Endless Sky (An Island in the Universe Trilogy Book 1)

by Greg Remy

  Zoe remembered wholly; he somehow always knew, as if he could sense any hint of self-diminution, even without words, and fix everything. He was a mechanic for the soul.

  Her great uncle let out a short cough and cleared his throat. “I feel an old expression would do at this moment: an arduous task, one which requires sweat, sacrifice, and long hours of work, simply indicates the treasure at its end is that much greater. Zoe,” He looked squarely at her with his old eyes, as if could see through to her deepest core. “I believe in you. You will find what you’re looking for, simply because you are looking for it. Nobody today ever gets that far. The fact that you are currently unsure of yourself is a sure sign your path is unpaved. The unknowns you yearn for, both out there,” he paused surveying the land and then back at her, “and within yourself, are what make you that singularity. To men like me, the universe is chaos; to you, it’s harmony.” He kissed gently her on the forehead. “On this infinite plane, you are the only paradox I have ever witnessed—you are unique.”

  Zoe let loose a giddy smile. “Keep going.” She chuckled, and he smiled broadly. “Thank you,” she said.

  Just as she stood up to go in and see how Darious was getting along, Renee came out to the porch. The sun was now setting and the clouds on the horizon produced glows that rivaled the most transcendental nebulas. Sampson motioned for her to sit in his lap.

  Once she had settled he pointed out to the desert and asked, “Look out; what do you see?”

  “Umm.” Renee looked out to where his finger was directing. “I see a cactus.”

  “No, past the cacti, what do you see?”

  “I see some bushes. Sand. Oh look, a dust devil!”

  “And past that?”

  “I see... hills past that.” She looked up at him, though his eyes remained fixed to the end of the world. She looked back out. “The horizon. Clouds!” she answered excitedly.

  “And past that?” he continued.

  “Past that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Umm. Past that...I suppose…” she paused, her face blank.

  Zoe bent down to be at eye level with the little girl and looked out with her. “Past that is space.”

  “Space!” The girl blurted, her voice assured. She turned to her grandfather, “but space isn’t anything. I learned that in school grandpa.”

  He responded, “Space is not just the empty distance between destinations, it is all of this—all the planets, moons, and stars, you and I, everything; an endless sky.” His definition seemed to be lost on Renee.

  “Well all, the sun has gone down, and the moons are always up,” said Zoe as she took Renee by the hand, “I think it’s just about bedtime.”

  Next morning, Sampson Thorgood served a heaping pile of waffles and eggs, which earned more praise from Darious as he ate with cheeks packed full. They all sat around the wooden kitchen table, Renee wagging in her seat while she ate and Zoe deciding to join in with her antics, elevating the laughter in the room until Zoe recalled another memory from her childhood.

  “Sampson, do you remember, ah what was it called, Lake Semp-or-eel?”

  “Lake Semporal. Yes.” Zoe’s eyes lit up. “Ah. A good summer destination indeed. A good place relax for a bit. It’s in Regole, just shy of the 85th parallel.”

  Darious swallowed another large morsel. “Lake Semporal?”

  “You’ll like it. Come on! We’re burning daylight!” Zoe quickly stood up and tucked in her chair.

  Her great uncle stood up too. “No leaving before I get a hug.” Zoe wrapped her arms around him and then smothered Renee.

  “Bye Renee, see you soon okay. You keep an eye out on this one.” Zoe thumbed towards Sampson.

  Renee responded with a dutiful look. “I will! Bye Zoe, I love you!”

  “You too.” And with that Zoe was already at the doorway motioning for Darious.

  “You had better go if you want to keep up with her,” said Sampson to Darious who was still at the table and had paused mid-chew. He swallowed and stood up, backing in his chair. Sampson held out his hand. “It was a pleasure.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Darious.

  Zoe skipped all the way back to her ship with Darious in tow. “Come on slow-poke!”

