The government of my native country created a program dedicated to overtaking those at the frontier of space exploration. The program name was loosely translated as ‘Project Sun Chariot.’
I was selected to command the crew in charge of carrying out this project.
Three years ago today, we launched into space. Aboard my shuttle was Pine, our pilot, and Willow, flight engineer.
The nature of our intimacy was strictly business. Training for space required being comfortable in silence, and that’s how we worked over the next hours, docking with the ISS. Red waited inside.
Of all of us, Red had the least experience. He was young but a special case. His mother had immigrated to the U.S. with him still in her womb. He was raised with the goal of infiltrating the space program of the United States, all for the sake of this mission.
Red had prepared drinks for us. He had poured whisky into sealed beverage pouches and we saluted through straws. Willow went to communicate with our officers on ground of our arrival.
Red was our mission payload specialist. Assigned his own duties, the rest of the crew including myself were left in the dark about what Red was here for.
Through the whisky burn in my throat, I spoke.
“I was worried. Your friend looked strong.”
“Not my friend. And not strong enough.”
I finished my drink and gestured.
“Show me.”
We left Pine with the liquor and Red guided me to the back of the station. He placed his hand on a door and opened it with sarcastic flair. Inside, taped against the wall to prevent him from floating in zero-g, was a man sealed in plastic.
His eyes stared at nothing and sagged; his mouth hung open stupidly. There was a wicked slash in his neck, deep enough to see his spine. Blood nearly filled the airtight plastic.
“What happened to the cyanide.”
Red shrugged.
“I lost it.”
“You’re sick.”
The astronaut only chuckled.
I pushed him out of the way and looked in deeper.
“Where is the other?”
Red began to walk away back down the hall. “It’s done. We’re here aren’t we?”
Our visit to the ISS was scheduled directly after the American’s time slot. Red was a part of the American’s crew. Him and two others were supposed to stay on the station until the next U.S. mission came and picked them up. Unfortunately for them, it was us who arrived.
We returned to the kitchen to find Willow and Pine had all but finished the whisky. I held my anger. This next part would be easy.
It is common knowledge that the universe is expanding at a rapid rate. So fast that at certain points it rivals even the speed of light. This phenomenon presents a paradox to physicists’ claims that nothing can exceed light speed.
And this is where we went wrong in the pursuit of space voyage. It was never about beating the speed of light. It was about expanding space itself.
That’s all I know of the science behind the device. My expertise is in its operation.
The chrome contraption was brought to the approximate center of the station. Similar to a coffin in both shape and size, the device was constructed by us but not designed.
In 1981, one of our probes received a communication. Not a dialogue of any kind but blueprints for two devices. One would allow us to fling a message back into deep space towards its source. The other was the key to space travel. It took us 10 years to translate it and 20 more years to build.
After three decades we wrote back. We thanked them and asked many questions: who they were, where they hailed from, how they found us. When we heard back we were astounded.
There were coordinates and a projection. Some sort of 4D model of a world. The model initially showed a beautiful planet with a large ocean, a pair of moons and inside a large solar system orbiting a white sun. But the projection would also zoom in, close enough to see countries, cities, structures, and even the inhabitants.
When you look at the flickering rock made from purple light you can smell the air, feel the warmth, even hear the laughter of the beings within
Their anatomy is completely strange. They have a blue hue and four legs connecting to an upright torso. Their arms are long and have what seem to be another ball-and-socket or shoulder joint a little bit more distal from where an elbow would be. Broad heads rest on thick necks and their faces consist of a flattened nose, a lipless mouth and three eyes located at equivalent distances around their head.
They terrified us. But we also saw how they treated their world. Crime nonexistent, prejudice unheard of, war something only imagined in the books they read, and pollution ancient history after committing to renewable resources. The planet they live on provides the energy they need for their technology, of which they surpass humans in every field by an immense distance.
We did not inform the U.N. about our communication with them. We waited for others to come forward with news of alien contact. When no one did, we had to assume the other superpowers had also received the communication and were sitting on it like ourselves.
What we knew for certain is that the first to establish relations with the extraterrestrials would become the dominant force on Earth.
When we returned, we would be hailed as champions, pioneers, even prophets. It rested on our shoulders.
