The seething Sun

“Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space”, or so they say.

“Dammit!” Jenna exclaimed loudly, as she stared at the page in the magazine that she had been thumbing through, left no doubt by the last jittery worker to occupy the seat.

Was there no place that she could go, nothing that she could do to get away from those stupid fucking words?

And here they were again. Plastered across the page like a call to arms.

“Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space?”

What dimwit had come up with that line? And who the hell were ”they”?

Whether the magazine had been left by accident or on purpose, it didn’t matter. Jenna had been grateful for it.

The glossy colors and cheery places that were shown within had provided a desperately needed distraction from the ion storm of thoughts that had been raging in her head from the moment that she had stepped aboard the transport.

And for a moment, it had worked. She had become totally transfixed by a family of four, on a beach somewhere in the Mediterranean. The photo had brought out such a feeling of longing in her, that for just one moment, she forgot why she was there.

Unfortunately, after turning the next page, it all came crashing back to her in the form of those dumb assed words.

No-one seemed to know who it was that had been the first to utter the iconic phrase.

To date, no “they” had stepped forward to lay claim to the act. But when they had spoken, the media had latched on to them as if they would be the last prophetic words of a dying planet. “And maybe they will be”, she thought disgustedly.

Because the horrific fact of the matter was that Mother Earth was dying. And there wasn’t a damned thing that anybody could do about it.

Hell, nobody even understood what was happening. The best that the big brains could come up with was that some element or substance, an ore, a mineral, a gas, or whatever it might be, was bubbling up from within the core of the sun in massive quantities. And once it reached the surface, it had begun to burn.

The resultant energies that were being released had already caused a catastrophic increase in temperature both on the surface of the Earth and in the atmosphere. The changes were beginning to choke the life out of every ecosystem on the planet.

The consensus was five years. Five years before the surface of our home would be uninhabitable, and totally devoid of life.

There was no telling what would happen after that.

And for all of that, the media dumdums had decided on some bone headed statement to be the last advertisement on the marquee of a soon to be forgotten civilization.

For the thousandth time, she shook her head in disbelief.

The meteor barrage of articles, commentaries, opinions and lunatic rants which had come hurtling out of every media platform, both public and private as a result of that one sentence alone had become part of a collective warning and a battle cry for those who were dead sent against the governments of the world spending what few resources Earth had left in an attempt to launch a mission to find a new home for humanity.

Didn’t people realize that we had no choice? Weren’t they literally experiencing the beginning of the end all around them? It was undeniable!

And yet almost all of the people on Earth were now being actively lied to. And the campaign had all started with those B movie words.

“In space, no-one can hear you scream.” Now that was a properly worded sci fi horror sentence! Didn’t anyone remember “Alien”?

Jenna pushed aside the feeble attempt at humor. Nothing funny here.

It had been her experience during those countless rounds of simulations and drills that once gravity had been negated, oxygen levels dropped to zero and the temperature brought down to a mere 100 below, (a warm day in the vacuum!), there had been plenty of screaming to be heard. And plenty of suit soiling too!

Granted, sims weren’t quite the vacuum of space, but the point was that all of the endless hours of training that she and the others had been subjected to were designed specifically to ensure that no crew member was ever floating alone out there.

So, if screaming did commence, vacuum or no, someone would hear it.

Of course, on a practical level Jenna understood that the statement, as sloppy as it was, was clearly a reference to the harsh and unforgiving nature of space and to the cold hard fact that in that vacuum, there is no atmosphere to generate sound, no wave to carry that scream.

It was also metaphorical. Having to do with the spirit crushing loneliness of the void, the overwhelming emptiness of a place where any living contact could be lightyears out of touch.

It was a statement designed to instill fear, and it was working.

With a sigh Jenna Kincaid stuffed the magazine back into the seat pocket from which she had found it and pulled on the heavy micromesh screen that covered the darkly tinted porthole, effectively closing out the rays of a hypersun, (now there was a good word!), that were doing their best to burn through the hull of the shuttle that she was travelling in.

The words vacuum and scream revolved unceasingly in her mind like two wandering moons unable to locate the planet that they should be orbiting.

“Are we ready for this?”, she thought. “Am I truly ready for this?”

It was a seminal moment in mankind’s history. There simply was no other choice.

Ready or not, we were going.

These thoughts and more continued to occupy her as the shuttle began its approach to the docking port of the orbiting station that would give her access to the first interstellar starship that this world had ever created.

