The Orthogonal Galaxy

by Michael L. Lewis

  “Well, I’d heard some of my type in the gang was sellin’ drugs, so I figured I needed to also, so I could get me that blade. Well, it was darn easy money, so even after I bought it, I kep’ sellin’ the goods. Problem was, there’s this other gang who thought we was workin’ too close to their territory. So I had to use my blade to cut someone up.”

  “How old were you?” Paol asked, fascinated at the tale.

  “Fi’teen… and then I’s real scared when he got himself outta the hospital, but he never came after me. He had lots of problems with his Daddy beatin’ him, and finally, he was just gone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Disappeared. We suspected that he done run off, but nobody knows fo’ sure. Anyway, there’s I was in a real mess, sellin’ drugs and gettin’ in trouble. Ma knew what I was doin’, but she never said nothin’ ‘cuz I gave her some of the money she needed to help with the family.

  “When I turned seventeen, my main bro’s on the street had this real dumb idea. They’s said, ‘Blade, get yo’ Momma’s car tomorrow fo’ some real business.’ I was the only one who could drive, ya’ see. Well, we was drivin’ along when Xavier tossed a handgun in my lap. ‘Fully loaded’, he said. ‘Just in case.’ He still never told me what was goin’ down when he had me stop the car along a store front. They strolled into the store, and was gone fo’ ‘bout two minutes when I’s heard some shots and then they come runnin’ outta the store. They jumped in the car and when someone else came limpin’ outta the store and started firin’ at us, I took off… a little too fast.”

  “What happened?”

  “The light at the intersection was red, but I was lookin’ back in the mirror at the poor foo’ who my bro’s shot up. He was still firin’ at us, when I heard and felt a crash. We was hit on the passenger side by another car. My buddy, X, couldn’t get out, but me and Kojo, who was in the back seat, got out and ran off. Runnin’ down the street we heard a voice yell, ‘freeze!’”. I looked and saw two plain-clothes types runnin’ down the street towards us with their guns pointed at us. Without thinkin’, I raised my arm and shot while runnin’. I never used a gun befo’, so I was surprised when I saw one of ‘ems go down. We kept runnin’ but we was stupid, ‘cuz we’d never get away.”

  “Why not?”

  “Xavier was trapped at the scene, and my Momma’s car would lead the cops right to her. I had no chance. My public defender tried to get me off as an accomplice to the robbery, seein’ how I didn’t know what X and Kojo was up to, but it was no use to try and lighten the sentence of an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon against a federal officer.”

  “Federal?”

  “Yep, they was two feds who happened to be in the ‘hood that day. What luck, huh?”

  “So, here I am serving 3 years as an accomplice, and 20 for takin’ down a fed… good thing I only hit him in the leg. I’d be serving 40+ if I’d’a wasted him.”

  “23 years, huh?”, Paol shook his head sadly.

  “Yep, and seven of ‘ems down, but I think I’ll be gettin’ sprung in another five or so—fer good behavior ya’ know.”

  “But you still haven’t answered my question. How do you know so much about math?”

  “Well, my Momma’s brother runs a car shop, and when I was startin’ to fall away, he tried to bring me back to an honest livin’. Told me how I was breakin’ my Momma’s heart, and if I wanted, he’d teach me to work on cars. I never took him up on it. I wanted to, but I was young and stupid and made all the wrong decisions. I had lotsa time to think ‘bout everythin’ when I was throwed in prison. After the first week, I thought so much ‘bout how I could be helpin’ my uncle at the shop, and how my Momma wouldn’t have to cry every day while I’m here in jail.”

  “Then, I had an epiphany.”

  “An epiphany?”

  “Yeah, ya’ know a precipitous manifestation of the essence or implication of somethin’.”

  Surprised by this intelligent definition, Paol was knocked back in his seat. “Does this epiphany involve a vision of a dictionary?” It was an unexpected attempt at humor that even he wasn’t expecting from himself, but now that he was thinking more about the poor life of this kid, and was thinking much less about his own problems, he allowed his own cares to lapse if but for a moment and returned to his previous, jovial self.