Four feet in length and width and two feet tall, the device had two terminals, one at each end, where operators would input coordinates.
At this point in time, I can admit to some fault. I could notice a slight sway in Pine as we input coordinates. That alone wasn’t enough to convince me he was inept and I vastly overestimated his competence.
Willow radioed and gave us the ready signal. After we locked our coordinates, Pine and I placed our hands on the cold pads at each end and pressed in unison.
There was a warmth that began to grow from inside, rapidly heating my palm just to the point of it being unbearable. Jumping to our feet we ran towards the docking station and strapped ourselves into the shuttle.
We had tested this thousands of times on live specimen. Insects and rats, then cats, dogs, monkeys, human cadavers and eventually a living person. These specimen could travel immense distances in a fraction of a second and with no lasting damage– physical or mental – occurring. The cumulative success rate of our lab was 98%.
The results of our very few and very tragic clinical failures uncovered an area of concern. When blood pressure reaches around 150/90 mmHg, expansion travel could be catastrophic for a living organism. In states of agitation, where molecules and biological processes are moving at rates far above average, expansion travel invites erratic instability and mutations between the organisms initial and resulting form.
10 seconds were left. I used a breathing technique taught to us back home. A deep breath through my nose until I couldn’t anymore, then another sharp inhale past that threshold. I held it for a second, then exhaled, slow, releasing all the air through my mouth until my lungs hurt.
3…
2…
1…
The briefest moment, so quick it felt like a dream or distant memory the second it passed. In that moment, there was pain. Vivid, alive; it possessed my brain and it burned and ate and bubbled. I went to shriek but the noise died in my throat. As real as it was, the moment passed, like all do and suddenly we were somewhere else.
Somewhere wrong.
“What the hell is this?”
Red unfastened himself and stood at the viewing port. Willow followed.
“They lied.”
I had never seen space so black before. Outside the window, was nothing, not even distant stars. I’ve never had a fear of the universe or isolation, but this unsettled me terribly.
“Pine. Coordinates.”
He had been staring at the monitor screens and jumped at the sound of my voice.
“It says ‘1-32-001-010-9901’.”
“How did we get so far?”
“What the hell did you put into the Expander?” I demanded.
Pine began to tremble. “I used the numbers you told me!”
Red started towards Pine.
The Space Expander had an absurd cool down period. After about a week it was considered reliably functioning again.
“You fucking idiot. GOD DAMN IT!”
“Look,” Willow said. “There.”
A blot on one of the monitors indicated something massive opposite our craft.
We were forced to move onto the ISS to find another viewing port. While our eyes adjusted we couldn’t see it. Gigantic dark blue, it was the only object besides us hanging in the nothingness. On the black canvas of space the planey was a navy sphere, scarcely illuminated.
I retreated into the hallway.
This ordeal was out of hand and threatening to slip away into utter chaos. Cautious of our next move, I found myself in the control room attempting to brief with the heads back home.
Red had locked comms between the station and all other countries except ours. We didn’t know if it would work from that far away, and I had a gnawing ache in my chest as I tapped out our own unique form of Morse Code.
Within minutes, there was a response. By then Red, Willow, and Pine were hovering over my shoulder, all of us focused on translating the message coming through.
They told us this:
“A M E R I C A N S K N O W L A N D A N D R E P O R T F I N D I N G S N O T I M E”
There was silence before Red spoke up.
“Then they can look for themselves. We don’t know anything. Do they even know?”
I typed again, explaining further our situation. I also relayed the coordinates of our ship and asked them to pinpoint our location to the best of their ability.
After another few minutes of silence, we received a final message.
“T H E V O I D A M E R I C A N S K N O W L A N D A N D R E P O R T F I N D I N G S”
The crux of our situation was leverage through results. If we didn’t produce anything that would prevent an all-out war, we may not have had a home to return to.
And so, we prepped for landing.
We initiated thrusters to push the ISS and our shuttle into a rotational spin. The centripetal force would provide artificial gravity. It felt good to be able to walk again.
Willow and Pine were busy ants, scurrying about to ready the ship, when Red asked to talk aboard the ISS.
We sat at the kitchen. Red ate an apple, slicing its red skin with a pocketknife.
