Survive

by Vera Nazarian

  “Okay . . . I can’t even imagine,” I mumble in awe.

  “It is unimaginable,” Aeson says, staring straight ahead. “In reality it’s a multidimensional object imbedded in our 3D space-time.”

  “You mean it’s not just a crazy super-duper imploding gravitational sinkhole vortex in the fabric of space-time?” I quip nervously, trying to set him at ease.

  Briefly, my attempt at levity works.

  He makes a soft chuckle. “It’s also rotating about its own axis. This can be inferred from the motion of the bright stuff orbiting it, getting pulled along for the ride—all of which makes it both easier and harder to visualize in our three-dimensional space. I believe your closest geometric term would be a ‘pseudosphere’ or ‘anti-sphere’—and even that’s not accurate. In short, it’s inwardly collapsing space-time surrounded by orbiting radiation junk.”

  “So, what is the visible part?” I ask. “The radiation junk?”

  Aeson pauses, thinking. “Yes. From our perspective we see the bright accretion disk—a ring of plasma radiation and super-heated incandescent gas and matter orbiting along the outer portion of the Rim.”

  “Accretion disk?” I echo.

  “Yes, the bright visible stuff. Our galaxy has an active galactic nucleus, so you can see a whole lot of brightness at an immense distance. That’s the exterior of the Rim of Ae-Leiterra. All the stuff is spinning so fast that the plasma is being ejected in two powerful jets, in opposite directions—one from each axis pole—flung outward into space. Your Earth scientists call active galaxies such as ours quasars, blazars, radio galaxies, Seyfert galaxies—depending on the viewing angle of the relativistic jets.”

  “Oh, I remember learning about quasars,” I say. “Not sure about the other terms. So, wow, the Coral Reef Galaxy is a quasar or a blazar, or one of those other thingies?”

  He nods. “Yes, all of them, based on which viewing angle or vantage point you use to describe its jets. Normally, if the jets are pointing in your direction what you see is deadly super brightness, and at such proximity there is no habitable zone. But, lucky for us, we have an immense Black Nebula between us and the deadly inferno—the Black Nebula shields us and makes life and survival possible in the Helios system despite our relative proximity to the active galactic center. And sorry, but the terms are necessary for what I’m about to describe, hence the aside on astrophysics.”

  “I don’t mind.” I smile.

  And then I understand something.

  He is cloaking himself in the clinical jargon, giving me a cool and rational science lesson, because this is so painful for him. So he’s distancing himself from the terrifying reality of what happened to him.

  Moments later, another insight overwhelms me.

  He is also doing this for me.

  Aeson is diluting the nightmare by flooding my mind with new information—simple and rational. He’s soothing me with cool, clinical, scientific wonder—in order to prepare me for his agony. He is trying to offset the pain of the coming darkness in which I’m about to be plunged.

  Oh, how well he knows me. . . .

  “Anyway,” he says, turning away again to stare before him. “Our concept of the Rim refers to everything within the black hole system’s exterior. It’s the last stable place for matter in general, a kind of multi-staging transition area before things start to fall into the black hole.”

  “Okay.” I nod, trying to visualize this weirdness. But all I can think of are nightmare horrors, unimaginable things happening to him.

  Last stable place. . . .

  “As you begin to move inward along the Rim through the accretion disk, you cross the static limit boundary of normal space-time and enter a messy ‘processing’ area with swirling bands of distorted space-time. Your Earth science calls it the ergosphere—where time dilation occurs and nothing can stand still, as space-time itself circles the cosmic drain. Meanwhile, the innermost boundary of the Rim is the photon sphere, the last place where light can orbit without being sucked inside. The ergosphere is oblate and bulging at the equator, so it partially overlaps the photon sphere. Finally, comes the reality horizon, past which physical reality loses its cohesion. It’s a boundary of no return for anything residing in normal space-time.”

  “And somewhere deep inside is a singularity,” I say. “Right?”

