The Black Hole Experiments Quadrilogy (2017)

by V Bertolaccini

  Gusts of air blew and withdrew in the opposite direction, blowing and sucking, giving Kruger the feeling that something invisible nearby was breathing over him, or something was there and the environment was reacting to its presence and its paranormal powers.

  The two paranormal scientists would love it, he was sure. They were out there in another vehicle.

  It had been them that had first found the world, and come out with the idea of the GX1 going to the world.

  They had become great and famous celebrities aboard the GX1 since saving everyone from the alien, when it had been found out by all the media there, and were now adored by the military and the president, who had been at deaths door when they had saved them, and took them away out of the universe to where the alien could not go.

  The media on the GX1 had given the story full coverage for weeks, and the president and military had given the two paranormal scientists full military protection around their laboratory and scientists and all the equipment to investigate everything that they could about what had been experienced by everyone when they had left the universe.

  What everyone had experienced there and had said had been a mass of confusion, and many people thought that something else had happened!

  Hundreds of scientists all over the ship were now working on finding a way to get them back to the normal universe.

  Even though many did not want to leave, and wished to investigate everything there for the totality of the voyage – as they were sure they would not experience anything like it throughout the rest of the voyage, and perhaps their lives.

  The surrounding space was incredible, and was packed with a density that was not thought possible, and had been for a long time, and such a state of density and such large suns would have caused the whole region to collapse into a huge black hole or at least an immense sun or suns, and scientists and everyone else aboard had been and were investigating it and thousands of other discovered phenomena.

  Many scientists and others thought the whole place was a central galaxy where all the rest of the universe was imploding to, and that there were outer small galaxies being pulled into.

  The two paranormal scientists had tried informing others of their investigations of paranormal disturbances there, and had soon withheld their research from them, as they had soon found out that they refused to accept anything of that nature, and they now avoided giving any details of anything of that nature, especially to the military.

  They had given Kruger some of their findings and thoughts of paranormal activity and strange occurrences occurring there, and he had given them his thoughts about it, and that he was not fully sure what to make of it as they had only proven that large amounts of strange energy surges and energy reactions were coming from there, and it was then that they had informed him of the discovery of the world that they were on, and that they had detected it as one of the high energy spots being investigated by them.

  Since the main point of investigation of the GX1 was worlds, and that nobody had else found any proper worlds, it was soon a major place to investigate, and the scientists all voted to go to the world, and the two paranormal scientist were congratulated with another major discovery when they found it not only inhabitable but full of advanced and unknown phenomena, and mind-bending wonders, which were detected from the GX1, and with there being so many scientists and others being on the voyage for such discoveries, a hundred vehicles were allowed out to map and investigate it.

  They found the remains of some form of advanced civilization, at the opposite region of the world, from scans of the world from orbit, before it had landed, and many wanted to see the site.

  Kruger had been amazed at the findings of the scientists on the day before they had left the ship. There were energy surges and strange occurrences all around the world, and sightings of life forms and what was thought to be entities all over the world.

  Nobody, not even the two paranormal scientists, knew what was there, and many even withdrew from visiting there, especially after the encounter with the alien.

  The other scientists ignored that and continued with their explorations.

  Kruger had wished to join the two paranormal scientists at first, as he knew they wished to visit somewhere in particular and that they had found something there, but he had decided not to disappoint Major Ripley and to join him.

  Kruger wondered where the two scientists were, and if they had crashed like they had, and he watched the pale sun vanish into the thickening gray mist, which started to surround them.

  Chapter 8

  The Fog

  On the horizon a big moon brightly shone more light across their path, as it rose over the horizon, with its lunar radiance reflecting intense starlight, and Kruger studied it with surprise, watching swirled clouds shifting over its surface, as he had not seen a moon with an atmosphere and clouds, and he even saw areas of water and green shades of what had to be large vegetation.

  The fog crept over the landscape and began covering most of the swamps, and thickened so much that the powerful beams of starlight could only penetrate thin areas of it.

  As they marched on behind Major Ripley almost walking into it, while ignoring it, Larsen started getting nervous and began complaining to Major Ripley, who ignored him at first, with being so determined to get away from the region of the vehicle.

  His legs became stuck in a deep bog of stinking vegetation, and Kruger saw he was getting tired, and watched the others and noticed that they were complaining too.

  It was then that Major Ripley finally slowed, and Kruger looked about, and saw that the fog made a circle around them, at the same distance all the way round them, and was intensifying rapidly, and he knew that they were trapped in it.

  “Where are we going ...?” Larsen moaned heavily, tired, fighting for air, angry that he had been put into another situation.

  Major Ripley stopped annoyed at the way things were going, and walked back towards them.

