Belated Fiction Friday-Universe Expanding Edition
As Saturday drew to a close, I remembered that I forgot my staple Friday feature, Fiction Friday. Oops. Well, what with the Thanksgiving holiday, my step daughter’s birthday on Wednesday, and Black Friday, I didn’t exactly have time to create a brand new story. So I’m digging back into the vault and dredging up a story that only a few eyeballs have seen. I had submitted it to Asimov’s, but was told it wasn’t the right fit at that time. Oh well, maybe it will get some exposure here and you will enjoy it.
Without any further ado, I give you…
Realize the Universe
by Justin M. Howe
“Have you ever lain perfectly still at night and listened to your heart beating?” the man asked.
“Yes.” the boy replied.
“Your heart starts to rise into your ears.” the man said. “You ever experience that?”
“Yeah…” the boy replied.
“And somewhere, behind your heartbeat,” the man said, “there’s a dull roar, like static on the radio.”
The boy was excited now, “Or like when you put a shell up to your ear!”
The man smiled. “That’s the creation of the Universe you’re hearing. We’re all traveling companions of the Universe.” The man straightened up. “But what if this Universe could take us just a little bit further…
“That’s exactly what my machine will do.” He announced, addressing the crowd around the boy. The man gestured to the curtains behind him, “With the help of my discovery, I can take you around the sun! Want to go to Mars? Venus? The rings of Saturn? Where would you like to go, ma’am?”
Giggling obnoxiously, the chubby woman that had pushed herself to the front said, “Orion’s belt!” Several members of the crowd chuckled.
“Exactly.” answered the man. “Since the dawn of time, man has been covering what the Universe is trying to tell us.” A giant television screen lowered itself. Slowly, it began showing slides of the cave paintings in Lascaux. “It wasn’t good enough for Man that the Universe had provided us with magnificent beasts to feed and clothe us. Man had to mar Her surfaces in order to recreate Her gifts.” The screen’s images came faster now, showing Roman coliseums, the Globe theatre, villages, and towns and cities.
The man continued. “It wasn’t enough that Man was destroying His little piece of the Universe, He also tortured himself.” The images on the screen came faster now, but the images shown were the both familiar and terrible images of the depravity of Man. Gladiators killing each other, crucifixions, iron maidens; war, famine, disease. Some of the crowd winced at the pain in the suffering people’s faces, while others watched without expression, disinterested. Get to the point.
The man let the visual onslaught continue as, slowly, audio built up around the images. Loud music played over newscasters announcing death tolls of terrorist attacks and counting bodies after natural disasters. Overweight celebrities shed fake tears and begged for money for poor starving children. Cartoon mice tortured cartoon cats.
“But what was still behind all of this?” the man said, somehow overcoming the cacophony of sound emitting from the speakers. The screen went to snow. The speakers went to static. Several members of the crowd covered their ears. “No no no, hands down!” the man said. After a few more seconds of noise the static ended abruptly, leaving the snow on the screen and the man’s voice.
“This is at the heart of what I have accomplished.” the man said in a hushed tone. “The species of Man have shut the Universe out. We’ve been so caught up in our own worlds that we have pushed the Universe aside.” The man began to pace slowly, making eye contact it seemed with each member of the crowd. “Nietzsche said that when we stare into the abyss, the abyss stares right back at us.” The man stared at the boy. The boy winced. “But I say, embrace the Universe, and the Universe will embrace you. Learn to listen again. This young man just said he could hear the Universe, how many of you can say the same?”
After a few mutterings in the crowd the man continued, “I don’t blame you, I once had the same handicap!-We’re just too busy. We don’t stop to dream anymore. Our dreams now are of climbing that corporate ladder, getting one step beyond our neighbor, being a success in the eyes of our peers! How do you think I obtained funding for this research?” A few people chuckled at that. A few men in dark suits and brightly colored ties nodded. “But one night, after a terrible, stressful day, I laid my head on my pillow and I listened.” the man paused for effect, “And I Realized the Universe.”
