Hyperspace

Hyperspace is a science-fiction/psychological story.  I don't care to focus on technology in my sci-fi, but simply use it as a vessel to . . . explore places no one has gone before.

I really should be punished for that joke.

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*

The entire craft hummed around him as he turned the key in the control board.

He was the only one who carried the key; it was the only way to drop in or out of hyperspace without using the failsafe device.

Alex rubbed his forehead, his skin feeling cool and clammy. He always felt cool and clammy on the ship. He never had really known why. The climate was designed for maximum comfort and to allow maximum efficiency for a hard-working spacer.

He couldn't see as the ship came out of hyperspace. There was nothing to see of it, anyway. It was something completely different from the world he knew. It wasn't enough to even say a human mind could not comprehend it if they saw it, so much as there was nothing to comprehend; it was so alien and different that there was no way to see it because light did not exist in that dimension.

Now that they were back in the comforting cold vacuum, he waved a hand over the sensor panel. It glowed to life, and began to report.

A slight click came from behind him as Nathan came in. They were supposed to all refer to each other by last name and rank, but that had broken down. It always broke down. There was only so long that people could act like drones before they went mad. It had gotten to the point that the companies had even made a chapter in the manuals about how to relax.

It always made him laugh to think of how they described mechanically such things as warm baths and masturbating, as if they were akin to changing a gasket on a machine.

“I felt us come back to reality,” Nathan said, sitting down in the chair next to him. The chair leaned back with him, conforming to him perfectly. Nathan seemed to take to life on the ship better than he had. Alex had been chosen for the role, but he didn't like living on a ship. At least, he preferred living on earth.

Glancing at his co-pilot, he envied the man's ability to just enjoy the chairs. They were supposed to be comfortable, but how he longed for a chair with a hard back. The kind he could just sit in and conform to its shape, not vice-versa.

Everything on this ship was like that. Conforming. Designed to be the ultimate in comfort and efficiency. Somehow, despite being soft and comfortable, though, it all felt cold and lifeless. It had been . . . what, two years since he had felt the texture of wood? Two years since he had been agreed to captain this ship, GE441, or “Sandra” as the crew called her, out.

Their task was as boring as her official designation. People back home thought that space exploration was exciting. He supposed it had been, the first week or so of training. But after years of it, when you finally got up here, everything was so ingrained in you that it was no longer interesting, just a mindless task. Everything, from personal hygiene to eating to ship maintenance.

It was only when you got up here, and realized you were in space, vast emptiness, that you realized that you were just trapped in a plastic tub, bound to do the same thing for years at a time.

Even their mission - which was to sample the mineral content of one of the myriad of new, earth-sized planets discovered by satellites - wasn't exciting. It would have been interesting to go down there, but from all reports it was just a lifeless hunk of rock that happened to be earth size. Despite that, they merely deployed a probe that took the necessary samples, and returned with them. All they had to do was press a button, watch a light turn red, then wait for it to turn green before they could leave again.

A year. It had taken them a year to get there for a mission that took three days to complete. Twenty-seven jumps each way. He had made a mark on the edge of his seat for each one to remember. Each

jump only lasted five days. That was the maximum allowed time in hyperspace. No one knew why, but things that stayed in hyperspace longer than six days never came out. And that was why there was only one key to allow them to enter it, and he was the only one who had it.

Years of tests of his mental health had decided he was the most responsible one to hold onto it. Even Nathan had failed that test, and that man seemed bothered by nothing. He always wondered why they thought he could handle it.

Years ago, they had sent hundreds, if not thousands, of probes into hyperspace to test it. It was a long time before they let a person try it. After all the probes that stayed longer than six days disappeared, they decided it would be safe for a human to stay in hyperspace for no more than five days. And that was why every ship had a failsafe; stay in hyperspace any longer than 120 hours, and it kicked in, forcing the ship back into normal space.

“Alex, your console's beeping.” Nathan didn't even open his eyes as he said it, still reclining in the chair.

“Oh. Right.” He absently punched some buttons that would transfer the relevant sensor information to his screen.

His co-pilot smirked. “You're definitely ready for this mission to be done, huh? Just another two weeks, then you can spend a few years resting.”

Right. Decontamination. Until enough people had done it, they isolated returning crews to make sure there were no dangerous side-effects from their long trips. There were rumours about men who had gone dangerously mad, or contracted bizarre illnesses that defied all known science.

Of course, those were just stories, and he didn't believe them in the slightest.

Looking at his screen, he felt his eyes burn with tiredness. He was supposed to have slept by now, but he always had trouble sleeping in hyperspace.

A lot of people talked about empty space and how terrifyingly alone you felt. He had never felt that, not since he had spent time in hyperspace. The sounds that sometimes echoed through the ship, they were some of the eeriest things he had ever heard. Sometimes he swore balls of light moved through the hallways when he was resting. He had never told anyone what he thought he had seen. They would have locked him in his room if they thought he was going mad.

Worst, his dreams were always disturbing in hyperspace. That much he had confided in Nathan, who had just laughed it off and said it was all in his head.

Being in normal space, however empty it may be, was just comforting to him. He slept better, at least knowing it was a reality he could comprehend.

And yet, he had always wondered why the ship's windows always irised closed whenever they took a jump. If there was no light, then what was the harm in leaving them open so he could stare at the pure blackness of hyperspace?

