02: Otherworldly Catastrophes

The transition, while transparent to Eric Morgan, left him dazed. Before he was even aware he’d successfully jumped trillions of miles, the ship’s alarms blared, alerting him that something was wrong.

Scrambling, he checked the various displays. Despite being largely automated, the capsule was arrayed with a variety of sensors to record this region to correlate where he’d ended up with their observations of the nearby galaxies. He scanned down a list of problems with the craft: “Structural Integrity Compromised”, “Unexpected Forces Affecting Craft Performance”, “Unable to Stabilize”. As he wrestled with what was happening, he was blinded as the interior was bathed in brilliant lights from outside.

If he wasn’t distracted by the alarms—necessitating immediate action—he’d have remembered to close his eyes to avoid this problem. As he groped for the display he couldn’t see, squeezing his eyes closed too late to do any good, he recalled what happened. In order to record the success of the trip, the ship was equipped with a massive array of lights to shine in a direct beam for home. The idea was, after he returned, the Earth would receive visual confirmation in another ten years when the signal reached Earth. It was designed to reinforce for everyone how phenomenal the distances were.

The majority of his ship was dedicated to the massive beacon and the power cells to operate it. There wasn’t much need for life support since he was only expected to be gone a matter of minutes. Generating enough illumination to be visible ten light years out required a tremendous power outlay. Most of his remaining time was waiting for the systems to regenerate the energy needed to return.

The lights clicked off, though his vision was slow to recover. Meanwhile, the clarion calls of multiple alarms continued. Eric was desperate to discover what was wrong. From what he’d read, there was a systematic failure and he was understandably anxious about taking corrective action. However, the ship wasn’t constructed to facilitate repairs, only with getting him there and back. Glancing at his oversized gloves, there wasn’t much he could do even if he had tools.

They’d assured him it would be a safe journey. While teleportation was a risky venture, since two physical objects can’t occupy the same space, NASA patiently informed him about the multiple test drones they’d sent. Each separated by millions of miles and taking images of the region, so they felt secure the area was free of obstructions. Clearly they were wrong about the risks. Deadly wrong!

Cursing, he opened his eyes to almost complete darkness, his pupils still constricted. The dimly lit interior was obscured by floating dots obscuring his limited vision. Like most electronic devices, there was a switch to make the display read its output audibly, designed so he could get updates while doing other things. However, he couldn’t see enough to find the damn thing.

The ship lurched, jarring him. He squinted, trying to force his eyes to adjust—which they did—just not fast enough to do much good.

Another terrible groan echoed as the entire craft shuddered, and he felt himself stretched backwards. Not yanked or pulled, but elongated, as if space itself was stretching in some weird relativity demonstration. He remained firmly strapped into his seat, but the monitor was now farther away than it had been. When he reached out for it, his limbs seemed more distant than they were moments before.

Eric had no idea what was occurring. No one ever warned him of this, since it had never been encountered before. He wondered what unknown hell he’d been thrown into. There was some unforeseen phenomenon here which was not only ripping his ship apart, but affecting the physics which maintained the vessel’s molecular structure.

The capsule’s whine increased in pitch and he heard a couple loud pops, announcing the outer seals bursting. He realized the craft’s limited oxygen content would be sucked from the ship. He reached up to check his suit’s oxygen, but his elongated body wouldn’t respond. His arm took an extremely long time to move, appearing to be moving great distances. His vision cleared, but the display was too far away to read. His arms were moving as quickly as humanly possible, so he pitched forward to bring the suit’s controls to his gloves.

A high-pitched whistle announced the evacuation of the ship’s oxygen, and everything not tied down began to fly across the ship, only to bounce back when they struck the craft’s walls. Although he had no reason to doubt his suit, with his hand half way to his helmet’s controls, he took a deep breath of the remaining oxygen.

He understood it was a futile action. The capsule wasn’t designed for a lengthy deployment and hadn’t been equipped with a mechanism to exit the ship. Whatever air was available in his suit wouldn’t mean much. What’s twenty minutes of oxygen when you’re trillions of miles from the nearest rescue? They wouldn’t even realize he was in trouble until he’d been dead and adrift in space. Still, he soldiered on because, frankly, there wasn’t any other option. When your life is on the line and you’re staring death in the face, you don’t quibble over how many moments you may have left. You grab any last second you can and hope it’ll be enough.

Convinced his suit’s air was working, he glanced up. The display he’d been so concerned with seemed incredibly distant. So far away, he could barely make out the dim glow of its screen. A random nut smashed into the corner of the screen, shattering the upper left corner, but it wouldn’t make much difference now. Another groan, followed by a large crack and the screen went blank as the capsule’s power cables snapped. So much for returning to safety!

The shriek of grinding metal pierced his ears, as he was further stretched towards some unseen point. His vision began to dim. He couldn’t tell if it was from the strain, or if he was witnessing actual events. It appeared the entire ship was losing its molecular stability, and the physical structures around him dissolved before his eyes.

Realizing there was no way to save his life, and no way to try, even if he understood what was happening, he thought of everything he’d left behind. With no immediate family, partially why he’d been selected for this mission, he hoped there was someone who’d care what happened to him. He wished he could see his wife—ex-wife, he reminded himself—or his sister and niece, but realized there was no hope of that. He was trillions of miles away, and it would take ten full years for the faint glow of his arrival to appear. Without sending another probe, they wouldn’t even know whether he was here or somewhere billions of miles further out in space. Even if they could identify what happened, they’d have no way to understand what occurred.