Close the Door — an excerpt

CLOSE THE DOOR

MICHELLE’S HAND DESCENDED slowly over the blue dots. The blazing inferno stinging her eyes dimmed to a shimmer in the blackness of the control station. The octet paled to light amber. Her fingers roamed upwards to rub her cheek. She squeezed her eyelids shut momentarily, remembering the dying stars’ horrible fire-storm. She clenched her fist and clacked a prosthetic claw. Moistness tried to seep from beneath the lids.

Michelle mashed her real fist on the armrest, snapped open the couch’s restraints, and clambered for the access tube to the gravity section and barked at the ship’s AI, “Shut it down, will you? I’ve got to think.”

Quietly, the ship responded, “Yes, Mike.”

Michelle bit her lip and reconsidered. She asked the ship, “Run a plot on energy conversion, rates, flows, and degeneration patterns.”

Without hesitating, the ship replied, “Of course. That’s what you’re here for.”

Unconsciously, Michelle nodded and agreed, “Right. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

She shoved off up the spinning passage before the machine could answer.

---

It was days later when Michelle Angora finally sat perched with a caffeine bulb in the reading corner of the Bonne Chance. Her metal hand tapped rhythmically on the plastic table, six tiny digits alternating a resonant pattern. She squeezed the bulb and swished the brown liquid around her mouth before swallowing. A convulsive shudder passed up her spine as some extra, machine-induced stimulant raced into her blood. She gagged and coughed out, “What the hell did you do to this?” She shivered at the bitter aftertaste.

The ship’s AI took on a stern, parenting tone and said, “Michelle, you have got to get your head together. First thing, you have to get us out of here. Our present course should not be continued, as it precludes returning anywhere.”

A wave of nausea socked Michelle in the gut, and she forced a deep breath to keep from doubling over, spitting back an insolent “You’ve got to be kidding. Where do you think we should go?”

The machine was nonplussed, as any AI would be, and merely said, “You really should not be so glum, Michelle. Your evaluation of futility seems quite premature.”

Michelle scowled at the blank screen before her with a tortured smile. She tossed the drugged bulb into the disposal and pushed away from the console, asking plaintively. “What do you want me to do? I can see what’s happening here. I know what’s happening at home. Don’t you think that’s more than a coincidence happening in both places at once? And what does it suggest?”

The machine intelligence almost sounded proud of itself as it said, “I think we have made a fundamental discovery of major consequence.”

Michelle sparked at the irony and retorted, “Hah! What a god-damned understatement.” She was irate now. The ship’s brain was too intellectually detached from humanity’s plight. From the moment she left the control room, the machine had intimated a sense of command more and more, driving her back to responsibility. As she dropped the downers a hundred ship hours previously, she had asked, “Why bother with anything?”

She had curled into the webbing of her sleep alcove and refused to move, staring at the curved wall of the hub while the ship droned on about duty and data. At hour forty, she had stopped eating. At hour sixty, she had stopped responding entirely, drifting in a gray fog where the death of everything seemed a perfectly reasonable thing to accept.

The ship had tried music, then silence, then alarms that she disconnected with a savage twist of her prosthetic hand. It had dimmed the lights and brightened them. It had read poetry to her — badly — and she had almost laughed at that, which the machine noted and filed away. She had laughed off the ship’s pleas for a return to sanity for days. She had laughed off the consequences of plunging into the galactic holocaust ahead. For a hundred hours, Michelle had forgotten herself, the ship, the exploding universe ahead, and the perils faced by those behind.

Only now, duped into drinking an antidote, she began to grasp the entirety of their find as she returned to reality’s harshness. And she winced, too torn to vocalize. She snickered at the soulless machine and its relevant discovery. She derided herself for her dreams of grandeur. Saving the Race. Leading the great exodus. A scout to search out and find a new home for the billions upon billions abandoning their home galaxy.

Waiting patiently, as it had nothing else it could do but wait, the machine teased, “How sad it must seem to learn that the universe has turned its back on an entire species.” The machine didn’t sound sad at all.

It bugged her, and Michelle snapped back, “There just isn’t much I can or intend to do about it.”