It always seemed such a paltry thing against the backdrop of space but in reality, the ship was massive. And there were others.

“Not taking in the sights?”

Jenna looked up from her musings to see Anthony Preston, the ship’s counselor, clumsily navigating his way down the aisle in her direction.

He was a big man, his physique and personality totally at odds with his profession. And although he could seem affable enough at times there were too many things that were off about him for Jenna to ever welcome his company.

As she watched him move closer, she wondered again why anyone that large of body, (he was easily 6’7” and weighed a good 290 lbs) would want to subject themselves to an environment where everything was way too small for reasonable comfort.

She also wondered, again not for the first time, how this man had become a psychologist in the first place. It just didn’t fit.

Mostly, he was all hard angles and muscle with a big booming voice that he constantly tried and failed to tone down, and a barely concealed attitude which implied that although he might be able to understand your problem, he felt no sympathy at all towards you for your failure to handle it. Weird.

“Nope” she said, not bothering to hide the mood she was in.

“Seen it all a hundred times before. It’s just too bad that most of the world will never get a chance to see the ship completed. Are you supposed to be out of your seat right now?”

Stopping just far enough away to be considered polite, he ignored her question and instead said, “An old discussion Jenna, and one during which you made very clear the side you were on. And you were the only one.”

“With all of the troubles that have set the mission timetable back, including the terror attempts by at least a dozen well-funded groups who are determined to stop it from happening, it was decided, by all of us I remind you, that as soon as construction could be moved into space, the project would be finished under the tightest of security, well away from the possibility of any further attacks or prying eyes”.

“I know all that!” she snapped, not realizing until that moment how much she truly detested this man.

“And I know there wasn’t a damned thing that I could do about it except to be in compliance or be forced off the mission! But what I never agreed to was to be a part of the big lie!”

“Our world is dying and the whole damned world knows it. And I still believe that the chaos and violence is being fueled by the fact that we, the chosen ones, haven’t offered the people anything solid to hang on to. They’re not stupid Preston!”

“The narrative that is being sold, written around that pathetic litany of words is so threadbare that even the most uneducated among them cannot believe it.”

“They know all too well that there is something else going on, that the wealthy and powerful have a plan of their own, and it clearly doesn’t include them, so they feel as if they have nothing left to lose.”

“They just want to be heard. To feel like their lives’ count too! And that maybe there is some small hope for them and their families.”

Jenna Kincaid was the Chief Medical officer on this first historic manned mission into interstellar space, ridiculously called “Project Hope”.

A heart surgeon by training she had been marked early on as a frontrunner for the CMO position due to her stellar reputation in the OR, and a social media life that she had managed to keep squeaky clean with the help of a college roommate who had luckily just happened to be a computer whiz.

Some of the things she’d done in the past were…negligible at best.

The truth was that she had always had a fascination with death, wanting to study it and challenge it.

And while a med student might reasonably be expected to conduct internet research on all things medical, some of her search interests and the groups that she had joined were a bit dark to say the least, even for someone who would eventually make a living cutting people open.

She had initially balked at the opportunity to join the team, fearful that intense scrutiny of her personal life might reveal secrets better left unearthed, offering the perspective that she was in fact a surgeon, and not a general practitioner, someone whom she thought might be a better candidate to lead a medical team.

But the selection committee, an august group of government big wigs, corporate lions, military mavens and billionaire proxies, had been quick to respond that where she was going there would be no distinction between the two.

She and her colleagues would do it all. And they wanted her to lead the effort.

Eventually, when she realized that her friend had done an excellent job of concealing her questionable activities, she started to think that maybe they were right in wanting her. Maybe she was the right person for the job.

But Project Hope? “Really?”

It was a reminder that despite her assessment of the situation, despite all of her protests that the world deserved to know what they were doing, the committee believed that their solution was the best for the future of mankind.

The name had felt like a slap in the face, or so it had seemed at the time.

Now she wasn’t so sure.

And then there was Anthony Preston and his endless rounds of psyche evals and “informal” talks which she had known instinctively from the beginning, were anything but. Being under his professional thumb had almost been enough to make her quit.

Almost.

“Now, now”, he said in a condescending voice that she knew all too well. “We’ve been over this a thousand times, and you know it. There is simply no upside to making it known to the world at large that Project Hope is still a go.

After the last bombing at the Facility, we decided that something had to be done.”

Why couldn’t this chick just get it already?

