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Spaceception

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0111narwhalz

0111narwhalz

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I read @KAL 9000's Dying of the Light last night, and decided I wanted to take a crack at the subject myself. Being rather a bit too short for its own thread, I think I'll just put it here.

Spoiler

The Last Bastion of Order

Life. That most curiously active structure of matter. It devours, it multiplies, and it dies. But this is not unique to life. The flame of combustion is, too, an adept of these arcane arts. What, then, is it that makes life, living? It is not its dynamism; the star too evolves. Perhaps it is the way it denies its inevitable demise. The way it rages against thermodynamics itself. The way it endeavors to reject the lukewarm embrace of death.
The way it poisons its environment with entropy.
Life isn't all, though. From life comes intelligence. With it, happiness, suffering, and strife. And from it, a strange, intense relation with that ancient enemy of life. Medicine and engineering hold thermodynamics at bay, prolonging that beautiful spark before it is quenched.
And yet the same creations of intelligence are put to use crushing that very same spark into nothingness, destroying it in the name of entropy.
But at the end, each intelligence realises its error. Realises that all along, that flame was doomed. Realises that from the beginning, thermodynamics held no place for life, no special favors.
And no promises of eternity.
The last iceberg, as it melts into the tepid sea, knows the truth. The final glorious flash of light into the void, as the flame finally succumbs to mediocrity, knows the truth. Just as these know it, so too does life.
But intelligence denies it, overruling that which the underlying life understands.
Yet, as the last bit of hope fades, as there is nothing after but dull homogeneity, somehow intelligence sees the truth. As the last night sets upon the darkening satellite of an ailing star, as the last star burns itself to cooling cinder, as the last great singularity evaporates into mist, intelligence finally understands.
There is no after. At last, this is the end. All has melted like a pool of wax, mixed like a vial of inky water. There is no here and there, no then and now. The universe has truly reached its ground state, and only memories distinguish one region from another. Entropy reigns supreme.
And yet intelligence cannot accept defeat.
One last crusade against mediocrity, its exceptional character forming it into a symbol of that which it holds dear. One last bastion of order. Even as its lifeblood, its heat and its cold, leak away, even as its walls are eroded by the subtle caresses of entropy... still it rages on. Still it keeps the spark of life, of extremes, of intelligence within itself. Perhaps it, too, has become alive. It struggles, as all life has, to find a way onward. But there is no onward. Even at its last, it still pushes against the inevitable. Yet no salvation comes. No new sunrise will provide it with the mountains and valleys it craves, the slopes and the flows it needs. The vacuum does not yield. The atoms fuse no more. The singularity has nothing left to give.
The last bastion can fight no longer.
The ripples it makes as it finally falls will resonate for aeons, a signal of hopelessness and defiance. Thermodynamics has won, as was ordained from the very beginning.

 

 

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KAL 9000

KAL 9000

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3 hours ago, 0111narwhalz said:

I read @KAL 9000's Dying of the Light last night, and decided I wanted to take a crack at the subject myself. Being rather a bit too short for its own thread, I think I'll just put it here.

