This story originally appeared in Alien Dimensions Issue #6
Aboard the Specialized Relative Gravity vessel, RGO
0.7 Light Years off from Delta Sagittarii
Jason Chiron was dying. He knew it. He felt it in every short breath he drew, every weak thump against his ribs. Despite the pain and the acute awareness of his fate, he felt some form of content. A wave of optimism replaced the discomfort ripping through his nerves. He had lived a life full of pursuit; pursuit of knowledge, of control. In the end, it did not matter as much as his newfound faith did. He had faith this was his destiny. To reach the Red Spider.
It began in 2017. At the age of 60, Jason had thought he had seen most of the golden age of science. He had toiled in the laboratories and basked in the glory of his contributions to several fields of academia. But the world changed that year when the extra-terrestrials arrived, and it changed the most for Jason.
Within months, like an ailing body reacting to a remedial graft, the planet united to defeat what they saw as an invading force. It took three long years but the aliens retreated, leaving behind a treasure trove of information. No one knew why they had arrived, and no one had wanted to find out. Most of his colleagues jumped to investigate the abandoned ships for their technology and the physics of how an alien species made it to Earth.
But Jason was interested in the creatures themselves and how they managed to survive the journey. It took him over a decade, but the fruits of his labor were groundbreaking. Through the relentless dissections and frustrating scans, he had discovered just how unique these creatures were. And suddenly, he stumbled into what he had always thought was a dangerous territory; the point where science and fiction seemed like two sides of a coin.
That was the end of his pursuit. The time for knowledge was now behind him. It was time for understanding. And he had understood what had to be done. Reach the Red Spider. Deliver the Golden Fleece right into the heart of the Scorpion.
Back at the RGO
Pilot Adam Chiron leaned over the MassQ and turned the knob ever-so-slightly to the left. An audible gasp emanating from the gears confirmed that he had set into motion a dangerous series of events. He then looked at the FMRI scanner and determined their distance from the rock they were headed towards. TX Fraction 4. A pseudo-planet half the size of Earth’s Moon but with similar gravity to Earth. Of course, in this context, it was not a planet at all. Merely a dust particle floating around the glorious White Dwarf. A web of the Red Spider around the heart of the Scorpion.
The heart of the scorpion was what the romantics in astronomy called Antares, the red supergiant star in the Scorpius Constellation. The Red Spider was however, a part of the Sagittarius constellation, more than 2,400 lightyears away from Earth, and not exactly on the list of places NASA could even dream of visiting in that time. His father, Jason Chiron, seemed to have more ambitious plans.
Adam had learned to grow up in the shadow of his father. As a student of most his father’s work, he was familiar with his obsession with the origin of life. From the 50’s when Urey-Miller gave us a first hint at how life may have started, to the recent studies about the atmosphere on Earth during the Hadean era, his father had always made significant contributions towards understanding life, as a biologist and as a physicist. But at the age of 73, when the old man began obsessing over the newly arrived aliens, Adam had thought the genius had finally lost his mind. He knew many of his colleagues had spent decades obsessing over the contents of the alien space craft – records left behind by the visitors that suggested they knew humans pretty well.
Using the reputation of Jason Chiron in extraterrestrial biology as well as his time and money, and Adam’s own expertise in engineering, he had managed to strategize a multi-billion-dollar space program. In return for his support, his father had insisted on secrecy for a pet project, one in which Adam wanted to know more about, but was never privy to. Of course, this upset shareholders, but as advance after advance was released, there were less and less questions of his father, and Jason could pursue his pet project in peace.
It took fifteen long years, but in 2042 the Genesis Project was successfully completed. They had built the first quantum engine which could manipulate the mass of an object, enough to make it possible to travel faster than light. Adam had always been fascinated with the rules of the universe, and the Genesis Project seemed to be designed to test these limits.
While conventional space programs relied on well-established physics to reach as far as possible, the RGO had to reach beyond the conventional idea of space travel. It had to break the universal speed barrier and do it without wiping out everyone aboard. Fueled by plasma, the material that made up the RGO shuttled between states of matter that allowed it to move seamlessly through space and time. And the tachyon-like existential properties of this matter made the RGO very fast. Fast enough to travel 2400 light years within what seemed like only a decade for humans aboard. Using this radical technology, they built two vessels that redefined space travel. His father had insisted that they would need a second one to escape the white dwarfs super-charged gravity. Even though Adam thought it strange, his father had contributed all his time and money to the project, so he dared not question. But, now they were close, it was time.