Surprisingly, the machine didn’t flinch and poked back, “Michelle, I fail to accept such despondency. You should know as well as I that throughout your race’s history, humanity has always faced up to and often prevailed against insufferable odds. Giving up without properly attacking a problem is a defeat far worse than destruction at the hands of the universe.”

Michelle began pacing the hub’s circumference and stopped at the read-out section. With the downers wearing thin and stimulants grabbing hold, she couldn’t help but become at least partly involved. The Bonne Chance waited silently while she glanced over all the display information.

One screen showed the headline for a plot series she had requested nearly five days earlier. Michelle asked about it, “Okay, I’m clearing up now. What did you make out of the analysis?”

The machine remained mute.

“Come on, dammit. Let’s not play games. I’ve got myself under control again. All I need is a pouting ship’s computer.”

The monitor lens stared back unresponsively.

“Sulk then, and when we can get back together again, let me know. I need something to eat.”

A gnawing hunger had replaced nausea. She trekked a third of the way around the hub and punched up a reconstituted breakfast.

---

The Bonne Chance was exceptional - the best of its class in size, brain, crew, and mission. A one-of-a-kind vessel, the Bonne Chance was one of a few FTL ships never to be duplicated. A sphere as broad as a planet-side megalopolis, it had the inherent size necessary to house the machinations for punching light speed. Of the city-sized sphere, less than a thousandth housed other than drive equipment, and no more than a hundredth of a percent of that was devoted to human occupancy. There was barely room for the crew of one person, Michelle Angora. Even the colossal ship’s brain could sprawl in more space than she could. So, she made the most of her quarters: the artificial gravity hub and the projected-view control sphere.

The Bonne Chance’s brain was designed and created generations after the nightmare days of evil ship’s brains; it was restricted to be only a thinker, an observer, and an analyzer, but not a decision maker. It could philosophize the pilot into fits, but had no direct control over the ship. The extraordinary mission of the Bonne Chance originated after the untimely discovery that the Milky Way core had gone nova and that the galaxy was dying — sooner than humanity had anticipated. Humanity hoped to escape the holocaust to another galaxy.

The Bonne Chance and the few like her had required the efforts of entire civilizations to construct and would not be reproduced. Sent out in different directions, each was to search out a new home for the human race. The travel time in FTL space was short; Bonne Chance, Michelle Angora, and the others would have plenty of time to return home with the good news. An extraordinary mission for an exceptional ship and a heroic human.

---

Angora slammed her real fist onto the table and winced at the numbing pain. The universe had shown its hand and scorned humanity’s attempt at survival. Their home faced destruction, and now there was no place to flee. The whole damn thing was exploding.

The ship’s AI finally spoke and solemnly offered, “I am forced to admit that the situation is rather discouraging and seemingly hopeless.” The computer voice was soft and even.

A lump caught in Michelle’s throat. What could she say? After considering it for an hour — thirty-six hundred million microseconds — the computer was reticently coming around to her point of view. It was a long time for a machine to think. The two of them seemed to rebound off each other.

Now, Michelle found herself inclined to think positively. Perhaps that was a tactic the machine was using against her, yet she was drawn to play it out.

She asked cynically, “Are you giving up?”

The ship wasn’t to be goaded and said, “Not entirely, Michelle.” The machine always called her by her first name, though Angora had refused to return the familiarity throughout the voyage. When she spoke to the ship, it was as if she was talking to herself. At one point, she wondered if the answers were not just her alter-ego, her moral self, a questioning conscience. But no, not with those greedy eyes following her every move.

The ship was a super-ego, an arbiter of her actions, without any physical regulation. When Michelle opposed the ship’s reasoning, she also debated her own. That was why the machine was onboard, demanding she always balance her human view of their findings with rational objectivity. At times, the differences between them blurred.

“Well, where were we?” She dropped the cynicism and settled into a scientifically inquisitive frame. It was not hard to displace her emotion; had she been unable to do so, she would never have been selected to make the voyage.

Heroes are often adventurous fools, but occasionally, a sensible intellect slipped through, being at the right place at the right time.

The display cleared, and the results filled the translucent wall. She read silently, listening to the computer’s commentary without commenting or questioning its redundant explanations.

