* This is a tentative continuance, no guarantees.
All because vanity calls.
I hope you won't be too disappointed.
We'll see if it works, or not.
==
.
There’s a mountain, and no, I’m not speaking of one of those thin ones, those fashionably slim, elegantly cutting through the air. You know, the ones that all mountaineers so dearly love.
No, it's an altogether other type of mountain. First of all, It's old, so much older than anything you ever have meet in your life. Think of a universe, any universe. Then ask yourself which came first, the mountain or SpaceTime? We can only guess there. And if you started to walk it I think you first would think of it as a hill, ugly, slippery, overgrown with trees, vines, and all kinds of rotting vegetation. But, after some weeks walking you might just start to wonder when this hill would end? And as you went on, forever exploring upwards, you would find its vegetation changing, the trees becoming increasingly scarce, bushes and moss taking their place. And, as you looked up that everlasting hill, you might just wonder how high it could go?
In fact, the mountain is so large, it covers half a continent, maybe more? Inside it, hidden from sight there are jewels of delight, valleys, filled with wild life, lakes gleaming blue, and people, well, inhabitants at least. To me it is a place of dreaming, and if you ever visited it, a place you would want to return too. So, you might ask, is this a real place? Well, as real as faith, hope and imagination can make it. Reality is only a game, you live it with your eyes open, but sleeping all the same. And this mountain, it's just as real as that.
And Jeff was there.
In fact, he had never really left..
=
“What do you see?”
“I don’t know”
“Look harder”
A sea of blackness opening into an abyss.
“There’s something, stars?”
“Harder.”
“Is it a game.”
“look.”
Looking into that swirling blackness his footing was lost, falling again. Now looking out from inside he watched the mountain recede, rapidly shrinking, twirling away into nothingness, and with it all his memories.
==
“Jeff.”
“Yes” He tried to wake up, but he didn’t really want to. There was something he had to do?
“Jeff, we need to confer.”
Why couldn’t they leave him alone? But, as he at last opened his eyes he once more knew where he was, and with that, his dream forgotten.
“Yes suit.”
“We have a problem.”
Jeff looked out, first checking on her ladyship. Her suit was still there beside him, its telltales a relaxed glimmering green. So comforted, he started to scan what space he could see around him.
“What problem suit?”
“There is a anomaly approaching.”
“Anomaly?”
What the hell did that matter anyway? He would be dead soon enough anyway, anomaly or no anomaly. But it might for Janelle. Yes, he had started to call her that, most secretly, and only in his thoughts.
“Describe it, please?”
“We first noticed it 1300 h, heading away from us. Royal scanned it at 1300:12:110:13 without luck. At 1300:12:111 the gravity slope changed, we are now getting dragged towards it.”
“A black hole, suit?”
“No, no data consistent with this behavior.”
Jeff had read of those small, and micro, black holes. Made at the birth of a universe they roamed its lanes, doing no more mischief than any other objects made of matter. It wasn’t until you passed its event horizon you really had to worry, and that said, you more or less had to meet them 'head on' to do that. But the suit and Royal was right, the gravity slope couldn’t be manipulated this way. Out here, where gravity was weak, the space could almost be described as flat, and to create a slope where none had been, and from a object leaving you ?
“Does it accelerate?”
“No.”
“Not a ship then?” Jeff found himself desperately wishing that he knew more. Maybe they should wake Janelle? “Have we tried to communicate?”
“No answer on subspace channels.”
“Can we stop us from getting dragged with it?”
“Yes, but we need a human decision for that. It will involve losing energy.”
Ah, of course. Energy, the great divider between life and death.
“How much?”
“Royal and me concur on losing between fifty to eighty percent, if done inside the nearest ten minutes. Raising constantly with the slopes steepness.”
That made it almost meaningless, thought Jeff, losing half their energy supply, or more, they could as easily commit suicide.
“You know that this is not a option. Why did you wake me.”
“Sir, our protocols do not allow otherwise, sorry Sir.”
‘Wow, that had to be a first’ thought Jeff. ‘Calling me, Sir?’ He almost smiled.
“It’s okay, suit, I understand.”
“Thank you Sir.”
“Stop that Siring please. Call me Jeff.”
“Thank you, Jeff.”
Some time passed as Jeff silently mulled over what to do, not that there really was any ´choices to be made here.
“Sir.”
“Didn’t I tell you, Jeff?”
“Jeff, our window of opportunity is gone. The slope are reaching lights speed.”
“What!” A black hole after all? But if it was, of some kind that Jeff never been told of. Not that he had that much experience, but he had crammed in what sleep courses he could find, as his apetite had grown aboard his new home.
“That makes no sense Suit? Give me your data?”
“Calculating, expected down time. 120:12 :134:02. Sorry updating, 119:11:34. Sorry updating.”
“Just give me your best guess Suit.”
“Extrapolating, from known parameters. I’m sorry Jeff, this will be a very bad guess. Give or take some minutes. Possibly 10 minutes, to half an hour. Its parameters are not linear. .And I have no data on anything able to accelerate faster, the closer it comes to light Jeff. According to my data the opposite should be the correct response, the higher the slope of light, the slower a acceleration, closing on infinity.”
