The Beacon: Hard Science Fiction

by Brandon Q Morris

  But he still had the app. He marked the positions of the seven stars, turning them into cosmic beacons. There they were! Their waxing and waning lights were immediately noticeable. Peter counted them and wound up with six. Number seven was in the column. But the picture made no sense. The stars seemed to be distributed randomly. He tried to trace some geometric shapes on them, but he failed. The stars were not on a spherical shell, or an ellipsoid, or a cube, or a cuboid.

  It would have been too good if his idea had worked immediately. Sigma Draconis was unsuitable as a center, so he tried 47 Ursae Majoris. The universe rotated around him. He had to hold on to the column for a moment because the motion made him dizzy. The projector mistook this for a switch-off command and Peter reactivated it with a wave of his hand. Fortunately, the app hadn’t reset itself yet. The universe continued to rotate until 47 Ursae Majoris disappeared into the pedestal.

  Again Peter examined the picture. Chance still ruled. He couldn’t forbid it. So it was the next star’s turn. In the meantime he had gotten used to the rotation of the universe. Gravity kept him oriented nicely. How might that feel outside a spaceship? He would like to go into space one day, but he would never be able to afford it. The other day he’d read a novel in which a young man named Martin Neumaier refused tooth and nail to set off on an exciting mission to Saturn. How unrealistic!

  Even from the perspective of the next star on the list, it didn’t show what he’d hoped for, and neither did it from the perspective of the following one. Peter repeated the process until he had worked his way through his list. Well, that was pretty much a waste of time. You have to realize when you’ve lost.

  He pressed the app’s reset button and the universe returned to its starting position. Peter smiled. It must be typical for us humans that the Earth was at the center of this. Would an astral projector developed by extraterrestrials do the same with their home planet?

  He looked at the time. Franziska had to be coming soon, but maybe there was still time for one last look. He stood in front of the column, in the center of everything. The universe spread out in all directions to infinity, and the further he went into the distance, the faster the spread. The seven stars on his list were arrayed all around him. He put in a spherical shell, but even with Earth in the center, it didn’t match the distribution of the stars. Before he gave up he tried other shapes but nothing fit. His idea was simply no good. He needed a new one.

  The thought hit him like a punch in the stomach. The center was the problem. Why should one of the stars, or even the sun, be at the center of the action? The center was more the trigger around which everything revolved. That was his mistake.

  He tried it differently. He did not even need to change the representation. He tried it again with a spherical shell. But this time he didn’t start with a predetermined center. He let the software calculate a spherical shell based on the coordinates of the seven objects, on which all seven stars must be located. The program took a moment. As soon as it had reported success, he tapped on ‘Show.’

  A gigantic shell appeared in the universe. Of course, it seemed gigantic only from his perspective. It measured a few hundred light-years, so it was a flyspeck compared to the entire universe. The shell glittered silver. If he wanted, he could choose a different color in the app. In reality, the shell didn’t exist. It only established a relationship between the seven stars, a relationship that presumably no one even knew about yet. Holinger and her team certainly didn’t, since they were just trying to find explanations for the disappearance of the stars.

  But for all seven of them to lie randomly on the shell of an imaginary sphere, what was the probability of that? Quite low. It was much more likely to indicate that there was a common cause for their disappearances, and this cause could be found in the center of the sphere. But that was not compelling. What was happening there may simply be spreading out along a particular path, for whatever reason. Peter nevertheless had the app calculate the coordinates for the center of the sphere. No celestial body was located there.

  What should he do now with his knowledge? He had to write Holinger. Maybe more candidates lay on this spherical shell, but the team had overlooked them to this point. Peter stepped in front of the shell and touched it. He felt a slight tingling on his skin, even though there was nothing there—pure imagination.

  He went to the column. Franziska would be arriving any minute. He was about to make the hand gesture to turn it off when it came to him—the spherical shell was also touching the column. Peter couldn’t see it, but he knew. That was precisely where Earth was. The solar system, to be exact. The sun was a yellow dwarf, just like the vanished stars.

  Peter shut down the system and fell out of the cosmos and into the living room. Of course, the sun was a yellow dwarf, but it still existed, because just then, it sent a ray through a crack in the blind. The fact that the sun lay on the spherical shell was either a small problem or a big one: a small one, if it invalidated his theory about the progression of the process by which the stars disappeared; and a big one, if the sun itself should be a part of this process.

  It was a small problem, he decided.

  A short time later, he heard the clacking of Franziska’s boots in the garden. She crossed the terrace directly and proceeded into the living room, where she took off her boots before kissing him on the lips in greeting.

  “Aha, have you been playing?” she asked.

  The column was warm and still extended in the middle of the room. There was no use denying it. “I’ve been doing some research,” he said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Then you’re not done with your preparation?” she asked.

  “Not quite.”

  “Good. Then I’m sure you won’t mind if I make a date with Greta tonight?”

  “I... No.”

  Yes, it bothered him a bit. She usually only visited her friend about once a month, and now three times in a week? On the other hand, it gave him more time to decide what to do about the lost stars.

