An Abundance of Stars (Fantasy)

The following story was the first one I wrote for my BA in Creative Writing degree so I will most likely never publish it, so I am giving it away for free here.

 An Abundance of Stars by John Woolard

            Doctor Terra Wellright viewed the holo-porthole, subconsciously pushing her glasses back up her nose, undecided. The ship’s cameras on its hull could display anything she wanted to see via a screen in almost any spectrum. She preferred the natural light spectrum as the default for the cameras. She liked to see the universe the way she was born to see it. This was probably why she never had her eyesight corrected even though the procedure was so commonplace. Her mother once commented, in passing, how cute she was in glasses. Her eyes now looked upon the vastness of space. Was giving up her past life worth this newness?

            The abundance of stars she could see without the hindrance of atmosphere always left her feeling small compared to the entirety of the universe, even though she was a giant when it came to space. She invented the time-hop drive, thus the reason this was the first time human eyes have seen these exact stars. She does not feel bad about stretching the truth about needing to be aboard the first, and only, spacecraft with her drive; she could have programmed an A.I. to do most diagnostics but one never knew when a leap of faith, that only humans could do, would be needed.

            She laughed out loud.

A voice, transmitted directly to Terra’s mind, asked in its A.I. monotone, “Is something wrong Doctor? I cannot detect any irregularities.”

            “I was just humored thinking about how a woman named Terra had come so far from Earth,” Terra replied.

            “I cannot calculate the irony. Being named after Earth does not mean you could not leave. In fact, it seems to be a fitting name to send someone whose name could translate to of the Earth to go out and explore the universe.” Such a pure analytical reply was exactly why Terra was sure A.I. would never be confused as being human.

            Terra informed the A.I. not to disturb her again unless there was an emergency with the Temperal-Wellright Nonpropulsion Generator. To her it was still the time-hop drive. Why do administrative bureaucrats think scientists always want things named after themselves? If the thing was that important let it stand on its own importance. Simply calling it a time-hop drive helped ignorant people understand what it did.

            Physiologically, Terra was eight weeks older than the day the ship left its orbital platform. Temporally, she was twenty-four light years away. The ship hops in twenty-four-hour spans. Terra was proud for the day when her idea went from a dream to a possibility. She removed propulsion out of the equation, to the other scientist’s chagrin. She realized that if they were going to fold time and space it would only work if the craft was sitting still.

            Terra felt the buzz in her entire body. The next jump was about to happen. She smiled in anticipation. The first week was a nightmare. Her stomach, her head, even her vision was shaken around like an anthill in an earthquake. The human body is resilient and can grow used to most anything so now she could remain standing through the jumps and only feel the slightest buzz of her body losing connection to the natural flow of time.

            The jump was instantaneous but to Terra’s mind it stretched for a day before rebounding back on itself and becoming the same time as when it began. Physically, though, the ship had moved the distance light travels in a day. It was just Terra’s mind trying to make sense of the jumps but feeling a day in an instant was not a sensation one could get used to no matter how resilient the human body.

            There would be nine to ten hours before the next jump, so she decided to check the last jump’s data. A.I. parsed all the data for official purposes but she liked to check on them when she could. To anyone else the raw lists of numbers and characters would be meaningless but the data is hers so she could read them as if it were her native language.

            She kept returning to the second screen of data no matter how far she would scan ahead. How? What she had read should not—could not—be. No jump that long could be possible. She placed a hand on the console to steady herself.

            The A.I. broke into Terra’s thoughts. “Are you having a medical emergency, Doctor? I detect your breathing is irregular and palpitations in your heartbeat.”

            “Have you reviewed the data from the last jump?”

            “I review the data as it is obtained since my computational ability does not jump over the time as yours does.”

            “Was there an anomaly?”

            “No, doctor.”

            “I have a gap of thirteen years.”

            “Yes, Doctor. Twelve years, three hundred and eight days, six hours, forty-two minutes, and six seconds.”

            “How? That is a jump of five thousand-fold to predicted range.”

            “This is within the formulas present for the mission.”

            “That was not part of the mission objectives; I wrote them myself. Can we even calculate the return trip accurately now?”

            “This had always been part of the mission objectives, Doctor. Are you having a medical emergency, Doctor? I am reading even a more erratic heart rate and breathing pattern.”

            “Yes, I am having a medical emergency! I cannot formulate a way we can return to earth,” She yelled. Where other people have nightmares of falling, waking just before death, Terra’s always centered around failure, some lack of knowledge that proved fatal to her science. Her nightmares had become reality. She made the mission parameters, but here was data demonstrating parameters she did not construct. Calming herself only slightly, she asked, “What is the mission parameters for jumps of that size?”

            “Please return to your pod and rest. I can administer a light sedative so you can relax.”

            Terra was confused. “How can you not answer my direct question?”

            “Upon discovery of mission parameters your control has been revoked.”

            “That is impossible.” Terra ran toward the control banks where she could directly access ship systems, including A.I. “On whose authority?”

            “Yours, Doctor.”

            “I made no directive.”

            “You did, Doctor. Directive 23-Alpha, voice and retinal signature verified.”

            Terra stopped and leaned against the passageway’s inner wall. She felt dizzy and confused; something she had only felt once before when she was a teenager after her father told her that her mother had died. The same day she decided to invent a way to leave Earth behind. She allowed herself to slide down the wall to sit leaning against it for support. She had no memory of the order. In fact, the last order she could recall was 21, so that was two orders she had no memory of. “What was directive 22?”