Everything was explained to an astronaut. They were scientists in their own right. They had to be, in order to do all of the necessary work, and to properly describe things for later transcribing. But no one ever explained why the windows were covered in hyperspace.

He had always dreamed of wedging one open before they jumped. Maybe the computer wouldn't let them jump if a window shutter wouldn't close, he thought. Either way, the computer would see him in the cameras and log his actions. The computer logged everything, from their daily activities, to the amount of time they spent on the john. For posterity.

And something like that, blocking a window open, would be a huge violation of the rules. Doing that would get him arrested when they returned. He imagined he would be declared mad and disappeared, to become a rumour for other spacers to dismiss and secretly fear.

His eyes had been scanning over the data outside of the ship, but nothing about it made sense. Was he more tired than he thought?

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he closed his eyes for a minute.

“Something wrong?” Nathan asked, sitting up more normally. He wasn't alarmed, though.

“Just a bit tired. Trying to interpret this data,” he replied.

“Is it that hard? All it's saying is that it's earth. Just go ahead and let the computer navigate us into the airlock. Nothing hard about it.”

That was easy for him to say. Neither of them had ever really done it. They had just practiced it more times than he could count.

Taking a deep breath, he forced his mind to focus and read the information. Why did this make no sense?

“This isn't earth,” he said, the words surprising himself just as much as Nathan.

“What?”

Alex shook his head. “This data doesn't match earth. It's the right size, but everything else . . . It's another planet. The computer must have made a mistake. We're at a different earth-sized planet.”

“Let me see,” Nathan said, pushing himself uncomfortably close to look at Alex's screen. His tone was more serious than Alex had ever heard it before.

“Take a look,” Alex said, not about to argue over something so trivial. “Global mean temperature is only 7 C. It's supposed to be May, for fuck's sake, temperature should be almost double that. The atmosphere has about 20% less ozone than earth, there are significantly higher readings of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides . . .”

“I can read it!” Nathan snapped. Alex had never heard him snap like that before. He went quiet as his companion looked it over.

“Fuck,” he finally heard the other man say. He leaned back in his seat, but now his face looked pinched and taut. “I guess . . . we take a look at the computer, and figure out how it got the wrong planet. Fix that, then we can go home.”

“I don't understand how this could possibly have happened. We just followed the exact same path we took to get to our target, except to account for Earth's movement.” This was something they had never trained for. Perhaps he should have felt more fear, but he didn't. Only a vague unease. “Computer. Run self-diagnostic, specifically targeting navigational systems.”

Running.

The computer complied. It didn't have a pleasant, cool voice, but only projected the word on a screen. It only took it a few seconds to come back.

All systems operating normally.

That couldn't be. This wasn't earth.

Nathan sat up. “Try this. Computer, please project our path to our objective and back to earth on the screen. Use the star field as a landmark to project proper calculations.”

Both men expected the computer to display that it was unable to process such a request; at least that would have been a clue to the problem. Perhaps an external sensor was malfunctioning. If they knew the problem, they could fix it.

Projection is complete.

The path on the screen was exactly as it was supposed to look. And it led them to exactly where they were, approximately 900,000 kilometers from a planet of earth's size.

But this planet could not be earth.

“Computer . . . Why does the planet below not look like earth?” Alex found his lips and mouth dry as he asked.

Computing.

Nathan leaned forward. Alex imagined his co-pilot's heart was pounding, just as his was. They waited, because it was all they could do.

“This has to be a mistake,” Nathan said. The words broke the tension, but only for a moment. Alex glanced at him, but he felt a jolt and his eyes shot back to the screen as he saw something change on it.

Sensors indicate planet has sustained major atmospheric and temperature changes.

“No shit, sherlock!” Nathan snapped. “That's not earth!”

The computer displayed that it was computing again. Alex couldn't think of anything to say. Now he felt that words were beyond him.

Sensors indicate the planet is earth. All parameters fall within expected ranges for early stages of artificial winter.

“Artificial winter. What on earth do you mean?” Nathan demanded.

Alex found his voice. “That is earth. It's nuclear winter. They launched. From these readings, everyone did.”

The computer continued to show new words, inexorably. Neither man could tear their eyes away, as much as they wanted to.

Sensors indicate artificial winter's cause was nuclear in origin due to the presence of heavy ionizing radiation in the troposphere.

“No!” Nathan yelled, standing up so suddenly his chair fell over. “No, that can't be! Not when we've just gotten back! No!” He pounding his fist onto the screen with a hammer blow, hard enough to make the screen fuzz for a second. But the screen was stronger than him, and returned to normal within a second.

Alex didn't know what to do. There was no training for anything remotely like this. “Nathan, calm down. It's going to be fine-”

“No it's not! Alex, the world's gone! Everyone we know or ever knew is dead. Everyone down there is dead! There's nothing left. Nothing at all. Not if this is right. Even if someone did survive, they will starve to death in a year, if they don't freeze first! Plants won't grow. Everything will die. This is the end. It can't be any more final than this!”

Nathan stumbled over his chair, then leaned against the wall. Heavy sobs began to shake his body.

Alex was quiet a minute. All he could think of was the fact that their superiors were gone. Slowly, he stood. “Computer, prepare the ship for hyperspace jump.”

His co-pilot looked up, his eyes red, face contorted. “Alex, wh-what . . . ?”

“Never mind me, Nathan. I'm just going to go prop open a window.”

*

FINIS