Black Hull

by Joseph A. Turkot

  But when do you decide to start changing the way you act, instead of acting like you’ve changed the way you think? What has the universe become? Why believe FOD at all? He infiltrated your thoughts for christ’s sake.

  Sometimes you have to go with your gut.

  Two more knobs, and then one worked. Blue light lit the chamber. The metal-walled room, sterile in look and smell, centered around a hole in the middle. Mick drew near to it, peered down, and saw nothing but void. He looked around, found the fuel cell housing, inserted it in. A computer terminal nearby lit. He walked over, input the commands he’d been told.

  SET TIME TO IGNITION > ?

  He stared at the screen, letting the question mark blink. A moon. Hollowed out. Its body the creator of the end of all things. He swiped three times on the screen and left. Behind him blinked the computer screen:

  TIME TO IGNITION OF G-10 BLACK HOLE EVENT: 23 HOURS 59 MINUTES 59 SECONDS.

  77

  A square of light appeared in the distant, sparkling pattern of nebulae. Other than the square, growing and changing before him, nothing else disrupted the speckled beauty of space.

  “What’s that Comproc?” Mick asked.

  “What is what?” replied the computer.

  “That anomaly, the glow ahead on the right.”

  “That is a UCA billboard.”

  “UCA billboard…”

  The black hull accelerated and the sign grew. Soon, Mick could read its thousand-mile-high fusion-powered lettering:

  UTOPIA – Tickets nearly sold out. Reserve your residence now for only 50,000 UCD!

  Coordinates transmittable upon request to your ship. Plant-pass required for entrance.

  “How long ago did we leave FOD’s station?” Mick asked.

  “Request not understood.”

  Singularity my ass.

  “Moon K4R-12. How long ago did we depart?”

  “Five hours and twenty minutes. Would you like a more specific time?”

  “No. Check the coordinates offered by the billboard for Utopia.”

  “Understood. Coordinates saved.”

  “How long to reach them?”

  “Projected travel time is ten hours and fifteen minutes.”

  “What about from Utopia to coordinate set three?”

  “From Utopia, travel time would be six hours and forty-five minutes.”

  I could make it. But what for? To see everyone. You’ll see them when you get home. I’d like to see everyone. You can’t get in though. Why not? Plant-check, it said. Fuck it, I have enough time to check it out. And what if you have another tail? Let’s just hope this black hull is as stealthy as the one that got me into this shit.

  “Change destination. Follow the coordinates for Utopia.”

  “Understood. Coordinates set.”

  78

  “This is UCA Utopia admissions board. Please dock in the .HUM uploader station and prepare for plant verification and storage.”

  Mick eyed the enormous golden sphere—a great stone, its surface reflecting the starlight that bordered it in every direction. Uploader stations, as gold as the world itself, orbited by the hundreds.

  “Pull her in Com,” Mick said.

  “Affirmative.”

  The black hull cruised by several other light-class vessels.

  Not a single UCA ship. These places are run by automatons.

  “Don’t go anywhere,” Mick said as he disembarked Comproc.

  He stepped along a thin gold railing, paused for a moment: a tiny gunwale and a thin layer of glass was all that protected him from the vacuum of space. Utopia filled the sky: tiny grooves travelled in intricate geometric patterns over its surface, and a glow seemed to light its outer mantle, and translucently, throb beneath the crust. It looked like a life current was running through the artificial planet. He moved along.

  He entered a small room with row after row of what looked like metal closets—besides their neat appearance, he felt like he could have been in a rundown New York City train station. Footsteps sounded, more than one person. He raised his pistol.

  “Don’t shoot!” cried a mother, two blonde girls hugging her feet. She was thin, starving probably, and her children looked worse than her. Grime covered their faces, as if they’d been lost in the tiny locker room for months. “We need help. We paid—it took our money and said we didn’t have enough. There’s no UCA replies—they’ve deserted this place. We were dropped off, we don’t have any way to get back home.”

  Mick looked around the aisle they’d come from—storage lockers as tall and wide as an eight foot man. Some of them had been wrenched open, bags of food and other items strewn on the floor.

  “Sorry, I can’t help.”

  Mick walked past. One of the children started to cry. He eyed an open locker and saw a body hanging by a hook. The person was connected to a pipe that ran into the ceiling.

  That’s how they feed the .HUM to the world? There’s no coming back from something like that—why the hell are you considering this? Mick couldn’t formulate a reply to his own better judgment. Finally, after he finished surveying the ransacked storage units, he moved to an empty upload closet. Let’s just hope they don’t fuck with my body when I’m linked in.

  As he stepped inside, the chatter in the other room increased. Someone else had come into the foyer with the girls and their mother—a man by the sound of the voice. He shouted something angry. Mick strained to hear, waiting to access the terminal in front of him. He looked down at his foreign, strange hands.

