The crew of the UN Seacrest felt a small lurch as if they were on an aeroplane that hit a small pocket of turbulence. The bridge was deathly silent, all members were plugging away at their holoscreens. Captain Khan silently reviewed each area on her array of screens.
“Report,” she called to her engineer.
“Jump initiated and completed as expected. We have travelled just over 2 million light years. We are approximately 500k light years out from our target destination. Reviewing jump data now. Standby.”
“Communications, give me a sitrep.”
“Captain, we are in the middle of interstellar space. There’s no feedback, no latent energy signatures. Internal communications are all green across the board. However, there is… Wait. What the?” Lieutenant Randy Brookes tapped at his screens with increasing urgency. “No.”
“Explain, Lieutenant,” came a Khan’s harsh tone.
“Captain, it appears that our sensors are picking up some unknown energy signatures that are akin to radio waves. I am trying to intercept and decode them. However, it appears to be nothing we have ever seen before.” The usually calm and collected Lieutenant Brookes fidgeted nervously as he poured over the data coming through to his holoscreens. Then he saw it. A cold chill crawled slowly down his spine as if a spider was spinning a frozen web. His heart rate increased in tempo and a small bead of swear adorned his greying temples.
“Do we have a source, Lieutenant?” With that, the main holoscreen that filled the bridge came to life. It showed an impossible sight. A dense swirl of variegated patterns and shapes. They seemed to throb with pure energy. The longer one looked into the sea of unending shapes the deeper and more abstract it became. The bridge drowned in colour as the holoscreen expanded to capture the scenes before them.
The low buzz of the bridges officers abruptly stopped as they all took in the impossible view. Shapes, fractals, swirls and unimaginable forms filled the screen. Each person was drawn to its magnificence, each person could sense the pull and wanted to jump into the all-knowing and all-giving appearance. They could all sense a distinct thrum. It felt like dread, reverie, salvation and terror packaged up into one simple moment. Just a simple glimpse at the display flooded them with a lifetime of emotion. The bridge remained entrapped. The bridge engineer didn’t notice the fusion engines’ activity. She didn’t see that they began to thrum in time with the entity in front of them. She didn’t notice the bright purple hue emanating from the outlets. She didn’t notice they were moving.
***
“Green across the board, Chief,” came Higgins’ report. Checking his holoscreen once more he was happy that all his components were in working order. Having looked at the display on the main engineering screen, he saw that they were pulled out of the jump early. Far too early. Returning to his holoscreen, Higgins conducted a deep scan of the immediate area. His eyes scanned all 6 of his available screens as the data came streaming in. As the last few gigabytes entered, his brows began to furrow and eyes narrowed quickly, followed by his eyebrows jumping up in surprise.
“Chief, look at this.” Higgins sent his data screen across to the Chief who almost exactly mirrored the expressions of Higgins.
“Ready the engines,” the Chief ordered, “I will update the bridge.”
Higgins began the process of preparing the engines for another jump. His status screen indicated that the other teams had already started the procedure for their areas. The data screen gave Higgins pause. It was something he had never seen before. He had no idea what it meant, but he could only postulate without doing research and access to more data. Running through the booting process took no time at all. The efficiency of the fusion engines was unparalleled.
Everything appeared normal on his screen. The activity node started to blink. Frowning a that, Higgins inspected the data and zoomed in on the fusion engine. He noticed that the drives were powered and engaged. Looking at the trajectory and speed of the boost he realised what was happening. The fusion reactors had engaged and were propelling the entire ship toward the anomaly. The speed was minute, the engines were barely engaged outputting any thrust; but they were moving and heading straight for it.
Higgins sent the data to the Chief’s screens.
“Bridge, this is engineering,” the Chief called into her communication panel. No response. “Bridge, this is engineering, we have a situation.” The Chief frowned and tapped at his holoscreen to bring up the bridge view. The view of the bridge filled his holoscreen and created an open audio channel. His lips went into a thin line as his eyes narrowed taking in the view. The screen had crashed, there was no movement on the bridge. He closed down the screen and repeated the bridge view command again.