  “Great. We’re going to the movies.”

  “Then you’ll be back by ten.”

  “No, we’re going to Munich, and we want to do something after the movie. I’ll stay overnight with Greta again.”

  “I see. You’ll meet the director there, too?”

  “Yes, honey. I’m so glad to be able to use my Spanish again. It was getting quite rusty. You know how much I love the language.”

  “Yes, I know that.”

  “Thank you for your understanding. Have you eaten anything yet? I’m so hungry! The session was terribly boring again.”

  It was quiet in the house. Typically, the evening news would be on at this time, but he’d already skimmed the day’s events online. Franziska had already been gone for an hour. She’d looked very nice and had been sporting her favorite perfume. Maybe he should have insisted on accompanying her after all. While he couldn’t imagine her cheating on him, his imagination wasn’t very perceptive. It always started out just like this in the dramas they sometimes watched together—the husband neglects his wife, and she goes elsewhere for companionship.

  Franziska wasn’t at all like that. She was candor personified. If she had slept with this José, she would have told him so as soon as she got home. She couldn’t keep something like that to herself. That was good, because he always knew where he stood with her—unless, this time, she didn’t say anything.

  But he needed to interact with another woman now: Melissa Holinger, the astronomer from Stockholm University. Her name didn’t sound very Swedish, but Villarroel, who was presumably her mentor, didn’t seem to have been born in Sweden either. For women scientists in particular, moving from institute to institute was simply part of their career. Maybe he should make a change, too. With the seemingly endless years at his high school, his enthusiasm was starting to wane.

  His hobby, astronomy, was the perfect balance. The universe was simply so huge that professional researchers couldn’t always keep an eye on every
thing. Amateur astronomers discovered new asteroids, comets, brown dwarfs, or even planets every year. Even when it was raining outside he could still be a discoverer, because NASA and ESA research missions shared their data on the web, and often relied on amateurs to detect previously undiscovered celestial bodies.

  Melissa Holinger. He wanted to write to the astronomer. Peter opened his notebook and put his feet up on the coffee table. Franziska would scold him now if she were home. He logged in and opened the paper that the SPACE editor sent him. Holinger’s e-mail address was there in the footer. He copied it, started a new message, and pasted her address into the recipient’s line.

  What should he write to her? He had no idea what scientists thought of receiving mail from laypeople. Did they get a lot of messages from obscure UFO researchers and hobbyists with no prior training who’d made up their own theory of relativity? He certainly didn’t want to be pigeonholed in that way, but how could he prevent it? He did not possess one scientific certification. He may be a math and physics teacher, but he really couldn’t know how significant his discovery was that all seven stars and the Earth were on an imaginary spherical shell.

  He simply had to try. If she didn’t read his message, he would be out of luck. Life would go on.

  “Dear Dr. Holinger,” he wrote in English.

  “I’m a math and physics teacher in Germany,” he typed.

  No. How would it look if he started with himself? Immediately quite unprofessional.

  “I was very excited by your publication in Nature Astronomy on February 10.”

  Too slimy.

  “Your publication in Nature Astronomy on February 10 has put me on a track that may be of interest to you as well.”

  That was better.

  “I had already made similar observations regarding Sigma Draconis and 47 Ursae Majoris.”

  He deleted the sentence. It sounded as if he wanted to dispute Holinger’s discovery. It was best if he simply stated the facts.

  “It is possible to spin up a spherical shell so that all seven candidate stars lie on its surface. Of course, this may be a coincidence, but perhaps important conclusions can be drawn.”

  He would leave that to Holinger.

  “What is particularly exciting about this is that our sun also finds a place on this spherical shell. I am aware that it is not one of the extinct stars.”

  A little humor never hurt.

  “But still, it seems remarkable to me. I would be pleased if you could include this train of thought in your reflections. I will continue to follow your research with great interest.”

  For the conclusion, he ought to suck up a bit. That way, Holinger might be more likely to keep him in the loop. He added good wishes, skimmed the text again, and sent the message.

  Outside, a fierce wind drummed raindrops against the windows. He was glad that he didn’t have to be out and about in Munich’s nightlife at the moment.

  On the other hand, it was a shame he couldn’t use the night for observations. He fetched his list of stars to work off. Then he used a star catalog to add more yellow dwarfs. After all, it was unlikely that such a phenomenon would be confined to a 60-light-year radius around Earth.

  Peter woke up because he was cold. He looked at the clock. At midnight, the heating turned off, and it was shortly after two. His list and pen were on the carpet. He must have fallen asleep in the middle of work. He shivered, rubbed his hands together, picked up his things, and left the room.

  “Alexa, living room off, hallway on.”

  The light in the living room went out and it got bright in the hallway. He closed the door behind him. Franziska’s shoes and jacket were missing, so he knew she was not back yet. He went upstairs, got ready for bed, and went back to sleep.

  March 3, 2026 – Passau

  “Peter, Peter, wake up!”

