She
watched as the seventh turbine started to spin, and all the light in
the world began to collect inside its blue corona along the rim.
Doctors Ven and Hadley had tried to explain the new propulsion engine to her several times, but the idea was just beyond her reach. "The Identity Drive can move entire planets," Hadley had said. "Right," continued Ven, "By reaching back through the aeons and re-framing our entire concept of localized space to another point in the universe, we can wear reality down enough to force it to comply."
"But it requires such an extravagance of energy we can only do it once," Hadley added.
A confusing proposition, but the only hope they had. Nobody had any idea the slow buildup of nuclear energy over the past century would attract such a force from the stars; not a sentient power but one of thermonuclear physics, unknown and still unlabeled by scientists who had no time to ponder it once it began to cool the sun at such a rapid pace.
The Drive was the Earth's last chance at survival.
She shivered at the awesome glow of the seventh turbine, the size of a skyscraper hung flat from suspension cables over the valley before her. Six others like it rested at equidistant points around the planet, each gathering the very forces of creation to reach out and touch the minds of humanity and fudge a zero into a one. A monitor on her console showed the forest outside thinning quickly, the bark turning gray as leaves scattered in droves across the dying grass. Color drained from the sky and coiled around her little piece of the Identity Drive, and the stars above pierced through the thinning light. Something arched across the dome of the artificial night like a thunderbolt, cracking space in two above and slowly, agonizingly, pulling apart.
A light flashed red on the console.
She glanced at the readout.
The destination coordinates had been set to somewhere near Alpha Centauri, where they would evacuate to the closest planet on which they could find a way to live. Now those numbers were changing, flashing through an unfamiliar sequence so quickly she couldn't read them. A voice called out from her radio, but the Drive's vampiric properties had affected that too, reducing Dr. Hadley's voice to a mash of grunting syllables.
She placed her hand over the engine brake. The turbine would shut down if she pulled the lever, but none of the energy would return to the planet. Too much of it was gone by now, shot out into the borders of the universe as she understood it. The world would crumble into ash beneath the dying rays of the sun. The Drive had not already stopped, which meant the other six turbines still spun. She had no way of knowing where the Drive would take them, but...
Could she pull the lever and live with the knowledge she had doomed humanity to a certain, freezing death?
Her hand fell into her lap. She watched the corona around the turbine shift into a bruised purple. A booming voice sang out from somewhere high above her.
The crack in the sky widened, and a single eye peered down through it.
Doctors Ven and Hadley had tried to explain the new propulsion engine to her several times, but the idea was just beyond her reach. "The Identity Drive can move entire planets," Hadley had said. "Right," continued Ven, "By reaching back through the aeons and re-framing our entire concept of localized space to another point in the universe, we can wear reality down enough to force it to comply."
"But it requires such an extravagance of energy we can only do it once," Hadley added.
A confusing proposition, but the only hope they had. Nobody had any idea the slow buildup of nuclear energy over the past century would attract such a force from the stars; not a sentient power but one of thermonuclear physics, unknown and still unlabeled by scientists who had no time to ponder it once it began to cool the sun at such a rapid pace.
The Drive was the Earth's last chance at survival.
She shivered at the awesome glow of the seventh turbine, the size of a skyscraper hung flat from suspension cables over the valley before her. Six others like it rested at equidistant points around the planet, each gathering the very forces of creation to reach out and touch the minds of humanity and fudge a zero into a one. A monitor on her console showed the forest outside thinning quickly, the bark turning gray as leaves scattered in droves across the dying grass. Color drained from the sky and coiled around her little piece of the Identity Drive, and the stars above pierced through the thinning light. Something arched across the dome of the artificial night like a thunderbolt, cracking space in two above and slowly, agonizingly, pulling apart.
A light flashed red on the console.
She glanced at the readout.
The destination coordinates had been set to somewhere near Alpha Centauri, where they would evacuate to the closest planet on which they could find a way to live. Now those numbers were changing, flashing through an unfamiliar sequence so quickly she couldn't read them. A voice called out from her radio, but the Drive's vampiric properties had affected that too, reducing Dr. Hadley's voice to a mash of grunting syllables.
She placed her hand over the engine brake. The turbine would shut down if she pulled the lever, but none of the energy would return to the planet. Too much of it was gone by now, shot out into the borders of the universe as she understood it. The world would crumble into ash beneath the dying rays of the sun. The Drive had not already stopped, which meant the other six turbines still spun. She had no way of knowing where the Drive would take them, but...
Could she pull the lever and live with the knowledge she had doomed humanity to a certain, freezing death?
Her hand fell into her lap. She watched the corona around the turbine shift into a bruised purple. A booming voice sang out from somewhere high above her.
The crack in the sky widened, and a single eye peered down through it.
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