  “What is the problem? We’ve hand held weapons that have been used on worlds all over our galaxy – which have beaten some of the most largest, deadliest, invincible, and advanced aliens and civilizations ...”

  He swiftly removed his weapon like an ancient gunfighter, and swiftly smashed an immense meteorite boulder into dust, and disintegrating the rest in seconds.

  Kruger and Don got his point, and it amazed Kruger that the vehicles had seemed so defenseless against attacks. On normal worlds their hand weapons were enough, and as powerful as the largest bulky weapons on most aliens worlds, and were probably of actually great use here if their imaginations never kept throwing situations up of what could exist, which the alien in the void had done, since it declared war on them.

  It was only thought that higher intelligent beings of big advanced civilizations had the means to match their defenses.

  Just to create a weak version of the energy shield of the GX1 took far more energy than most of the largest alien spacecrafts could produce.

  “You never saw that thing kill the rest of my crew!” Larsen moaned, slightly satisfied by the dramatic display and the deadliness of their weapons, reminding him of the power of the weapons, which they had not used.

  Major Ripley seemed to recall some of his old training, and pointed at the weapons on their spacesuits, and ordered them to remove them, and they removed them, and he had them practice firing them at objects.

  Kruger fired away at distant objects amazed their power, and continued firing into the distance, testing what range they could go to. It amazed him that they never got the chance to use them. He was even sure by the way people reacted to them that there was some rule and spacecraft rule preventing people using them, unless it was they had to, to save their lives.

  He still thought that they should have more of the military on the vehicles though. He tried firing into a dense area of the thick fog, now going around them like wheel rim, and was amazed that it reacted and split open to avoid the energy blasts, and it quickly fille
d itself in afterwards.

  The world about their sides was full of swamps, bogs, ditches, and bubbling pools of stinking chemicals and water. Chemicals in thick concentrated pools poured out gases through the cooling air giving it a sulfur stench, which they gave an occasional cough to, when it got deep and concentrated in their lungs.

  The fog crept more rapidly towards them all around them, and Major Ripley gasped slightly, and smelt the air, and announced mainly to Larsen, “We’ll have to enter that! There is no other way! Besides we will be getting help here soon ...”

  “From your communications device – giving out our location?”

  “Correct! There is not enough power in the thing for communications at the distance the others are, but it will give our location to them ...”

  “So we only need to handle this fog ...” Don coolly replied, surprising Major Ripley again with his coolness, which always seemed to be there, as though he knew what would happen.

  It gave Kruger a great deal of happiness thinking that he was not just a twin, but Don was him from the future, and that he would survive such situations.

  Yet at times he doubted it, and knew time could be altered anyway. He wondered if he shot himself, and Don was a future version of him, if he would vanish upon his death.

  Chapter 9

  Trapped

  The fog engulfed them, and swiftly thickened up about them, and blinded them, but in areas in thinned out and they caught glimpses of the ground beneath their feet as they plodded on, wondering if the others could actually find them there, and why they had not taken more drastic measures earlier on to avoid it, when it had started appearing.

  Kruger studied the thick fog about him, seeing what it did, and saw that it reacted less now that they were in it and not at the fringes of it, and wondered if he was part of it or something now, or it just considered them part of it.

  Suddenly, a light appeared deep in the fog to their side, and Major Ripley took them close to it, surely considering if it was the recovery vehicle. Yet Kruger watched it vibrating up and down, and brighten, and its beam pointed near them.

  A sluggish gurgling of something wading deep in and out of bogs ahead moved their way, confusing them more, and Major Ripley stopped his rush forwards, and came to a halt in a thinner area of fog where the visibility was better, and his familiar rugged look shone out of the fog, listening and observing everything ahead, in confusion.

  He then placed the light near his head, and stood with his light shining over his face.

  “We better be prepared ...” he muttered. “I never heard any vehicles sounds from there ...”

  “I never either ...” Kruger agreed, looking concerned, considering what they were encountering.

  “We better have our weapons ready then!” Major Kruger stated, removing his weapon, and waited for the others to remove their weapons and get the feel of them.

  “Perhaps we should inform the others in the vehicles?” Larsen asked. “We could check if it is anything to do with them?”

  Major removed his communicator, and silently started trying to contact the vehicle with Major Douglas, and when he could not pick it up he tried to contact any vehicle that he could, and stood surprised when he never.

  “Could this fog stop the communicators working ...?” he asked them, trying to grasp the situation.

  “Not normally!” Kruger answered first. “But this fog, and it being on this world, in an alternative universe, changes the rules.”

  “So once again it could be anything!”

  Larsen moved in close, to show his worried features.

  “Don’t forget that thing that attacked us ...” he stated, and moved backwards, as Don moved in, and Kruger examined him, and his forced reactions.