The moment they had gathered for had finally arrived. The curtains began to rise. Flashes from cameras went off. Men with video cameras moved in for a closer look with their wide electronic eyes. The curtain cleared the object and the flashes died down. A man in the back of the crowd spoke up, “Is that it?” The rest of the crowd murmured to themselves or turned to their neighbor and murmured to them. The object behind the glass looked like nothing more than a large metallic box. It didn’t shine. It had no glimmer. Just a box with a few pipes coming out of one side and going in another.
“That’s supposed to take me to Orion’s belt?” the obnoxious woman said. “Looks more like I would take it to the dump!” A few members of the gathering laughed and applauded. Some turned as if to leave.
“Wait!” the man said, raising his hands. “What if I were to tell you that I had already used this machine to find life on another planet?”
The crowd quieted. The man lowered his arms. He had their attention once again. “On the far side of our galaxy there is a planet not yet on any of our star charts that looks frighteningly familiar.” The screen began to show film of a familiar landscape. It could have been any jungle or rainforest on Earth. Someone said so. “Are you sure?” the man asked. The image cut to a wide, serene lake that could have come from anywhere. Except there were dinosaurs drinking from the lake. A few people gasped. Some harrumphed. The camera zoomed in for a closer look. There were dinosaurs, all right.
“Hey, did you get Spielberg to do this bit?” a cocky teenager said from somewhere.
The man smiled. “The proof is in the pudding,” he said. “Or in this case, the Box.” He raised his right hand that held what looked to be a large remote control. Pressing a button, a large door began to open in the box. The glass panel that separated the box from the crowd shook with the terrifying cry that bellowed from the box-ship. People startled. A woman screamed. “Do not be alarmed!” the man commanded. “The reinforced panel between us will protect us!”
Another woman screamed; “Look!!” The man turned to face his device. A huge snout was emerging. The snout was followed by a seemingly endless row of sharp, curved teeth. The teeth were followed by yellow eyes. This tableau took a moment to register in the audiences mind. Their brains couldn’t cope with a creature that they had no reference for in their world. Understanding took hold as they realized that this was truly a Tyrannosaurus Rex, emerging from the opening of an impossible spaceship.
At least, from just the head it appeared to be a T-Rex. Above its eyes were bony protrusions that looked like small horns. As it continued to emerge, they saw that spikes followed along from the middle of his forehead to the tip of his tail. Unlike Earth’s T-Rex, this one had huge arms that could surely rip a man apart before those massive incisors ever reached the poor soul. Behind the massive arms had to be the most surprising evolutionary quirk of this far off planet: small wings sprouted from his shoulder blades, as ineffectual as Earth’s T-Rex’s arms had to have been.
The crowd stood transfixed as the beast lumbered up to the partition. Breath from its nostrils fogged the glass. The creature took a couple of steps back and then rammed the glass with its head. True to the man’s word, the reinforced glass held. The beast then began to pound on the glass with its massive arms. “Well, I think we’ve seen enough.” the man said after several minutes, again holding up the large remote control. Pressing another button, red lasers fired at the animal. The beast took steps backward and swatted at the incoming barrage of fire. The accurate lasers guided the animal back to the box which, without harming the beast, quickly shut itself. Security guards moved in for crowd control as the man was assaulted with questions.
#
That night, the man stood in front of his miraculous machine. He pressed the button that allowed him to enter the ship. He sat at the controls. He sighed and glanced back at the creature who slumbered in his too-small holding pen at the rear of the ship. He had made a convincing demonstration, but now it was time for the beast to go back to its home. After several diagnostics and system checks, the unlikely pair were on their way.
#
The next afternoon, an investor came to the exhibition hall asking for the man, who was supposed to meet her for lunch. No one had seen him all day, but if she found him, she was to let them know. He and his ship were gone, along with all the plans for his miraculous ship that he had allowed absolutely no one to help him with.
