“James,” she said in a friendlier tone which went some way to allaying James’ fears. “This capsule is based on a mechanism which is very similar to the new MMU device you have on your back. You’ll get used to it in not time. When you reach the specified point, press the red button on the upper part and the Trifariam will automatically detach from the capsule.”
“Aren’t you guys coming with me?!”
Helen fired a stern look in Carpenter’s direction. She was astonished that nobody had brought the professor up to date on the ins and outs of the mission, even more so when he was the one in charge of carrying it out. “James. We believe that if we are relatively close to you when you create the black hole, we will be irrevocably pulled into it and we will disappear. Our only chance is if we leave you there. We will come back for you when everything is over.”
“What?! Are you crazy?!”
“James, you are the only one who can control it. The lives of billions of people depend on you. You will be in direct contact with us and the Space Center in Houston at all times except when you create the black hole, because sound cannot escape from it and you won’t be able to communicate with us. However, we think we will still be able to communicate with you.”
“Officers.” The voice was trembling and worn out from recent events as it filtered through the speakers of the spacecraft. James could hear it more clearly through the earpieces attached to his helmet. “This is the President of the United States of America.” There was a brief silence. “In under an hour, the Sun will exact its revenge and the Earth will be devastated by its immense power. We don’t know what the consequences will be but we think it cut all communication lines and destroy the vast majority of satellites.”
“We’ll lose our signal with Houston!”
Before that realization could reach Earth, the President had already mentioned that problem. “Communication with the spacecraft will be cut off but according to our calculations, the lunar space base will not be affected by the solar storm because the Earth will act as a shield. After ten minutes a satellite will be launched into orbit to restore the vast majority of communication lines needed to communicate with you. We are hoping that everything turns out alright because the solar eruption caused the atmosphere to expand and increase in size, affecting the orbit of satellites.”
“Sir, how is everybody?”
Two minutes later, James couldn’t see the President subtly pinch his lower lip between his thumb and index finger, taking his time to answer. He was searching for the right words. “It is chaos. I have the most powerful leaders in the world demanding answers. People have ignored the warnings and are leaving the cities where they would clearly be safest. Crime has increased by four hundred percent and we don’t have sufficient resources to resolve the situation. Officers… the world is in your hands. Prepare to begin the mission as soon as you arrive.”
Carpenter and Helen proceeded to put on their spacesuits and haul on the backpacks which would allow them to accompany James on his journey and return to the ship in complete safety. The process of getting dressed correctly would take over half an hour.
Meanwhile, the President asked for all communication with the spacecraft to be severed, except for the special channel through which they could talk to James privately. “Mr. Oldrich, can you hear me? Somebody wants to say something to you.”
The unmistakable voice of the U.S. President crackled through the earpieces in his helmet.
“Yes sir, what is it?”
There was an eternal silence, peppered with several spells of interference as if the communication channels were opening and closing. Richard eventually spoke. “Hi, James. How is everything going?”
When the professor heard his friend’s voice, he was overcome with emotion and couldn’t help bursting into tears. He had the feeling that he was never going to see them again, and that was what worried him most of all. “How is Lily? Are you both in a safe place?”
The hospital room had been turned into a makeshift communications center for the occasion. Cables weaved back and forth in all directions, the only place free of them being the perimeter around Lily’s bed. Her eyes were wide open, staring at her father’s best friend.
“Don’t worry James, she’s okay. They’ve fitted the windows in building with several protective systems, reinforced the refrigeration systems and suppressed the use of inflammable materials.”
“Richard, if… if something happens to me - “
The paleographer stopped him. “James! While you’re not here, I’ll look after Lily as if she was my own daughter, I swear.”
“Thank you,” he replied. “Put her on! I want to talk to her!”
“James, she’s awake but she is unable to speak a word. The doctors say she will be fine but she is still suffering from the shock of seeing what she did.”
“Put her on!” he insisted. “I want to talk to her!”
“Okay James, but they’re warning me that all communications will be down when the coronal mass reaches the satellites orbiting the Earth. From that moment on, you’ll have a few hours to use the Trifariam.”
Richard held the telephone to Lily’s ear. She jumped slightly when she saw the professor’s hand getting uncomfortably close to her face. She calmed down when she heard her father’s voice.
“Darling! Can you hear me?!”
Thanks to the numerous electrodes connected to her body, the monitors showed that the girl’s cardiac rhythm shot up when she heard her father. It was as if she wanted to say something, but couldn’t.
James burst into tears. “Lily, I’m so sorry I left you alone but I had no choice. That damn piece of junk needs me. I want to know that I love you like crazy, you’re the most beautiful thing in the world.” The girl started to seriously hyperventilate; she seemed to be aware that her father was saying goodbye to her, but… why? She wondered. She wanted to say something but felt like her vocal chords would not respond. “I hope to be back as soon as possible, but while I’m not there, do everything Richard tells you to do. He’s a good guy and he’ll look after you when I can’t.”