“I will wait here,” he said simply.
“What, with me?” I asked, almost amused. The rest of the crew would land the ship onto the planet while I remained on the ISS to monitor and report further updates. My safety was nearly guaranteed.
Red nodded. “Or you go. I can handle operations from here.”
“And your payload?”
“I said I can handle it from here.” Red smacked the table with his knife still in hand. I snatched his wrist pulling him over the table towards me.
His arm flexed, in a struggle to control the blade. I locked his other arm and pulled it down, hard. Red was splayed over the table, prone and flopping like a fish.
I whispered into his ear, “No, you will –”
But Red barked and continued to twist, until I brought his blade in front of his eyes. Still in his own hand, it scraped down the side of his face, shaving scruff until it found his neck. I made sure to push the broad end with an uncomfortable amount of pressure onto his larynx.
“Listen you mutt,” I snarled. “You misremember who I am. They have you believe yourself as some wunderkind, you forget your place. You have only given me good reasons to cut you; the next one is your last.”
A look in Red’s eyes did not satisfy me.
The noise of the table flipping surely reached Willow and Pine. Now a heap on the ground, I stepped all my weight onto his hand. Wrenched out of his grip in the struggle, I brought Red’s blade onto his pinky and stamped hard.
Blood ejected from his hand in the same way a child’s water gun sprays out its contents. That first spurt nearly traveled the length of the room. Red gasped in shock, and then pain. He grasped his wrist and rolled onto his knees, his forehead pushed onto the ground.
I circled him until he knelt before me. The sticky redness continued to flow, in subsequent shorter and less forceful pumps.
“When I step in shit, you lick my boots clean. And if I say you are landing with the ship, you land with the fucking ship.”
Shaking, Red raised his bloodshot eyes. His pale forehead was slick with sweat. I pitied him enough to leave before he responded. On the way out I told him to clean his mess.
Over the next hour I scrutinized Willow and Pine. There would be no more fuck-ups.
Red returned after fifteen minutes and strapped himself into a chair. No one minded that he did not help.
The ship departed after another hour. Willow, Pine, and Red detached from the ISS and floated toward the dark navy planet. Nearly twice the size of Earth, its pull had dragged us into orbit not long after we expanded.
“Do you copy, Captain? Over.”
I sipped a hot coffee from the station watching while the planet absorbed the ship. The temporary gravity from the rotating ISS allowed me to enjoy my drink from a mug.
“Affirmative, Pine, over.”
With some time before they reached the surface, I looked on the planet from the void.
We were in the Boötes Void, a supervoid in the universe, where the saturation of galaxies is so abnormally low, it’s considered a hole in space.
This planet was home to the loneliest place in the universe.
I decided to try and give it a name. I liked Glacies, Latin for ice.
“In a moment we will be free of the clouds, over,” Pine said over radio.
“Please, tell me when you do, over.”
A couple of minutes passed.
“Err, Captain?”
“Yes. What is it? Over.”
“It’s water. There’s water everywhere. Over.”
“Water? What is the temperature? Over.”
Based off location, size, and color, I would’ve argued that the temperature should be around -230 degrees Celsius or -382 Fahrenheit. When Pine declared a reading of 66 degrees Fahrenheit, I was incredulous.
“Take it again.”
My faith in Pine had dwindled dangerously low since we began our voyage but it was Willow this time who recited the temperature readings. Again, 66 degrees.
“The video display should come through momentarily, over,” Willow said.
I waited for the monitor in front of me to develop.
“There is nothing, Willow, over.”
“It says its streaming, over.”
Before I could question the competence of my entire crew the screen exploded with light like a flashbang. The audio running through the monitor sounded like a train passing inches away. I jerked my head away and covered my eyes. The sudden polar switch in contrast stunned me.
I looked again to find the source of the noise and light.
It was thunder and lightning, churning like an army of industrial machines and cleaving the sky into fractals allowing visual of a warring sea below. No land, just furious water. Colossal waterspouts and salty tornadoes charged over dozens of currents battling for control. Based on the ship’s altitude, waves upwards of five hundred feet tall, stormed across the black surface and crashed into each other catapulting froth and water into the sky. The sky was choked by one mass of black smoky cloud that continuously spit rain and electricity.
