Wormholes

  One of his crew announces.

  BEAM PLATFORM CREWMAN

  Sensors indicate the throat has not expanded!

  Several opposing disks on the floor and ceiling of the control room flash and holographic images of a dozen aliens appear. One of them yells.

  HOLOGRAPHIC ALIEN

  You fool! You've killed us all!

  EXT. SPACE - EARTH ORBIT

  A caterpillar-like robot works its way along the exterior of the Ringship. It reaches the blacken edge of an exploded engine at the base of the craft.

  INT. RINGSHIP - CONTROL ROOM

  Aella shakes her head at a frowning Voam.

  AELLA

  It's no use. We need a space dock to get the engines back on line.

  VOAM

  There has to be a way.

  Patricia focuses in on some spinning debris on one of the control room monitors.

  The scene blurs into a memory. She is back at the frozen pond at Elmendorf Air Force Base watching the two teenage skaters. The Boy Skater calls out to his girlfriend.

  BOY SKATER

  You've got to trust me.

  The girl hesitates...

  GIRL SKATER

  Okay.

  She accelerates toward him, reaching out her arms. They twist as their hands clasp. Both teens spin rapidly around their center of gravity.

  Back in the Ringship, Patricia jerks her head around to face Voam.

  PATRICIA

  If you opened up the wormhole here, instead of closer to the sun, how far would Mopelia be from Earth?

  VOAM

  One hundred thousand miles. If we bring Mopelia that close, the gravity shifts would destroy both worlds.

  PATRICIA

  I don't want it at one hundred thousand miles. I want it closer.

  VOAM

  Closer?

  PATRICIA

  If Mopelia emerges from the wormhole at the right velocity along Earth's direction of rotation, both planets will orbit each other.

  VOAM

  A double planet?

  PATRICIA

  It's the only way.

  Eamax and Aella jerk around at their stations and start crunching numbers.

  VOAM

  There will be earthquakes... Tidal waves...

  PATRICIA

  If we do it right, it will be minimal. Earth's spin momentum will be transferred to rotational momentum around the common center of mass.

  Aella rotates around in her seat.

  AELLA

  It's possible. The pinch point between the two worlds will be just one hundred miles wide.

  PATRICIA

  (to Voam)

  Together we screwed things up. Maybe, together we can fix them.

  Voam hesitates for a moment. He turns to face Aella, Eamax and the rest of the crew.

  VOAM

  Go!

  EXT. SPACE - EARTH ORBIT

  The Ringship rotates until it travels lengthwise along the Earth's equator. The ring starts spinning faster. The mound of orange ore clinging to the stem of the ship begins to swirl.

  EXT. PLANETWIDE WORMHOLE

  The walls of the wormhole close in on Mopelia. Alien space stations careen out of control and smash into each other.

  The cabled satellite where Voam and Patricia docked, snaps in two. Both orbiting platforms spin out of control. The long cables whip around and collide with other city-sized stations.

  INT. BEAM PLATFORM - CONTROL COMPLEX

  Gohoth puts his hands over his face.

  GOHOTH

  What have I done?

  EXT. SPACE - EARTH ORBIT

  A curtain of orange ore is pulled out from the stem of the Ringship and flows into the base of the spinning ring. From the top of the ring emerges a brilliant beam of blue light.

  The beam extends outward and converges. At that point, a black wormhole opens and starts to expand.

  Inside the wormhole, a spot of light appears ahead of Mopelia. Streams of blue-white energy travel along the transparent walls. The wormhole pulls back.

  INT. BEAM PLATFORM - CONTROL COMPLEX

  Gohoth lifts his hands. Shock and hope.

  GOHOTH

  Voam!

  EXT. EARTH - SAN FRANCISCO - PARK - DAY

  People look upward in shock as a black line spreads across a clear blue sky. The line fattens into an oval. The view is not quite edge-on. A sparkling space station materializes out of the black void, followed by a dozen more.

  The crowd's capacity for awe turns to shear terror. The horizon of an alien planet emerges, like a neatly-cleaved slice of a ball seen edge-on.

  The ground starts shaking. Screams and panic as people run in all directions. In the sky above, the new planet becomes more spherical by the second.

  EXT. SPACE - EARTH ORBIT

  The Ringship travels in front of the emerging planet. The energy curtain from the top of its ring is spread wide, feeding power to the expanding wormhole mouth.

  Dark material streams out of several ring sections damaged by missile strikes and the Eagle Eye laser. Gaps form in the energy curtain feeding the wormhole mouth.

  INT. RINGSHIP - CONTROL ROOM

  Alarmed, Eamax twists around in his seat.

  EAMAX

  Energy levels fluctuating.

  AELLA

  We're losing condensed matter from the rings!

  VOAM

  Close off the damaged sections.

  Eamax pounds the softkey control pad in front of him.

  EAMAX

  I can't! The circuits are blown out. There's no control.

  VOAM

  I'll have to do it manually.

  AELLA

  Out there?

  Voam turns to Patricia.

  VOAM

  How far does this working together concept extend?

  MONTAGE

  Several quick shots of the gravity effects on Earth.

  A volcano erupts, spurting lava into the sky. In San Francisco, the bay bridge arches and sways. A couple of cables SNAP.