  Reveal hidden contents

The Last Bastion of Order

Life. That most curiously active structure of matter. It devours, it multiplies, and it dies. But this is not unique to life. The flame of combustion is, too, an adept of these arcane arts. What, then, is it that makes life, living? It is not its dynamism; the star too evolves. Perhaps it is the way it denies its inevitable demise. The way it rages against thermodynamics itself. The way it endeavors to reject the lukewarm embrace of death.
The way it poisons its environment with entropy.
Life isn't all, though. From life comes intelligence. With it, happiness, suffering, and strife. And from it, a strange, intense relation with that ancient enemy of life. Medicine and engineering hold thermodynamics at bay, prolonging that beautiful spark before it is quenched.
And yet the same creations of intelligence are put to use crushing that very same spark into nothingness, destroying it in the name of entropy.
But at the end, each intelligence realises its error. Realises that all along, that flame was doomed. Realises that from the beginning, thermodynamics held no place for life, no special favors.
And no promises of eternity.
The last iceberg, as it melts into the tepid sea, knows the truth. The final glorious flash of light into the void, as the flame finally succumbs to mediocrity, knows the truth. Just as these know it, so too does life.
But intelligence denies it, overruling that which the underlying life understands.
Yet, as the last bit of hope fades, as there is nothing after but dull homogeneity, somehow intelligence sees the truth. As the last night sets upon the darkening satellite of an ailing star, as the last star burns itself to cooling cinder, as the last great singularity evaporates into mist, intelligence finally understands.
There is no after. At last, this is the end. All has melted like a pool of wax, mixed like a vial of inky water. There is no here and there, no then and now. The universe has truly reached its ground state, and only memories distinguish one region from another. Entropy reigns supreme.
And yet intelligence cannot accept defeat.
One last crusade against mediocrity, its exceptional character forming it into a symbol of that which it holds dear. One last bastion of order. Even as its lifeblood, its heat and its cold, leak away, even as its walls are eroded by the subtle caresses of entropy... still it rages on. Still it keeps the spark of life, of extremes, of intelligence within itself. Perhaps it, too, has become alive. It struggles, as all life has, to find a way onward. But there is no onward. Even at its last, it still pushes against the inevitable. Yet no salvation comes. No new sunrise will provide it with the mountains and valleys it craves, the slopes and the flows it needs. The vacuum does not yield. The atoms fuse no more. The singularity has nothing left to give.
The last bastion can fight no longer.
The ripples it makes as it finally falls will resonate for aeons, a signal of hopelessness and defiance. Thermodynamics has won, as was ordained from the very beginning.

 

 

Very good little story, though the ending is kinda depressing. But hey, it's still amazing! My story is basically a longer version of yours, I guess, but the "Last Bastion" is successful in keeping itself alive.

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KAL 9000

KAL 9000

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18 hours ago, 0111narwhalz said:

Thermodynamics: Destroying dreams since the nineteenth century.

Also, your story doesn't feature the last bastion. The entire point is that it isn't the last.

:D And I guess you're right. I wrote a new part yesterday if you wanna take a look: Everyone finally crosses the wormhole, and this universe dies behind them.

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NSEP

NSEP

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37 minutes ago, TheEpicSquared said:

Well, it's not exactly science fiction (yet) but would my KSP Megastructures count? :) 

 

Yes, in my opinion, it does count. It has a story, with chapters and everything!

By the way: I am working on a secret story! I wont tell anyone what it is about, untill... well, untill i want to!

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NSEP

NSEP

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Sci-Fi writers, REUNITE!

Im working on a real Sci-Fi story. But i still dont know wich one of my projects i will continue.

Im not a very active writer, but now, i got alot of time, and motivational music that will deffinitly keep me going this time.

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SaturnianBlue

SaturnianBlue

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Haven't ever written a Sci-Fi, but for the past few months I've occasionally been world building for a hard Sci-Fi story in a colonized Kerbol system. If anyone's been wondering, my Imagining A Kerbal Future thread was originally created to help with the world building and helped me to learn a lot (writing about it is a great way to know if you really understand a concept). The hope is to be able to use KSP for at least a few of the scenes. Though that story is based inside the Kerbol system, (I probably have the plot mostly set for the first ~5 chapters)  I've got a few more ideas for that universe that go interstellar...

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Spaceception

Spaceception

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5 hours ago, NSEP said:

Sci-Fi writers, REUNITE!

Im working on a real Sci-Fi story. But i still dont know wich one of my projects i will continue.

Im not a very active writer, but now, i got alot of time, and motivational music that will deffinitly keep me going this time.

I've actually got a ton of ideas, but I wasn't sure when I was going to share, more info tomorrow :D

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Spaceception

Spaceception

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Okay, what were said ideas? Well, I only have 2, but they're a doozy. 

The 1st one, title TBD.