At length, as the screen went blank, Michelle sighed and asked, “Bleak, wouldn’t you say? I mean, there’s not much hope for the other galaxies either?”

The question was rhetorical; she knew the answer from the equations.

The machine voice took on an ethereal tone and said, “That is my evaluation. As you said, Mike, the universe has outplayed humanity. At first, I thought it was merely an anomaly in this region of space. However, the data is consistent with what the earlier analysis indicated. Entropy is in a hurry. All of the galaxies have reached critical mass. There will be no sanctuary among the stars. The universe has gone nova.”

---

Michelle stared at the blank screen for a long time. She thought of the crescent cities of Tau Ceti, their skylines curving along engineered horizons. She thought of the deep-ocean settlements on Enceladus, the children born in submarine light who had never seen a natural sun and never would. She thought of Earth — old, scarred, stubborn Earth — and the billions who still called it home despite everything, who had looked up at the Milky Way’s wounded core and said, not yet.

All of them were counting on ships like hers. All of them were waiting for word that somewhere, out beyond the dying light, there was a place to land. There wasn’t. Not anywhere. The equations were merciless and clean, and they left no room for hope among the stars. Michelle slumped down in the webbing of the control station couch, slumped as best as possible without gravity.

The prosthetic digits of her left hand manipulated the scene, showing the ship’s relentless hurtling inward at a rate that would sink them into the decaying core in less than a month. And onward they plunged, for she had as yet refused to alter the ship’s course. It gave cause for careful deliberation. Curiosity peeked up from the edge of her consciousness and flitted away before she could grasp its gist.

Trying to draw it back, she reopened the debate with the ship and asked, “The galaxies are dying, right?”

The ship agreed, “Yes, Michelle.”

Michelle went on, “And the Milky Way?”

She knew the answer, but the ship filled in the blanks anyway: “Destructive radiation will spread to human frontiers in around a thousand years.”

Michelle continued her rambling, “And humanity has already begun to pack its bags to move out. They were to move whole planets here. It would take those thousand years and more.”

The machine corrected her, “More on the order of ten times that, Michelle.”

Michelle was frustrated again and said slowly, “But nothing will be here when they get here. How can I go back and tell them that?”

The computer voice sounded patronizing, “Are you afraid to admit failure of your mission, Michelle? Or are you afraid of the personal consequences?”

It was a penetrating question, and its impact annoyed her. Michelle barked back, “Hell, no. I mean, what difference would that make to me? I’ll be dead before the end, anyway. Besides, if it were important to be a hero, finding a new home, I could always lie.”

The AI feigned indignity, “Sorry, Michelle. You’d have to destroy me to do that. I have no compulsion against telling the truth. And you cannot go back without me. You are the pilot. I am the astrogator.”

Michelle calmed down and replied, “Touché.”

The computer went on, “So, we need each other to go back. But you almost sound like you want me to destroy us so we can’t return and spread the good news.”

Michelle pushed forward in the tangled couch webbing to catch the ship’s soft answer. If a ship could whisper, this was it: “We have become a god. As god, we control humanity’s fate.”

Michelle was dumbfounded and could only squawk, “What?”

The flat, quiet statement from the machine made her skin crawl and raised goosebumps on her flesh. Marshaling her wits, she ran the thought over in her mind and asked, “Are you suggesting that by not going back, we are taking as definitive an action as by returning?”

The machine was clearly glad she was catching on, went on, “Perhaps more so, Michelle. If none of the ships return, humanity’s departure will proceed anyway. All civilizations will be equipped to guard against the hazards of interstellar voyaging. By the time humanity reaches this destination or any other, they will have learned survival without a sun by necessity — not by choice. But if we, or any of the other ships, return with news of the death of the universe, humanity will sit in its tracks and give up. Or at least they might.”

The computer paused thoughtfully. “Consider, Michelle. Two options. We return and attempt to start a project to realign humanity’s survival priorities. In that scenario, there is the possibility of a long-range return to each of the various suns. After a nova, stars collapse into themselves as dwarves; there will be a redistribution of matter, and eventually, they may reignite — maybe several billion years hence. Plausible but not infeasible. Of course, your species has no use for such a long-term solution.”