#
After returning the beast to its rightful home, the man took a deep breath. He had never known air that wasn’t tainted by pollution. He felt this place rejuvenating him in a way that no detoxification process on Earth could possibly achieve. Every part of him screamed, do not leave this place! This is where you belong. Your’s is not the world of Man, but a world in which you don’t have to answer to investors, stock-holders, or the government! You would be in charge! You would be master of all that you survey! You would be Adam before Eve. Better than that, you could remake this world in your image! You could be God!
The man thought this over. It would be simple enough. His was the only working prototype. They couldn’t possibly come back to retrieve him if they wanted to. His mind made up, he began to hike. He found a deep ravine that would serve nicely as cover for his ship. Not far off was a valley with a clear blue stream running through it. He stopped and took a drink. The clean cool water ran through him like a healing elixir. He sat on the bank of the stream and began to laugh. His laughter echoed through the huge leafy trees, causing some manner of reptile-birds to take wing from their perches. He laughed even harder at that.
#
After concealing his miraculous device in the ravine, covered in foliage; he returned to the valley and set up camp using provisions he had brought in his ship. His shelter was a solar tarp that stored the warmth of the sun during the day. At night, it radiated the heat back down on him while he slept. Not that he got much sleep that first night. His mind was racing with the possibilities of life on this planet. He decided that it wasn’t just the potential of this new world, but what the planet had already become that excited him. The evolutionary twists and turns that had occurred on this planet without any sentient interference. He would enjoy living here.
His thoughts were interrupted by a crash in the brambles to the side of him. He rolled over on his side and propped himself on one elbow to get a better look at what was going on out there. The forest was silent once more. He rest his head back down when a softer rustle sounded from the same general direction as the crash. He sat erect now, trying to hold his breath. He cursed himself. Something had sensed the heat of his solar tarp and had come to investigate. How could he have been so stupid? Another rustle. The man was standing now, ready to… what? Fight? Run away? Both solutions seemed inadequate. He would die rooted to the spot under his makeshift shelter. When this planet evolved sentient life thousands of years from now, they would find this camp and think that they had evolved from him. This made the man giggle nervously. They would have a foolish search for some ‘missing link’ between him and them that couldn’t possibly exist.
Another rustle.
A large, mouse-like animal that came up to the man’s knees appeared, the man didn’t get a fantastic look at the creature, because it ran straight through the campsite, tearing past the man as fast as the thing could go. The man ducked as his makeshift shelter was ripped up and away. As the tattered solar tarp fluttered to the ground, the man saw the culprit; a huge winged lizard flew off in pursuit of its prey, the moon glinting off of its mighty purple wings and sharp crimson talons.
Heart still racing, the man decided this might not be the best place after all. Perhaps it would be best to return to Earth. However, the man was exhausted and didn’t feel that he’d be able to hold his thoughts together long enough for the trip home, so he abandoned his camp and returned to the ship in order to rest there.
#
The man was awoken the next day by an explosion. The man quickly keyed the controls that would allow him to exit the craft. As he exited, he smelled smoke and the unmistakable smell of ozone that comes with laser weapons fire. As he climbed out of the ravine, his anger swelled. Who could do this? When he crested the top, he saw something that truly sickened him. A fleet of box-ships had arrived. Men in some kind of high-tech armor the man didn’t recognize were hunting the creatures as far as the man’s eyes could see. He realized that the box-ships were sleeker and more attractive than his prototype. That was impossible. He had not shared the final solution to the ship to anyone. Someone must have figured it out. He supposed it was inevitable. That’s when he realized that these men could have come from anywhere! How egotistical could he have been to think that he would be the only person to ever create the miraculous box-ships? Progress was inevitable. Progress was sometimes made by the wrong people. Weren’t his investors the very type of people he had tried to keep the designs away from? He had been so careful to protect his dream, and now here were these braggarts, having the time of their lives at this planet’s evolutionary detriment.
The man ran and slid back down the embankment to his ship.