“Something had to be done?” Jenna shouted, “telling the world that it isn’t as bad as it seems? That the new plan is to shore up existing underground facilities around the world and to construct more so that eventually everyone will be able to escape the surface? It’s ludicrous!”

“And then selling the lie by creating a campaign around a single pathetic sentence?” She was seething now! The thought of the deception bringing her to the brink of violence, as it always did! Where was her scalpel?

“Fortunately for us, it’s not so much a lie as it is the putting forward of an idea that many scientists believe has merit.”

“Underground bunkers! While the planet disintegrates around them! What a joke” he said, laughing that big laugh of his.

“You hypocritical bastard!”

“Would you prefer to stay here with them Jenna?” he said, his smile becoming a slight and knowing thing. He loved to bait this woman.

“It can still be arranged.”

That statement, that threat had been used like a whip across her back, all through training, time and time again in order to keep her towing the line.

But once she had decided to become part of the team, she was determined to get through the demanding requisites, the endless evals and sleep deprived days that had begun to feel like a sequence in a very bad movie that was stuck on rewind.

At times she had seriously begun questioning her decision but, in the end, she had not let anything stop her from making it through.

Project Hope would see 10000 of the Earth’s best and brightest launched into space aboard a ship designed to carry a crew of 200 and a huge cargo of everything that would be needed in order to cross the interstellar void, find a suitable planet and begin the process of colonization.

Their target was the Eridanus system, a constellation of stars about 10.5 lightyears from Earth. Recent breakthroughs in computer science and nano-technology had allowed scientists to build and deploy telescopes of unprecedented capability and the images that had been captured coming from Eridanus had been very promising at a time when humankind desperately needed a lifeline.

Those images and the discovery of a technology which allowed for the literal “folding” of space itself, enabling ships to cover vast distances in relatively no time at all, were the biggest catalysts, (beside the whole Earth dying thing), behind the effort to conceive and implement the plan that they were calling Project hope.

The big lie of course was the idea that somehow those who were left behind would be able to survive the radiation, the gravimetric and magnetic upheavals and the incredible atmospheric pressures which would be created as the Sun continued to burn.

“As the sun continued to burn” she thought for the thousandth time.

It sounded completely, madly, insanely absurd, yet there it was.

“Go probe yourself!”, she spat back furiously. “Whether I die here or in the vacuum of space, at least I have the choice. None of them do and they deserve better!”

“We have one chance to get off of this planet, complete this almost certainly doomed mission, despite the A.I. projections, and create the possibility for Humankind to survive somewhere out there.”

“If we succeed, we send word back and then the exodus of the wealthy and those they deem worthy will begin in earnest, carried away in the remaining ships which should all be completed by then.”

“And how many people will they carry? A hundred thousand? Two hundred?"

"The remaining billions will die, and they know it, no matter what we tell them. That’s why we have the protests and the bombings!”

She knew it was pointless. He was right. They had had this discussion countless times and it always ended the same way.

Ultimately, she had decided to join the mission because the opportunity to be a part of something so incredible simply couldn’t be ignored.

She thrived on the unknown. It was the way she was made, and what had led her to pick up her very first sharpened knife all those years ago.

“Jenna,” he said. “I cleared your psyche evals despite your having exhibited just this type of behavior during the meetings. I would hate to think that you are going to be a problem once we leave the station.”

With a herculean effort Jenna brought herself under control.

There was still time for this asshole to have her removed from the program and that couldn’t be allowed to happen.

Because the fact was that she honestly did believe that she was the best person on Earth to fill the position of CMO on this mission. Someone who could make the hard choices, someone who could do what was necessary without the burden of considering the moral implications.

And she also knew that once they were underway, his authority over her would be greatly diminished.

The corporate pawn that they believed her to be had no intention of always moving in the direction that she was told. But they didn’t need to know that.

Plastering her best winning smile on her face she said, “I’m sorry Anthony.” Just using his first name made her skin crawl.

“It’s just so overwhelming sometimes, truthfully all of the time. But I will play my part and do my best, just as I know you will. You can count on me.”

Anthony Preston widened his smile, content, by outward appearance with the conciliatory nature of her reply.

“So easy”, she thought.

He gave her a curt nod and then turned to move back to his seat.

As he strapped in for the docking sequence his thoughts were unsettled, as they frequently were when it came to one Jenna Kincaid.

She was indeed going to be a problem.

Her attitude towards the decisions that had been made hadn’t changed at all through training. And her psyche evals clearly showed a propensity for antisocial behavior.

Add that to the fact that she obviously despised him, and it definitely equaled a problem.