  Blade slapped himself on the knee and whooped raucously at Paol’s banter. “Aw, that’s a good one, Paol… you’re a funny man. No, it had nothin’ to do with a dictionary, but if ya’ ever need to borrow one, I got me one, right under here.”

  Blade leaned down to point under his cot, and Paol craned his neck to discover a vast collection of books, large and small, under Blade’s bed.

  “Have you read all of those?” Paol asked admiringly.

  “Most of ‘ems. Ya’ see, the ‘precipitous manifestion’ that I had was that I could either spend a dozen or two years feelin’ sorry fer myself, or I could make somethin’ of the time. I mean, I’ll still be young enough to do somethin’ with my life when I bust outta here, ya’ know? So, I decided to read and learn, and ya’ know what?”

  “What?”

  “I really enjoy readin’ and learnin’ ‘bout new things. It’s enlightenin’, invigoratin’, exhilaratin’, ya’ know?”

  “Um… hand me that dictionary, would you?” Paol smiled for the first time, and Blade responded with his most hearty round of laughter yet.

  After Blade regained his breath and wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes, Paol concluded, “So, this is where you’ve learned about mathematics?”

  “That’s right,” Blade said excitedly. “Ooh, hang on just a moment.” He knelt down, and Paol watched him rifle through the books under his bed and mutter incoherently to himself. “Where is it now? I thoughts it was over there… Oh, that’s where’s I put ‘All Quiet on the Western Front.’… been wantin’ to read that one… some good history there, I bet, just decent… ah, here ‘tis.”

  Blade returned to his seat with a large hard-bound text book, titled, Applied Mathematics, Volume II.

  Flipping through the index, his fingers raced down the page, “Aha! Prisoner’s dilemma,” he exulted. “There ya’ is, now.”

  Paol shook his head as he saw the page titled ‘Case Study 2: Prisoner’s Dilemma’, and marveled at the highlighting and well-drafted handwritten notes in the margin.

  “Blade, I’m absolutely flabbergasted.”

  “Flabbergasted!” winked Blade. “To be overcome with astonishment or stupification.”

  At this, Blade waited for Paol’s snicker—his first in weeks—before returning to his whole-hearted laughter. At this point, Blade himself had an epiphany. Perhaps it was the affable, easy-going nature of his cellmate that protected him against the most hardened. How could anyone not quickly grow to love this young man? Fate had handed him a bad lot in his wrongful conviction, but at least he was placed with one of the most decent men possible in this brutal environment.

  Chapter

  18

  The pilot leaned back in the seat of his C-320 space craft as it floated serenely through the expanses of space. The C-320 was the most recent engineering marvel at NASA. Capable of traveling at 0.6 times the speed of light, it was the fastest space craft ever constructed. Now that it had completed a rigorous three years of testing, it was on its first mission to the outer edge of the solar system. The C-320 had the appearance of a white bullet, although on closer inspection the shape was more flattened than rounded, and had wing-like protrusions on either side. It was spray-coated with some of the highest tech material ever invented. A light-weight, elastic and resilient polymer, it protected the ship and its passengers from impacts with space objects.

  Inside, the ship could be deemed cozy at best, but astronauts never seemed to use that term upon return to earth, where they almost certainly proclaim that “sardines have no idea.” Even so, space explorers were clamoring for opportunities to take the new-fangled vehicle for a spin somewhere
in the galaxy, simply because of the excitement of exploring the far reaches of the solar system where no man had ever traveled before.

  “All systems check. Having successfully navigated through the asteroid belt and beyond the orbit of Jupiter, we’ve obtained cruise velocity and are on time with a rendezvous at the edge of the galaxy. The Magellan-Victoria is all systems go,” the astronaut voiced into a headset and then lifted the microphone away from his mouth. “You see, Tef… everything is going normally.”

