Donny had just come out of the nuclear engine chamber when he was given the weird news.
"We're what?" asked Donny.
"We're accelerating away from Earth," said Portia, toweling her hair. "Verna figured it out and mission control has concurred."
"But how? Why?" asked Donny.
"Don't know," said Verna. "Can't see any reason for it." She put her elbows on the navigation console and cradled her chin in her palms and grimaced. "There is no way the shuttle's explosion caused this."
"I can now estimate we're doubling our speed every 10 minutes," said Jules. "At this rate we'll reach the speed of light within the hour."
"This ship will disintegrate before that," said Ayame, scanning the inner hull for cracks.
"Disintegrate?!" blurted Lyle. Up to that moment in time he'd been enjoying a tube of yogurty stuff for lunch.
"Uh, we better stay out of this," said Mickey, gently steering Lyle away from the crowd. "Come on, let's get a job from Jules."
The two sat down and cabled up their SPECTACLs. In 4 seconds the Pheely-session was over and they got busy searching through the blue plastic crates for a floor-tile removing suction tool.
"Waste-REL," said mission control over the radio. "Have you any new information for us? We're stumped as to what is happening to you." The mission manager's usually calm voice revealed mounting layers of fear, stress, panic, exhaustion and constipation. "We're thinking you ought to try and slow the craft down by setting the magnet/graviton drive to maximum and hope you get pulled back toward the space junk."
"It'll smash us to bits," said Donny. "We can't just collide with the garbage, you know. We have to approach the junk gradually or it'll blow us up."
"Who is this?" asked Mission Control.
"This is Donny… er… Donald Summers."
They heard the mission manager quietly ask someone Donny's identity. "Oh, the Fullsenz-junkie," whispered the mission manager. "Look, could you put someone with authority on the line, please."
"As much as I hate to admit it, STC Mission Control is right," interrupted Jules. "Unless you're planning to colonize Mars, we better try and stop this thing."
"I agree," said Verna.
"Me too," said Ayame.
"What do you think, Donny?" asked Portia, mostly just to make him feel better about the insult from Mission Control.
"Okay then," said Donny speaking directly to Jules. "Lyle and Mickey are pretty good at spotting targets. Do you need help or can you do this?"
"I'll take care of it, but you better all strap in again," said Jules.
"There's no time for that," said Donny. "Fire up the magnet and scan for big metal masses."
"Yes, sir," smiled Jules. The whir and buzz of the magnet/graviton drive rose in volume and pitch. Jules began attracting a wide array of items to the ship. Each was pulled out of its orbit around the Earth and dragged behind the Waste-REL.
Having overheard what was going on during his search for a floor-sucker, Lyle had taken his place at the scanning station, reviewing the LASAR display. "It's not working," he sighed.
"We're just picking up a tail for our own artificial comet," said Verna, reviewing the same displays while smoothly sidling up behind Lyle.
"Wait, I see a couple of massive items," said Jules.
"Odds are they won't slow us down," said Verna.
"Don't tell me the odds!" insisted Jules cavalierly and then he giggled a little. Upon hearing this Lyle looked to Verna for clarification but she just shrugged.
Soon there were 236 objects ranging in size from stove bolts to luxury automobiles dragging along behind the Waste-REL, at more than 10,000 kilometers per second.
"It's not working!" repeated Lyle.
As the others gaped at the displays in horror, Mickey grasped Portia gently by the arm, held his finger to her lips, sat her down in one of the Pheely chairs and she let him insert a Pheely-cable in her SPECTACL. He then sat down beside her and cabled up himself.
"Hi," he said.
"What?" asked Portia, frantic. "What are we doing in here?"
"You really can't do anything more out there, Porsh," said Mickey. "It's up to the technical people." Mickey then turned to the sky and said "Jules, can we have a Florida beach please, normal heat and humidity for the season, lots of beach salad, please."
"Sure," said Jules' voice and the world became as Mickey had requested. 105°F with a humidex factor that felt like a billion and a smelly beach.
"What are you doing?" asked Portia.
Mickey held up his palms of calm. "Don't worry, we're at maximum accelerated time. A fraction of a second of real-time has passed. Look, just listen to me for a second."
"For a second," confirmed Portia, with firm conviction. "No more."
"I want to," started Mickey. "I think we're going to die in a few minutes and…" Mickey stopped.
Portia could pick up the personality and the confusion in his facial expression, even though it didn't exactly look like Mickey. "Go ahead, I'm listening."
"I, uh, I know that I'm just a pheely geek and not worthy of someone as…" Mickey winced at the sunlight. "It's so hot here."
"Jules, can you give us Hawaii," asked Portia. "You know, the "perfect" Hawaii?"
Jules didn't even speak, the world simply became 30 degrees cooler and the beach became pristine. It was paradise. Mickey and Portia were in bathing suits and somehow Jules had found a way to make them look like themselves. At first Mickey was very disconcerted but soon he marveled at the precision of Jules' interpretation of Portia's looks.
"You look so good," said Mickey. "I love the way you always look so good."
"You've got to be kidding," said Portia.
"No," said Mickey. "I want you to know that ever since we were kids, I've always thought that you were the only girl in the whole world but… You're a lot younger than me and I'm such a stupid pheely geek and…"
Portia placed her sandy fingers on his lips. Then she brushed them away and kissed him. Mickey wrapped his arms around her in an instant and squeezed her into himself and kissed her as if he'd never kissed anyone else in his life, which was mostly true if you excluded Pheely sessions.