There was Hyper, and then there was sub space. Humans came from Sub space, or SpaceTime as some called it. Hyper was just a description of a region where the laws no longer held, as far Jeff understood it. Like a fracture inside floating glass someone had told him, a bubble in where nothing moved, but from where SpaceTime was accessible everywhere, even though under some restrictions. But nothing could break the law of lights speed in a vacuum, to go faster by ordinary motion presumed more energy than the universe contained itself.
“I’m getting a headache.” Jef mumbled.
“A painkiller?”
“No suit, Thanks though.”
“Is there any ideas in you data banks? Anything that can suggest how this is possible?”
“Negative energy, and matter, might, but not really Jeff. Most theory's expect them to act the same as ordinary matter and energy.”
“Portals then, suit? Could it be some sort of portal?”
Portals were the big unknowns. They did not fit any known theory. Whoever had built them first did not use worm holes, and there was no known energy drawn from their existence.
“Not enough data Jeff. Maybe, but there is nothing in my banks about portals manipulating gravity.”
“And it doesn’t accelerate you say?”
“No.”
“Well suit, I don’t see we have any choice? Let’s try to enjoy the ride.”
“Acknowledged, changing into survival mode. Goodnight Jeff.”
As Jeff found himself slipping under, he still tried to vocalize his protest, but, to no avail.
His last thought, ‘damn those protocol’s to hell.”
===
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Comments
Well seems interesting, but
Well seems interesting, but you might want to interconnect your chapters better...
Thank you for writing,
Beyogi
It took me a couple-
of sentences to connect to what was going on too. Wasn't sure if it was more flashbacks or what. I am getting the feeling that many years has passed since the first back where he was a child. The woman was the teenager who was watching after him and now had a ship of her own before it was destroyed. He seems to be very knowledgeable given his questions about space-time. They are now being dragged into some kind of anomaly. Possibly part of what caused the lost of their ship?
Any more to follow? Please may I have another helping? :)
hugs
Grover
Oh Please! Please! Please!
It sounds like something interesting is about to happen. Is it a portal? Aliens? A portal sent by Aliens? I dunno. But I WANT TO! Please, More?
Wren
I always thought...
> Think of a universe, any universe. Then ask yourself which came first, the mountain or SpaceTime? <
How about: the BigBang or whatever the start was vs SpaceTime; I always thought they came into existence together. Before was inconceivable/meaningless, then there was everything, but infinitely small. SpaceTime started; expansion or hyperexpansion started; this was a "real" universe so infinitely small took on a very small real value. If string theory is a good description of everything, I guess the universe was the size of a closed string, which, I guess, is similar to the smallest quanta of space. As soon as any time had passed, whatever is the smallest quanta of time, like 10^-24 second (?), the universe was larger....and so on.
Actually, I can't get my head around the whole universe, all of matter-energy, in some supersmall thing/volume/whatever. How could gravity be overcome? How does this differ from a black hole? I wonder if there are equations that describe this, like maybe weak and strong nuclear forces repel at tiny distances or something else overcomes gravity. Maybe in a black hole matter is not this compressed. Classically, like following general relativity, gravity in a black hole is unstoppable and matter is infinitely compressed/density is infinite; there is a singularity, where classical equations don't give a real universe type answer. Maybe the singularity is not "in" our universe. Alternatively, according to string theory, there is a limit to which matter can be compressed: the size of a closed string, so infinity density is not reached.
Hmmm, it makes sense that a micro black hole would be this small. A black hole with the mass of the earth has an event horizon radius of 0.9 cm. A supermassive black hole has an event horizon that is macro not micro, 10^9 kilometers in radius! I really don't know the physics, completely guessing, but maybe something contrary to gen rel, etc. happens to the matter; it could be in some unknown state, but not compressed to the size of a string. It just seems that there must be some difference between a supermassive black hole core and the Big Bang.
Hugs and Bright Blessings,
Renee
Ready for work, 1992.
Hugs and Bright Blessings,
Renee
heh
Groover. I do like the twisting labyrinth of your mind. Similar to mine in fact, maybe you should be the one writing :) you give me ideas, and they're not bad ones either. And yeah Wren, I wonder too :) And to all of you. Thnxs for commenting, it helps me see what I wrote and if there are other ways to do it. (Beyogi I'm not sure what you mean by interconnect?)
And yea Renee, 'energy' is one of the weirdest things I know of. The universe seem full up with shuffling energy around. If we ignore motion and so time, instead pretending that the universe is one big chunk of dataspace in some binary, or octagonal, whatever computer. Then we let each point be represented by some number. Those numbers could represent some state of 'energy' or other.
Then we look at the cube frozen, without time. Now you can see all numbers there are, being 'still'.
Then we introduce times arrow and watch the numbers change. There's your 'motion', nothing really 'moves' in that universe, but the numbers do change under the arrow. And for us representing some set of numbers inside it, each one of us, the illusion of motion will be perfect, and 'energy', going from useful 'new' to old 'non-useful'.
But it doesn't explain 'free will' and what 'energy', and 'time', really is.
To me 'time' is the real mystery.
It's the numbers changing, and to do that they must have a reason.