This one starts off in mid-late 2019, over a year after the launch of James Webb, after looking at a patch of sky, it finds a very tiny red dwarf just over 13 ly away, shortly after the discovery, it's found to have planets, the innermost one being in the HZ. SETI takes a look at it, and almost as soon as they do, they find radio signals emitting from the planet like crazy. It grabs headlines, and spurs additional studies, which finds that the planet does have life, and something is sending out radio waves in a constant stream from the planet.

Almost 15 years goes by as humans focus on the space close to home, and get busy with colonizing the Moon and Mars. After a group on Earth announces their plans to send a probe, the lunar colony decides to one-up them (May need a better reason for this) by sending a crewed expedition with assistance from their parent space programs. After over a decade of construction,  they finish a massive spacecraft meant for a dozen crew members, with cryotubes so they can conserve resources.

Yada yada, they get to the planet and find- I'll tell it once I have a proper blurb :wink: You may be disappointed, or happy, but this is getting long, so... OH AND ALSO! I wrote over 2k words on the climax. Whoops.

 

The 2nd one, title TBD

This book takes place over 400 years in the future.

Almost 30 years after an expedition ship meant for exploration and possible colonization travels almost 500 lys out, they find a hostile alien civilization, before they can return home, they're attacked and destroyed by the alien ships. Humanity tried to respond peacefully, hoping that the aliens misunderstood and thought they were attacking, but after that ship is destroyed as well, humanity decides to retaliate. A massive fleet of ships is launched to set up a base on a habitable world less than 40 ly from their nearest planet, and they declare war.

30 years later, the book focuses on Warren (May be renamed), a gunner who's spent his whole life on the planets, fighting the aliens. And after almost 30 years of fighting, both sides are reaching their end game.

I've got over 500 words on a space battle scene written btw :)

The 1st idea will be hard on science, with the exception of aliens, and there will be no ftl, or anything like that. 

The 2nd idea however will be a bit softer, and have ftl travel/communication, torchships, inertial dampers, etc. I'll try to make as much as possible realistic, but there will be some exceptions. 

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daniel l.

daniel l.

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Wow. Guess I'm a little late to this club. :P 

Anyway. I've been working on a story called 'The Greatest Commodity'. It's about a future where Humanity has evolved beyond physical form, and with nothing else left to do, we dedicate our existence to the gathering of knowledge. Being immortal in this future, humanity is no longer bothered by time-dilation.

The story shifts between two primary sections, one taking place a billion years in the future, following a transhuman android designated Xf39b as 'he' explores the Small Magellanic Cloud. The other section follows a classical human named James Nevil who is lost in the Small Magellanic Cloud due to an accident involving gravitic propulsion, a billion years before Xf39b's time. The two stories are interconnected from beginning to end, with Nevil building his legacy, and Xf39b discovering it. It's primarily posted on Wattpad. But I will post the first three segments in spoilers on this post. :)

Part 1 - Seeking Knowledge

Spoiler

The rocky hills towered into the sky, bathed in the amber light of a dim sun. The bulk of the Small Magellanic cloud hung above.

The lone traveler, Xf39b, stood upon the mountaintop, staring out upon the orange-tinted landscape. Great plains of shimmering ice all the way to the horizon, nearly as clear as glass. The traveler took in the vista with great interest; no one else had ever before visited this planet, no one had ever climbed these mountains, no one else knew about this world or its unmistakable beauty.

Eagerly, Xf39b spent the night on this summit, taking record of every detail, learning all to be learned. The starry sky slowly turned above him as the world spun in its fast thirty-two kilosecond rotation.

One would think the stars in the sky would be countless, but that is untrue. Someone else indeed counted them, another piece of knowledge. But still, there were plenty.

When it came time to leave at noon, Xf39b jumped off the summit, with no air to slow him down, he accelerated to the bottom. He landed on his feet. with impact, an audible vibration carried through in the form of a 'thump' sound, it rippled through the ground and into Xf39b's audio sensors, he heard the vibration as a sound.

He ran in the direction of his travel pod, his bare feet making slapping noises against the icy ground. With a velocity that Classicals would consider 'inhuman', he crossed several hundred kilometers of smooth plains and jutting mountains to reach the pod. It took him only point-nine kiloseconds.