At that moment, the light in the room vibrated, the windows shook and the wind changed from the gentle whistling of the morning, to a monstrous and deafening roar. It was a taste of things to come.
James could hear the full extent of the din which was beginning to build in the hospital room. He knew that it was starting and that communications would be down in few moments. “Lilyyyy! I love you, sweetheart!” he screamed with so much force that his breath steamed up the glass visor on his helmet.
Before the communication broke off and the room was plunged into terrifying darkness, only to be illuminated by the backup lighting system, James heard a word come from Lily’s mouth, a word which gave him instant strength: “Daddy”.
Chapter 97
One and a half hours after the tragedy on Earth.
Every single line of communication with the Earth had been destroyed. The pilots tried to get in contact with the lunar space station but it was no use. Would they succeed in launching the satellite into orbit?
Time was running out. Carpenter checked that the three of them had their kit perfectly in place and that the oxygen supply was working correctly. He gave orders for Alan Glenn to disable the system which simulated the Earth’s gravity inside the cabin. They then proceeded to expel all the air out of the chamber and once again checked the breathing system. With just one hour to go until the coronal mass reached the position, they activated the automatic opening on the hatches which would suddenly expel them into the blackness of space.
Although the feeling of weightlessness was the same, the sheer size of space made James lose his mind for a few minutes. Only Helen’s words had managed to calm him down and give him the energy he needed to break away from the slip and make that final push which would send him outside the spacecraft, and from which there would be no turning back.
The MMU interface was very simple to control and James
took to it within minutes, using his masterfully.
A slight push from the unit was enough for them to leave the craft and take position at the established coordinates, three hundred feet away.
While Carpenter looked over the whole system, making sure that they were in the exact position and carrying out one last simulation to check the paths of the asteroids, Helen explained how he should detach the Trifariam when he got there.
At that moment, the two astronauts looked at each other and although they couldn’t see the other’s face thanks to the visors they wore to protect them from radiation, they knew that they were both terrified. They said goodbye to James and activated the propulsion system on their MMUs to return to the spacecraft as soon as possible, leaving James in the loneliness of space but not before assuring him that they would return for him when the black hole closed up and the danger had disappeared.
The young professor watched with an expression of resignation as the two astronauts walked through the hatch which led inside the craft, closing the doors behind them. Thirty seconds later, the engines roared into life and the TF-08 disappeared from sight at blinding speed. He took a moment to lift his hand to his chest, the place where he kept his only two traveling companions - an old Bible that he had found lying around in the spacecraft, and a photograph of his daughter.
Feeling a renewed sense of strength after hearing his friend’s words of encouragement and the apparent improvement in his little girl’s condition, James stood up straight in his spacesuit while he stared in determination at the capsule that the scientist had prepared in order to transport the Trifariam. He didn’t have much time.
It was easy to maneuver the mechanism which disconnected the object from the container. With gentle yet precise movements, he directed the Trifariam towards the red planet and it activated as if by magic.
The first few moments went on forever - it seemed as if the object wasn’t working, which made him extremely nervous indeed because he had no means of communicating with the Space Center in Houston. However, after a few seconds the device emitted a blinding light which was the firing shot of the whole process.
The corner of the Trifariam emitted a heavenly light which engulfed him in seconds. How James himself felt varied enormously from minute to minute. He had initially felt a great desperation and anguish when he noticed that he was unable to move; it was as if a huge force field was being created around him and which prevented him from moving a muscle in his body. However, in spite of all that, the machine seemed to have drugged him with an excess of adrenaline which caused him to feel euphoric, happier than he had ever felt before, granting him sudden peace inside and the feeling that everything was going well.
The beam of light moved at extraordinary speed, creating a perfect sphere in record time, a thousand times faster than on the Earth’s surface. Although James did not consider himself to be good at guessing, he thought that the ball of light may have already reached six miles in radius, something amazing considering that only two short minutes had passed.
He tried to move his right arm but it was impossible. His body was as rigid as a rock.
After five minutes, the spherical beam of light had a radius of over thirty miles and it had become slightly darker in color. He felt as if all the muscles in his body had tensed like never before, he had the feeling that they would snap at any minute, but he was still completely free of pain.
Finally, after seven minutes, the beam of light stopped sixty miles from where James was. The sphere started to emit electromagnetic pulses and twinkles of light at a similar rhythm to the heartbeat of a newborn baby. All of a sudden, it disappeared into the darkness of space.
Chapter 98
Half an hour went by before the first signs of coronal mass reached the point where James was floating. He saw how the black hole, completely invisible to the naked eye, had opened up, and was drastically altering the direction taken by the radiation waves and solar winds, with them being rapidly pulled towards it. The center began to light up as if hundreds of fireworks in different colors were all exploding at the same time. His body trembled with every impact of radiation and although it seemed surreal, the hole was getting larger by the second.
So it is true that black holes increase in size when they’ve swallowed something, he observed.
He wondered where the spacecraft could be at that time, but looking at the direction it had taken he felt sure that they had fled to some safe place where the black hole would serve as a shield, but… had they realized that the asteroids were just about to arrive from that same direction?
