For a long time it had been studying everything and trying to find another way to get the spacecraft!
After careful examinations of the spacecraft’s outer energy shield it had begun to realize that around the energy bubble there were small amounts of weak energy that could be used to attach some of its energy forms, and it had made a shield of energy made from itself around the energy shield, which would remain hidden there, so when the spacecraft left it would travel with it, and when possible, and they removed the energy screen, it would form into another entity/life form, capable of far more than the entity/human that it had put aboard, and it would become a vastly improved version of it.
Chapter 3
The Mind-Bending World
For a moment Kruger was staggered as a dazzling radiance blinded him, and he thought he had been thrown out of space and time all over again, and he realized that the space vehicle that he was in had crashed.
The sky outside the front of the vehicle was a mass of intense light, from immense stars nearby almost covering the sky there in white and gold, and it was so strange that he was sure that it was not even in another universe anymore, or was at the outer limits of the big bang of a universe, at a distant point.
He switched on a light screen, which shaded the intense light flare bla
sting into his brain, which now looked like the sun on Earth covering his entire front, and he checked the other two passengers of the vehicle, Major Ripley and Don, which he could now properly see near him.
Even after traveling beyond space and time the world that they were exploring was so mind-bending all the crew were virtually staggered at it all of the time. There was at least a billion light years of what must be the most compact region of space possible, and the world had to have the weirdest landscapes and scan results possible, which was another reason why they were exploring it.
The world about them was so altered from the normal the others never said anything and occasionally gave muffled gasps!
“So it has happened again?” Major Ripley moaned, and sniggered, glancing out at the world through a side window, with his hands shading his eyes, searching the outer landscape, in wonderment – wondering what they had thrown at him this time. Yet he like new occurrences and such excitement, and getting out the spacecraft.
“But I’ve not lost any memories of anything!” Kruger stated, checking his memory of everything that he could.
While Don nodded in agreement, he replied, “I have not forgotten anything either!”
The vehicle had crashed again as it had done on the world in the void, when the alien had wiped away most of their memories of the people in the vehicles to cover it being there, to get aboard GX1 spacecraft, but this time it was different, and Kruger gasped at the thought of the thing still being alive, and up to something.
It made him shiver thinking of all the occurrences that had happened over the past weeks, and wondered what the consequences of it all would be.
“The alien may have changed itself and its tactics, realizing the situation is different ...” Major Ridley announced.
“Yet if it was aboard, why did it come out here? And why would it make us crash? And why would it even risk it – as it would know that we would not fall for it again. It is pointless ...”
“It could have been an accident this time? Perhaps we have hit something?”
“But why were we all unconscious! That is a rare occurrence!”
Kruger felt his head for bruising – which he confirmed never existed ...
“I do not recall us actually hitting something,” Major Ripley finally announced, after some thought, looking about outside, and below the vehicle. “Look! We’ve only skidded to a standstill into a bog of yellow crawling slime – and the vehicle has stopped itself automatically! Kruger! You’re the scientist here! You work it out for us!”
“Perhaps this time it was gas ...?”
“As I have told you before there’s none in this model! And if this gas exists, it has no smell, and must be concealed somewhere! And I’m sure it would be of interest to the military ... And for them to investigate why it was used ...”
“There could be some gas in the atmosphere outside, and we may be taking in the outer atmosphere ...?”
Major Ripley glanced through all the shuttles instruments, and replied, “If I can remember rightly, the vehicle automatically takes in the atmosphere, which it has been doing, as it is perfectly breathable, and that it would have stopped anything getting in that was unwanted ... And there does not seem to be anything in here, or has entered here ...”
“This is another universe! It has a different framework, and could have different laws of nature ... Unknown to us ...”
“Meaning what? In other words anything could happen out here now! Perhaps the gas just materialized here – knocked us unconscious – and vanished afterwards ...”
“We better keep things open that’s all ...”
Suddenly, Major Riley jumped, with his eyes jerked wide open, when a human figure shifted out of thick mist outside, at their side, and he removed his weapon.
“What is the distance to the nearest shuttle?” Major Ripley whispered, to confirm what he knew.
“Well, there are hundred vehicles out, and the nearest has to be miles away ...”
“We better contact the others! Check what is happening!”
Kruger watched the strange figure move in close, and bang his large heavy glove hard against the vehicle window near him, and thought he recognized him for a moment.