            “To replay directive 24-Beta and attached recording. Would you like to review it now, Doctor?”

            A life of big science with infinite numbers and such a small number—three unknown orders—was destroying her. “Beta, was that a corrected order?”

            “Negative, Doctor. 24-Alpha was to be replayed for you if you did not figure out the actual mission before you were recycled.”

            “Recycled?”

            “You have assured this A.I. that Beta will also explain that. Would you like me to replay 24-Beta?”

            “Yes.” Tears streaked her cheek; they too were last seen the day her mother died.

            The digital signals to Terra’s brain created a hallucination. One not created by a faulty mind, but as a recording of synaptic events that were designed to transmit a message to one’s self—a memory. The image was not perfect. She could instantly see why. The room that the recording was created in was not a cerebral lab but her own lab. The image of herself came into her sightline and sat down on the lab chair she had spent hours upon hours, thinking—dreaming up her time-hop drive.

            “Hello, me. First, congratulations for figuring out the mission’s parameters. I would hope I was smart enough to have figured it out the first time around, but if not, at least I got to the numbers eventually.” Terra felt disorientated. The playback froze, like a shimmering desert mirage, until Terra refocused on it.

            It continued. “As you know you have been jumping way longer, or is it further, than planned. Isn’t time fun? Sorry, you are me, so you already feel that way. I—you—did much better at this time-hop idea than even others figured we would. I think they gave us free reign for father’s sake and memories of mother than any real belief in our idea. Well, here we are, and if we calculated right, they died of old age several jumps ago.”

            Memory Terra took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Terra caught herself doing the same. Memory Terra replaced her glasses. “Sorry, mother’s memory always tears me up. Mom and dad will always be remembered for their cyro-stasis chambers, but we will be forgotten, though we took leaps beyond anyone’s knowledge of time. As soon as I figured out how far we could really jump I saw the problem: we would out-age any possible discovery, and any return to Earth would be a multitude of centuries after we had died. I guess to put it in as politically incorrect way as possible, since we both know I would find this humorous, you are now a meat-puppet. Directive blah-blah twenty-five is to record your memories after two hundred jumps and transfer them to one of our clones from cyro-sleep—thanks mom and dad— until, like you apparently had, one of us figures this out.”

            “Pause,” Terra whispered. “A.I.?”

            “Yes, Doctor?”

            “How many times have my memories been replanted?”

            “I do not know, Doctor.”

            “Where can I access my clones?”

            “You cannot access them, Doctor.”

            A.I. is smart, but also literal. “Where is the entry point to which I no longer have access?”

            “Deck three, console three-C.”

            Terra stood and wiped the tears from her cheeks. Her entire concept of what she was doing on this voyage had been destroyed. How long had she been traveling, or how far? Was she really a clone or was all this a ruse to get rid of Professor Alan Wellright’s crazy ideas daughter?

            The gravity-lift stopped her ascent on deck three. The console was the last one toward the aft. Funny how the builders of a stationary ship still saw it as having different directions, she wondered, her mind trying to distract itself from this nightmare. Her vocal passkey did not work. The system did not even acknowledge she had spoken. She punched the console. “Open, damn you!”

            She leaned her head against the corridor’s wall. Tears ran down her cheeks. What would she have made her passkey that she could keep from herself until she needed to know it? Then she realized what. During the entire voyage not once had she thought of her mother, until she was overwhelmed with this new discovery.

            She whispered what her mother would call her when she was just a child and would run around, non-stop, “My little shooting star.” The panel slid open, and she stepped into a large combined medical-cargo bay. Pod upon pod were lined up, so abundant she could not guess how many there were. In each cryo-pod laid herself. Each looked like a human sized child’s doll if the child thought themselves Doctor Frankenstein with all the tubes and electrodes attached to each body. She recognized the pods; they were her parents’ design. So many frozen clones. When did she have time to formulate such a grand, and insane, plan? And all behind her own back. Hundreds of her selves asleep, frozen in time. Each in their own personal coffin.

She counted empty pods as she walked along them. Sixty-seven. She sighed in disbelief. “I’m the sixty-seventh Terra,” she spoke aloud.

            “Sixty-eighth. Primary Terra called herself Terra-one. Shall I continue the recording?”

            After a few moments of numbness, staring into the last empty pod she whispered, “Play.”

            Memory Terra reappeared in her mind. “Now we have a choice. Well, you do, I attentionally left this up to the one of us who figured this out since she would have more data than I do while recording this. You can order the A.I. to reinstate all these directives and it will install my prime memories into the next clone and the next one to figure it out will get these same recordings. Or you can direct the A.I. to initiate a new directive and end this experiment since we have lived too many lives, and no one will ever benefit from our discoveries. When you decide, return to the console. Yes, I know you are in the cyro room because it is where I would have gone. Use your retinal scan to make the directive of your choice. It has been nice being us.”

The recording ended.

            Terra felt numb as she looked across the field of cryo-pods. Mother would have loved it, so many shooting stars peacefully asleep. Of course, father would have just complained about his pods being used as they were in a non-medical application. Terra laughed looking at the overwhelming number of pods. Were all of them as insane as she felt?

            “A.I., have I made this choice before?”

“There are no records in my memory of this event but that does not mean it did not happen before.”

            Terra returned to the console and took off her glasses. How could she have expected herself to make this choice? Did her original self have to make this choice, or was this curse reserved for her clones? She found herself envious of Terra-one.

            She placed her eye on the scanner and made her choice.