For the last twelve minutes, James heard nothing through his earpieces except for the typical hissing when a good line of communication cannot be established. He wasn’t afraid, but he did feel anxious to know what was happening on Earth.
When he thought that the worst was over, it happened. Astonished, he watched as hundreds of asteroids the size of a football pitch were slightly changing their orbit so as to form a kind of curve which made them move faster, until they ended up colliding with the huge sphere that was attracting with immeasurable force. With each impact, the circular areola that marked the edge of the black hole lit up as if by magic.
James let his imagination wander and thought about what would happen if those hundreds if asteroids had been space shuttles, unknowingly approaching their fatal demise. He thought about the faces of the pilots when they realized that all the ships in front of them were disappearing into the ether, as if they were being absorbed by an unusual force that swallowed them up in the blink of an eye.
The first impact was immense. The diameter of the asteroid was over 1600 feet, which meant that the collision with the black hole was brutal. The feeling this time was similar to that of hundreds of needles sticking into the body and being dragged through the flesh, so he was petrified to discover that there were another twenty coming towards him. He stoically tolerated the situation. As they were pulled closer to the black hole, many of them disintegrated when they collided with each other but this only happened with the smallest ones; the larger sized asteroids were intact when they came into contact with it.
Now, James’ body was beginning to give up with every collision. He didn’t understand why such suffering was necessary, but he accepted it whenever it meant things turning out well.
When the asteroids were crashing into one another in the hole, an explosion of light reverberated around the space inside the sphere. James didn’t know what had happened to them; perhaps they had disintegrated, started to form part of the bulk of the sphere which would explain how it increased in size with every impact, or maybe it was simply making them disappear. Whatever was going on, there was no sign of them reappearing once they were inside.
Stammering, he tried to communicate with his colleagues. He wanted to know what the situation was like back on Earth, but his calls for help went unanswered, even the shrill beeping of the interference had died down.
The last asteroids to escape from the belt were pulled into the black hole’s gravitational field and changed course. There must have been about fifty of them, all traveling together, but the force of the hole saw them fuse into one big cluster which looked like one singular asteroid of mammoth proportions. The collision was the most painful of all. He felt pressure and a violent blow to his spinal column, which led to him spitting up blood. It was as if a heavyweight champion had dealt him his best blow to the kidneys.
From that moment on, he was overcome with loneliness. He felt frustrated, desperate and an extreme sense of guilt which would only be washed away if somebody told him that the mission had been a complete success. The pain was so intense that he preferred to close his eyes and succumb to his cruel fate. If he had to die, he thought, then the quicker the better, but suddenly everything changed. The crackling fireworks died down and the celestial aurora which seemed to be invading the sphere started to change color. It developed into an intense red, making him feel calmer than ever before. The pain had s
topped and his heart felt at peace. Am I dead? he wondered. The sphere started to beat like a heart, expanding and contracting until it suddenly burst, causing a wave of blinding light that spread sixty-two thousand miles in under five seconds. Then it vanished.
“Carpenter!” yelled Alan, the pilot. “We’ve detected an immense explosion. The screens show that the hypocenter of the explosion is the exact place we left Mr. Oldrich.”
“You’re fucking kidding me! We gotta go back!”
“Shit, there’s more!” yelled Scott. “The device we fitted to him so we would know his location has stopped working. It is as if it has disintegrated.”
Alan chewed his lower lip. “Do you think he’s dead?”
Nobody dared answer.
“Scott, have you managed to make contact with Houston?”
“Not yet. The solar storm has destroyed all the satellites.”
“Fuck! What do we do?!”
Meanwhile back on Earth, a deafening roar of conflicting opinions broke out in the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. Many had decided to abandon the operation and take shelter in the deepest areas of the complex, in search of a safety which was lacking above ground. The strong solar winds and radiation were destroying everything in their path. Millions of people had lost their homes when they were lifted up into the air, like a mere sheet of newspaper being whipped about in the summer breeze. Cities had been plunged into deep chaos with the destruction of electrical devices and transformers. Lighting, traffic signals, elevators, heaters, factories, transport, storage systems for essential resources like food and water… everything had stopped working. It was chaos.
Hundreds of tremors ran across the Earth’s surface, razing everything in the path to the ground. From China to America with Europe and Africa in between, the seismic waves left a devastating image in their wake. Skyscrapers in the most powerful cities in the world collapsed with astonishing ease, as if they were a line of dominoes. The cracks forming in the Earth’s crust were sucking down everything that fell into them, like the jaws of hell. But the worst was yet to come. The tremors affected several nuclear power plants that couldn’t stand up to the test and many of them suffered damage to their main reactor as a result, causing radioactive material to escape and pose an unimaginable risk to human health. In some cases the workers had managed to put a stop to the disaster by losing their own lives in the process, but ten nuclear power plants and their surrounding cities still had to be evacuated. The parallels with Chernobyl were alarming.
Trifariam, The Lost Codex (2012) Page 54