  But he shakes his head. “Despite what your Earth scientists theorize, there is no singularity—in other words, no narrowing point—or tiny ring—of infinite density, space-time curvature, and gravity into which all time and matter collapses. To paraphrase your slang, there’s no universal ‘buck stops here.’ Instead, there is a moment of fundamental trans-dimensional homogeneity after which reality and information picks one quantum path out of an infinity of choices—and reforms like a snapped rubber band and continues elsewhere.”

  “Oh!”

  “The opposite side of the black hole potentially extends beyond that ‘blur’ jump-point, terminating in another cup-shaped receptacle somewhere else—a different space-time reality,” he says. “And all of it is superimposed upon itself, all phases and dimensions existing simultaneously.”

  My breathing slows down as the convoluted meaning sinks in. “This is . . . still not sure I understand.”

  He continues: “Imagine a double-sided funnel, a hyperboloid, or another similar biconical shape. For example, your Earth Arabic numeral eight, or the symbol of infinity, or even your ancient hourglass.”

  “Okay,” I mutter.

  “Now imagine that you can twist the object at its narrow midpoint where, for some strange reason, it’s perfectly malleable. You wring its neck, spinning it around like a centrifuge—and when it stops, the top and bottom funnels are misaligned in relation to each other.”

  I stare, concentrating so hard that my forehead hurts.

  “The black hole ‘grail’ is such a quantum shape in space-time geometry. At the midpoint connecting the two halves, it extends and blurs into a quantum field of wormholes. . . . They buzz like an electron cloud, or a hive of insects, spinning around a gravitational nucleus—the so-called singularity. It is like a probability corridor with many doors, and it connects two or more separate cosmic realities . . . which may be infinitely distant physical or temporal locations.”

  “Wow. . . .” I exhale in wonder.

  Aeson pauses, giving me time to process. Then he takes a deep breath and continues.

  “Anyway, as I was saying, something happens at the Rim of this particular black hole, our black hole, something that must be dealt with. And it involves yet another duty that the Imperator and the entire Fleet must perform, on behalf of all of us—not only Imperial Atlantida but all Atlantis. This duty has been with us throughout the ages. And now that I know more about my Father’s actions and intentions for Earth—it is easy to guess that it’s related precisely to Earth’s ancient dimensional rift.”

  “What exactly is this Imperial duty?” I ask, while my mind is still reeling with intellectual awe.

  Aeson sighs, seeming to gather his thoughts. “It involves capturing very specific, rare energy emissions from the black hole. The idea is only vaguely reminiscent of your Earth notion of Hawking radiation—quantum entangled particle pairs of matter and anti-matter located right at the event horizon being torn apart by gravitational forces. One part of the pair disappears into the black hole, the other remains outside, and this ultimately changes the mass equilibrium of the black hole, diminishing it over time.”

  I frown, trying to remember physics class. “We were taught that nothing—or at least nothing substantial—can escape a black hole. Hawking radiation has not been observed on a large scale and is somewhat theoretical. And now you’re saying that’s not quite right. So how does that work? I don’t remember understanding it all that well.”

  Aeson glances at me. “The Earth concept is flawed, so don’t bother. We have an Atlantean unifying Theory of Everything that works to seamlessly connect the small and large-scale universes
of physics. We call it the Blur Transformation and Transposition Principle, or BTTP. Too long to explain now, but I promise, you’ll have the opportunity to learn it later. For now, all you need to understand is that black holes can leak matter in an exotic way unfamiliar to Earth science. Our term for it is trans-dimensional radiation.”

  “Wow. Okay.”

  “As I was saying, black hole energy emissions,” he continues. “Basically, it’s a common occurrence around the Rim of Ae-Leiterra. Particles of emitted t-d energy break out past the reality horizon, past the photon sphere and orbit the black hole. They become part of the accretion disk, some ending up in relativistic jets, and eventually forming nebula clouds in deep space. We measure and keep track of it, looking for any radiation anomalies. And every few years the nature of this t-d radiation changes, and instead of venting formless masses of quantum particles, what comes forth are pegasei.”

  My mouth parts. “Oh!”