Adam stared at the distant white dwarf as the RGO began its submission to gravity. As a part of the Genesis project, they had made Exosuits and Internal Shields that exploited a similar quantum technology to remain impervious to the effects of the extreme gravitational pull of the dense, dying star. While the suits were certainly not perfect, they managed to keep events inside the RGO far more controlled than the chaos that ensued outside.
He walked out of the control room and headed towards the medical bay, where his father rested. He had to speak to him one last time before the RGO crashed into the rock beneath them. And this time he was going to get some answers.
2400 Light Years away from Earth
The hum of daily life outside her tent made her nervous as always. Ghari-Zu never felt at home on TX Fraction 4, one of the planets surrounding the Albina. She looked at the mirror floating in the middle of the spacious tent. Many had told her she was just as beautiful as her mother, Dha-kira. The white eyes, same as all her people, resting between dark silk-like retrices that extended to the back of her head. She ran her pale, slender fingers through them, just like her mother did. But her heart desired a path far different from her mother’s.
The manitas, her people, were known to have received gifts from the Albina. Gifts that allowed them to make matter from energy. They moved around the glorious white star and created planets around it. But Ghari-Zu desired to reach for other stars. She respected the might of the Albina, but surely there were others, colorful and powerful. And she wanted to reach beyond their planets and fly to the other stars. The Manitas, however, had no means or aspirations to do so.
Brushing these thoughts aside, she finally stepped outside her tent. The ashen earth crunched as she walked towards the maze of caverns that garnished the surface as far as her eyes could envision. She could see many of her people scouring the dust around her, but they seemed to be somewhat frantic. It was unlikely of the Manitas to break their solemn gait, but what worried her more was that she couldn’t see her mother.
“Ghari-Zu, get inside,” she heard her mother yell. But she still couldn’t find the source.
“Ghari-Zu, look up,” Dha-kira cautioned. But Ghari-Zu only cared about where her mother was. She finally found a tall figure hiding behind one of the smaller DGR droids. She ran towards her mother, curious as to why she was hiding. But the moment Ghari-Zu saw her wide-open eyes, all she could see was terror. Dha-kira seemed in a trance, staring at something up behind their tent.
“Mother,” she ran and touched her face, “Are you alright?” She felt anxiety wash over her. She needed to get back to the tent and call for help. But her mother continued to stare into the skies. Ghari-Zu finally looked up. A grey sphere was coming towards them, getting larger. She had never seen anything capable of doing what the object was doing.
Ghari-Zu followed her mother as swiftly as she could. Both had frozen in their places as the sphere began to fall. But within moments, her mother had recollected herself and pointed towards the droids on the other side of the tent. They started their sprint towards it, but something about the approach of the sphere seemed to disturb the dust around them. They looked up and realized the sphere seemed almost precisely headed towards them. There wasn’t going to be enough time.
At the time, Mother reached the droid, the ground beneath Ghari-Zu’s feet gave way. She fell back, her arms grasping the empty air.
“Mother,” she yelled as she fell through the ground into one of the caverns.
She heard the increasing whine of the object before the shock of the fall caused her to pass out. As consciousness left her, she thought about what she would do when she eventually walked out of the caverns. And if the sphere had caused the death of her mother, she would find whichever race it was and make them pay.
#
“We’ve entered the atmosphere,” Adam said to his father.
Jason looked up; his weary eyes betrayed the curl of his lips. He stood up from his bed and tried to stand up. His son came to assist him, but Jason shook his head. As he walked out of the medical bay towards the main chambers, he felt a sense of purpose that could only be quenched if he did this last part himself.
The thought of arriving at their destination reminded Jason of how he had mapped the visitors’ home planet. It took him three years to decipher where exactly they came from. But using their bodily frequency and the traces of radiation from their eyes, he figured out that it was a white dwarf in the Red Spider nebula. The cradles of stars in our galaxy, nebulae were masses of gas and plasma, the perplexing state of matter that is pure energy. It is through this energy that stars are created, and Jason was aware that this galaxy could have been created from this very nebula that lies at the heart of the Milky Way. To him, it was no longer about mere curiosity, but about the one thing he had always wanted to understand; the origin of life.