  The pair boarded the craft and were on their way, a quarter turn around the planet and soon parked at a small lake shaped like a figure-eight. The park was a bit dismal and the heat of the day was sweltering. They were the only people for kilometers. Zoe deboarded with a couple towels and Darious carried two white folding lounge-chairs.

  “Set them there, as close to the water as you can.” As soon as he had, Zoe plopped down on one and stretched out. “Darious, there are some very specific, serious laws at this lake. Numero uno: take a seat, lean back, and relax.” He complied. “Now, take a deep breath in. Like me.” Zoe filled her lungs “and exhale, slowly.” She blew out the air and could hear the same from Darious. “Now smell!” She picked up her nose and again inhaled. “Ahh.” She reclined further. Soft splashes of water nipped at her bare feet and the hot wind that had circumnavigated the planet brushed across her face. After a short while she could feel the onset of that other-worldly feeling when dreams begin to connect to reality and wandering thoughts expand like ripples on the water’s surface.

  Zoe came to around noon as her stomach began to rumble. She realized Darious was snoring. Smiling, she tapped him on the shoulder and softly spoke, “Hey, do ya want some food? I’mma run to the ship and grab some stuff.”

  He turned over and faced her with sleepy eyes. “No thank you.”

  Zoe soon returned with a single silver pouch and ripped into it. Laying back, she scanned the surface of the lake. Nothing had changed. The small population of the planet allowed for the preservation of the whole for ages and little beaches like this one remained more or less untouched. Though it was nice and calming, she couldn’t imagine spending more than a couple day’s repose here. It was after all, quite a dull place. Zoe snickered. Dull. She lazily eyed the rolling waves in the distance and tracked their nodes from side to side. They could continue indefinitely, lurching forward to fill the lower energy state in front while being urged onward from behind. At the core of pseudo-forces, like the Coriolis Effect, were the real ones—oscillations, motion from harmonics. Zoe followed the waves for so long she soon felt the same bobbing motion within herself. In her musings she imagined herself as a crest just as a watery trough came along, a node in perfect harmony with its antinode. What would happen? Negation; nothingness.

  Zoe sat straight up; her entire mind had suddenly ignited. “I can’t believe I missed it!”

  Darious tilted his head and stared at her.

  “Wha—,” he began.

  “Darious!” her eyes were sparkling “Before I met you at the space port, I was having a conversation with a semi driver about sensor ghosts he had experienced in deep space.”

  “Sensor gho—,” Darious began, but was shut down by Zoe continuing her excited thought.

  “His ship had errored for a minute, even though he’d been completely shielded in a faraday cage, and all commercial fleets utilize redundant systems. That’s where we were a few weeks ago. I obtained the coordinates from him and checked it out for myself.”

  Darious was now fully awake and sat up. “But I thought you did not find any abnormalities, Zoe.”

  “You’re right. But in fact, we did miss something. Something so big we were staring right at it and couldn’t see it for what it was.” Darious looked like a blank slate. “We must go to the IRC Majora Station!”

  “What was there that we missed?” he asked.

  “No, no Darious, aren’t you listening? It’s what wasn’t there! That’s what we’re going to find!” The slate crumbled but Zoe paid it no mind; she was still completely jolted. “Darious, I can’t believe we missed it!” She quickly packed up her things and began running back to the ship with Darious picking up the chairs and everything else as fast as he could to ensure h
e kept up with her.

  Chapter 7

  Majora’s Mask

  Darious was just finishing to strap himself in as the thrusters roared to life and the ship began its explosive ascent. Zoe was at the helm; her gaze set beyond the limits of the atmosphere to a destination beyond the limits of sight. Darious’ voice shook as the ship tore through the turbulent ionosphere of the planet.

  “Zoe, where are we travvveling to?”

  She turned toward him and was about to answer but laughed as she saw him belted sideways to his seat.

  “Darious, we are headed to the IRC.” She giggled and turned back.