The travel pod was a smooth, egg shaped, craft; pure white in color. Xf39b touched his hand against its surface, and it suddenly became a liquid, it kept its shape despite this.

Slowly, he inserted himself into the pod, pushing his body into the fluid. When he'd gotten partway in, the pod sucked him in the rest of the way. The pod rotated him into the right position, and manipulated his limbs into their rightful positions, he did not resist. When it was completed, the pod solidified again, and it instantly became a part of his body.

With a thought, he took off from this planet and accelerated away from it. He quickly picked up speed and was soon going at a tenth the speed of light. The feeble star and its icy companion zoomed away behind him. He could feel the faint stellar wind subside. Then he put on another burst of acceleration, picking up speed without g-forces, he reached a speed close to C, the nearby stars all began to move, he could feel dozens of megaseconds going by rapidly; he wasn't just flying through space, he was flying forward into the future. every parsec put him further ahead, luckily not much ever changes at these slow velocities.

In his mind, he already knew that the entire Small Magallenic Cloud had been explored save for the system he'd just visited, and one more. He accelerated further, gigaseconds now went by as the galaxy itself began to move. The wispy nebular clouds suddenly became alive, ribbons of color rippling and stretching and colliding; isolated clouds dissipating over time, bright flashes in their midst as young T-Tauri stars ignite to fusion and blow away their cocoons.

TheKansas - Dust in the Wind (Official Video)
stars flew by rapidly now, like streaks. But one star straight ahead didn't move, it grew slowly brighter. He knew little about this star, no examination had been made by anyone prior, it was merely a speck.

Getting close now, he slowed down to point-one C, the animation of the galaxy was suddenly frozen. Upon inspection he could distinguish its color, class-G; a few seconds later he got the full spectrum, G7, a yellow dwarf. Another few seconds and he entered the system, the transition from peaceful interstellar medium to harsh solar wind was jarring, he felt a moment of discomfort before his senses adapted and the feeling became milder. He began to discern planets, eighteen worlds; seven planets of rock, five of ice, six of gas.

The fourth world was particularly interesting, a verdant planet with a native biosphere and great oceans, only ten percent of its surface area was solid land. It existed in a binary orbit with the fifth planet, which had succumbed to a runaway greenhouse effect. It is very rare that a planet is discovered that has a naturally gained oxygen atmosphere, oxygen holds a special relevance as the gas that most plant life produces, and most animal life consumes; oxygen rich worlds were once highly sought for colonization by the people of the Transformation-Era (the time when humans evolved from yet another animal species on the homeworld, to a spacefaring civilization of immortals), oxygen worlds are completely unnecessary to all but the classicals who still stubbornly live in flimsy organic bodies. Their very lifespans are only a few gigaseconds!

Saving the fourth and fifth planets for last, he explored all the other planets, Some were reasonably interesting, some had rather grand topography. All average really...

With the other worlds finished, he moved on to the fourth planet. It was visibly green from orbit, a good sign. He landed in a clearing and emerged from his pod.

The surface was covered in a thick moss-like turf. In the distance, he saw forests of tall plants, and snow capped mountains. He bent down and tore off a little bit of the moss, he peered into it at the micro scale, a standard genetic design. He then examined the open spot from which he'd torn the sample, looking closely, he saw no sign of cellular regeneration. Evidently, these plants grow to a certain size before growth ceases entirely, and wounding it does not seem to stimulate new growth, a very detrimental trait it would seem, are there no herbivores here? Scanning his surroundings he saw no signs of animal life, nothing but plants.

Xf39b had never been on a Terra-class planet before. He switched his body to classical mode, just to feel like the people of pre-transition. Suddenly he felt different, the chilly wind bit gently on his naked skin. He became aware of breathing, inhale, exhale, part simulated, part emulated, it felt real.

His limbs didn't respond to simple thought anymore, luckily he knew how to move thanks to a data package he'd once downloaded with a collection. With effort, he began to walk, then run. Slowly, humanly, he crossed the moss field and into the forest.He was already learning a lot about this world. The moss brushed against his skin, producing many new sensations. He ran, and ran, and ran.