  “I know, Jainn, and that’s what has me concerned,” replied the pilot. “There’s always a problem on these voyages, no matter how small or insignificant. So far, there has been nothing. It’s almost too quiet, too eerie. I just want to get that anomaly out of the way, so I can relax and enjoy the trip.”

  Jainn shook his head. “You’re too superstitious. Everything will be fine.” The confident navigator reclined as far as he could in his seat and gazed out into the expanses, stars blazing in panoramic splendor from the cockpit. “Would you just look at that, Tef? What an amazing view!”

  Tef reclined his seat, wanting to forget his concerns. “You’re right about that, partner. I’m still surprised that we’re traveling faster than any human ever has, and it feels dead still, just the hum of the ion thrust engines.”

  “Yeah, it definitely doesn’t feel like we’re moving… I mean I know that those stars are very far away but it still surprises me considering the speed we’re traveling that you hardly notice us moving.”

  The two star-dazed astronauts enjoyed the various quality of brilliance and color that filled the black canvas behind them. Even Tef, the paranoid pilot began to relax and forget his worries.

  While the astronauts were watching the spectacle overhead, they could not notice the tiny particles of ice and dust left behind from some far-flung comet, speeding by as they intersected its orbital path. However, the C-320 was very well-equipped to sense them, and alerted them to their presence with an audible alarm. Both returned their seats to a fully upright position simultaneously to assess the situation.

  The pilot lowered the microphone on his headset. “Victoria reporting to mission control on a debris sensor. It appears as if we are being impacted on the right side by minute debris field at an angle of 254 degrees. We’re commencing navigation first to minimize angle of impact.”

  Tef worked a joystick to cause a gentle and gradual roll of the craft in the direction of the stream, to allow particles to glance off the right side of the craft. Jainn monitored the sensor data of the craft and watched intently for any other alarms signaling problems while navigating out of the debris field.

  Tef spoke clearly into his headset. “Mission control, we’re going to pitch up at an angle of 13 degrees from the galactic plane to take ourselves away from the field. Frequency of impact detection is decreasing rapidly.”

  Taking a deep breath, his turned to his navigator. “Well, Jainn. Hopefully, we’re out of the woods. There’s that anomaly I was worried about… may it be the last.”

  “Yeah,” said Jainn panting slightly. “I love this job, but I really hate...” He was interrupted abruptly by a jolt which rolled the craft slightly to the right. An alarm indicated some kind of breach on the wing. Jainn looked out of the right side window in order to get a visual on the incident and grew pale instantly.

  “Tef, I’m seeing vapor coming off of the end of the wing!” he exclaimed. “Oh no, I’m seeing sparks… and...” His voice trailed off as he saw a white piece of debris floating in space just behind the wing. “Tef, we’ve sustained damage.” The tip of the right wing had been sheared completely off of the craft by one of the minute particles they were attempting to avoid.

  Tef continued in a business-like manner. “It looks like I’ll need to continue the direction of pitch in order to pull up from the debris. We really need to distance ourselves from the portion of the vehicle that’s traveling right next to us. If we veer into its trajectory, it could do more damage still.”

  The wing tip fell out of view as the craft continued to pitch up, but what the unsuspecting astronauts couldn’t see was that the particles, although fairly sparse now, were continuing to bombard it pushing it closer and closer to the back of the craft. As it slammed into the rear, the C-320 yawed from side to side. An alarm indicated that damage had indeed been sustained in the back of the craft now and that oxygen was escaping into the vacuum of space around them. Vital cables, electronic equipment and hardware began to ooze out of the gash like blood, and each lost object was only adding to the damaged exterior as it was sucked into the volume of space.

  While the astronauts struggled to regain their craft, shouting orders to each other, closing off pressurization breaches, sweating nervously, and listening to a litany of alarms, the craft began to pitch and yaw violently until the ion generators in the rear of the vehicle were severed. Tef, previously fighting the joystick, let up and leaned back in his seat

  “Tef!” barked Jainn. “What are you doing?! We’re spinning out of control and need to restabilize the craft!”