  “Will they be able to detect where we are with the communicators out?” Don asked them, with a glimpse of worry.

  Kruger could not be certain if he was really reacting or not!

  Yet it did seem as though he was experiencing new things now, and had not actually gone through the encounters, and he was sure that if he was from the future that things had changed as they were now in an alternative universe, and he was reacting to the fact that he would be experiencing new things, and he wondered again if he was there to prevent something from happening, without altering anything else.

  Yet Kruger realized that there was no real proof, and that his reactions were really different, and he saw that he could not depend on such fantasies, and he recalled that he had not originally believed in time travel, and especially not in traveling backwards in time.

  Why had nothing been discovered there? The technology and all the research into it would have at least proven its existence!

  Major stood checking his communicator device, and put it away, and avoided replying to Don. Surely to avoid adding to their problems!

  “There was a device on my spacesuit sending out footage of what happened!”

  “So we better stay around here!” Larsen added. “As they will arrive there then ...”

  “Correct! But we better check what that light is as best as we can, without being seen.”

  Kruger realized that he would properly never experience anything like this place and this universe again if he made it back alive to the normal universe and the Earth. He would remember it forever, and he was sure he would be remembered in the history books for taking part in it all.

  He wondered if it would be proven that time travel existed, and he realized if it did and Don had traveled back in time that he would have to go through everything over again, and that he may alter things and do things differently from what Don had done, and that he might do something that alters things by accident, and that he could also be stuck in a scenario of travel back in time and living out the events for the rest of his life.

  Chapter 10

  The Beast

  Strange multicolored streaks of starlight exploded through thin fog, and Kruger was reminded of the fast rotation of the world, and in the sky above him massive blinding stars were appearing.

  The light from one star’s flickering streak hit his face like a desert sun being shaded by something. It was a truly unique world that saw no darkness, and probably would never know it.

  He wondered again, from his normal scientific perspective, what the larger and more advanced life forms on the world would be like in such an environment. They had seen little so far, as the spacecraft had landed in one of the most barn regions of it, as there had been few regions for landing the immense spacecraft.

  The lights above rapidly engulfed them, and they lost more of what little sight they had, as they had briskly sheltered their eyes, and still tried to examine everything.

  If only the vehicle had not crashed and they were out there exploring where they were supposed to. He would be extremely annoyed if they found the things that he wanted to discover without him.

  Thick volcanic soil shrouded everything, covering their boots with muck, and their lower spacesuit with dust, and Kruger imagined the mind-bending landscapes beyond, and he realized that he no longer felt tired.

  It was shocking how easily they had got trapped and lost, and the worst part was he could not realize how they could have avoided it. They should have stuck to the exact place that they were to be, for the vehicle to find them. But in the dense fog with all its vast dangers they soon kept altering course, and everything turned indistinguishable.

  At one point slight gaps leading through into distant areas showed outer empty fogless regions. But Major Ripley stuck to the same general direction, and he was too tired to alter his course.

  A peculiar whistle still shadowed them from an unknown place, driving Kruger insane trying to identify it.

  Their legs almost became stuck in some deep bogs of stinking rotting vegetation and chemicals, which resembled quicksand as it grew in depth, and he would wonder how such chemicals got there. Many smelt like they had been dumped there by some industrial site, and he considered if an intelligent
species there could have built civilizations there. But his mind refused to accept anything without further evidence, and he continued on going.

  Then, out of nowhere, a light emerged through some strange undergrowth, and its radiance pulsated like a living entity, magically illuminating the fog and strange tree forms, creating mind-bending shadows that weaved and probed though the mist.

  While they silently and casually stopped and observed it, heavy pounds of something of incredible size and weight rushed out towards them, causing them to scurry away without being able to see anything behind them.

  They furiously moved their legs in and out of bogs as it grew nearer and deadlier, causing their legs to become painful and tired, shifting away to hard ground, to be able to escape better.

  It was like their last stand, and being on the edge of their destruction, and Kruger watched how each of them reacted, and noticed Don reacted the least again, and even looked as if he had no intention of trying to kill the thing with his weapon.

  They ran almost blindly up and down over bogs and humps, rushing through to where they believed there was flat ground.

  Heavy beast sounds furiously exploded out nearby, and clearly chased after them, and Kruger considered turning and firing his weapon. It was common for large animals to become frightened and withdraw from being fired on.

  Loud explosions surely would scare it enough to avoid them!

  It was like a strange nightmare, and finally annoyed enough at Major Ripley’s avoidance of doing anything at all to save them he swiftly turned and blasted away at what looked like an immense shadow on the fog, where the sounds exploded out!

  They were breathless, and they all stared blankly at him, and he wondered what Major Ripley was thinking, and what his explanation for not using his weapon would be.