Pins (28)

 

Bakersfield US 
2037

Colour rushed back in. Sophie tripped forward. The geodome cover rippled as rain battered it. She saw Alisdair on his knees. He was scrabbling at the ground. There was another man in a biohazard suit beside him. A faint outline of threads floated above the ground, disappearing as she looked. It was such a relief to be out. Such a relief. She was dripping with sweat inside the hazmat suit. Her whole body trembled. It was as if she had been plunged into a terrible nightmare for several minutes. 

Alisdair stood and jogged towards her. He was breathing heavily. He hadn't told her about any of it beforehand. The sparkling net. The white roots. The distant pillars. He hadn't told her a damn thing.

'Are you well?' he shouted. His gloved hands moved over her. He pressed his visor close to hers. His eyes looked desperate.

'What were those things?' she said, and felt herself welling up. Her legs wobbled, and Alisdair caught her. 

'What things?' he said. The man in the biohazard suit walked over, and helped carry her to the entrance.

'White... stuff,' she mumbled. Her head ached, and she vomited inside her gas mask. Alisdair swore. The two men carried her swiftly over the dark field. Portable lights on tripods cast a spectral glow over the geodome. Alisdair rubbed her back as they pulled her into the tent by the dirt track. Two more men in protective gear lifted her face-piece off, unclipped the mask, and cleaned her up. Alisdair was pacing and wringing his gloved hands.

'You were in for longer than I meant,' he breathed. 'We couldn't get one of the bloody pins out. It just wouldn't give. We had to reposition the whole shape in the end. I can't understand it. I was exact. I'm sure I was exact. I checked and checked. It just wouldn't come out.'

'How long?' Sophie coughed. Alisdair turned his back on her and hung his head.

'It's been three days,' he said. 'I'm so sorry.'

 

 

HD 85512b orbit, Vela Constellation
-

Her cabin was small and dark. Sophie passed her hand over a sensor, and a blue night light came on above the bed. The floating monolith flashed across her mind. The sooty void, dusted with stars. She walked into the bathroom, and darkness seeped around her. She grasped the sink. 

Her reflection was watery and indistinct in the mirror. She lifted a hand to wipe a slick of black drool from her chin. It was so quiet out here. The ship hummed softly around her. She leaned forward and studied her egg-white eyes. As she did so, she saw herself crossing the bedroom behind her in the glass. Her exact replica. She gripped the sink and watched. Her head felt hot. 

She saw herself walking with strange jerky movements, like she was moving in stop-motion through the soft blue wash. She backed away from the mirror, horrified. She closed the bathroom door quietly, and slid down the wall. She sat in the dark, listening to the scratchy shuffling outside.

It felt like everything was broken into little bits. The past was fixed. The past should be fixed. She knew this. It was a given. We remember it. We have history. Traces. This was the time of our experience. We have no memory of the future. There are no traces. 

She teared up, and clasped her palm over her mouth. The scratching moved closer to the bedroom door. She closed her eyes. All those years. All that tramping about and talking and dreaming and loving, for nothing.

She sobbed, stood, and pulled the door open. She stood shaking in the doorway. Her doppelganger was gone. Alisdair was curled up on the floor of the cabin. His face was pasty, and his wrinkles were like doughy rivets. He smiled, and his gums glistened with black fluid.

'We can't keep doing this,' he said.

Sophie edged forward. She caught a freezeframe of the viewscreen. The black monolith. Tiny lights glowing on the vast, smooth column. She saw it again and again, and each time she felt differently, and each time she was different. She knelt down and reached for Alisdair's hand.

'We've been here before,' she whispered.

His face was a grotesque blur.

'Stop,' he said. 'Just fucking stop. We need to be exact. You don't know the repercussions.'

Sophie dropped his hand. She could hear the words, but she couldn't see his mouth. She thought that she remembered the words, but she couldn't be sure. She couldn't be sure if they came before, or after, this moment.

She crawled along the floor, and pulled herself up onto the bed. A fat white root lay across the pillow like a slug. She curled herself into a ball on the duvet.

 

 

HD 85512b orbit, Vela Constellation
2038

The conference room was bright. Alisdair stood as she walked in. The orb was drifting near the ceiling, its fuzzy cloak trailing above their heads. Keys and Walden nodded to her.

'Do you feel better?' Alisdair asked. He looked anxious.

'Yes,' Sophie lied. Alisdair's left eyebrow lifted.

'Did the support bring you breakfast?' he said. Sophie took a seat beside Walden. He was drinking freeze-dried coffee through a straw in a sealed plastic bag.

'Some lovely thermostabilised scrambled eggs,' she said. 'With liquid salt and pepper.'

'Excellent,' Alisdair said. He sat. He did not take his eyes off her. 

'Cards on the table,' he said. Sophie tensed. Keys sat up straight, and folded his hands on the table.

'Like I said yesterday,' Alisdair sighed. 'We need to go to the planet first. I know this seems to deviate from our immediate objective. I know that it may appear slightly amoral. But we have reasons to believe this may be crucial in securing our own health first. And we can't help anyone if we can't help ourselves.'

Walden tapped his coffee bag.

'Makes sense,' he said.

'These organic compounds... ' Alisdair said. He paused and chewed his bottom lip. Sophie lowered her head. She wanted to reach for his hand. Comfort him.

'It's perhaps not the right phrase,' he continued. 'In some ways they're certainly organic, in others they appear synthetic. But by the same hand, this is similar to the assessment that they appear to have been around for an awfully long time. Millennia. In other ways they also appear a new thing. They are fluid in this way.'