  “A ship, black ship,” the man’s voice said. They’re going to try to steal your fucking ship.

  He strode out of his locker and went back into the room. Already out on the railing went the man. He looked as haggard as the woman and the children. All of them, together, were heading straight for the door of his ship.

  “You can’t get in,” Mick said. The man didn’t slow down. He sped to the door and drew a small computer and a tool from his pocket.

  “God damn it,” Mick muttered. He raised his gun.

  He looked at the thin glass tube keeping them out of raw space. Miss here, and everyone suffocates.

  “Back off I said.”

  “You can’t fire that here,” the scavenger said. “You’ll kill us all.”

  “Stay away from my ship,” Mick said.

  So he’ll back off, and then you’ll disappear into Utopia, and he’ll mind his manners? Might as well kiss that ship goodbye.

  He pushed past the woman and her children. With his left hand, Mick grabbed the frail man and lifted his chin up, then fired into his throat. His body fell into a pile and Mick turned toward the screaming.

  “Do you want to go with him?” he said.

  “Please don’t,” cried the woman as her children wailed.

  “Then—don’t—fuck—with my ship.”

  He took the tool and small computer from the dead man’s hands and returned to the locker. He closed the door, wrapped the link cord around his neck as a tiny picture instructed him to do, and pressed yes to the request for .HUM check.

  NO PLANT-TAINT DETECTED. CONGRATULATIONS! YOUR .HUM IS APPROVED. ENTRY TICKET AND TRANSMISSION UPON PAYMENT IN FULL.

  Mick drew out FOD’s plastic, put it next to the screen for a moment. The screen again wrote to him:

  PAYMENT RECEIVED. YOU HAVE UP TO THIRTY MINUTES FOR STORAGE. ONCE COMPLETED, CONNECT YOUR HARNESS AND PRESS TRANSMIT.

  “What about returning? What if I’m coming back?” Mick asked the computer. No reply. “Computer, I have a question.”

  “This is the UCA help desk. How can we be of service today for your Utopia needs?”

  “What if I want to return? How will I return to my body?”

  “Although leaving Utopia is extremely rare—and with good reason—one can return at any time to their respective storage locker location and make the necessary arrangements to leave. Please be reminded, there will be no refunded tickets, and each ticket has a single use. You may
not return to Utopia using a previously used ticket. The UCA is not responsible for your body while you are in Utopia.”

  “Won’t be a problem.”

  “Welcome to paradise, and enjoy your immortality.”

  The computer beeped off, and then the screen appeared with a countdown time starting from twenty-nine minutes.

  Mick locked the door in his upload closet and stared at the screen.

  “Show me something,” he said.

  79

  The world was filled with places Mick recognized. There was his house, his childhood street. Beyond that, his vision changed, and materializing before him was the NASA FRINGE academic building. One of his professors drifted by, a smile on her face: he’d just received an A on one of his term papers. The imagery shifted. He realized it had done so after his own decision—his own memory. He looked down—the familiar lines of his own hands.

  Age?

  As the thought popped in, his hands firmed, lines disappeared, and he made the strong fists of his twenty-two year self.

  The flow of people, voices, smells, and images rushed through his consciousness, forming his reality. The pull of elation released him into a state of ecstasy.

  Anything you want. As real as real. What? You decide.

  A sudden throb of fear drove through his heart—this is perfect—better than anything heaven could ever be. You have to go back and turn off the G-10 black hole. Otherwise, this won’t be immortality, just a day’s taste, and then nothingness.

  A voice rose from darkness:

  “It’s me, Mick.”

  Mick turned, opening his eyes, though in reality he did nothing, for he no longer occupied any physical space. FOD appeared, and behind him the moon world laboratory he’d constructed for years in secret, inside of which was the ignition device for the black hole.

  “FOD?”

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “This is—incredible.”

  “That’s why it has pacified humanity. What you are experiencing now is the great hope of each family, each generation of families—to get where you are now. It funds the spread of the plague we are responsible for—humanity.”

  “I can’t—I don’t think I can leave.”

  “Mick—there wouldn’t be time even if you did try—you couldn’t get back now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Time passes differently here than outside. What you perceive as minutes will have been hours on the outside.”

  Fuck. How many hours of wiggle room to get to the T-jump station? Two?

  “I have to tell you something Mick.”

  It was still FOD. Mick said nothing, he felt the tearing of his soul—the worst indecision he’d ever known—the swelling of some familiar memory that he felt would materialize and prevent him from ever leaving—his family.

  “There is no such thing as reverse time travel,” FOD said. He pulled his hood up, concealing his aged face. His body disappeared into darkness, the moon world upon which he walked fell away into a spray of color.

  “Liar—you’re a fucking liar.”

  “It was the only way to keep you in this, the only way to pull you along. But it was a just cause. Remember that. And here you are, and you’re rewarded.”

