by Floyd Looney
“Dr. Singh, I don't see anything”
“Give it just a few more moments” the elder explorer replied, but already the darkness was being pierced by pinprick-sized lights and they grew more brilliant as the universe resolved around them. It was space. The vision before them became clearer as if someone were adjusting the resolution on a giant television monitor.
No television had ever had resolution like this. The magnificent image before them wasn't a projection or a reflection, it was real. The Eagle Nebula stretched out before them from horizon to horizon in all of its glory. Massive columns of gas millions of years old, star nursery and the inspiration of the title “Pillars of Creation”.
“Impressive isn't it?” the older man asked. His answer was awed silence.
Let the grease monkeys and rocket jockeys explore Mars, the old man had declared decades ago, the real exploration will begin with the conquest of the Quantum universe. After all these years his vision had been realized.
“The biggest problem left is to name everything we find” Dr. Singh said, with humor in his voice. Gregory knew why he was there. He had been brought here to be one of the “Quantum Disciples” who had spent the past decades being derided as such. Of course they came to accept the term like a badge of honor.
As the particles moved through space they came upon one of the stars that had been formed in the cluster but had been discharged. For a hundred years it had been moving away from the nebula at high speed for such an object but considering to the giant nebula it hardly seemed far at all.
“What do you see?”
Gregory wondered what he was supposed to see for a moment before he gasped. The escaping star had taken some of the gas, dust and rocks from the nebula with it. Of course, it had its own gravity after all. The orbiting particles were already starting to flatten out into a disk. Someday that dust and rock would form into planets.
“So soon after leaving the nebula?”
“So soon” the old man asked, sounding tired “So soon we must leave our encounter”
Like a rubber band he snapped back to the laboratory in Singapore. Two others were assisting the old doctor, giving him water once he was sitting up. Dr. Singh tried to wave off his concerns “I missed lunch, I shouldn't have done that”
Gregory followed the doctor and his two hawk-eyed assistants to the next room where he sat on a plush chair. “Don't you have more to say after such an experience?” the amused old scientist teased “Probably already have the start of your next report formulating in your head”