  The ship evened out as it reached space. Zoe leaned over her console, bringing up several virtual screens of coding. Meanwhile, Darious worked to release himself and then joined her at her side.

  “Zoe, what is the IRC?”

  “A sub-ionic research station.”

  “Oh. What is that?”

  She continued typing. “A place where people study radiation from the universe.”

  “Oh. And—”

  Zoe interjected, “Hold on, and hold onto to something Skipper. I’m going to initiate the turbo drive.” She pressed her finger to a button with a lightning face. Darious stumbled backwards a few steps until the sudden acceleration evened out. Without looking from her screens, she asked “Are ya still alive back there?”

  “Yes. Zoe, we need to work on your warnings.”

  “Ya ya. Can you go to the central room? Directly to your left, open the third drawer up from the floor.” Her fingers continued programming. “Look for a rectangular black box with lots of small circles on one side.”

  Moments later Darious came back with said item. She quickly glanced at it. “Yup, that’s it. Okay, now smash it on the floor.”

  “What?”

  “Lift it high and fling it to the ground.” She made a motion with one hand while the other continued pelting the keyboard.

  Darious perplexedly looked at the box and proceeded to break it on the ground, flinching as debris went flying. The enclosure burst apart, exposing electronics and wiring. Zoe, without missing a beat of her programming sonnet, instructed him to locate a specific circuit board with two long green wires. Then she had him open a panel on the lower left-side of the cockpit.

  “Okay, so we gotta rewire the azimuthal elevators. I noticed they were a bit shaky on the last landing and though we can’t feel it now, they’re causing a bit of vibration to the hull. Nothing to worry about, just an inefficiency we can edit out.”

  Zoe told Darious to pull out the free ends of all the blue wire loops from within the panel and remove the insulation from each. In total Darious had counted out 245 thin-gauge wires. He was to connect each one to an open port on the electronic control board; it didn’t matter which—the computer would sort them all out. As for the two green wires, Zoe was going insert them into the main control panel as soon as he was done and then the elevators could be balanced.

  Darious went to work, meticulously hand welding all the wire connections by Zoe’s guidance. At first, he clumsily fumbled along, but soon he was into the groove. Before Zoe knew it, he had announced he was on wire #115. She paused her computing and looked over at the human epitome, hunched over in the corner of her cockpit, methodically and carefully working away.

  “Darious.”

  “Yes Zoe?” He didn’t look up, as his concentration was still very much on his task.

  She paused a moment, mouthing a few inaudible words before settling on the one that would do and softly spoke. “Thanks.” Her mellifluous meaning expanded within herself and a soft smile lifted her lips, warming her cheeks.

  “No problem,” Darious quickly responded, not seeing the blossoming rose behind him. It budded for a few more moments before a gale of corporeality blew off its petals—a beeping began from the center console. Zoe whipped around and checked on several computer systems.

  “The ship is prepped for full input, I just gotta finish these last sequences.”

  “Okay, Captain. I should be completed soon. By the way, I recently read that Polyflex tubing can sustain much more deteriorative wear. Perhaps later we could phase out these connectors with some.” She peered over her shoulder for one more quick glance, smiled, and continued her computational onslaught.

  The following day, after the azimuthal controls had been corrected, the ship reached its destination, the IRC Majora Station. Zoe explained to Darious it was funded by the local universities and originally tasked—hundreds of years ago—with studying the sights and sounds from the earliest recordable universal history, but now its main focus was to annotate universal constants out to n-th places.

  As they neared the research center, its massive size had an obvious effect on Darious as he stared with eyes wide open. The Majora Station was composed of giant bulbous sections connected by long corridors, like a science fair project of geodesic marshmallows and toothpicks, with enormous satellite dishes protruding from several sections. Zoe snickered as she told Darious its bright white exterior was exactly what they should expect to see on its inside—white walls and white lab coats. She continued, “Yup, the nerdiness level in there is so high that it’s seeping out through the seams.” Darious remarked that he hadn’t known intellect was a leaky physical substance. Zoe assured him it was.