#
As he sat down at the controls, he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was a random act of cosmic violence that made Earth spiral down the course of human evolution. If that meteor had never crashed, there would be no pollution, no wars, no men killing the home of their birth, only to eventually conquer other worlds and destroy them as well. If that meteor had never crashed…
Adrenaline flowing, the man adjusted the controls and concentrated. Prehistoric Earth. He played it out in his mind. He got a mental image of the earliest days of life on Earth. It would be sweet satisfaction knowing that the dinosaurs would be saved and that Man would never rule the planet. He salivated at the thought of putting himself between his beloved planet and the calamity that would destroy the last noble rulers it had ever had. Could a greater sacrifice ever be made? His heart leapt at the thought. Incredible that he could have such an effect on time. The further back his machine pushed back on the time stream, the harder it became to keep conscious. Just a little more, just a little… was the last conscious thought the man had.
#
When he came to, the controls were dead. The man had a headache. He touched a hand to his forehead and felt the warm stickiness of his own blood. Upon inspection of his surroundings, he saw a spattering of blood on the consoles. The box-ship must have spun violently out of control after he lost consciousness. He checked all the status monitors. Life support was still functioning at the bare minimum levels. He got the sense that he was moving, yet he had lost consciousness some time ago. Wasn’t the ship designed to stop if it’s pilot lost consciousness? Otherwise who knows where one could end up if the ship literally followed one’s dreams? The proximity detectors were offline. He had no way of knowing where he was. For all he knew, he was caught in the gravity well of a large planet or sun, both of which would spell out certain doom for the man. He fumbled for the manual override for the shutter that covered the forward viewing portal. He usually kept the shutters closed, for the dizzying array of light and color that appears before you as you pass through space and time at the speed of thought can be an overwhelming experience. After several minutes of stubbornness, the shutter gave way. At first, the man thought that something must be somehow obstructing his view, for he could see nothing. Just sheer blackness. Nothing. No stars, no nebulas, absolutely no matter of any kind.
He had himself convinced that he would simply die without ever knowing where he’d wound up. He turned his head away from the screen to close the shutter and resign himself to his fate, when a small pinprick of light appeared in the corner of his vision. It was so faint and distant that the man hadn’t been able to see it when he was looking straight on. Only in the corner of his eye did the light appear. He turned to look at it and it disappeared again. Realization began to creep in. He must be at the event horizon of a singularity! Panic welled up in him. He would surely be sucked in. His life’s work for nothing. His mission of martyrdom amounted to nothing. He decided he wasn’t ready to die. “Not like this!” he cried aloud, pleading for this cosmic joke to end. He toggled switches, pounded gauges. Something should be able to get propulsion up. The light had become brighter. He could see it straight on now.
The man began to laugh. You can’t outrun fate. Not even in a ship built on thought. The singularity began pulling on his legs. His feet seemed an impossible distance away from him, yet he felt no pain. The synapses in his brain hadn’t stopped firing, but they were so stretched in time that it would take thousands of years for the cells to communicate. The clock in the instrument panel slowed, then stopped, as they were pulled in.
#
An eternity passed as the box-ship was inexorably sucked in to the singularity, stretched into an infinite strand of matter. But even eternities must end. Something about the introduction of a complex foreign material into the singularity didn’t agree with it. Eventually, it exploded. The box-ship was evaporated into its composite atoms, of course, as was the man. Dust and debris began to collide as infinite amounts of matter spewed from the singularity at infinite speeds. Gases formed themselves into radiant balls, dust formed rocks, which collided in to one another and formed large objects which would much later be referred to as planets. The atoms of the man were spread over impossible distances over an infinite breadth. These atoms found their way to infant planets, were forged in the hottest chemical fires, becoming the building blocks of life.
#
The funeral was small. The eulogy was short. People weren’t sure what to say about a man with so much energy. What do you say about a man who reignites within you the desire to be something more? To do something more? What can you possibly say about a man who has taught you that it is possible to fly on the wings of your dreams?
No one was ever able to duplicate his experiment, however. “What a shame,” they said, “that he and his machine were taken from us before anyone else could Realize the Universe.”
copyright ©Justin M. Howe, 2008
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