I miss blue. How long has it been? The 'Superlux' was all shiny, dark carbon nanofiber, the depths of space the color of nothing, and this planet nothing but green. I only remember blue from home, from an Earth I'll never see again.
Such arrogant masters of knowledge we humans are. We thought we knew every secret that nature possessed. That arrogance built the 'Superlux' to take us to the stars and instead we flew headlong into our ignorance. . .
Despair mixed with hope felt uncomfortably like panic. Everyone was gathered in 'Superlux's galley, sitting at the dining table except for the Mission Commander. They looked ready to stampede, but not ready to speak. Dr. Jeff Blayne finally stood up.
"To answer your question, Commander - no, we can't know," Jeff stated quietly. "I don't have the time or genius to even postulate a theory as to why this happened. What we thought we knew about spacetime is incomplete."
"Thank you, Dr. Blayne," said Commander Vince Lematt from where he slouched against the hatch to the central passageway. "So, it's like those original explorers, like Magellan and all the rest. We're lost, off the map here, and anything we do is new." He stood straight and tugged his mission jacket. "We're going back."
"Okay," said Jeff, standing as well. The rest of the ten crewmembers seemed frozen in various postures of exhaustion. "I'll work up a course profile factoring in for the 1,000 years we seem to have lost."
"No, Doc," Vince said, a ragged edge on his firm voice. "I'm going to reverse the original mission profile, try to run an exact mirror course."
I miss them. They wanted me to go back with them, but I couldn't bear the thought of returning to Earth 2,000 years after my birth. Dropping a Neanderthal into the 21st century would be easier - everything would be incomprehensible. Mankind could even be gone. Earth is dead to me and I could not bring myself to face that. . .
They named the new planet Emerald until they discovered what had happened; if they talked about it at all after that, they just called it 'down there.' Science missions needed to be done down there, so the mission specialists nominally pursued them as the flight crew prepared 'Superlux' for their attempted return to Earth.
Commander Lematt found Dr. Cynthia Stewart standing at the nearby beach, gazing at the distant green horizon. She spent much of her time there; most of her science projects involved life, useless on this dead planet. He stood beside her quietly for a long time before speaking.
"Cindy, are you sure?" He watched closely until she nodded. "I can send the lander back down on auto-pilot."
"Vic, don't. We talked about this already." Cindy crossed her arms, half turned toward the Commander. "You might need it and I certainly won't. Good luck. Goodbye." They walked away in opposite directions.
I miss home. Star positions changed so much that we couldn't find Sol, so I don't even have that to look at. Home. . .
"The membrane of spacetime is hugely thinner between stars than science ever predicted," said Dr. Blayne to the press conference. "The mass of our spaceship 'Superlux' deformed that membrane so much that we literally fell off the edge of our Solar System. We exceeded the speed of light falling into our own singularity, resulting in motion through both time and space." A reporter surged to his feet.
"Really, Dr. Blayne? Time travel?" The moderator's threat to holographically block the reporter from the rest of the interview stirred some discord, but Jeff offered to answer. He continued when the reporters grew quiet.
"Yes, time travel, in a way, but not a way we can use." For a moment he considered the explanation. "The direction of this time travel is forward, into the future, but at the same time the traveller loses temporal energy; that is, time dilation occurs. We seemed to be in the future on Emerald, but moving so slowly through time we could never travel fast enough to take advantage. Only Commander Victor Lematt's intuitive leap to exactly reverse course made our return possible."
Later, over dinner, Jeff had another interview, this one with Vic.
"Not right away, but eventually, yes," Jeff said over coffee. "Say, two years for development and testing, another couple to build a ship. But, like I said, it won't help Cindy."
"Because she's still in dilation," Vic said wearily.
"Exactly," said Jeff. "We won't be able to interact with her at all."
"And if we try to repeat the original 'Superlux' mission, five or six years would have passed and she'd be dead because we only left her a year of supplies." He pushed his half-finished dinner aside.
"Right now she's alive," Jeff said sternly. "When the new Balanced FTL ships get there she'll still be alive." He leaned on his elbows to look Vic in the eye. "Listen, she'll be one of the most researched objects in the galaxy. We may eventually discover how to get her out of the dilation effect."
"What the hell do we do until then?"
Jeff sat back and crossed his arms. "We make sure the world doesn't forget her or us."
Five years later, both men watched the launch of 'Transluminal' from the bridge.
I miss Vic. Maybe they made it back. . .
The ships came and buildings sprang up like weeds - labs, dormitories, recreation halls. A spaceport was built, became a major hub of human star travel. Jeff guided research into Cindy's condition until he was buried near the original camp. Research station and spaceport coelesced into a city of drifting buildings, which spread into a crystaline megatropolis reaching up into orbit and down to the magma. Cindy remained, a relic of forgotten times.
I miss. . .
In an eyeblink the city became ruin, then rubble, then part of the patient green landscape. Plants introduced by man struggled, spread, but eventually failed and died. Cindy remained, never moving but now miles from the beach.
I. . .
The beach swept back to Cindy's feet, like a wave of sand. A passing dark planet lost a tiny moon to Emerald's sun, a moon which orbited less than a thousand times before impacting Emerald. Chemicals from the moon and volcanic activity muddied the eternal green and again life was born to lifelessness. It spread and evolved until sea and land teemed with all manner of beast.
miss. . .
The green landscape warped and buckled, the beach waxing and waning like an uneasy sea. An intelligent race of cephalopods crawled from the sea, evolved to greatness, worshipped the eternal Cindy until they, like man and many others before them, passed on to transcendance. Their existence disappeared in an instant and the green returned. Cindy remained as the outrush of energy and matter in the universe reversed and became a torrent pouring back to the center of everything, a maelstrom that ripped apart the planet as infinity fell back into itself.
blue. . .
The End
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