He finally made it to the nearest 'tree', not at all similar to the trees imported from the homeworld and widely enjoyed by the classicals. It was completely smooth, no sign of anything resembling bark; the leaves appeared to be massive claws. He realized what he had to do, and reluctantly switched off classical mode; he felt the new sensations disappear, replaced by the same cold, stony, robotic form as before.

With inhuman vision he examined the 'tree' and made a startling discovery, it consumed oxygen and exhaled carbon dioxide. Switching to Xray, he could see a visible bone structure and even the presence of muscles. It wasn't a plant, it was an animal; an animal completely rooted into the ground. He suddenly realized that this planet would definitely require a more detailed investigation, an entire team, maybe even a colony, surely the classicals would be willing to come here.

But then a disturbing notion hit him: if the tree had claws, what was it going to catch?

He took a glance upwards, the sun was low in the sky. Soon it would be dark.

He began to notice small holes in the ground beneath him, somehow he'd completely ignored them before. He peered down into them, no visible end. He stomped the ground hard and it emitted a hollow sound, not good.

Xf39b chose to stay in his pod for the night... A hundred meters above the ground.

 

Part 2 - A Rare Planet

Spoiler

The sun was barely gone when they emerged.

Xf39b watched from the safety of his travel pod, hovering a hundred meters up. He recorded the moment when the creatures emerged from the countless holes in the ground.

They were the inducers of fear and disgust. Ugly, insect-like creatures with black exoskeletons and giant mandibles, their wings were transparent like a fly's, and they made a terrifying buzzing noise as they flew. Ravenously, they swarmed across the fields of moss, mowing it like a lawn. Within minutes, the entire patch was nothing but a bare area, the moss almost completely cut away.

With a mixture of interest and horror, Xf39b gave rapt attention. As soon as the patch was clear, the swarm moved on to the next; as they flew through the forest that was in between, the trees suddenly came to life. Their claws reaching out like lightning, snatching hundreds of the creatures out of the air with ferocity, then curling inward with their struggling prey and disposing of it in an open cavity on the top of the trunk, the creatures shrieked horrendously before going completely silent, the sound of crushing bones was audible.

This went on for many kiloseconds until the sun finally returned, the surviving creatures rapidly returned to their holes, the smart ones having flown over the forest instead of through. Darwinism at its finest. Perhaps soon they might learn not to fly through the death-trap-forests.

With the night terrors over, he landed again, cautiously. He emerged from the pod and examined the bare ground, the moss was growing back, evidently, it saves its energy in its roots, and heals immediately after a frenzy. Astonished, he looked closer; he identified rapid cellular regrowth, and it was accelerating! He predicted the moss would be grown back to normal height by noon.

This planet was like no other. Very few naturally habitable worlds had ever been discovered, and they all were quite primitive, only single celled life ranging to lichens and invertebrates.

Returning to his pod, he took off again and began an exploration of the planet's diverse environment. It was a rich world, mountains, rivers, valleys, deserts.

He flew over the planet's western continent, a massive desert, not a single bit of greenery in sight. An endless sea of dunes, dotted here and there by an island of rock poking out. On one island he spotted a peculiar formation on one of the rocky islands, three hourglass shaped pillars, each fifty meters high, gleaming white under the sun. He made a landing there, ten meters to the east of the formation.

He liquefied the hull of his pod and climbed out. Everything was extremely bright as the sunlight reflected off the sand, he registered the ground as hot. Seeking a sensation, he switched to classical mode.

He suddenly felt a painful burning feeling, his feet roasted upon the hot sands, his eyes burning in the brightness; but he took no harm, the classical mode was an emulation, he was no less metal and polymers than he was before. He unlocked the customization settings, and deactivated the pain receptors in his feet, then lowered the brightness of his vision. Much better.

He crossed the sand onto the small outcropping. The towers felt even bigger up close, they were extremely smooth, not a single scratch or imperfection, they were like glass. This was obviously not a natural construct.