  “We can’t,” proclaimed Tef calmly, while fixing his gaze somewhere out into space.

  “Why not?!” shouted Jainn as he glanced all over the panel, dazed by the number of lights and alarms.

  “Listen, closely. What do you hear?”

  “Alarms… I hear alarms. All over the place.”

  “Exactly! You hear alarms. But, do you hear the engines?”

  Jainn strained to listen to the remainder of his environment. He silenced all of the alarms to get a better fix on any other sounds in the cockpit. Then, he noticed the panel of flashing lights that were lost by a sea of red, yellow, and white lights pulsing from the panel. The engine failure alarms had indeed come on. Breathing heavily, he racked his brain for a solution to the problem.

  “Ok,” Jainn struggled to control the emotion in his voice. “Let’s think this through. We need to get back there and restore power to the engines. Since the craft still has power, we haven’t lost the ion generators yet.”

  “We’ve sealed off the cabin, Jainn. Nothing short of a spacewalk would get us back there, but we don’t even have an airlock that we can reach. Even if we did, we have no way of stabilizing the craft.”

  “How bad is our destabilization situation?”

  “Can’t tell, the sensors have been badly damaged or lost, so I don’t trust them, but if you look at how quickly the stars are spinning, my guess is that we’re rolling very fast, and pitching a little too. In fact, I’m guessing we have velocity vectors in all three directions. We couldn’t possibly calculate a successful jump-off from the craft.”

  After an uncomfortable and eerie silence, Jainn asked his pilot, “So, what do we do now, Tef? We can’t simply sit here and just float off into space completely out of control! What are our possible scenarios, captain?”

  “Well, in the worst case,” the pilot stated in a matter-of-fact manner, “we get pulled in by some nearby object’s gravitational field and we’ll begin to accelerate toward it, eventually slamming into the surface and creating a deep crater.”

  “And the best case?” asked Jainn. “The worst doesn’t sound very encouraging.”

  “In the best case, we become one of the universe’s most bizarre objects orbiting around some planet or solar system as a frozen memorial to the mission.”

  Having muted all of the alarms, the astronauts sat there in complete silence and near darkness as the power being served from the damaged generators weakened. Their attention was immediately drawn to a large orange button in the middle of the panel that was sounding with a harsh, pulsating buzz accompanying it.

  “Mission Abort!” read Jainn. “I don’t remember seeing that button. What does it mean, Tef?”

  Tef didn’t get a chance to answer as a final electric pulse shot through a vein-like series of circuits throughout the surface of the aircraft. In complete simultaneity, a thousand small explosions on the surface of the craft reduced the Victoria and a
ll of its contents to dust. For a split second, all of the oxygen remaining on board turned into a fireball of bright orange and searing blue flames, before quickly evaporating into the quiet blackness that existed before Victoria wandered into the region.…

  Maril Scoville sat straight up in bed. He found himself sweating profusely and breathing heavily. He clutched his chest, feeling his heart pound rapidly under his ribcage. It was as dark as the vastness of space surrounding the recently destroyed C-320 Magellan-Victoria. The harsh pulsating alarm from the C-320 cockpit panel persisted. Slowly, Maril realized that it wasn’t a panel alarm at all. Instead, the noised emanated from his digital clock alarm which read 5:00 AM.

  His wife rolled towards him and rubbed his back. “What’s the matter, Honey?”

  Composing himself with a deep breath, he whispered, “Another nightmare.”

  “What happened this time?”

  “Tef Alline. He was… he was on a mission with the new astronaut, Jainn Tucker… and…” His voice trailed off. “And the shield failed them.” He hung his head and rubbed his face with his hands.

  “Oh, Honey… I’m sorry.” She tried to focus her hazy thoughts to say something comforting, but was having difficulty at this time of the morning. After a few moments of silence and reduced breathing she continued, “Where are Tef and Jainn now anyway?”