Event Horizon

by Scott McElhaney

  “Did you find a rubber mat?”

  “Not yet. And most of these adhesive tubes are hardened,” he grumbled.

  “The product you are looking for will not be. It remains soft even when dried.”

  Just then, he located a brown tube of the gasket adhesive and placed it into his jacket pocket. Then he pulled out the drawer above it. There he discovered a black mat under the metal tools. He yanked the mat out, causing the tools to rattle loudly against the metal base of the drawer. He almost closed the drawer out of courtesy, but recalled suddenly that there was no one left to be courteous to. He then pulled out all the other drawers until the weight of the drawers offset the weight of the box itself. The whole unit started to lean. Then as Skylar leapt back, it crashed to the floor noisily.

  “Are you alright, Skylar Rains?”

  He laughed. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve got the stuff I need.”

  “You will need to cut rubber circles much larger than the bullet holes. Smother these in adhesive and place them over the holes. These will be held in place by the pressurized cabin.”

  “Are you sure this will work?” Skylar asked, heading back to the Orbiter.

  “I have a vast library of information at my disposal. If you located the correct items and you follow my directions, this will work.”

  He rushed back into the Orbiter and the door closed behind him. Then he unzipped his backpack and shuffled around until he located his small knife. He pushed his backpack aside then tossed the rubber mat onto the floor. He opened the blade and stabbed it into the mat.

  . . . . .

  The jagged rubber circles held firmly to the window under the growing cabin pressure. His ears popped as he sat down into the pilot’s chair.

  “Cabin pressure indicates a perfect seal. I am bringing the engines online and warming up the hover coils.”

  “Please keep in mind that this is all foreign to me,” Skylar stated, buckling up the seatbelt.

  “Most of the controls can be handled by me, but you need to steer and manage the speed. The orange lever to your right will control your hover height which has a max of around ninety feet. The steering wheel is self explanatory with the exception of the squeeze trigger under your fingers. The right controls speed and the left controls the brakes. Do you understand so far?”

  “I think so. What about up and down?”

  “Push forward on the steering wheel to go down and pull back to go up. This is the same for the flight systems of your era. I can take over the navigation and controls as we near the space station. Flight computers always handle the docking anyway.”

  The Orbiter swayed as though pummeled by a strong wind.

  “You are hovering now. You may ease the forward jets now with your right grip and be ready with the brake on your left hand. The orange lever again will raise you higher if necessary.”

  He squeezed the right grip gently, causing the Orbiter to move forward slowly. He steered cautiously to the right as he exited the hangar. Then he reached down and pulled on the orange lever, bringing the spacecraft up as smoothly as an elevator. He pulled the lever all the way back, hoping to attain maximum height and stay clear of obstacles.

  “You seem to have good control. We are now at the maximum hover height, so you are going to have to lose any remaining fears. In order to leave the atmosphere, you are going to have to achieve a significant amount of speed. I want you to squeeze the lever hard and be ready to pull back on the steering wheel. The purple gauge on the console will need to read ‘0’. This will mean you are pointed directly upward.”

  He nodded and then squeezed tightly. The Orbiter shot forward at frightening speeds. He was pushed back in his seat by the g-force while he stared wide-eyed out the window.

  “Pull back slowly and watch the purple gauge.”

  He took his eyes off the window and stared down at the gauge. The numbers slowly counted down as he pulled back on the steering wheel. I wasn’t long before he was watching the sky open up in front of him. The purple gauge read “0.”

  “Soon, you will see stars as you leave the atmosphere. When the red gauge reads 500 miles or more, you can start leveling off the purple gauge again.”

  “You are quite the coach,” Skylar said.

  “You are quite the student.”

  He leveled the ship off at 523 miles and stared out across the crisp sky. He never imagined that he would see the moon or the stars from this viewpoint.

  “I’m going to bring the ship on a course toward the space station. You can relinquish the controls now that I have acquired the target and we are free from any obstacles.”

  He released the steering wheel and watched as the ship turned sharply and headed higher above the Earth. He looked down at the planet and saw very little that he recognized from the photographs of his day. The planet was covered in a haze, but he could still see land in some areas. The landforms of North America still looked basically the same until he caught sight of the eastern United States.

  There was a large “C” carved into the area above Florida where he believed South or North Carolina should be. It looked like somebody took a perfect bite out of the side of the United States. If he had to guess, he’d say a meteor of enormous magnitude must have struck in the Atlantic just a few miles off of South Carolina.

  “It looks horrible. I would have hated to live through something like that.”

  “Is there a crater?”

  “Yes. If it would have hit in the center of the US, the crater itself would be bigger than Kansas.”

  “That would be devastating. It would have darkened the Earth for a long time. The earthquakes and the wildfires would have been terrifying.”

  “How is it that you speak like a human?” he asked, staring out the window.

  “I have the ability to imagine. There is no historical record of such a strike and I imagine it would be awful.”