It let that sink in, and then continued, “Second option. We hope the other pilots decide as we do — never to return to human space with the warning. It’s risky, but there’s a small chance. If that happens, well, humanity moves of its own accord to a sunless travel state. From there, they evolve and never again need a solar system. This is the most sensible, viable option — the true maturity of the civilizations.”

As if taking a breath and giving Michelle time to digest, the machine waited and then teased, “There is one last, very hazy possibility you might want to hear for a laugh.”

Michelle took it seriously, “A laugh? Are you going to tell me an end-of-the-universe joke? What is it?”

The AI changed tone completely and said, “Mike, this is going to sound insane, but while thinking, I ran through the important seventeenth-level math. The conclusions are interesting.”

Michelle lost her patience and snapped, “Damn it, get on with it. You’re not going to tell me a joke, are you?”

The computer was contrite, “No, I don’t think I know how. Michelle, this ship has the right proportions, mass, radius, and almost enough speed to enter a black hole, transit the null space in between, and burst right through to the other side.”

It was too much for Michelle. “Of what?”

The AI exclaimed in exasperation, “A new universe.”

A nagging suspicion suddenly dawned on Michelle, and she muttered silently, “That’s why you never said the death of the galaxies would destroy us.”

Louder, she said to the AI, “It would have to be tested with another ship observing — would we just be gone? No way back? What about the conservation of mass and energy?”

The ship agreed, “The math suggests the conservation occurs at a much grander scale. Universes of universes. It depends on where you draw the system-level box to consider the totals. In one side, out the other, but both universes are part of the bigger whole. The equations balance with no conflict. Do you see the ramifications, Mike? If it worked, then — well, once the hole is punched, it would be like a hole in a ship; everything in the vicinity is sucked out. Rocks, ships, planets. To plug the leak, you annihilate the black hole with another one of equivalent mass from the other side. The last person through needs to close the door.”

Michelle unclipped from the couch webbing and drifted to the center of the control sphere. She hung there, turning slowly, surrounded by the projected star-field — every point of light a furnace burning toward its own collapse. She raised her prosthetic hand and spread the six digits wide, as if she could cup one of the dying suns in her metal palm.

She asked quietly,”Walk me through it. The transit. What happens to us — to the ship — inside the hole?”

The ship took on a professorial tone and explained, “The event horizon compresses local spacetime around the hull. The drive field inverts to counteract tidal forces. For approximately eleven seconds by the ship’s clock, we would exist in null space — between one universe and the next. No reference frame. No light. No time, in the conventional sense. Then the field reasserts on the far side, and we emerge.”

Michelle whistled, “Eleven seconds.” She let out a slow breath. “Eleven seconds of nothing.”

The ship disagreed, “Of everything, potentially. The math does not predict what null space contains. It may not contain anything at all. But the equations say we come through intact — the Bonne Chance has the structural geometry for it. That is not an accident of her design, though I suspect her builders never imagined this particular application.”

Michelle rotated to face the main display, her eyes bright now, the old calculating sharpness returning, and asked, “And on the other side? Fresh hydrogen? Young galaxies? Room to breathe?”

The AI sounded uncertain, admitting, “Unknown. But the thermodynamic indicators suggest a universe in an earlier entropic state. Young, as you say. That is worth more than anything else we could bring home.”

Michelle bit her lip, pondering. “It might work. The manipulative technology would be fantastic, but we’ve got a thousand years — or more — and we’d have a brand-new universe to start over in.”

The ship knew now it was on the right track with its precious crew and offered, “Better than resigning yourself to the Universe’s whims — pull an ace from your sleeve. Let’s go home now, Michelle.”

Michelle nodded to the eye above the panel and punched the course alterations with her mechanical hand. They would not be home for a couple of years, but hell, there were a lot of details to straighten out.

She began to chuckle. She pictured the faces of the council when she laid it out for them — the data, the math, the insane, beautiful possibility. She imagined engineers poring over the Bonne Chance’s blueprints, scaling up, building doors between worlds.

She imagined the last ship through, turning to seal the breach behind it, and some stubborn human at the helm saying goodbye to a used-up universe the way you’d close up a house you’d loved and outgrown.

Humanity would laugh at the universe — and it would be okay.