  Franziska leaned over the bed and shook him by his shoulders. She was wearing sunglasses and shiny red lipstick, things he could clearly make out despite it still being quite dark in the room. He assumed it to be a dream—a lucid dream, something that was happening to him more and more frequently. He could usually decide how these dreams would proceed. Only, Franziska somehow eluded his control in these dreams.

  “What is it?” he asked. “It must be really early!”

  “I slept with José!” said Franziska.

  “What?”

  “I slept with him!”

  “So, did you sleep well?”

  “Not slept! Had sex. Fucked! You know what I mean.”

  He should probably have gotten excited at this point, but it was just a dream. It was not worth it. It wasn’t real. At best, Peter was curious to see what Franziska would come up with next. Hopefully, she wouldn’t start filling in the details.

  “That’s good,” he said. “Now go to bed and get some rest.”

  She shook him by the shoulders again. “Is that all you have to say? Aren’t you even interested in who I go to bed with?”

  “Yes, of course, my darling. And it’s not who, it’s whom.”

  But this is all part of my dream. He didn’t say this out loud, because Franziska would only get upset about it. After all, to her it was not a dream.

  “‘My darling?’ I just told you that someone else fucked me, and you call me your darling?”

  This was a strange dream. About the strangest one he’d had lately. He should tell it to Franziska. Or maybe not.

  “Yes. I’m still tired. Can we talk about it later?”

  “Later? You want to talk to me about cheating later? Man, Peter, you can go fuck yourself! I’m getting a divorce!”

  Franziska stormed out of the bedroom and slammed the door.

  When he woke up, he was, at first, a little disoriented. He reached over, but the other side of the bed was empty. That’s right, Franziska was out with Greta and with that director. Only then did he notice the buzzing of the alarm clock. He pressed the ‘Off’ button. Today was Tuesday, and he had to go to school. First period. That group of students was always especially nice.

  He showered, got dressed, and ate a small bowl of cereal. There was no sign of Franziska. It looked as if she hadn’t even been home yet. No need to worry. She’d probably go to school from her friend’s house.

  He looked at the weather forecast. It was not supposed to rain today, so he got the bicycle out of the garage and cycled to his workplace.

  As promised by the weather forecast, the sun shone in the afternoon. Peter noticed Franziska and her friend Greta when he pushed his bike behind the house. They were sitting on deck chairs, covered up, and toasting each other.

  “Looks like you two are having a good time,” Peter commented.

  “It’s not alcohol, just lemonade. Greta made it herself,” Franziska answered.

  He put the bike down, then went over to her, and gave her a kiss. She smiled at him. He hadn’t seen her this happy in a very long time. Was that good, or was there something to worry about?

  “Hello Peter,” Greta said, pulling her hand out of the blanket and waving at him.

  “Do you want to join us for a bit?” Franziska asked. “The lemonade is good!”

  “I have a lot of preparation to do, unfortunately,” he replied.

  That wasn’t quite true. He didn’t want to end up arguing with Greta, which was what usually happened. She swore by homeopathy and was always quoting her horoscope, along with everyone else’s. She really believed that a distant star determines a person’s fate. He once explained that most of the stars around her couldn’t even know she was born yet because it took longer for the light to reach them than she had yet lived, but that didn’t affect her thinking.

  “I’ll be leaving soon, too,” Greta said. “Then you’ll have your wife all to yourself again.”

  “Stay a little longer,” said Franziska. “Peter doesn’t mind. Right, Peter?”

  “Yes, of course. Stay. I still have lots of work to do, as I said.”

  “Did you finish everything for you
r classes?” Franziska asked.

  She had prepared the supper while he was still working, and then called him into the dining room. She had set the dining room table in white. There were even wine glasses on it. Unusual—they rarely drank wine with dinner.

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  He’d finished after an hour. After that, he had thought about an optimal measurement strategy. He’d wanted to solve the problem that the telescope always needed a certain amount of time to find a certain object. The farther apart two objects were in the sky, the longer it took to slew. Peter came up with an algorithm that minimized the telescope’s path. Now all he would have to do was type in the coordinates of his test objects.

  “Poor you. Haven’t you taught all of these math and physics classes at least twice now?”

  “That’s true, but the performance level is very different. I have to balance that out. It would be great if they would introduce electrostimulated learning here—after all, it’s been common in China for a long time. In art and music, maybe it doesn’t play such a role, but you could adjust the performance level much better before the lessons.”

  “I find the idea creepy. Imagine if knowledge had been instilled in our children without them realizing it?”

  “At least then they would have learned something. But I do know what you mean. State propaganda. That may be a problem in China. But in our country? How come you have so little to do right now?”

  “I just assigned projects in all the classes, so I really don’t need to show up for class,” Franziska said.

  “You’ve got it good.”

  His smartphone vibrated. He pulled it out, even though he knew that Franziska would find that rude, but he was waiting so anxiously for Holinger’s answer. No one else answered him at this time of day. The sender, however, was an ex-colleague. He put the phone away again.