Story of Titans is an epic space-opera novel of a civilisation not far from here.
A photon is trapped within it’s star for thousands of years before escaping. Once out, it darts in a single direction unimpeded. The chances to see any particular photon approaches zero. The vastness of space is simply too much. A photon is wasted, you could say. What is light’s purpose if not to illuminate something? And even so, it can only do so through enormous quantities.
The sun rose again over the horizon. It wasn’t a particularly amazing sight. The
light was ancient and faint by the time it passed through the window, through the air, and into an eye. There was no need for eye protection this far away. The sun might as well have been another dot among billions.
Ethel was the only one who saw this particular rise. It would quickly dart across the sky and disappear once again, repeating seemingly indefinitely. To everyone it was unimportant. It would happen again in 30 minutes. It might as well have been an accident that she saw it. The photon was quietly disregarded by her brain alongside the billions of other photons that had made such a journey. There are far more important things to focus on.
Ethel was floating in a lab. Gravity would be inconvenient for her purposes. Everywhere else she could go had gravity. Yet, something about entropy not pulling on her was cathartic. Serene. Closer to the universe. Of course this meant nothing to the particles in a container, suspended by ferromagnetic alloy. Every particle is beautiful, but right now these particles were light years more important than a photon.
Ethel spoke her confidence softly. No ears had to hear her- only an array of microphones around her. “Trial six of eight” the vibrations in the air carried the words, “The particle decayed after 12 seconds into its quantum components. Automated tests show it held a maximum of two-thousand four-hundred fifty nine megapascals.”
A switch flicked, and Ethel pushed it back down. “Beginning trial seven of eight.” A whirring commotion came to a stop, and Ethel took down another container from the source of the noise and pushed it into another device. Three arms emerged from the device and secured the container. A moment passed, and a snap, then silence. Projected text scrolled in front of Ethel’s eyes. “Trial seven of eight. The particle decayed after nine seconds into quantum components. Automated tests show it held maximum of one-thousand nine-hundred forty-two megapascals”
A bleep, and she flinched. The projection read Containment in Progress alongside a countdown. The testing device was secured against a wall, the whirring contraption remained motionless, and the gravity slowly began to turn on. Then the door opened.
“May I be of assistance?” Ethel spoke with slight annoyance. A figure stepped through the door, grasping onto a hand-rail in case the gravity was not yet finished settling. Ethel was now lying on the floor, her head tilted toward the open door. “Erik?”
Erik straightened himself like a soldier at attention and held a fist to his chest. “Transport from Neptune is docked. You have new materials awaiting.” he spoke formally. Ethel pulled herself up. Erik knew that she need not be appraised of the docking. “Thank you” she mentioned nonetheless, thinking of when the complete the eighth trial. Incomplete science might as well have never begun.
Erik’s arms fell beside him. “I will go with you.”
“You needn’t accompany me.”
“I want to.”
“Very well” Ethel stated plainly. The material would have been brought to her by a delivery mechanism, but she wished for exercise, and it seemed Erik did, too.
A doorway opened, and another. Ethel took two flights of stairs downward, and Erik followed her. Handholds were placed liberally along the walls, ceiling, and floor sometimes along beams that serve no further purpose. Most things were an eternal white or light grey, a side effect of the many clean-rooms. Erik kept pace with Ethel, lagging a meter behind. Few people could be found. Even if they were not concerned with various operations and experiments, this place could hardly be crowded.
The two stepped into docking room. Despite the hallway and the docking room both having gravity, between the door there was a tiny pocket of antigravity. Ethel stepped through it and almost immediately became dizzy, and instinctively reached for a handhold. Erik walked through the doorway as if it were any other.
A sign on the wall read “Seraph, Titan • Dock 04”.
The ship contained in the room was tiny only compared to other vessels. It still towered several dozen meters above them. Several robotic arms were unloading the ship, and a woman in captains’ regalia waved her hand over a projection, reviewing times and manifests.
Ethel tapped a screen, and an arm moved to hold a small metal container in front of her. She took the box, and studied the labelling carefully. “Warning: Contains liberated quarks” was stencilled on the side in red pigments, but every other amount of information regarding the package hovered a centimeter above the surface in violet. Holding the box in front of herself carefully, she braced herself before passing through the doorway into the hall once more.
Erik was greeting the captain and had not noticed Ethel disappeared at first. When he did, he took his own package and too returned to the hallway after bidding farewell to the captain alongside a wish to meet up later.
Erik didn’t have a lab to return to. He instead retreated to his own quarters. Erik’s quarters is probably the most colorful place on Seraph. Patterns on plaques and fabrics adorned the surfaces. “Lock the door” Erik whispered, and Seraph complied. He pushed his thumb onto a small surface on his package and it revealed its contents.
The gravity shifted as the ship in dock four began to take off.
“Seraph Station, this is captain Vyroe of the Neptune ship Condor, requesting departure.”