Astounded, I slumped into my seat. I checked again the space around the ISS, both visually and via monitor. With the lack of stars, we had prepared to land on an ice giant. What was heating this planet enough to sustain an unfrozen ocean?
Through the monitor I watched as Pine navigated the ship through the foreign sky. The violent weather didn’t allow them to descend further.
“We can’t make much of a landi – there is nothing here, lets go.”
Voices clashed on the other end of the radio.
“Continue surveying until my say, over” I clarified.
We had to keep looking. For the sake of our future.
“It’s a large planet, we’ll find something, over,” I said.
Eventually we did.
Pine flew the craft for a few hours, heading in the direction sensors indicated an increase in temperature. Meanwhile, we studied the raging planet below.
There was no way for light to penetrate the choking clouds even if the planet did have an adjacent sun. The ship was guided by its own headlights that did little to cast away the dense night relying more on intermittent flashes of lightning instead.
During these moments, I could see huge areas of the ocean a couple square miles in size shifting elevations. Sometimes it would sink below the average level before being filled in. Or sometimes it would rise, where the water began to bulge as if something were about to breach the surface. Sometimes odd shadows cast beneath the surface when the herculean bolts of lightning flared across the sky.
From my terminal I could also access the body cameras fitted to each crewmember’s suit.
Pine, Willow, and Red hadn’t moved much throughout the journey. Red remained slouched in his chair as he was during departure. He gripped one of his gloved hands tightly.
Soon, another flash of lightning revealed a structure in the distant water.
“Captain,-”
“I see it, over.”
“Temperature peaks here,” Willow said.
The wrath of the sea was mild here. A circular grey structure rose out about a hundred feet out of the water. It’s shape was similar to a water tower you would find in the suburbs. Pillars supported its main body reaching out from beneath the excited waves. A circular platform extended from beneath the main body of the structure, before leading into stairs, which rose another 80 feet or so in colosseum-like fashion.
A divide between the stairs expanded the platform into what was unmistakably, a landing area.
“Waiting on you, Captain, over,” Pine said.
“We land, now, over” I replied with a smile.
Our problem had all but been solved. This was a huge glowing sign of intelligent life. What we were looking for.
At the time, I foolishly thanked God. Now, I curse him.
During a period of relative calm, Pine descended the ship. Relative is the operative term. The waves were still 50 feet high, and in the distance monstrous weather patterns could be observed in awe. Rain hammered the ship, and the water continued to act as though it was alive.
When the craft made contact with the landing platform, Willow reported an entrance to the silo-like erection. A door was carved into the grey wall of the structure.
Inside the craft, the crew prepared to walk. They seemed nervous. Pine fumbled over his clasps with shaky hands. Willow checked her suit three, four, then five times.
Though, Red’s behavior had been abnormal since our confrontation on the ISS. He was only turning his suit’s flashlight, on and off, on and off.
I scanned the ship camera again. I could rotate its field of vision to allow a 360 degrees scope. I waited for the lightning to see. From the front, there was nothing notable. I turned the camera around and waited again.
The screen was black for a while. There was a whisper it sounded like, through the audio. I thought someone on the crew was talking until I checked on their silent progress. A few minutes I sat with anxiety scratching my stomach while the sound grew from a whisper to a hiss. My instinct knew it was wrong. I wonder what an extra minute would have meant.
When light flashed again, a wall of water was revealed. A liquid mountain, fit with snowcapped peaks of foam and ocean cream, bore down on the unaware crew.
My body’s sympathetic nervous system lit up like fireworks. Reaching for the radio switch, I sent another freshly brewed coffee spraying across myself. The scalding liquid made me jump out of my seat. Swiping it away, I slammed the voice switch and bellowed.
“WAVE! ROGUE WAVE SIX O’CLOCK!”
Everyone inside the ship, froze. They had finished dressing and the entrance to the craft was halfway open.
Red’s intuition was what saved him. He moved first, and fast, clambering out of the ship and turned to face the unstoppable force of nature. He barely looked for a second.
Pine and Willow began to scramble while Red sprinted down the platform towards the structure. By then the wave had halved the distance between them.
The ship would be unable to take off until its entrance was closed again. The only chance to survive was to make it inside the structure.