"Why didn't you tell me, Mickey?" said Portia. "You don't know how much it would have meant…"
"Because you were… Because if I'd told you how I felt then… I'm older than you, it wouldn't be fair and look what you've done with your life. I mean, you're a psychologist; you work for a big company. I'd have ruined all that."
"You don't know," said Portia. "Maybe we could have worked it out together. Maybe I'd have had a more positive effect on you."
"Than your brother?" smiled Mickey.
"Well, I don't know," laughed Portia. "Maybe. I don't know which of you is the worse influence."
"It's me, of course," He smiled. "But now that doesn't matter, because, we're going to die -- but in here, in accelerated time, even if we've only got 5 minutes together out there, we've got all day to be together in here. Only one day, but, I'd die twice just to be with you for one day."
"Oh, Mickey," Portia whispered and held him.
"I love you," said Mickey, nuzzling into her neck and kissing her ear. "I've always loved you."
"I've always loved you too," cried Portia. "Why couldn't we…"
"We've got now, right now. Let's go for a walk on the beach and hold hands and then we'll make love in the surf while there's still time for us…"
"But I can't," said Portia. "As much as I want to. I have responsibilities out there and so do you. We can't hide in here, Mickey."
"There's nothing you and I can do to help," said Mickey.
"But if there's a chance," insisted Portia. "It could be something we can't predict -- I want to be there. I want to do what I can, but listen, it's not over just because we die. Maybe, maybe in the afterlife we can be together like this. You don't know; nobody knows." She stood up and, holding his hand, pulled Mickey upwards and then wrapped her arms around his waist. "But knowing you love me. That means everything to me, Mickey. No matter what happens, I'd rather have lived with your love for 5 minutes than lived forever without you."
Mickey felt her cheek press into his own and he hugged her gently. He kissed her neck with every word. "Okay… captain… What… are… your… orders?"
"Jules," said Portia holding Mickey's hand. "How much time has passed in real time since we started this session?"
"About 4 seconds," said Jules. "And by the way, you make a cute couple."
"What are our options at this point?"
"None, I'm afraid," lamented Jules. "I can't even begin to guess why we're going in the direction we're going in, very well why we're accelerating towards it. It's like there's a black hole opened up somewhere between here and Mars and the only thing it's attracting is us."
"So would you postulate that what's happening to us is a natural or unnatural phenomenon?" asked Portia, impressing Mickey no end.
"Oh, there isn't anything natural about what's happening to us right now," said Jules.
"So the outcome is completely unpredictable then, isn't it?"
"Yes," agreed Jules, a bit surprised, which is a rare experience for a sapient in a metaquantum computer. "You're right."
"So we shouldn't panic," said Portia and turned to Mickey. "Come on, let's see if we can help."
Mickey smiled. He was just happy to have told her. His mind was blown knowing that she loved him back. They weren't even going to get to make love, but then, he thought, maybe that was right.
Portia kissed him and then said: "End session."
Travelling at the speed of light may or may not be impossible -- no one who could do it cares. There are better ways of getting around without losing all your friends and family in a time discrepancy.
It should be understood at this point that there are more dimensions than just space/time. There are a lot more and we don't know how many so don't ask.
An important feature of many of the dimensions that humans don't directly experience through their 5 senses is that, unlike three-dimensional space, existence in these dimensions would be erroneously described as "everything in the universe taking up approximately the same exact spot". For instance, there is only one creature that is native to the Sixth Dimension. It can not be described in space/time terms, but imagine a snake eating its tail, now forget about that and think about a bunny.
Beings that can convert or transform themselves from the more spread-out dimensions into one or more of these "same spot for everything" dimensions can benefit from low travel insurance rates. This is because the transportation of a space/time/matter person through these dimensions has two benefits -- you can go across your galaxy instantly and you'll come out feeling better than you've ever felt in your entire life.
In many advanced galaxies, conversion/transformation services are not readily available just anywhere, but can be set up ahead of time if one has sufficient forewarning.
Although humans have always postulated the existence of wormholes, among the advanced species in other galaxies the name for these phenomena is best translated as "fuzzy-navels". There are many reasons for this, but the most likely one is that going through a fuzzynavel gives you a warm, cozy, connected-to-the-universe kind of feeling. Of course this also means that intergalactic war is impossible, because every time an aggressive and ferocious warlike species pushes their battle-ready armies through a fuzzy navel, they came out very mellow and well adjusted and not at all up for a good fight and, so, get slaughtered.
There was a Conversion/Transformer fuzzynavel directly in the path of the Waste-REL. The Waste-REL had no way of detecting the fuzzynavel because, in space, a fuzzynavel looks like a big chunk of nothing, which is what space looks like too. The only difference is, the fuzzynavel sends you through to another space and time by converting you through the sixth, seventh, eleventh dimensions and part of the fourteenth (AKA thirteenth) dimension.Moving through the conversion/transformation fuzzynavel has the same effect on every sentient being who crosses the thresh-hold from space/time into spottiness and back again -- it's the most therapeutic experience a person could possibly enjoy.
Next: The Fuzzy Navel
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