  “These trans-dimensional quantum beings,” Aeson continues, “they seem to literally appear out of nowhere, somehow escaping the gravitational pull of the black hole. The assumption is, they somehow ‘hitch a ride’ on the light quanta at the photon sphere, using those same escaped particles as slingshots to propel themselves into our dimension beyond the destructive reality horizon—in a parody of your Penrose process.”

  I listen intently.

  “The pegasei emerge at the ISCO, orbiting the immense Rim of Ae-Leiterra. And then, defying the gravitational pull, they start moving outward along the Rim radius toward the exterior edge, where they gather in massive super-flocks. This happens gradually until the super-flocks are large enough to be harvested.”

  “So that’s where you get the pegasei!” I exclaim.

  Aeson shakes his head. “Only some of them. But really, it’s not the main reason for what the Fleet does and what the Imperator does there. It’s never about pegasei. . . . It’s about what their presence indicates.” He takes a deep breath. “The most important Imperial duty of the Kassiopei has been to maintain the Great Quantum Shield at the Rim of Ae-Leiterra. The shield keeps specific trans-dimensional entities—such as the ancient alien enemy—out of our space-time. It keeps them from reaching out to us directly through one of the trans-dimensional wormhole pathways via the black hole.”

  Suddenly my heart is beating fast. . . .

  “We’ve been taught that’s how they first arrived to threaten Earth’s Ancient Atlantis—they came the same way as did the pegasei,” he says. “Here, the pegasei only serve as warning markers for us. Their presence marks the spot where the shield has become particularly vulnerable. The fact that the pegasei are able to emerge at all is a symptom of general weakness in the Ae-Leiterra shield. But apparently it’s also a symptom of another, even more critical weakness. . . .”

  “What?” I ask.

  Aeson looks at me intently. “If you recall, pegasei were originally discovered on Earth. How, why—it’s been shrouded in ancient history. We’ve only been taught over the centuries that there’s a correlation. If pegasei show up, our ancient alien enemy is soon to follow—so we must immediately check and reinforce the shield around our local galactic nucleus.”

  “Like a canary in a coal mine,” I whisper.

  Aeson raises his brows. Apparently, he’s unfamiliar with this phrase. “In any case, we all know about the correlation but not the real details. Remember, the general public has no idea about the existence of the dimensional rift on Earth—and neither did we. But now, thanks to my Father finally giving up some secrets, you and I know, and I’m willing to bet that the pegasei are coming from the inadequately shielded Earth rift via a wormhole and ending up here. Which means—not only has the Ae-Leiterra shield weakened against t-d radiation, but far across the universe, the original shield enclosing the rift on Earth has weakened too, and is allowing passage once more. The Earth rift is leaking directly here!”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “I did not properly understand it, the true extent and complexity of the Imperial mission at Ae-Leiterra—not until now.” He pauses. “I now believe it’s intended to maintain both shields at the same time—the one around Ae-Leiterra and the remote one back on Earth.”

  My eyes widen.

  “For centuries, all of us have assumed that Ae-Leiterra poses a general danger locally, as a portal for trans-dimensional activity. The Great Quantum Shield, or GQS, we were told, was engineered by our ancient ancestors on our behalf, soon after we arrived in the Helios system. They created it to retrofit and seal the black hole against dimensional invasion. And we’ve been maintaining it ever since, by means of Imperial Logos voices and cosmic-scale geometry. Now, of course, we just learned that the Imperator also maintains in a similar manner the ancient ark-ship and, apparently, a hidden moon of Atlantis—and who knows what else!”

  “You really think there’s something else?” I ask faintly.

  “Hah! I don’t know what to think anymore, Gwen. At this rate, the whole world is unraveling.” He shakes his head again. “But—allow me to continue this sad story, now that I’ve given you the background. So, every few years, the Imperator takes the Fleet on a maintenance mission to the Rim, after receiving reports from SPC Command about pegasei sightings. Once a certain amount of pegasei energy is present, it indicates a weakness in the shield, so it’s time to perform maintenance.”

  “I see.”

