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Temporal Incursion. Stellar Flash Book Three. Prologue. By Neil A. Hogan
2129/02/15/01:43 Tuesday
A bright object cut across a section of the Kuiper belt, broke apart a tumbling two-piece proto-comet, then shot out of the Solar System at high speed. Explorer satellites in the area reported it as traveling close to the speed of light.
*
An explosion rocked the little island of South Bimini, flattening palm trees, shorting out power cables, and collapsing buildings. A group of factories dissolved into a crater, then sank under a tsunami. A tiny object exploded from the center of the carnage, climbed quickly into orbit, then blasted past the moon. Luna satellites recorded a white streak but were unable to determine origin or destination.
*
Drone 478 detected the intruder as it sped past Saturn and immediately activated its staccato flash drive, materializing further along the tiny object’s estimated path. The drone recorded it as it passed, predicted its trajectory, then repeated this several times before the object entered the Oort cloud. 478 quickly flashed back to Monitoring Station Z and delivered its composite video.
*
The images faded to black, and the lights came back up to reveal a small, oval room, with a tiny porthole looking out onto a section of Saturn’s rings.
“Interesting, don’t you think?” Doctor John Patel scratched his short, graying moustache, and glanced across the leafy table at his colleague, Admiral Rasskator, an attractive, green, mantis-like being from the planet Preyos.
Rasskator remained silent, a slight movement of one antennae the only sign she had heard him.
“We’ve since been able to confirm the objects are heading to Proxima Centauri B,” Patel continued. “They’re mostly moving at light speed but pause whenever they encounter something. Best estimates suggest they’ll arrive in just over four and a half years’ time.”
Rasskator chirped quietly, and her translator Englished. “They will be in the F.R.I.’s jurisdiction, then. Why see me about these?”
Patel smiled thinly. “Admiral, you plan to retire in four years’ time. If these objects are likely to cause a problem around then, I’d like there to be a faster transition between you and the new person here, so that we have time to prepare for anything that might eventuate.”
“Always planning ahead, John. Don’t you ever get tired? Live for the now!”
“Not a detailed plan, just a, well…”
“You’d like a recommendation for my replacement in 2133?”
Patel nodded.
Rasskator, rubbed her claw across one of her long green antennae, twisted her bulbous eyes a few times, then chirped. “Well, firstly I recommend building a new and more powerful Space Station. I doubt this throwback is going to last much longer. Certainly, if there are going to be more of these particles passing through, we need to have some kind of research center nearby.”
Patel sighed, looking about at the tiny space, knowing the monitoring station was barely 500 meters across. “It’s in hand. The project will commence at the end of 2132. We’ve received enough complaints from, ahem, your station, to bring things forward.”
“Acceptable. I do recommend Captain Victoria Heartness. She will have been working as a captain for ten years by then. An ideal time to be considered for promotion, and as my replacement.”
Patel leant back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “Interesting choice. We’ll see how she goes, and maybe I’ll put in a good word. Anything else I should know?”
Rasskator pointed a claw at the time stamp at the bottom of the last video. “You might have missed something with the last recording. Hard to see tiny Earth numbers in a hologram.” Her proboscis twisted back and forth in amusement, knowing Patel knew Preyosians had much better eyesight than humans. “Let me play the images forward for you again. Watch the clock.”
The composite drone footage played again, and Patel’s eyebrows raised as he realized what he was seeing. “The image is forward but the time stamp is running backward? How did I not notice that?”
“You have billions of projects on your mind. Impossible for you to notice everything. That’s why you are always happy to get a second opinion. In any case, whatever that object is, it is surrounded by a reverse time field. If that hits a populated area, there are going to be many beings in a lot of trouble. You saw what happened to that island in your Bermuda area. You were lucky it wasn’t a lot worse.”
“Well, let’s hope it
passes safely through the Proxibee system and keeps going,” said Patel.
“Otherwise, it won’t just affect one world, it’ll wipe out the entire
flash ship project.”
It is the year 2133, just one hundred years after Alien Shift. Humanity can now perceive the trillions of alien races that live in the galaxy, having finally increased their frequency speed to Zero. Now a member of the Interdimensional Coalition, humanity works with alien races from all over the universe on Flash ships, exploring realities on higher level frequencies, and instigating First Contact with new alien races. The Stellar Flash Frequency Ship is the newest addition to the universal mission.
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