“Bridge, this is engineering, do you copy?” This time, the Chief opted for a different angle of the bridge in case that previous viewpoint had malfunctioned. His new vantage allowed him to see the main holoscreen of the bridge. A swirl of polychromatic shapes and figures filled his screen. The bridge crew remained still. It appeared this viewpoint had crashed too. However, the endless, forever moving entity played in front of him. The bridge crew were enraptured. All of them staring into the anomaly in front of them.
“Chief?” Higgins asked as he looked over at Wells. She was frozen. Her eyes glazed as if she had heard some terrible news. Her face slack, unmoving, unblinking. Higgins walked over to Wells’ function to check on her and then he saw it. The anomaly, the entity, the thrum of energy circulating, pulsing in waves. Upon seeing the swirl of colours before him, he felt every emotion he had ever known. He felt like he was being called, beckoned by some divine being as if he was being welcomed back to an old friend’s house.
A sharp tone brought him out of his stupor. His console blinked incessantly. He walked to his workstation to find the engines were now out of sync. Engines three and four were engaged and thrusting away from the anomaly whereas engines one and two increased their power to intercept. With his training kicking in, Higgins opened up his communications panel and contacted Chalky who ran engine two.
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“Chalky, my engine is malfunctioning and is heading toward the anomaly. You need to increase your output to counteract mine. I will contact three and four to advise them to do the same.” Higgins didn’t wait for a response as he contacted engines three and four. He tapped away at his holoscreen, frantically trying to get his engine to respond. His console blinked out.
*ACCESS DENIED*
“What the hell?” Higgins said to himself with exasperation. He tried accessing his other screens and consoles.
*ACCESS DENIED*
He looked up at Chief Wells and noticed she was still trapped in some sort of trance. Unmoving, slack-faced and still. A terrible feeling filled his chest and he began to feel the tightness of anxiety grab him and punch him in his gut. His heart began to beat faster, his head pounded in his ears.
Higgins looked around the room at each of his colleagues and saw that they were in the same trance-like state. He moved across to the auxiliary console and tried to review the status of the engines.
*ACCESS DENIED*
Higgins began to panic, he didn’t know what to do. He started to hyperventilate, his vision became blurry and darkness appeared in the periphery of his vision.
An all-hands alarm started to sound in the distance. Its usual ear-piercing shriek was soft sounded in time with his beating heart. CRASH. The sound of metal upon metal crashing against metal jolted him out of his panic attack. The once distant resonance of the all-hands alarm was now all too present. The blaring horn in his ear urged him forward. The only option he could think of was to manually disable the engines by engaging the fusion release chamber.
He ran down the Seacrest’s corridors. The carefully installed wiring and pipes blurred past as he made his way toward the aft. A burning started to build in his chest and his breaths became short and more difficult. His legs started getting heavier and he sprinted. The uniform whitewash walls and grey, plastic flooring made it difficult for Higgins to keep track of where he was. He stopped by a wall console to catch his breath. He tried to activate the holoscreen to check his position with the main chambers.
*ACCESS DENIED*
“Come one man!” he shouted to nobody in particular. He abruptly stopped, realising something. Horror replaced the burning in his chest and his heart sped up with the new thought. He hadn’t passed anybody. He’d not seen a single soul on his short run. Although he had only covered about 100 metres, he should have seen somebody.
He went into the nearest room which happened to be an engineering sub-compartment. In there he saw three colleagues. He didn’t know who they were as he generally kept to himself. Looking at their ranks, he could see they were juniors. However, having looked at them all he had confirmed what he had already known. All of them were staring at their holoscreens with the same vacant, emotionless expression on their face. He didn’t try and bring them out of their stupor as he know it wouldn’t work. He had already tried this with the Chief. One last time, he tried accessing the auxiliary console.