  “This particular mission was scheduled to take place at the Rim sometime after my thirteenth birthday, and we embarked on the journey to get there several weeks earlier. I was assigned on the Imperial sebasaret, which is a warship-class vessel with both military and science research capabilities, smaller than an ark-ship but larger than a velo-cruiser. The mission always includes an array of several hundred sebasarets serving as Fleet formation anchors, and numerous smaller cruisers and shuttles placed in-between, with small space buoys scattered throughout to extend the boundaries and allow formation fine-tuning.”

  I nod and listen.

  “The idea is, the Fleet array spreads out like a great net. Sebasarets, cruisers, shuttles, buoys—all ships lined up at wide intervals like a necklace of beads—spanning a significant area along the circumference of the Rim. Then the Imperator places the entire array into a Stationary Quantum Stream—” Aeson gives me a look of concentration. “It’s a very different kind of quantum phase state from the ordinary Quantum Stream with which you’re familiar—the kind where we have to accelerate to enter it, and which we use to travel cosmic distances. In contrast, the Stationary Quantum Stream is weird. It needs no specific velocity, can be achieved from a fixed, or slowly drifting position, and is extremely difficult and dangerous to implement, requiring perfect precision. Only a Logos voice must be used to shape it, so the task falls to the Imperator.”

  “Okay. . . .”

  “The ships, phase-locked in the safety of the Stationary Quantum Stream, may approach and traverse the Rim, flying as deep as necessary. They can approach the black hole’s reality horizon and even cross it safely, and enter inside. No time dilation, no radiation or other matter corruption is experienced.”

  “Oh, wow,” I whisper.

  “That’s why we call it the reality horizon,” Aeson adds. “It poses danger only if you’re occupying this present space-time reality. If you’re inside any kind of Quantum Stream, you are in a different reality, so you may pass safely.”

  “That’s amazing!” I say.

  “And so, getting back to what happened. I was assigned to assist in the sebasaret Resonance Chamber, where my Father sang the complicated main sequences to initialize the SQS all across the Fleet array. Once the quantum field was up, and we were safely encased in our SQS bubble, we physically entered the Rim. The next step was for the Imperator to oversee and correct the frequencies of the resonance network. That includes all the systems and all the officers on the other ships who were using local voice commands to send out the space buoys.

  “Normally an ordinary skilled F
leet technician can perform QS fine-tuning, and no Logos voice is needed. However, because of our dangerous location—the extreme gravitational and other anomaly risks posed by the proximity to Ae-Leiterra—the Imperator was required to stand by. That’s because the very field boundary of the Stream can start to degrade, and he must be there to fix it.”

  “Why would it degrade?” I ask. “If the Stationary Quantum Stream is supposed to be safe—”

  “Think of it this way. When you’re flying through the cosmos in a normal Quantum Stream, you’re moving so infernally fast that there’s no time for anything outside to even begin affecting your field boundary. You can pass through the heart of a star, a turbulent nebula, anything—and you keep going safely. But if you remain standing in place, you get relentlessly bombarded by whatever’s immediately surrounding you. In this case, plasma radiation orbiting the black hole—X-rays, gamma rays, and more. And it all starts to wear you down.”

  He pauses. “Imagine the ultimate hellscape scenario, Gwen. Conditions of indescribable heat, energy, pressure, and violence, all of it caused by Ae-Leiterra’s immense gravity. . . . It’s a nightmare crematorium of matter—where plasma radiation is generated by the friction of superheated gases and matter moving near light speed. And now, imagine—the Fleet has to sit still in the middle of all that hell, enveloped by the precarious ‘safety bubble’ of the Stationary Quantum Stream.”

  I shake my head and exhale a long-held breath, slowly.

  “The safety of hundreds of ships and thousands of lives depends on it—and the Stream itself depends on one man wielding the Logos voice, the Imperator,” Aeson says with sudden intensity. “It’s a fine balancing act that needs to be maintained constantly. If needed, the Imperator must go from Fleet vessel to Fleet vessel and perform local resonance tuning and reinforcing, in person—up to and including taking a small shuttle to individual buoys if they are in danger of falling out of bounds and collapsing the Stream.”

  “How often does that kind of thing happen?” I ask carefully. “A boundary collapse, I mean.” I listen, watching Aeson’s face start to turn grim, as he remembers.