Roger Allen - The Shattered Sphere

“The Lone World,” Sianna said.

“Yeah,” Wally said, staring at it in amazement. “Charon Central.” Sianna grinned, nodded, and grabbed him by the shoulder. However that sideways mind of his worked, Wally had followed the same logic she had, and then gotten the same answer. She was right . Oh, there would be all sorts of battles and struggles ahead to convince the others, but that was trivial, a mere detail. She knew she was right. She had spent this day and this night underground, cut out from the sky and the stars, here in this place where time seemed so plastic that she felt cut out of time herself. But it had been worth it. Worth it to find this truth that would—

Out of time. Wait a second. Wait just a second. Out of time .

She turned and grabbed Wally by the arm. “Wally! Those Ring-and-Hole sets you made co-orbital with the Moon in the simulation. That was the best way to stabilize the orbit?”

Wally shrugged. “Best I could see.”

“And those were standard R-H sets, right? They could do anything that other R-H sets could do?”

“Sure. They’re big, heavy-duty units, but yeah, they could do the normal stuff. Why not?”

Sianna did not answer, but instead nodded to herself, thinking it through. The last link was there, just coming into reach. Yes. Yes.

“Wally. What’s the orbital circumference for the Lone World? For the real one, not the Moon in the simulation.”

“The circumference? Well, um, let’s see. Circumference of an ellipse is um, ah…” Wally picked up a pencil and starting working it out on a scratch pad. Sianna was treated to the rare sight of a master of computer math struggling over a simple problem on paper. “Ah… that’s ah… no, wait. Carry the… right. Right. Okay. Rough number would be about 665,000,000 kilometers. But why—”

“Good. Fine. What does that come to in light-minutes? How long would it take for a beam of light to travel that far?”

“Huh? What? Easy enough. Just divide out by the speed of light— um, just under thirty-seven minutes. But why—”

Thirty-seven minutes . God knows how, but it all fit! The same number that had been nudging at her subconscious all morning. Thirty-seven minutes . The time period that it would take a beam of light to travel the circumference of the Lone World’s orbit. Thirty-seven minutes. The time discrepancy between the Saint Anthony ‘s clocks and all the clocks of Earth. Somehow, Earth had been accelerated to light speed, sent once around the orbit, and then decanted back into normal space. Sianna looked out toward the tiny dot of the Lone World, imagining the R-H sets that must be strung out along its orbit. Why, she did not know, but it had to be. She didn’t know how they did it, either, but that number, thirty-seven minutes, told her they had done it. For some reason Earth had been pulled out of time, suspended, dropped into stasis, and moved once around the Lone World’s orbit at the speed of light.

Sianna felt her heart pounding, her weary soul alive with excitement and enthusiasm. She had it. She knew she had it.

But even in her moment of victory, Sianna’s subconscious found something to throw up in her face. A cloud popped up to cover the sunlight, and Sianna felt the all-too-familiar knot in her stomach, her guilty conscience reminding her of the consequences of wasted time.

Damnation. There was always something to ruin the fun.

Her finals started tomorrow and she hadn’t even thought of studying.

“…There can be no doubt that his role in the Abduction caused Larry Chao to become somewhat unbalanced. All witnesses agree that he suffered tremendous guilt and shame, along with and on top of the shock and survivor guilt that everyone suffered. There has been much discussion of how this might have shaped his later actions. However, another, less well known incident has not received anywhere near as much study, though it no doubt had as much to do with his disordered state of mind when he destroyed Pluto and Charon not long after.

“Soon after the discovery of the Rabbit Hole and the entryway to the Lunar Wheel, Lucian Dreyfuss was sent down to attach a new form of gravity-wave detector on the then-still-functioning Lunar Wheel. Dreyfuss was accompanied by a TeleOperator, and the TeleOperator was controlled by Chao. The TeleOperator was capable of providing extremely detailed sensory feedback to the controller—too detailed, as it turned out.

“Almost immediately upon arrival at the bottom of the Rabbit Hole, Dreyfuss and Chao were attacked by two mobile Charonians of a previously unknown form. Dreyfuss was abducted, and later officially presumed dead. Chao’s TeleOperator was decapitated and suffered various other serious injuries, even as highly realistic sensory feedback was still being fed back to Chao. The result was a classic case of TeleOperator Trauma Psychosis. In effect, Chao experienced—and survived—his own violent and grisly death. He was actually under heavy sedation for much of the journey to Pluto—and the catastrophe he would quite deliberately cause there.”

Lucian Dreyfuss looked past the TeleOperator, the human-form machine Larry Chao was controlling from the Moon’s surface. Lucian peered through the visor of his pressure suit at the two monstrous robotic creatures, and felt his heart freeze solid with fear. “Behind you!” he cried out to Larry. The TeleOperator turned to look .

“Oh my God,” Lucian said. The Charonian robots were brutal, aggressive-looking things. They had long cylindrical bodies and rode on two sets of wheels. Each of them had four long, sharp, vicious-looking manipulator arms ending with cruel, sharp-looking grip clamps where their hands should have been. They were plainly aware of the intruders.

“They know we’re here ,” the TeleOperator said in Larry’s voice. Lucian was about to say something, anything, in reply — and then the Charonians moved. Fast. Before Lucian was even in motion, one of them was right in front of him. Its grabber arms swung down and snatched at him, lifted him up off his feet. Lucian tried to scream, but the sound stuck in his throat . He reached out toward Larry’s TeleOperator, but then he was in motion, the alien thing taking him away .

Away.

Away.

Down the tunnel, down the endless tunnel, down into the dark and the blackness, bouncing and jouncing along, held upside down in the pitch darkness as the Charonian moved in a headlong rush down the tunnel. Now Lucian did find his voice, and he did scream, and scream again, and again, until there was nothing left of his voice .

They snatched at him, grappled him, peeled him out of his suit, forced his body into some sort of strange hibernation, and sealed him away in whatever it was that held him —

And so he slept.

And so he dreamed.

For a long time he had been still, truly asleep, truly inert. But now something had roused him, bestirred him just enough for him to dream, to remember it, to relive his own capture, his own nightmare undeath once again .

Again.

And again.

Lucian Drey fuss looked past the TeleOperator, the human-form machine Harry Chao was controlling from the Moon’s surface. Lucian peered through the visor…

“Lucian!” Larry shouted, waving his arms, desperately trying to get his attention. “Lucian! Over here! Look at me ! Not at the damned TeleOperator. Look at me —”