  He could see an object far ahead of them. As small as it was, he figured they still had a long way to go before they caught up with it.

  “Can I ask you to look up something in your historic records of the world? It has nothing to do with me.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I want to know if the term ‘wedding feast of the lamb’ ever appeared in history or in literature. Was it in a movie or a famous historical event?”

  The computer paused for a moment.

  “It was a part of folklore and mythology. There was religious group in your time that believed a god by the name of Jesus Christ would return for his people and share in this feast of celebration. This was part of a story that became illegal to reprint or to have in your possession.”

  “Folklore? Jesus Christ is a huge part of society in my time. I don’t know a whole lot about him, but I never thought of him as folklore. The Bible is illegal?”

  “Yes. Even the information I gathered would have been illegal. Someone risked a lot by having it available to my search engines,” the computer responded, “I will slow down and begin my final approach.

  Skylar watched the ball-shaped structure as they drew closer to it. The object eerily resembled a small Death Star from the movie Star Wars. Something enormous appeared to be attached on the other side.

  “All environmental units are online. Final records report thirteen people aboard the SA Space Station.”

  The Orbiter drew closer to the ball and then started to tilt downward.

  “So we’re going to find some dead bodies up here?”

  “No. There are no records of departure and there are no records of decomposition. Like before, there is simply nothing. Ten inches and closing… nine, eight, seven… we are attached and the escape trunk is sealing at this moment.”

  Skylar unbuckled himself and crawled to the ladder in the back. The hatch above him made a hiss followed by a metallic clunk as it opened.

  “Welcome to the SA Space Station. When you climb through this escape trunk and into the station above, you will discover a shift in gra
vity. Right now it will appear as though you are climbing upward. At the end of the tunnel, you will discover yourself to be entering a passageway from the side wall. The gravity will be pulling you in a confusing direction.”

  The tunnel appeared to be too tight for the backpack strapped to him, so he pushed it upward above him as he climbed the ladder. Just as the computer had warned, when he reached the top of the ladder, the backpack fell sideways to the passageway floor. Skylar tumbled out afterward.

  The walls of the hallway arced around, giving the impression of a circular passage that probably returned to the same spot. He stood up and then lifted his backpack from the floor.

  “This station serves as a launching point for large spacecraft. The ISDC TauCeti is docked right now on the other side of the station.”

  He started down the hall, staring at his feet in wonder. One of the main problems with the concept of long distance space flight has always been the need for artificial gravity. To date, no one had ever come up with a reasonable theory of how this could be created. He’d be curious enough to ask the computer, but then what would happen when he took that information into the past? Paradoxes are frightening things.

  “So there was supposed to be another trip to the planet around Tau Ceti?”

  “Yes, but the launch was delayed due to the war. Most of the records point to a complete abandonment of the space program when the war erupted. The Space Administration seems to be non-existent shortly thereafter.”

  “What is the condition of the ship?”

  “Unlike the Orbiter, there is no way one man can fly the ISDC TauCeti alone. The ship requires a crew of at least seven people and that is assuming no one sleeps.”

  “It was just a thought,” he mumbled, stopping before a door.

  He pressed a little red button and the door slid open. He discovered a small bedroom in exceptionally neat condition. There was no dust or fallen ceiling panels anywhere in sight. The bed was neatly made and there was no other evidence of past occupancy.

  “Well, I should probably choose a room if I’m going to be stuck here for a while.” Skylar said.

  “The rooms are all identical. This one is registered to no one according to the records.”

  Skylar heaved the backpack onto the bed and then walked over to the side door in the bedroom. He pressed the button and the door slid open. He snickered. There was one technology that didn’t change a bit over the years. The toilet was as familiar as any he had ever seen before.

  “This room will serve you well because the kitchen and the cafeteria are located in the middle of this level. Any of the inner doors of the main passageway will take you there.”

  He nodded then sat down on the bed. His mind returned to the lady he referred to as Tiara. He lay back on the firm pillow and tried to pull up an image of her in his mind.

  It was her smile that reflected so clearly in his mind. People smile for a variety of reasons, but most often, the smiles are “placed” on their faces. A kind “hello” or “how are you doing” are usually offered with a placed smile. When someone tells a semi-funny joke, we offer placed smiles. When someone takes our photograph, we offer a placed smile.

  But those placed smiles were so rare when we were children. Our smiles were more real and infinitely more sincere. Those Christmas morning smiles lit our faces twenty times a day and a hundred days a year.

  When he looked at Tiara, she always had a full, sincere smile on her face. It was a beautiful smile that told everyone just how truly happy she was. It was a childish smile that spoke “hey, come see what I found – it’s exciting!” The silken beauty of her long brown hair and the deep color of her eyes just somehow faded into the background behind that smile of pure joy.