The problem of having such a vast spacecraft and crew, which he had not gotten used to, was there were too many strangers aboard, and that they were always coming into contact with people that they never recognized, and he now knew hardly any of the other people in the vehicles, and going by what he had seen of Major Ripley and Don that they were the same.
There was nothing strange about the man, who was wearing a spacesuit without a helmet, and only did two things differently, which was his silent and strange look and him being there in the first place, as nobody had wanted to leave the protection of the vehicles, because of the place they were in and the hidden dangers.
Kruger wondered if he would make it home alive, which was incredible, after all the years of helping and preparing for the great voyage to the final frontiers of the universe. They must have done just about everything to check that nothing went wrong, and had proven to them that if anything new was actually found that there would not be any danger. They believed that dangers in space had been virtually annihilated, and were now just small accidents. The dangers of the past were thought to have been left behind. Even in wars, humans were very rarely ever killed, and were mainly fought with machines, and mainly robots, and the people involved hardly ever actually encountered dangers.
He could not place the stranger and put it down to memory loss from the encounter with the alien, and the strange environment of the new universe.
“I cannot reach them!” Major Ripley shouted.
“There could be some damage to the communications ...”
“You mean something is blocking transmissions ...”
Major Ripley stuck his face against the side window and studied his face and figure outside, and the man ignored him, waiting for him to open the door.
Kruger did think he looked familiar and acted like one of the crew, but so had the alien when it had done a perfect impersonation of him, as Dan.
“You will have to let him in or something!” Don announced. “At least talk to him through an opened window!”
“He could get in here anyway,” Kruger stated, after thirty seconds of silence. “The vehicles have no real defense against direct attacks – or from that alien.”
“That’s a good one! But we did drive back with that alien aboard the last time, and we could be blamed for helping it get aboard!”
He pressed a switch, and a window partly opened up, and he called out, “Someone must be in trouble for you to have come all the way out here! Across this place!”
“Correct!” the stranger replied. “Our vehicle crashed, and something killed all the crew ... I just escaped, with my life ...”
Major Ripley gasped, and asked, “What’s your name, and vehicle number?”
“I am Larsen of vehicle sixty!”
Kruger remembered the name, and had a vague recollection of him, and showed his recognition of him.
“I vaguely remember you too! Did you wake up unconscious? And was your communicator working?”
“Yes, we all woke up unconscious, and the communicator was not working ... I used a device to detect your vehicle, which I knew was here, from our equipment earlier on ...”
He showed them a hand device that was in his suit.
Major Ripley moved away from the door where the stranger was, and allowed Kruger to unlock the door, and they watched the air slightly react to the outer atmosphere of the desolate world.
They watched the man enter and speedily close the door behind him, as though he had been waiting to get in for a long time, and to get away from something, and they remained silent as warm air warmed the vehicle again.
“Now what will we do?” Kruger muttered, looking about outside. “You said that there is something deadly over there that killed your entire crew?”
&n
bsp; “Our vehicle was surrounded by that hideous mist that floats about this place, and something smashed it to pieces, killing them, and escaped, as I was near the back ...”
Kruger studied the man, and saw his fear of the place, and that he had been running to escape from it at one point.
“So we better get out of here ...” Larsen warned, after they sat doing nothing for a minute. “If that thing gets over here ...”
Major Ripley immediately jumped over to an area with controls and activated controls, and the vehicle lifted into the air, and floated forwards.
“But where are we going to?” Don asked. “There is more of a chance of it being in front than behind us, if we travel on. As it could spot us at a lot of locations moving on, but if remained here, it will only be able to find us at this spot ...“
“Correct!” Larsen replied first. “But this vehicle can swiftly fly upwards, at any speed, and can even travel in space, and that thing cannot leave the ground as far as I saw!”
Major Ripley continued on the course they had been on before the crash, ready to lift into the air when needed, and they all seemed more relaxed by it.
When they finally heard a noise from the communication device, Major Ripley jumped to attention and stopped the vehicle, and moved in beside it, and had Don take control of the vehicle, because he was the most alert and ready to handle anything coming at them
“Vehicle four here!” Major Ripley announced. “Any information on why the communications were down?”
“Ripley! This is Major Douglas in vehicle two. It seems to have happened again! All the communications were down! They only returned to normal a few minutes ago! We seem to have a different problem this time! All the vehicles crashed, but the vast majority are running again! They’re working on the problem back at the GX1. This time, all the vehicles have been ordered to continue with what they were doing!”
The Black Hole Experiments Quadrilogy (2017) Page 34