James Scotson - Planets Falling

“Oh Mel. I should not be left to my thoughts. I need things to occupy my time. Even dull discourse among governors’ aides is better than this forsaken assignment. After so many years, they ship me out here to hold watch over a big bakery? I do not know what I did to deserve this.” He took another sip from his cup. “Just a year ago I was tracking down pirates stealing mineral shipments to zenat. The next thing I know, I receive a transmission from the Collective telling me to report to the Platform to babysit a bunch of glorified greenhouses. What a waste of my potential.”

“Well, the level of self-pity seems to have reached an all time high.” Melat jumped on his soft bed. “Sit down. I have some news for you.” She gave his cabin a look. Plants were everywhere. Most were species she did not recognize; many were glowing lightly, similar to the luminescence of his sleek, exquisitely smooth, flawless skin. He chose black for his wall panels — no personal belongings were visible. On the bed was a single thin sheet with no pillow. The whole room was glowing with biological light. The most amazing thing was the smell — a strange mixture of citrus and pine that she found irrestible.

“If it is about the activity on Nine, I already know about it. Grey contacted me and asked for a security sweep of the quadrant. I did not find anything out of the ordinary. If you ask me, it is likely pockets of swamp gas igniting on the surface.”

Melat took the cup from Fromer’s hand and peeked inside. She grimaced and set it down. “That’s old news. The activity has started up again. This time it’s near the north magnetic pole. I think we’re going to investigate. Sober up and come visit me when you get the chance. You’ll know where to find me.”

Earlier that day — the Platform’s light cycle was maintained on a standard earth day — Grey was jogging with Melat around the perimeter of section 17, the primary recreation and housing deck. It was a beautiful place to exercise. The track extended out into space, built with a translucent material that made it seem as if they were jogging while suspended in the vacuum. Sparse stars pierced the velvet beneath their track shoes.

Melat’s shoulder-length red hair was bobbing back and forth. She wasn’t breaking a sweat. “Is it my imagination or do things seem tense around here?”

Grey chuckled, without smiling.

How was that possible? Melat thought.

Grey huffed as if in response to her mental query. “Everyone needs a break. Verat is being more of an ass than usual. Gorian is wound up and spends all hours communing with the computers. Iggy spends most of his time soaking in his brine. We all need to escape for a while. And now…” He stopped himself.

They ran a few minutes in silence. Grey waited for the question. “Now what, Grey?”

“Nine is acting weird. Lots of lights are appearing on the surface. It stopped for a while. Earlier today it started up again. We’ve never seen anything like it. The probes are streaming incredible amounts of data. We can’t keep track of it all.”

“What do you mean lights? Like the planet has been invaded by glow bugs?” She imagined giant fireflies buzzing through the mist.

“Something like that. The closest I can guess is that we have ghosts on the planet. Not real spooks of course. But mysterious lights that generate no heat. The imagery from orbit shows that the lights are flickering, gathering at some places, and then disappearing as quickly as they appear. The weirdest thing is that the lights are discrete…almost like they’re sentients or animals. When we zoom in on the imagery, I swear I occasionally see figures. I thought I saw a face looking up once. Black, open holes for the eyes and mouth.” He stopped for a moment and then started running again. “I’m losing it. The rest of the observatory crew is freaking out as well. We have no idea what to tell the Collective.” He was really starting to moisten now.

“You bunch of science nerds are spending way too much time in the remote observatory. What kind of tea has Verat been brewing up there? Or are you all smoking it? I’m sure you’re getting interference from sensors or the planet is picking up radio interference. I can’t believe that I’m the one trying to be objective here.”

The light on the deck was dimming — artificial dusk was falling on the Platform. Grey grabbed a towel from a dispenser and stretched his calves. “Come on Mel. We like surprises. But this was completely unexpected. None of the simulations remotely predict that the life down there’s able to capture, much less, transmit images. And even if it could, who would be sending them? I feel like we’re viewing old time movie projections in the fog. Have you been practicing your piloting procedures lately? Especially, drops?”

“You can’t practice something like that. It’s a gift. All the girls want it but can’t get it. You either do it or you don’t.”

Melat was a pilot. Pilots were very rare, only about one tenth of half a percent of the human population in the galaxy had the cognitive ability to be one. Piloting was not about steering columns, brakes, and accelerators. It was about the ability to gaze into the subatomic realm, shape quantum foam, drop from one reality to the next.

No supercomputer designed yet had the capacity to manipulate energy and matter to link one section of space-time with another in the universe. Actually, it was not a single drop. Rather, to travel across the unimaginable emptiness, it required nearly an infinite number of transitions through the roiling particles and waves welling up through existence. The physicists affectionately called it a drop because it appeared as if space itself opened a hole beneath the traveling object — usually a transport vessel — and proceeded to swallow it up.

Grey sopped his forehead. “What does it feel like for you pilots when you make a drop?”

For travelers, a drop seemed to be instantaneous, although in real time, trips across the galaxy could take as long as several hours. But for pilots the passage of time, the experience, had to be different.

“Everyone asks me that. I’m not tired about answering it though. Better than any drug ever grown, brewed, or concocted. Believe me, I’ve tried. Of course you have all the preparation. Calculations. Meditation. You also have to slowly raise your metabolism with some pretty hardcore medication. But then when you step into that chamber and link to the interface it is completely worth it. I’m surprised you’ve never asked me before.”

“Don’t like to pry. However.” He paused. “Given that I just spilled top secret information, I thought I’d reciprocate. Really, though, can you describe what’s going on? I mean, inside the ship?”

“Well, first there’s the typical interface menu. Very much like a visual holograph — you can see it without your eyes, you know? Just projected on your optic lobes. Then you begin to scroll through all the diagnostic tests, pretty standard stuff. When you’re ready, you flip the switch.”

“The switch?”

“It can be anything really. Pushing a button, turning a door handle, flipping a mouse trap. For me, I see a dandelion and blow on the seeds. Just something that you use to activate the program and initiate the drop. Blow. Seeds start to scatter in the wind. Then you see it. Well see’s only a weak approximation. It’s as if you are hovering in a vast three dimensional canvas with stars, dandelion seeds, whatever, around you, inside you. You feel the space as well as see, hear, even taste it. You imagine a pattern of particles coming together, then you imagine another pattern, and then another. That’s where all the prep is involved — memorizing the patterns. Before long it’s like being in a warm cocoon, sleeping, dreaming. The computer is interpreting those patterns as ways to adjust gravity and merge the right sections of space-time until you get to the coordinates you’re targeting. When I wake up, the drop is done and we’re somewhere else. I feel like I had the best nap ever. I absolutely crave it.”