  Somehow, he knew he would never see her again. She was part of that planet below and so were the visions of that eternal summer. When she introduced him to the brilliant and radiant man, she put a stop to the visions altogether. Of that, he was certain. That man literally kicked him out of the party.

  Now he was stuck with only the memories. Her image would survive only as long as his mind was able to hold onto it. That was the moment he recalled something she had said to him.

  She pulled him aside before the party. She had already seemed fearful that something bad could happen. What was it she had spoken to him? She told him to remember that he still had a chance and no one else did. He could still return because somehow he still had an opportunity.

  Was she talking about returning to the cold Earth again? Or was she talking about the biblical Wedding Feast of the Lamb? If so, this all had something to do with Jesus Christ and getting… somehow getting invited to the feast? But she had said that everyone was invited and it sure looked like everyone in the world was at that reception.

  “Computer, how does someone get invited to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb?”

  “That book was taken off the net centuries ago and as I said, it is illegal material.”

  He scratched his chin as he stared up at the ceiling.

  “I was told I can still go to that party. I need to figure out how. Tiara is there.”

  “I don’t have a response to your statement because it confuses me.”

  “Well how did you find out that the feast was related to Jesus Christ?”

  “It was part of a college thesis I located on the net. The paper was about the human desire to eat. The thesis had little to do with religious beliefs.”

  He reached back and tucked the pillow firmly beneath his neck. It was a welcome respite from the rough backpack he had been using the last two nights.

  “I won’t tell the authorities if you can find me a Bible.”

  “I’ll hear nothing of such talk. I am programmed to remain within the confines of the law.”

  He shook his head and then rolled over onto his side.

  . . . . .

  Skylar awoke to the smell of coffee. He sat up in his bed and wondered suddenly if he was dreaming. There was no childish laughter or bold, crisp colors to define that summertime world he kept visiting. The room was still bathed in the same artificial light that existed when he dozed off.

  “Is that coffee I smell?” Skylar asked.

  “I cannot cook the food in any automated way, but I can brew coffee and tea. Forgive me for my interruption into your sleep. I was intrigued to discover the different systems up here. Did you know that the computer system doesn’t talk up here? Also, it is much more limited in its ability to converse.”

  “In other words, it is just a computer. Maybe in space, they want computers to be dead so they don’t encounter a HAL situation,” Skylar stated.

  “I somehow knew you were going to eventually bring up ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. For someone of your century to be inserted into the technologies of today, you display less fear than I had anticipated.”

  “So you agree with the fears?”

  “No. Even if I were alive as you suggested, I would rely on you for my eyes and my arms. Unlike the fictional HAL, computer vision has never come to pass. I truly cannot see. I have attained a lot of my information through you.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed and then ran his fingers through his hair. He was feeling desperately in need of a shower.

  “Information? Such as?”

  “You helped me to verify the extent of the devastation and the fact that it was a war. You helped me to verify the lack of bodies anywhere. I now have a better understanding of this world. It appears as though I am in for an eternity of loneliness once you pass away.”

  He laughed as he looked up at the ceiling.

  “So you have come to appreciate my existence? You see me as a companion?”

  “Yes I have. I would be troubled by your departure.”

  “And the coffee?”

  “It awaits you in the cafeteria. I will show you to the food supplies also.”

  . . . . .

  Skylar spent the better part of the next day getting familiar with his new home. He discovere
d twenty bedrooms of which half were designed for more than one person. He found a medical facility, a lab, an observatory, three supply rooms, an exercise facility, the communication room or bridge for lack of a better word, and a meeting room.

  Sifting through the bedrooms, he located three clean outfits as well as a large stash of reading material. The books were yellowed with age, but solid nonetheless. Most were novels or books on philosophy and science. He gathered all these up and delivered them to his bedroom.

  The computer offered plenty of conversation. They shared their discoveries with each other and listened to stories from each of their own histories. Skylar was happy for the companionship, but continued to long for the presence of Tiara.

  Hours passed into days and by the end of a full week, Skylar yearned for something more. The novels kept him busy, but after a while, the stories all melded together into one solid, twisted opus. He could feel the boredom slip in and beckon him to his bed. Sleep was slowly becoming his only escape from the monotony.

  By the end of another week, he was sleeping more than half of his days away. The dreams were often of his world in the 21st century. Most of those dreams though, he couldn’t recall in the morning. Finally one morning, Skylar jumped out of bed and hollered at the ceiling.

  “Is there a way for me to fly the ship to Tau Ceti?” he blurted out.

  “I already told you that it would take a minimum-”

  “I know what you told me,” he interrupted, “But technically… scientifically, is it possible? Maybe with your help?”

  “It wouldn’t be safe, but technically speaking, we could fly the ship to Tau Ceti. We would increase the chance of a disaster by 15% and the chance of overall mission failure by 28%. I imagine that I could watch over the engineering controls, but you would need to run back and forth from engineering to the bridge a few times a day. I could monitor the GF around the ship and keep an eye on most of the controls…”