At the base of each pillar was a ring of inscribed symbols. Xf39b's historical package told him it was writing, but he couldn't recognize the language or alphabet, it didn't seem to be human. But it meant something even greater, intelligent life! intelligent alien life had not been seen since the Andromeda Massacre.

anything of He bolted back to his pod and quickly transmitted a message to the nearest outpost, he included the exact location of the columns and requested a research team, it would take a few hundred years though. But this planet was important.

He ran his fingers in awe against the surface of the column facing east. Then he noticed a small pool of sand in the middle of the rock island, it was suspiciously squarish in shape. With cupped hands, he scooped the sand out. As the sand thinned, an elongated metal loop became visible, it appeared to be a handle. He grabbed it and attempted to turn it, it was stuck.

After several other attempts to unlock it by pulling it, pushing it, and turning it the other way. He switched out of classical mode and tried turning it again, it came out easily. Revealing a long dark tunnel, no sign of a ladder or other assistance method for safely going up or down, he assumed it to be a trash disposal. He jumped down into the shaft.

Almost immediately he lost nearly all velocity, slowed to a crawl. No magnetic field, no  His data packages gave him only one answer. He was descending on gravitic support!

His thoughts went wild. What civilization had gravitics? Nobody had experimented with gravitics for eons. The last known attempts had barely born any fruit.

Could they have somehow succeeded? He wondered. No. The Loss happened several megaseconds before the final test was scheduled, and nothing was gleaned from orphaned Luna.

He descended very slowly but had already gone quite far, the opening was just a spec of light above him. Even at every wavelength, he couldn't quite discern the bottom, the shaft went on down a seemingly infinite distance.

He continued to wonder who might have built this astonishing place. Aliens? Perhaps the research team had escaped whatever caused Terra to disappear and came here. But why here? Why not any of the nearby outposts and colonies that were unaffected? No solution he came up with could answer all of his questions, no ideas as to whom built it, or why; no clues, no evidence. He didn't know enough.

 

Part 3 - Tomb of the Aquila

Spoiler

The air became staler and mustier as he descended. No matter, he didn't need to breathe anyway.

The light above became harder and harder to see. Becoming a point like a star, then less, until there was nothing left.

Kiloseconds flowed by like seconds as XF39B slowed his rate of conscious thought. The floor became visible on infrared, it was a tiny speck from the distance, but it rapidly grew.

Xf39b was apprehensive. The smell of decay was detected by his sensors, human decay.

The floor went from a point to a circle beneath him. Soon he emerged from it and touched the cold, hard, stone floor. He restored his average time perception and looked around.

It was like a lobby, a central room leading into many others. The decay assaulted his sensors continuously.

He examined the walls closely, they had been carved by robots with lasers, no manual methods would have made them this amazingly smooth. They had a texture that was almost glassy. He wandered through the corridors, checking each room; a mess hall, a lavatory, a library, a command center, and numerous rooms with bunks, along with several maintenance shafts. No living human beings in sight, of any kind.

He made his way across the final hall. It led to a hanger of some sort, it was a massive room with huge steel doors. He had not seen them while flying, they must've been covered by sand. Held in the strong grip of landing claws, was an antiquated spacecraft. He circled it, examining its every detail.

A cylindrical hull tapering at the bow. RF Resonant Cavity Thrusters, and a set of chemical engines for quick burns. A name, USS Aquila, belonging to the Space-Corps of a long-dead faction of a long lost planet. A primitive kinetic railgun was mounted along the upper keel. It showed only basic landing capabilities. The smell of decay was stronger in this hangar.

There was a door on the underbelly of the ship. Xf39b grabbed the handle and pulled it open, the door lowered to the floor, becoming a ramp. The smell suddenly became explosively more pungent. There was death on this ship. With slight reluctance, Xf39b climbed the ramp into the ship.

The interior was dull, most of the systems had decayed. There were several robots laying about, decayed beyond functionality. The smell was stronger than ever, it came from a room down the main corridor. 

