A Stellar Anomaly

“Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.” – Cpt. Ray “Drift” Johnson, 2234.

~~~~~

Year 4, Day 364

2215 Hours

Dr. Rowan Adelaide

NHISR Endeavour

It’s almost the end of the fourth year. I can’t say that I’m elated for that time to come, since out here, there really is no concept of time passing except whenever I look at the calendar. As per the status of my contract, this is my routine monthly audio-dictation record.

I am, for the fourth complete year, in synchronous orbit around Cersei-III, a white dwarf star that has been my sole preoccupation for the past four years and which I have been noting as ‘Cersei’ to shorten the name. Uhhh, let’s see, what else? I am aboard the New Human Institute of Scientific Research vessel Endeavour, where I have been conducting "scientific observation" though this really means I've been keeping the heat shields on 'round the clock and have been staring at the blazing surface of a star. I am in G-class space, meaning that while there is no life in this sector yet, that could change in the future, and the sudden appearance of a star would certainly warrant investigation and not this much worry.

In the beginning, this specific place in space where I am right now used to be empty. That wasn't just the private interstellar satellites taking pictures, but official government owned NHISR satellites which confirmed the absence of any celestial body of any type, be it stellar, planetary, or even nebulous. Then, all of a sudden, Cersei appeared out of nowhere. Corporates were all over publishing the photos their satellites captured and had every major news outlet cover the subject. "Sudden Appearance of a White Dwarf" and "New Stars in Sector G" were just some of the major headlines that went galactic, and NHISR couldn't deny them. Cersei was a new object in Sector G, and the government confirming corporate ones sent the public into a wild frenzy of unnecessary and unhealthy speculations. "Aliens," some said. "Truly an act of God," said others.

"Dr. Adelaide. We want you to find out." Haven't gotten around to changing the camera's damaged output plug so you can't see that I'm pointing with lots of authority, but that's basically what the politicians said to me. Y'know, in some ways, politicians are worse than corporate shareholders. Shareholders just need a text document with fancy charts and I wouldn't have to explain anything. Politicians need not just the fancy charts and scientific jargon, but they need it explained to them because they need to know if what you're explaining to them will win them more approval points for the next election.

Anyways, that's how I'm got here. Drafted and shipped off to Point Nowhere in Spacetown and have been stuck here ever since. I have all sorts of fancy instruments and things to keep me company, and the nearest outpost is only a couple lightyears away which is easily within half a jump, so it's not all entirely bad. Except that I don't have enough data to show for this multi-billion dollar research.

The only real data I have are the numbers I took in my first year. Solar radiation, projected mass and mass decay, luminance, all things you'd need to record if you were looking at a star. Keeping in mind Cersei is a white dwarf, a star that is significantly less reactive than Sol-1, the primary star which Earth-1 orbited, the readings become estranged from their reality.

Cersei outputs more solar radiation and average luminance than an average star, six times more in both measurements, and yet despite this, the calculated mass is half of what it should be and it seems to be losing mass at a rapidly decreasing rate. If the politicians who are listening don't understand that, it means Cersei is still losing mass, but it's losing less and less, like if you slowly turned off the water to the garden hose without closing it all the way. But aside from the mass decay slowing to negligible levels, the other readings haven't changed much at all.

"Figure out why there's a star where the used to be nothing." Yeah, sure. Easier said than done.

~~~~~

Year 5, Day 19

1502 Hours

Dr. Rowan Adelaide

NHISR Endeavour

I just finished taking a call with the NHISR Oversight Committee, and they've just asked me to get closer to Cersei. For the past four years, I have kept this same distance of 1 AU and there's only so much you can do with that much space. The Committee members and politicians have been telling me to make a miracle with an experimental procedure that prevents me from doing the task while at the same time, expecting results that would take at least a decade to gather and formulate, and somehow deliver it within at least half that time. It's only now that they trust the word of a scientist.

I will be putting the Endeavour within six million kilometers of Cersei's surface. The simulations calculate that's the maximum distance the shuttle can go before the heat shields give out and I end up inside a spaceship sized oven powered by the sun.