“FOOLS, GO NOW!”
Red had considerable distance on them and his physical shape was evidenced by his speed. The suits add considerable weight to the wearer, and Willow and Pine were most affected.
Lightning flashed again. The water level plummeted as the titan wave drew in the ocean around it, increasing its size to staggering proportions. Cascades of water began to drop from its mass, some dousing the ship. The wave was upon them.
Red had reached the structure and was fumbling with the door. Through his camera, I could see vaguely recognizable symbols etched into the metal.
He turned, saw the wave, and renewed his efforts.
The water enveloped the ship, and began swallowing the platform at immense speed.
Pine had pulled ahead of a wheezing Willow.
Red screamed and beat the door with his hands.
“MOVE!” Pine roared.
Without breaking stride, Pine smashed into the door at full speed. Brute force was the key and it pushed open wide enough for Red and Pine to slip through. On his feet, Pine turned back and shouted for Willow.
“HERE! YOU’RE HERE!”
Pine reached out. Lightning briefly lit the sky again and from Pine’s body camera there was Willow, arms flailing, legs pumping against the black wall.
Then, Pine’s camera was sent spinning. Red had thrown him inside. He was pushing the door close.
“wait!” Willow gasped with her last breath.
The door clamped shut. Both men braced for impact. When the wave hit, their cameras rattled to the sounds of war.
I half expected everything to be swept away. It took five minutes for the entirety of the wave to pass, but the structure remained standing. I could see Red and Pine through their body cameras, sprawled over the floor, heaving air.
“Captain.”
It was Pine, on his knees.
“Captain, where is Willow? Did she make it?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Red said.
Pine dropped his head to the floor and wept. There may have been something between them.
Red, that bastard, shook his head in disgust.
“Pine, I –”
I started but was distracted. Willow’s camera was still on. There wasn’t much to see, mostly black, I could only describe it as some sort of commotion. A particularly loud crack of thunder that was picked up by Red and Pine’s camera audio, was only barely heard through Willow’s.
Then a piercing light; the flashlight on Willow’s suit turned on. She was underwater. And alive. The beam dimly lit a thrashing mess of arms and bubbles. I switched the communication so I was only speaking with her.
“Willow! Willow, answer me.”
Static muffled her but I could hear her voice. The suit would allow her to breathe until its oxygen expired.
“Willow!”
From somewhere far off an odd glow began to spill a warm radiance until the flashlight was useless. The area around Willow became discernible.
“-YOU HEAR ME! HELP!”
“Willow, I hear you, I can hear you. Calm down”
“Thank God, Captain, I’m underwater I don’t know which way is up.”
“I can see.”
Willow’s camera turned towards the glow. In the murky distance, was a desaturated luminescence, and a ship. It was too far to see through the haze, but even from my view on the screen it looked impossibly large. No, too large to be a ship. It was a sunken land mass. A continent conquered by the ocean.
“Do you see that?” Willow asked.
And then she shrieked. Because it wasn’t a continent either. When the thing began to move, the ocean moved with it, dragging Willow along.
The appendage of something - so immeasurably vast it defied comprehension - unfurled.
Over the radio, shrieking was replaced by laughter. I watched Willow’s camera record her mania while she was swept towards that horrible glow until a loud pop cut the feed.
I sat there stunned. There was no oxygen in the air. I fell out of my chair to the floor, gasping and clawing at myself. My mind, at a crossroads, fought with itself to make sense of what it had seen, on the brink of devolving into complete lunacy. Black splotches spread across my vision, like ink soaking into paper towel.
The whining sound of Pine’s voice called me.
“Is it safe?”
I forced stiff breaths into my chest to stop from passing out. My throat opened and then I was greedily inhaling air into my aching lungs.
“Captain?”
Red and Pine had recovered and studied the walls of the room around them. They hadn’t heard any of it.
Straining, I pulled myself tenderly into my chair. Pine went unanswered while I let oxygen circulate again.
That thing. GOD the thought of it induces panic. But no matter how big, it was still a world away.
Desperate for some sort of order, something to anchor me I reached for the radio switch.
“Continue on. The weather is too violent to leave now. Willow did not make it. We will complete the mission.”