Because he knew, had known from the very beginning when the plan had been presented to him, that in order for him to “play his part”, his real part on this unprecedented voyage, he would need the cooperation of the CMO in charge specifically, to do it.

He would manage somehow, he thought, as he tried once again to adjust the seat back in the damned uncomfortable chair that he was “sitting” in.

He felt more like he had been stuffed into a barrel.

Yes, he would manage.

His employer would demand it. But it wasn’t going to be easy.

There was something about that woman that screamed dangerous.

He would have to be very careful.

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The last shuttle of the day had finally docked at the station and the last man off stood staring at the scene in front of him.

He was a small, unassuming man, slight of build and character with a hunch to his back and wisps of thin white hair hanging desperately on the sides of his head.

He had had only the most rudimentary introduction to what it would be like here, and he was completely unprepared for what he was seeing, even though his badge held the name and face of a man who was a supposedly a seasoned station worker.

It was…amazing, and almost paralyzing in its scope.

Steel beams and glass enclosures filled an enormous atrium that was bustling with human activity.

Gurneys, gantries and elevators were in constant motion as supplies and equipment were being moved from one point to another, their final destination the huge ship, a piece of which could be seen from the large bay windows that fronted the station.

He looked out at the Earth. Still blue despite being bombarded by radiation and thought that he had never seen a sight so beautiful in his life.

Time seemed to stop as he stared at the blue and white marble that seemed to be stuck to the surface of space like a child's drawing hung on a refrigerator door.

It was the noise that brought him out of his reverie. The noise was stifling. Each sound and voice being amplified tenfold despite the dampening materials that had been built into the walls and ceilings.

It was all so chaotic, and it was mesmerizing.

A grand testament to Mans capabilities. It was almost enough to make him doubt his decision.

But no. He wouldn’t do that.

He took it all in as best he could while accessing the node that had been implanted behind his left ear.

Immediately, a map of the station was projected outward in front of his right eye where he could see the route that had been marked for him to follow.

He was ready for what he was about to do, even if it would result in his own death. A death that was soon in coming in any case.

Even the computers hadn’t been able to help him. The cancer was in every cell in his body by now.

As he studied the map, doing so more out of habit than necessity, he found himself wondering about the feeling of sadness that was slowly creeping its way into his consciousness.

He had had a good life. He had no regrets. And he was certainly no killer.

Not even a fanatic.

But he was someone who believed that the mission to find a new Earth, the one that was clearly still ongoing despite all of the media coverage to suggest otherwise, could not be allowed to continue.

He truly believed that mankind’s only chance at survival was to remain here, burrow deep into the ground and wait it out.

After all, not all of the scientists were in agreement about what was happening.

And he was one of the dissenters.

As a group they believed that the sun was simply burning off excess material, something that had happened before, and that it would soon cool down again, allowing life on the planet to continue.

All we had to do was wait.

When he first became aware of what was being discussed in furtive whispers by some of his colleagues, he quickly realized that here was an opportunity to do something truly meaningful before he died.

His career as an Astrophysicist had been unremarkable and he had nothing to show for a lifetime of searching which caused him to be blind to what he had already had.

A wife and a family who loved him but were always in the back of his mind until eventually they were not there at all.

Desperation to make his mark had led him on a decades long quest for discovery, forsaking all other aspects of his life, until the quest was all he had left.

Then, other scientists had discovered how to make the “Singularity” a real thing.

And when the machines woke up, all of his work, which had been leading him nowhere in any case, had become utterly obsolete.

That was the story of his life, but it wouldn’t be of his death.

He would do something significant before he died.

He patted the side of the workbag that he was carrying, assuring himself again that the device that he had been given was still there.

It was brand new tech. Thanks to another breakthrough that had been made possible by those damned sentient machines that had shown us the way to seeing reality in new and completely different ways.

Made of an alloy which triggered no alarm at all when subjected to the various security scanners. And when passing in front of the screens, it simply wasn’t there.

Inside the casing was a compound that was so explosive that once detonated, the entire station would be destroyed, along with all souls aboard.

He became aware of that sadness again, as he moved through security and toward the door that would lead him to his destination, contemplating the outcome of his actions.

So many were about to die. But it couldn’t be helped. The mission had to be stopped.

He passed through the door and into a long, well-lit corridor.

He was in no hurry.

He knew that even though the plan allowed for him to set the bomb with enough time to escape off the station, there would be no shuttle back to Earth today.