The navigation console has a travel solution which will get the Endeavour to its target orbit within at least five days. Warp drives are designed to take one across distances greater than twelve lightyears, and the spooling time combined with the cooling period are 1. not worth the time and effort for what really amounts to a fraction of a second's worth of activation, and 2. the residual speed left over from the jump will carry me too far forwards and within the danger zone of the star.

Needless to say, this is the most exciting part of the experiment thus far.

~~~~~

Year 5, Day 23

2200 Hours

Dr. Rowan Adelaide

NHISR Endeavour

I have reached the determined orbital distance sooner than expected. Not that I wanted the trip to be delayed, but it means that the engines were drawing more power than they should've been.

Systems are still functionally, and power loss is well within acceptable margins. Even the engines appear all right despite the overheating I was expecting.

I will begin retaking Cersei's numbers tomorrow. Hopefully this new change in parameters, however slight, will allow me to record some meaningful data.

~~~~~

Year 5, Day 24

0121 Hours

Dr. Rowan Adelaide

NHISR Endeavour

The proximity alarm went off about seventeen minutes ago. At first I thought it was a glitch until the ship shook. This continued for ten minutes until I pulled the Endeavour back another six thousand kilometers. It turns out Cersei was what triggered the proximity alarm as it is flaring filaments of plasma from its surface. From my position here, I can see a dark corona that's facing me, and the plasma that lashed the Endeavour is being retracted into it. If only to add to the strangeness of the dwarf star's plasma being pulled back into its main body, the rate at which the filaments appear seem to increase relative to my distance to Cersei. I know, even saying out loud sounds crazy, but considering I didn't register any activity from it prior to my advance to this new distance, it's the only conclusion I can glean from this flying sardine can.

The heat shields have taken a serious beating. I don't know if I'll be able to approach so close again without risking the whole ship burning to death. I have contacted the Committee and notified them of the situation.

"Continue your observation," they said.

~~~~~

Year 5, Day 26

1841 Hours

Dr. Rowan Adelaide

NHISR Endeavour

Proximity alarm went off again, but for something else.

The ship's bow camera captured a shadow moving across the white dwarf's surface, and the calculations based on the object's size and trajectory indicated it to be a life form of some type, though without adequate shielding from Cersei's solar radiation and the blazing heat, it's likely the lifeform is already deceased.

Additionally, as soon as the Endeavour identified the figure, an open channel communication opened with the ship. It responded to no hails, and only played a looped message, which I will play right now.

"This is Captain Ray Johnson of the NHISR ship Pilgrim's Adventure. I am adrift in space, and I am dying. Yes sir, I am, dying. I sustained a gunshot wound to the lower abdomen on my right side prior to getting into this EVA rig, and even if it is patched up, I am bleeding to death and have no way to treat my injuries. If there is anyone on this channel, please come to coordinates 983.112 by 2234.116 relative to the Chuci farming colony in the Haddenoi system. Please, if anyone can hear me, respond."

The message isn't complete, like the captain simply forgot to turn off the recorder. There's a full three minutes of silence before the end, which I have removed in order to keep the file size of this audio recording manageable.

"Nobody can hear you scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. If you shout loud enough, someone will hear you cry."

He appears to go into a serious of delude ramblings for the next fifteen minutes, and after that, the message repeats.

I'm going to rest for today. After hearing Captain Johnson die over and over again, my ears just need some peace and quiet for a while.

~~~~~

Year 5, day 134

2051 Hours

Dr. Rowan Adelaide

NHISR Endeavour

I realize that my absence of any recordings for the last three months has been irresponsible of me, but I felt that I needed to make sure I understood what was going on. If it is, this may very well be my last recording.

Two days after I first received the looped recording, the audio capture equipment exploded with static. Of course, my first instinct was to assume it was an equipment failure of some kind, but something stopped me when I went to switch the equipment off.

I heard a voice.

It was faint, but beneath the cascade of noise and static, it was there. I did my best to filter out all the extra frequencies until I isolated it, but the technological limitations of the audio capture equipment for post-processing made it difficult.

Over the course of the next thirty days after that, I filtered and removed individual frequencies by hand, and with each one removed, I could hear the voice clearer. It was Johnson's voice, or a very convincing double, because it didn't sound human at all like Johnson's did in the distress call.

"If you shout loud enough, someone will hear you cry," it said. The voice had Johnson's timbre but when it spoke, it had a flattened panic to it, but I guess that makes no sense.