'The pins,' Keys said.

Alisdair looked at him and nodded.

'Let's start off basic,' he said. 'Take it right back. Light takes time to come from you to me, so I see you... a little bit in the past. A few nanoseconds. This isn't much. But all the same, I see you right now as you were a few nanoseconds ago. And this effect is cumulative. If I was at home, and you were on Jupiter, I'd see you as you were a few hours ago. If you were near the Sun, I'd see you as you were four years ago. If you were looking at me from where you're sitting, here, now, you'd see me as I was millions and millions of years ago.'

'Uh-huh,' Keys said. His fingers drummed the table. He looked impatient.

'And I would see you in the future,' Alisdair said. Walden threw his hands up.

'Jesus, Alisdair, I - '

'Bear with me,' Alisdair said, raising a hand. 'Now. We all exist in dimensions. We all exist in shapes. Say the shape of the brane our universe exists in has a kind of twist, or crimp, in it. On one side of the twist there's a metric signature with three dimensions of space, and one of time. On the other side there's four dimensions of space, and no time.'

'Time has a variety of properties,' Keys interjected. 'And different layers. Thermodynamics, entropy, place... you're mapping this out really broadly. There's no underlying specifics.'

'Please,' Alisdair said, closing his eyes. 'Please. We'll work inwards. We'll tighten it up. Everything beyond this is outside of our experience. Take the time.'

Keys rolled his eyes and sat back. Walden scratched his beard. Alisdair's face was red and sweaty.

'So, somewhere inside this brane,' he said. 'Somewhere inside this object, this shape, there is a singularity. It's deeply hidden, and you will never see it. It would be impossible. But beyond this singularity, time stops.'

'For whom?' Keys snapped. 

'For anyone,' Alisdair said. 'For me, for you. Bearing in mind this is a completely hypothetical thought experiment... '

'Okay,' Keys said. 'Say I bite. Say you're trapped inside this brane, this shape. You'd have to account for every molecule of air inside and outside of your body. They'd be completely suspended. You'd be unable to move. You'd be trapped.'

Alisdair smiled.

'But say that pocket of time had already occurred in its entirety,' he said. 'It had been punched out, removed, however you want to word it. You can exist in this pocket as you already had done. It acts as a protective layer. And the number of pockets increase exponentially. You have more and more room to manoeuvre.'

Keys puffed his cheeks out.

'Too far down the rabbit hole for me,' he said.

'The ones you've worked on,' Walden said. 'You said they seem like they've been there for ages, but also that they're new.'

'Because they harvest the pockets,' Alisdair said. 'They carry them. They're always present in some form.'

'They're trying to save themselves,' Sophie muttered. Everyone looked at her. The orb detached itself from the ceiling and flitted down. It settled on the edge of the table. Alisdair held Sophie's eyes. She knew he was trying to find reassurance. 

'The pins... ' He said. 'They emit very specific nuclear signals. Unique composition elements, too. Extremely rare alkaline-rich clasts. Minerals that aren't found anywhere else in nature. Florenskyite. Both the exoplanet and the monolith are emitting similar signals.'

He breathed in and swallowed. The orb flared orange.

'Did you know this before or after they contacted us?' Keys said.

'I'd joined the dots,' Alisdair said. 'I obviously can't say I was certain.'

They sat in silence. 

'I feel like we should turn around and go right fucking back,' Keys mumbled.

'Sophie's not well,' Alisdair said. 'This is the other thing. She spent too long inside a shape. It's my fault.'

Walden and Keys looked at her. They watched her eyes. She tried to breathe slowly. Alisdair slid his hand towards her.

'We have to try and help her first,' he said. 'And we might ensure our own safety in the process.'

Keys folded his arms. Sophie felt the tension in the room. Walden slugged back his coffee. 

'Well, suit me up,' he said, pushing his chair back.

*

The hold preceding the docking bay was cramped. The EMU suits added another layer of constraint. Alisdair was silent. Walden fidgeted. Sophie stared through the glass. Noise came scratchy in the earpiece.

Keys was floating about the frustum-shaped capsule. He drifted over and punched a button on the opposite side of the door. The panels slid open. They glided inside, bumping into each other. Keys nodded to them.

'I still say we ought to sort her out and leave them,' he said.

Sophie caught hold of a seat, and pulled herself down. She eased into it and strapped herself in. She'd only been awake a few hours, and was exhausted already. Alisdair was checking the hatch seals for leaks. He didn't need to. He was probably trying to calm himself. The orb was bobbing around, flaring yellow/orange/red as it rattled through a series of checks. Alisdair lowered himself slowly into a seat. He flipped a panel on the arm of his suit and adjusted the pressure gauge. Sophie heard him in her earpiece.

'They are actions borne of desperation,' he said. 'And may only be the actions of an isolated group. It may not be representative of the whole. That should be one of the first things you think of. You shouldn't lump everything into one group.'

Keys shook his head and floated into the seat beside Sophie. Walden and Alisdair strapped themselves in. 

Sophie looked round at Alisdair, and saw her own face reflected in his hemispherical visor. His gloved hands tapped the seat rests. Keys checked them over and tapped at the control interface above him .

'Buckle up, happy campers,' he said.

A mechanical voice droned a stream of data in their ears. The orb appeared satisfied, and flared blue. It flitted above them and nestled into a corner. The capsule groaned as the ship rotated and shifted its orientation. There was a hissing noise and a heavy jolt as the hooks were opened. Sophie clutched at the arm rests.

The capsule undocked and floated out into the void. 

 

 

https://www.abctales.com/story/stephen-thom/pins-29