“What do you think lies out there? Why did you bring the second ship?” Adam asked from behind him.
Jason continued to walk until he reached the main area of the ship, a brightly lit vacant chamber decorated only by a large cache of shabbily stacked folders.
“You told me this would be our most exciting achievement. Our brave new chapter that could inspire humanity for centuries,” Adam continued to speak as his father reached for the folders. “You helped me see the raw and unparalleled impact of this mission. But the closer we get to the end of this journey, the more I feel uncertain about your intentions,” his voice palpably laden with frustration.
“I am sorry for keeping you in the dark, but it is now time to reveal all. We are not here for humanity, son. We are here for all of life.” Jason’s voice was frail, a low murmur. He picked up a few of the folders and deliberated their contents before turning back to face his son.
“What do you mean by all of life?” Adam asked, realizing he would finally learn about what his father had been working on all these years.
His father looked at him, seriously. He took a deep breath. This was it.
“Adam, these beings, they are our creators,” he said.
Adam was taken aback. This was not what he had been expecting. In all his years of a frustrating yet formative relationship with his father, he had never known him to be a man of religion, or have any ideology based on a creator. Had he finally succumbed to dementia?
“You don’t have to internalize your ridicule. I have not lost my mind just yet.”
“But father, you don’t honestly expect me to believe in a creator or that you believe in a creator. You have always been a man of science; sturdy, reliable science that works through theories and models, not fairy tales.”
“What is a theory or a model if not the plaything of our childish curiosity? Much like a fairy tale,” Jason smiled. He handed over the folders to Adam.
Adam flipped through the papers inside, annoyed that he wasn’t at least using a tablet. His eyes narrowed in confusion. “These are the same sketches and plans that they found in the alien spacecraft. I assume, for your reference on our way here?”
“Not quite. These are the folders we will leave for our creators, so that they can leave them for us.”
Adam stared quietly, his face frozen in bewilderment.
Jason continued. “We are heading for a CTC, son. An enormous gravitational powerhouse where our sense of space and time is sorely irrelevant. This mission was not for exploration but experimentation. The first experiment in time travel. The scientists on Earth still think in the old ways. But I’ve worked it out.”
“Is this your big project? I’m aware of closed timelike curves, the most popular model to explain time anomalies around black holes, but they are not something we can experiment with. CTCs have a catastrophic disadvantage, the grandfather paradox. We cannot time travel, father.”
Jason smiled. “I truly did believe once that humanity had wasted too much of its time chasing paradoxes and impossibilities. I had come close to giving up on even my obsession with life, thinking we can never truly understand how life began being in the limiting constraints of our universe. But they proved me wrong. They showed me what we forgot to account for. They are quantum beings, son. They are the pure embodiment of a quantum operator.”
It had been a while since Adam had revised his quantum physics, being an astronaut who usually dealt with classical physics. But he could well remember the fascinating details of a quantum operator. The act of observation that collapses quantum superpositions. The key to existing in our quantum universe was to give in to the mercy of quantum operators, the same way the vibrant colors of a flower are at the mercy of a mindful bee that sees it. If our universe were beauty itself, then quantum operators were the beholder. Adam started to realize where his father was leading him.
Jason noticed the glimpse of realization on Adam’s face. “When I began understanding their language, their constitution, I realized that they were barely made from matter, but their mind was a giant quantum processor. That was how they survived the journey to our planet, son. They travelled through space and time. Almost like they knew where to go.”
“How did they know to come to Earth? Why would they come to Earth?”
“Because we came to them first. The only way they could have known our anatomy and our history and our progress in quantum mechanics, is if we told them ourselves. And I think that is what we are about to do.” Jason looked at the folders in Adam’s hands.
“Father, you thought of coming all the way to a nebula so you could deliver our address to an alien species? As incredulous and impractical that sounds, it is bound to ensure that they come to us and wreak havoc again. Couldn’t we have, in your crazy theoretical model, avoided that entirely?”
Adam was picking up on the pace of this conversation and his father seemed pleased by his question.
“We cannot avoid this loop, son,” Jason said. “Classical physics insists that time travel will lead to catastrophic paradox. But quantum mechanics is far more insightful. If we travel back in time and eliminate our own existence, quantum superposition ensures that we keep doing that to ourselves over and over again, thus collapsing into the reality of our existence and our elimination from existence. We are bound to come here and do this, and they are bound to come to Earth so we can go to their planet.”