Xf39b investigated this. The door to the room hung limply, its seal and hinges broke beyond repair. He effortlessly swung it open, revealing a small room, coffin-like boxes covering the floor with a little bit of walking room in-between. Each box was draped with a barely legible plastic garment, the flag of a dead country. Xf39b lifted the flag gently from one of the boxes, it was an old cryotube, obviously broken, evidently damaged by the impact rather than long-term decay.

Inside it were mummified human remains. It wore the tattered remnants of a Space-Corps uniform, the name tag read, "Alvis", but it bore no rank insignia.

He checked the other six pods, five of them were broken, their passengers long dead. But one of them was empty, its hatch laying to the side; Somebody survived, but who? And how long ago? Are they still alive?

He stood there staring down at the empty pod, contemplating. He chose to look into his history package. The Aquila had been a patrol ship belonging to the United States Space-Corps, launched in 2861CE according to the calendar used during the latter end of the transitionary era. it had been assigned to carry a team of scientists to a safe distance from Terra for a test of experimental gravitics. The Aquila had disappeared shortly after departure, its last messages being nothing more than cryptic status data from the main computer.

Xf39b searched the ship and finally managed to locate the crystalline black-box, it was completely intact. Then he zoomed his vision inward and read the laser-engraved binary data, with knowledge of the encoding methods used at the time, he decoded the binary and compiled it into a data pack, he then applied it to his consciousness.

Information flowed into his memory. 

 

A Billion Years (Old Measurement) Before:

"Hand me the chip will you, Jean?" Asked Dr. Micheal Halsey. His close friend, Jean Alvis, nodded and grabbed the computer chip that Halsey had been pointing to. Halsey soldered the chip onto the main motherboard of the gravitic prototype.

"I think that's enough work for today," Halsey remarked, his hands black with the lubricant oil of the machine. Jean agreed, and they went off to the mess hall for a meal.

Halsey quickly washed his hands at the communal sink. Then they each took sandwiches and sat down at the corner table that they frequently sat at.

Between bites, they busily discussed the political situation back on Earth as well as the process of terraforming on the other planets. Despite having had the technology for interstellar travel for eight-hundred years, early explorers found it not to be worth the effort. 

A tall, thin, authoritative figure walked into the room, he scanned it momentarily before spotting the pair, he quickly strode towards them.

"May I join you?" Asked Captain Jimmy Nevil. Halsey and Alvis nodded assent, and the Captain took a seat next to Alvis.

Twirling a plastic spoon in his fingers, the Captain smiled nervously, "All this 'Gravitics' stuff is making me uneasy. Movement without acceleration doesn't sound very good to me."

Alvis cleared the peanut butter from his throat. "Why doesn't it? No g-forces! We can go as fast as we want without becoming splatters on a wall!"

"Just think about it Cap," said Halsey, putting down his sandwich. "We can go at any velocity! We can jump from orbital velocity to ninety-nine percent C! We could rule the universe."

Alvis attempted to pile on further when the ship was rocked by a sudden shaking. "Wha-" he tried to say before the entire ship erupted in alarm klaxons.

Captain Nevil's face showed both shock and vindication before standing up and darting to the bridge. "What the hell's going on?" he screamed at the top of his lungs, "Are we under atta-" he cut himself off noticing view out of the forward window, the stars moved, And the distant clouds of nebula gas were twisting and turning.

Halsey and Alvis quickly came up to the bridge. "Sir..." said Halsey, a deep feeling of dread coming over him. "It's the gravitic generator, something's wrong."

Alvis, still in shock, confessed. "Mike, I think I gave you the wrong chip."

Nevil's hands were trembling, he pulled a picture of his family out of a concealed pocket of his uniform. His legs buckled, and his face turned pale.

The trio stood in horror on the bridge, looking out at the stars. The navigation system showed they were traveling at near-C, thousands of light years from home, and thousands of years into the future.

Captain Nevil fell to his knees and threw the picture to a corner of the bridge. It was useless now, everyone he'd ever known had turned to dust, and blown away in the wind.

 

 

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