  From a vantage point a thousand feet above the pacific coastline of greater Los Angeles, a wall of water several hundred feet high sweeps in.

  END MONTAGE

  INT. RINGSHIP - AIRLOCK

  Voam enters a code into a numeric keypad. A wall display flashes the words: Explosive Decompression Enabled.

  VOAM

  The gravity field will push you toward the ring. You need to crawl along the surface and close the connecting valves where the material is leaking.

  PATRICIA

  Don't we need spacesuits?

  VOAM

  There is enough air pressure and oxygen trapped inside the gravity field.

  He reaches out and grabs her hand. She nods to him.

  EXT. SPACE - EARTH ORBIT

  An airlock hatch explodes outward from the Ringship. Voam and Patricia are violently thrown outward. The force is too great and they lose their handhold.

  Patricia flails her arms and legs as her body rockets toward the rotating ring. Below her, orange ore swirls in a tornado-like vortex. Above, intense energy feeds a planet wide wormhole.

  Voam smacks into the ring first, grabbing a handhold. Patricia hits the ring. She slides along the surface, clawing desperately, grasping for anything.

  Her legs slide clear of the ring before her hands find a metal tube to latch onto. Her legs dangle a foot away from the torrent of flowing mineral. The SOUND in the contained atmosphere is like a run-away freight train.

  She pulls herself up and nods to Voam. The alien makes his way to one of the leaking sections and cranks a valve closed. Patricia crawls to another leak and repeats his actions.

  Mopelia is halfway through the wormhole.

  High above the Earth, the atmosphere SWIRLS in a gigantic hurricane. Then a cone of air forms between the two worlds.

  Back at the Ringship, lines of force ripple through the ship's metal skin. The central section twists. The ring tilts as it spins.

  INT.
RINGSHIP - CONTROL ROOM

  Aella screams and Eamax reaches out for her.

  EXT. SPACE - EARTH ORBIT

  The central shaft of the Ringship twists again. It shatters and EXPLODES! The energy wave mixes with the remaining ore. Gravitational forces twist the ring and it rips into a dozen sections.

  The wormhole begins to collapse as Mopelia continues emerging. The shrinking vortex mouth just skims along the planet's atmosphere.

  Voam and Patricia cling to a broken section of the ring. Mopelia's gravity pulls them down into it's atmosphere toward the pinch-point between the two worlds.

  The violent air thrusts them around toward the far side of Mopelia where the collapsing wormhole scrapes against the outer atmosphere.

  The edge of the alien world slips out of the way as the wormhole closes, but its atmosphere loses a huge volume of air. Voam and Patricia are caught and sucked into the wormhole an instant before it slams shut.

  MONTAGE

  In San Francisco, the bay bridge continues to arch and sway. Cars slide back and forth on its surface. Then it settles down and holds.

  An erupting volcano subsides, its lava flow reduces to a slow moving ooze.

  Above the coastline of Los Angeles, water recedes back into the pacific.

  END MONTAGE

  EXT. HYPERSPACE

  Voam and Patricia cling to a twisted section of the ring inside a donut-shaped cocoon of trapped air. All around them is a vast sweep of moving colors reminiscent of the MANDELBROT SET of fractal shapes.

  PATRICIA

  Where are we?

  VOAM

  In the space between spaces.

  PATRICIA

  Are we dead?

  VOAM

  Not yet. The residual dark matter must have created this inter-dimensional rift.

  She grabs her ears.

  PATRICIA

  My ears hurt.

  VOAM

  The gravity pulled in a large volume of air.

  He reaches out to her and touches her face.

  VOAM

  The pain won't last long.

  PATRICIA

  Neither will we.

  Ahead in the distance, a patch of silver floats near a ribbed, multicolored column. The column seems to travel down to infinity. On either side of it are moving spirals of florescent green and red.

  PATRICIA

  What's that?

  A SILVER FORM that looks like an large, undulating glob of mercury moves closer. The churning images of thousands of colors reflect off its surface.

  SILVER FORM

  Primitive three-dimensional creatures. Should we terminate them?

  ANOTHER SILVER FORM (O.S.)

  No, we should help them.

  Voam and Patricia whip around to see another shapeless blob of silver move in from behind.

  ANOTHER SILVER FORM

  We can give them the tools to survive here.

  VOAM

  This must be the advanced life form I detected.

  SILVER FORM

  How can we trust them with such power?

  ANOTHER SILVER FORM

  We must try. They deserve our respect.

  A DULL ROAR begins from a great distance below, growing louder. Patricia looks down the length of the Fractal column to see a tidal wave of ripped and distorted patterns obliterating everything in its path.

  She reaches out to Voam and takes his hand.

  PATRICIA

  We'll face it together.

  He smiles back at her as their bodies are bathed in brilliant, multicolored light.

  EXT. SPACE - DOUBLE PLANET

  Mopelia and Earth slowly revolve around their common center of mass. The lights of civilization arch across the surface of both globes.

  The planets are close enough at the pinch point to share a common atmosphere. Spacecraft and massive satellites travel around both worlds.

  PATRICIA (V.O.)

  Whatever the future holds, we will face it together.

  THE END