  “All of it?”

  “Everything. I had to wait for what my mathematics predicted thirty years ago—your appearance in my spacetime.”

  “Sera, she knew it wasn’t real?”

  FOD altogether vanished. In his place, a sparkling array of stars moved, and then, a beautiful planet, a tiny ship orbiting it—he flew, as if a phantom, through its hull walls. It was the Cozon.

  He watched XJ eating, steam rising from his electric orifices. By his side sat Sera. She looked over at their new guest.

  “It’s about time, Mick,” she said.

  “You took me to Melbot’s station—you know reverse time travel is real,” he shouted.

  “Mick, of course there is no such thing as reverse time travel. That much is common knowledge,” XJ said, turning around to see his old friend.

  “I’m sorry Mick. I had to. I needed you, because I needed FOD—so I could get here.”

  “But you’re not here, you never made it here!”

  She looked confused.

  “I am though. You made it, so we all did.”

  “No, you’re dead. I saw your body, saw your uncle’s planet explode.”

  “It doesn’t matter, the details. We’re here. And we’re still flying.”

  “Look at your brother and father—do they look like what they’re supposed to to you? Does it look like the mission’s complete?”

  Mick looked from her face to the droids—only they were not droids, and they were not on the Cozon. They were by a lake, at night, under two bright moons. A long dock stretched into black water, and a dim light offered light behind. Sera sat nearby, her legs stretched out—and she no longer looked like Sera. Her hair was short, chopped, and her smile was fuller than he’d ever seen it. Her eyes were glowing, happy, and green.

  It’s not Sera.

  “It’s me, Mick,” she replied. “It’s really me. Before the transplant.”

  A boy splashed his legs in the water, drawing close to a canoe. By his side, with an arm around him, protecting him from falling into the water, was a young man, in the prime of his physical power, watching vigilantly the dark stretch of dangerous water.

  “We’re going in together Teddy, alright?” the man said.

  “Can we still learn to play that game tomorrow?”

  “You mean chess? Of course, but I know you two really wanted to go in the water, so we’ll do this tonight.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  “Thank you Mick,” Sera said. She walked over to him. Looking down, he saw his feet at the edge of the dock. She looked all of eighteen years old to him, and gorgeous. She leaned in close, grabbed his waist, kept him safely away from the water. She closed her eyes, kissed him, and then hugged him hard. “Thanks.”

  None of this is real. It’s all bullshit. Coming from my imagination.

  Sera laughed at him, as if his thoughts had amused her. They fell into the water. Coldness enveloped him, and then she disappeared in murkiness.

  You’re wasting time here, get the fuck out…

  Get out and go where? Die out there, alone in the cold of space? There’s no reverse time travel, you heard him. I was his pawn. All of them. And there’s not enough time. Hours have passed. The G-10 will annihilate this Utopia and the rest of them—the whole universe—any second now. Enjoy it while you can.

  Bullshit. That’s me talking to myself about things I don’t know—things I can’t know.

  It’s your last chance to see your family. To go home. And you’re going to waste it?

  Family…

  The word was a like a bell to toll him back to his sole self. Before him appeared the silhouette of a couch. A warm fire crackled, and a tail wagged from atop a pillow. Voices crawled through the living room—warm, happy hearts. They turned around.

  “Dad, you forgot the popcorn,” Christopher said.

  “Oh, I’m—I’m sorry Christopher,” Mick said.

  “What’s a matter Daddy?” James asked, crawling up on his mother’s shoulders.

  “Nothing,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes.

  “Are we still going to fly my rocket tomorrow?” Christopher asked.

  “Let your daddy relax. Now, sit down and stop kicking your brother.”

  Karen…

  Mick watched the back of her head, waiting for her to turn to him.

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  “It’s done!” screamed James.

  “James, quiet,” Karen said.

  “I’m sorry babe,” Mick said.

  She finally turned around, her face the same as the night he’d first met her. She hadn’t aged a day.

  “So am I. But we’re starting over, we agreed. So let’s move on. We’re open, honest, and committed. And that’s all there is
to it. We can work through it. Can’t beat ourselves up.”

  The kids were gone, along with the couch, the fire, Selby, all of it. Replacing everything was a king size bed. Mick’s wife stood before him, draped in a single thread of gold silk, watching him, waiting. She smiled softly, her red lips curled into a sneer of lascivious appetite. She offered him her hand. He took it. She drew him in, pulling his body onto hers, sinking their merged bodies into the endless mattress.

  “You don’t have to worry about it anymore. I forgive you.”

  “Karen…”

  “Do you forgive me?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “It’s time to make up,” she said. She poked his chest, drew a line down it toward his legs.

  “I had the most awful dream,” Mick said.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “I was lost in space, in the future. I had no way to get to you. No way to fix everything. I felt awful and I—”