*ACCESS DENIED*
Knowing he had to avoid looking at the marvel on the holoscreens, he exited the compartment and continued his journey to the fusion hub. After another short sprint, he made it to the fusion hub. The fusion hub housed the magnificence that was the fusion reactors. It enabled the four engines to operate in harmony whilst directing and controlling the exact amount of energy out required. Although Higgins operated one for the four compartments that controlled the status and velocity of the engines. This was the true control area. However, this compartment remained unmanned due to the proximity of the fusion core.
After having scanned his retina to gain entrance to the compartment the hub was before him. The large open area covered multiple decks reaching as high as 30 metres. Both floor and ceiling had a pristine white finish that shone with the reflections of the ambient light. With an ambient temperature of 10 degrees Celsius, Higgins shivered slightly and goosebumps appeared on his arms. The central floor held the fusion containment chamber which was a stark contrast to the all-white surroundings.
A huge black cylinder sat in the centre of the room almost reaching the entire 30 metres. Its diameter was approximately 10 meters. There were thin inscription-like wiring that covered every millimetre of the core’s exterior. The usual soft blue glow was now replaced by a vibrant purple. The core hummed uncharacteristically. The usual soft hum was replaced, Higgins noted, by the same cadence and tempo displayed by the thrumming thing outside.
Higgins ran to the manual access panel to begin the manual shut down process.
*ACCESS DENIED*
“Shit, shit, shit.” He looked around for solutions but nothing came to him. Higgins main skill was his creativity that allowed him to find a way out of tricky situations. His uncanny ability to create something with few materials had landed him multiple opportunities in the engineering world. Having sailed through university with a masters, he soon realised the conglomerates would paid him millions of credits for their projects. He enjoyed an easy life with great money and fantastic benefits. Until the day that Aaron Long turned up at his door.
Higgins was pulled out of his thoughts as the humming increased, becoming more erratic. The hue of the core was now ever-changing. Sky blue turned to golden yellow, golden yellow merged into a crimson and finally settled into a verdant green. Slack-jawed, Higgins could only stare at the spectacle. There was nothing he could do. He was locked out. They were screwed.
***
The fins on the UN Seacrest’s fuselage pumped into action as the vessel orientated itself toward the rift. The fusion engines, now working in tandem, thrummed along with the changing songs and harmony exuded by the rift. The energy seeped out from the unknown and slowly clawed its way to the Seacrest. It moved along the vacuum of space like a hound searching for its prey’s scent. Strands of pure energy merged to form thick ribbons like the tendrils of a leviathan. They crept ever closer to the incapacitated Seacrest as it made its way to the fusion core embedded in the centre of the ship.
***
The hub that housed the core started rumbling. The floor began to shake and Higgins stumbled and knocked his head on the console as he fell to the floor. The wiring on the fusion core housing shone a bright white light illuminating the whole compartment. Higgins closed his eyes shut with the sudden change, but the image of the core burned in his mind as he covered his arm over his face.
Higgins opened his eyes as he got to his feet. The bright light had subsided and had been replaced with a deep crimson. Furrowing his brow, Higgins walked closer to the core and saw the wiring that had been so meticulously built and installed had changed. The distinct arrays that adorned the core before was replaced with what could only be described as impossible.
The Seacrest lurched and forced Higgins to lose balance again, he fell forward directly into the shell of the core. A loud chorus of chords filled his ears, lines of fractals, shapes and figures filled his eyesight. As soon as it came it went. Higgins remained motionless. Still. His hand unable to pull away from the core. His vision swam, the verdant green had returned and filled the room. At that same the energy from within the core became volatile, threatening to escape the containment of the core’s shell. The UN Seacrest was now just metres away from the rift in the sky. As the nose of the vessel met the rift, the fusion core exploded engulfing the entire ship in white hot flames destroying everything in its path. The last thing Higgins recalled was seeing a strange message popup in front of him:
[Anomalous entity detected]
[Origin: Unknown]
[Purpose: Unknown]
[Message: … … Standby … …]
[Message: Access granted]
[Message: Welcome anomaly, you have been initiated into the multiverse. Identifying seed for deployment]
[Message: … … Standby … …]
[Message: Seed identified. Transporting now]