Adam breathed in, solemnly. He was beginning to understand. His father had discovered an actual event of time travel that loops itself in this quantum universe. But more questions were needed. And a niggling doubt in the back of his mind. What will happen to them in this time loop future? He needed more. “That is quite a model, father. A quantum explanation for the Novikov Principle. But why did you call them creators?”
“Ah, now you have forsaken the pursuit of knowledge and begun your journey to understanding.” He held his son by his arms. “There is more to this time travel than this single loop.
“I believe that these magnificent creatures are elements of construction. The agents of order in a universe of entropy. They live in the shadow of the most chaotic nebula at the center of our galaxy. They possess the power to bring about reality itself, reality in a form that they prescribe. I believe they can create the most ordered system in our known universe, life itself.
“Open the last folder. Look at the drawings.”
Adam obliged. A paper crowded with scientific figures emerged. It was from the famous Urey-Miller experiment, a representation of the apparatus. Scribbled under it were the key biomolecules his father had helped formulate in that experiment, the primitive building blocks of life. But there was a note under it. Product: racemate. Adam understood that note was a sigh of defeat. Many scientists have criticized this as the greatest weakness of the chemical origin theory. Adam remembered the basics of biology his father had taught him, the identical twins of each amino acids, one right-handed and the other left. But in all forms of life, only left handed amino acids are found; the building blocks of life are all the same kind.
“We couldn’t figure it out. We never could,” Jason said, teary eyed. “We had no answer for why life chose to order itself around one form but not the other. At some point at the beginning, the existence of life collapsed onto one form of building block instead of another.”
“You think this reality, this singular collapse essential for all life on earth…you think it happened because of a quantum operator?”
“Not just any quantum operator. The only sentient quantum operator that we know of, which can travel through space and time.
“We are delivering ourselves to our creators, Adam. We are giving them our technology, so that they can use the second spacecraft and use their unique abilities to create life on Earth. We are finishing our time loop so that the time loop of life can begin.”
The ship vibrated sharply. Adam knew that meant they were about to land on the planet. But he suddenly realized more. There was no evidence they existed in any of the records. There was no record of Jason or Adam Chiron in any documents that survived the war. No evidence even, of the aliens having ever met humans. He realized now that they were not destined to survive.
But the Golden Fleece, the second plasma-fueled space ship aboard the RGO, would be ejected out from the center of the sphere on impact. Adam suddenly realized that the Golden Fleece looked quite similar to the alien ships that had invaded. A prototype from the future.
“How can we be certain they will know when to reach Earth? How will they know what to do? They will need instructions.”
Jason looked up, wiping the tears off his sunken cheeks. He took one of the folders from Adams hands and picked out a piece of paper. It was a concoction of hieroglyph-like illustrations that showed the aliens, with their white eyes and feathered foreheads. Illustrations of the solar system, with the Earth colored white instead of the ashen shades of the other ten planets. A plethora of equations in what seemed like gibberish.
“A message in a bottle,” Jason smiled, handing it over to Adam.
Adam had suspected all along that it was going to be a one-way mission. But a one-way mission that ended with the creation of the human race? That suddenly made it worthwhile.
There was a thud as the Golden Fleece ejected, a flash, and then nothing.
#
One Billion Years after the Formation of Solar Protostar
In the solemn silence of space, a grain of dust had now grown into a large rock, spinning relentlessly as it found itself struggling to break from the magnificent yellow star. Traces of the nebula that formed these ornaments of space had dissipated over the centuries, leaving behind the smoldering sun and ten ardent disciples. Amidst showers of fierce boulders and baths of unforgiving emissions, the planet revolved and rotated as if it had given up on a sense of purpose, given in to the mundane. On its surface, rusty winds left toxic piles in its wake. Violent streams of perspiration rolled down the wastelands and poured into the limitless valleys. Hazard and cruelty seemed like the only thing left on this rock.
Except for one slender figure that walked upon those dusty mounds. Ghari-Zu took in the glorious thunders and rattling rains with her white, pearly eyes. She remembered how far she had come and how much she had longed for this journey into the unknown.
As she walked upon this strange planet, she picked up a handful of the liquid flowing under her feet. She let it evaporate from her hands, while she stood there wondering, deliberating. Was this the third rock from the yellow star or the second?