“This is Seraph Station. Captain Vyroe, the gate will open momentarily. Have a safe flight.”
A wall of energy flickered in front of the ship. Several beams of light emanated from corners of the docking room, concentrating on a single point. A rainbow of colors swirled around the point, growing until it took up the entire wall. The beams of light appeared to become increasingly absorbed by the colors, until a black center appeared. The wall of energy disengaged, the room turned red.
Captain Vyroe threw a switch, pressed a few buttons, and gripped onto steering and throttle. The ship’s engines were already warmed up, and the ship slowly passed into the black center. The blackness surrounded the ship as it passed through, and then the dots of stars appeared. The rainbow of colors receded behind the ship, and dissipated.
Obrad was in flight control. It’s not his duty to admit and depart ships, but he was already there and was more than qualified. Other than himself, flight control was deserted. Besides, he thought, it was good to remain practised.
His finger brushed the air a projection occupied, and a console retracted into the wall. Obrad brought with him a mess of a console to replace it with. “Test console installed” he spoke to the array of microphones that dotted the station, “performing diagnostics. Ania, are you ready to go?”
“Ready, Obrad” a disembodied voice spoke. The voice belonged to the individual in a small ship only visible to the naked eye with exterior lights switched on. The console of questionable design blinked green, passing the diagnostics. “Launching target” Obrad pressed a button, then pulled a lever, and entered in some numbers on a keypad, “Console active. Ania, you’re up.”
The small ship’s engines whirred in Ania’s ears. Her hands pushed up on the throttle. The ship’s speed gained. Closer to the target she sped. A wave of her hand and a tube on the ship opened up. A small rocket fired from the ship and Ania pulled up before the ship hit the target. The missile was nearly to its mark when the console whirred to life. Beams of light emanated from the station, focused in front of the target. Colors poured out, the console shook, and the missile passed through the colors. The console calmed down.
“Well?” Ania requested the results. The colors reabsorbed into space, and Obrad saw the target was destroyed. “It didn’t work,” he said, “the wormhole didn’t initialize in time. Come back in.” Obrad pulled the console back away from the wall and a piece fell to the ground. The original console reappeared in it’s previous position.
Ania was stepping out of her small ship. It was barely large enough for her and the technology it carried. “Thanks for letting me assist with your experiments,” she said. Obrad reiterated a point he had made some time before, “If it is too troublesome, I can remote control a drone.”
“I asked to help, remember?”— of course Obrad remembered — “It is a good excuse to fly some more.”
Obrad smiled a bit. “And it does help that a skilled pilot is testing these systems” he spoke, “If you can’t destroy a target, no one can.”
Ania tossed her helmet at the wall, where it stopped a few centimeters from impact, and then moved unnaturally into it’s assigned place. “See, this is mutually beneficial. See you tomorrow?”
“Yes, indeed.”
Obrad didn’t have to carry the console back to his lab. The station took it back to his lab. He walked slowly back to his lab, wondering what to do to improve the reaction speed of his project. A faint light danced outside the window, then behind the moon. The sun had set once again.
Author’s note: My apologies for the hiatus in updates.
Ania walked with large strides, her head up, arms swinging by her side. Her pace would have been slowed by others had the hallways been any more lively, but instead she could glide around the station unimpeded.
She was one of the few pilots on the station. Seraph didn’t need many. The other pilots were largely elusive, invested in their own work. Ania was the most social, perhaps because she didn’t have a lab of her own. She didn’t need one.
Turning a corner, stopping, then two knocks on the door in front of her.
“Apologies, I cannot have company at the moment,” a disembodied voice said. It belonged to Erik, on the other side of the door.
“Are you with that captain I saw you talking to earlier?” Ania’s tone conveyed teasing. Ania and Erik got along well, probably better than anyone else on the station.
“That makes… thirty-seven incorrect guesses since you started that, out of thirty-seven.” Erik laughed.
“Shucks. I still think I was dead-on the last time I guessed you were with Ethel!”
“Conference call!” Erik sang.
“See ya, Erik.” Ania had been walking away from Erik’s door for ten seconds before then. A chirp signalled that the call had ended.
Erik was nearly done unpacking the parcel he received. Many were things that couldn’t be manufactured on Seraph. The station had a limited capacity to fabricate objects, far inferior to those found in the flying cities. Yet, the station’s fabrication was sufficient. It could make organic matter, synthetically aged items, various polymers, and so on. But, it required very special equipment to create organic matter that worked, and even more so to create it at scale.
Yeast was one such matter.
Erik couldn’t tell if his own research was stagnating. No one on Seraph knew exactly what Erik did, sometimes not even Erik himself. He had no lab, made little to no additions to the library, and seemed annoyingly intent on befriending everyone.
So of course, he needed yeast. It was, as far as anyone had achieved, impossible for this kind of yeast to create a starter. The hypoallergenic genetic modifications came at the cost of the long-term reproduction of the yeast.
Now, how was he to get an oven into his quarters without anyone noticing?