When Johnson spoke, his voice shook a little. You can hear him hide it but it's definitely there, and it causes his voice to rapidly fluctuate in the tones. the wavelength itself is riddled with so many peaks and valleys along its trajectory that I can practically see the anxiety. But this other voice looks like the average of that, like a sine tone that lazily drags itself across the screen.

"I am dying. I am bleeding to death. If anyone can hear me, respond."

So I responded.

"This is Dr. Rowan Adelaide of the Endeavour. Identify yourself," I said into the open comms. After two minutes, it replied.

"EVA."

"Confirm, your name is E.V.A? As in EVA? Or is it just Eva?"

"No."

"No? Eva isn't your name?"

"Yes sir."

"If EVA isn't your name, then what is?"

"I am adrift in space, and I am bleeding to death."

That's when I realized who, or more precisely, what I was talking with. Yeah, that's right.

Cersei.

I was talking to the white dwarf itself. As wholly fantastical as it may seem, it's at least more believable than it suddenly appearing out of nowhere.

By day 76, I realized that Cersei was communicating to me through Johnson, whether it be his radio or even just the distress call itself. Through simple yes/no questioning and a little bit of current events research, I've been able to put together what I think is the best .

Near the coordinates in Johnson's distress call was a once in a universe's lifetime of celestial events: a collision of two black holes. For clarification, by near, I don't mean within a couple jumps, I mean neighbouring sector near. Not only did the two singularities collide, but they orbited each other once their masses reconsolidated, and they devoured everything they could find.

Cersei was one of those things, pulled and stretched, accelerating its life until it became what it is now as the hydrogen atoms rapidly compressed into each other, and all resultant energy and excess mass produced was hungrily eaten away by two vessels of the end.

But somehow, Cersei escaped with its life, or what's left of it. What I'm able to guess is that through an explosive discharge of mass, it was able to escape the singularities' gravity well and fled until it got to here. As it fled, it left a very subtle trail of highly volatile and nuclear charged heavy metal gasses, which, as far as I can tell, breadcrumb a trail straight back to wherever it came from.

Now, the question of how it got here may have been solved, but how it did it so quickly is unknown to even Cersei. If the stellar body is even capable of thought, I am sure it's thinking of the day it will die.

~~~~~

Year 5, Day 355

0001 Hours

Dr. Rowan Adelaide

NHISR Endeavour

I am no longer in Sector G space. Rather I am now safely away from that place after a series of random jumps. My warp engine is in need of serious repairs after, wow, seventeen consecutive jumps. Heat shields are down, power is at an all time low, and I don't know how long it will be until I die from eventual life support failure, starvation, dehydration, or suffer some hull breach that thrusts me out into space.

To save what little power and life support I have left, I'll keep it brief.

The twin singularities found Cersei, and me along with it. It wasn't obvious at first, but once I could see the distortions in space some twelve light years away from where I was, I had to go. Cersei told me as much, using as many broken sounds from Johnson's distress call that it managed to say one last thing to me.

"Run."

When I didn't power on my engines for another two days, Cersei lashed the audio equipment so hard it blew out every speaker in the shuttle. Filaments of iron white plasma reached out to touch me, and knowing that any more damage to the heat shields would prove fatal, I moved further away. I could see the singularities circling each other, their gravity forcing them into a dance that ripped apart the fabric of reality as the emptiness of space was being bitten and tugged into a single point.

I watched Cersei disappear, the trails of white plasma unwinding from its surface and splitting off into the abyss, until there was nothing left, and the singularities simply danced along, off to find something else to eat.

In the time since my last recorded audio file, I've learned nothing while feeling like I understand everything.

I wonder if Johnson felt like this before he died, hoping someone would find him before it was too late, able to help him in his hour of need. I don't know if stellar bodies can think, but if they can, I bet Cersei felt the same way as Johnson. Maybe that's why it used Johnson's distress call, because it understood. Maybe, maybe I understand too.

Maybe, if you scream loud enough, someone will hear your cry.

~~~~~

To anyone out there, this is Dr. Rowan Adelaide of the NHISR Endeavour. I am adrift and am running low on power, life support, and supplies. My warp drive is damaged and I require immediate assistance. My SOS beacon is active.

Please.

Come get me.