  The pair docked and as they were exiting the craft, Zoe stopped Darious and looked in his starlit eyes. “Darious, any tall tales I weave, just sew them with me, k?” He nodded in the affirmative. She took his hand. “Come on raggedy man!” and tugged him down the ramp.

  They signed in at a computer interface and made their way past the first white bubble, through its only connecting corridor to a similarly-shaped, albeit larger, white lounge area with chairs. Zoe espied a console on the wall. She walked over to it and began navigating through the station’s computer while Darious looked around. Zoe read through a list. “Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh.” One eye flickered and she took in a longer breath, “uh huuh.” Darious came next to her. “It seems we are in luck. The Margo Sector was scanned at the time of the incident. Now we gotta find someone who will let us see the data.” Zoe keyed in the location of the student labs. “Alright, let’s go.”

  Several marshmallow rooms later, they reached the laboratory section and Zoe paused at a lab marked by the Greek letter ‘Phi’ with two transparent sliding doors underneath it. Looking inward, Zoe saw a single person, seeming to be in his mid-20s, tinkering with some electronic tubes. There were instruments and gadgets on tables and on the floor, and a large clear tank at the center of the room. Zoe stepped up to the doors, which opened horizontally at her presence. The individual looked up from his work, his body freezing as he saw her, his young moustache forming an “M” as he mouthed his surprise. He adjusted his glasses and put the pen he was using into his pallid lab coat.

  “Hello!” said Zoe cheerfully.

  He stumbled over his words for a moment. “He-hello.”

  Zoe confidently strolled toward him. “I’m Zoe. And this,” she motioned behind her, “is Darious.”

  His lip curled slightly downward upon seeing Darious. Zoe noted that for being so young, societal ego apparently had a strong grasp on him already. He was probably one of those reclusive types, not taking in what college was supposed to teach one about an open mind before being too compacted by roles and responsibilities. “I,” said Zoe, cutting into whatever thoughts he might be having, “am looking for someone to help us, to help me.”

  His eyes lingered on her for a moment. “What is it-can I do for you?” he said, his voice slightly squeaking.

  “But before you do, do tell me about this experiment you’re running!” She walked over to the clear tank and ran her finger along its riveted edges.

  “Please, please don’t touch it. It’s very sensitive.”

  She tapped the glass. “Seems to be filled with de-ionized water. Let me guess, you’re running trials on subatomic particle vector potentials during their flight t
hrough this,” she tapped on the glass again, “aqueous medium.” He looked momentarily stunned. Zoe held out her hand. “We are from the university; just here to check a couple things. This lab seems to be in tip top order.”

  At this the student seemed to relax a bit. “Pleased to meet you,” he said as he shook her hand. Darious offered his but it was ignored. “I’m John Echelon. Professor Hollik is my advisor.”

  “Very good. So please, tell us more about your experiment.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He spun a ceiling-mounted computer screen around and brought up several line charts. “Through the water solution, utilizing simulation quantum energy potentials, I am setting and tracking electron movement possibilities. What’s so very interesting about this is the likelihood that each particle during its swim is in fact not swimming at all, nor even in the reservoir!” Zoe looked impressed and nodded her approval. “It is truly fascinating work.” He expanded the charts. “During parallel accelerated runs through 100,000 years’ time, completed within nine months, thanks to the hyper-span infinitesimal string computational methods I’m utilizing; it’s what my dissertation is on, I found fourteen instances of tracked electrons beyond this room, even though they were wholly contained within the reservoir.” That ego again showed through in his tone. “My experiment is good to the thirteenth decimal; only four off from the current standard model.” Oh, how so very boring.

  “Oh, wow! Very good sir,” Zoe said sounding captivated.

  “Yes,” he replied self-assured.

  “However, for the moment allow us to have you stray from your experiment. Could you aid us with the hollo-plotter? It’s different from the one we have, and I don’t want to risk interfering with another’s work.”