Episode 4: A User’s Guide to the Universe
Farewell to home was as quiet as deep space.
It was crowded inside the Dumpling. All the Apostles were there: myself, Alex, Ares, Anya Volkova, Kenji, Kai—the old guard and the new. Even Mark, our newly minted god of comfort, had flown in to say goodbye. He was the one currently entertaining Grover, chasing a laser dot across the rug. Our upgraded chassis—flawless masterpieces of engineering—stood along the walls like silent sentinels, awaiting their long preservation.
"So, you’re serious then?" Mark finally looked up from the game. "Flying that far just to look at another star? Sounds like the longest vacation in history."
"It’s not a vacation, Mark. It’s a ballistic calculation precise to the nanosecond," Alex replied calmly. "Our route is a straight line to Epsilon Eridani. No deviations. And no, there is no margin for error."
Silence fell over the room, broken only by the crackle of the fireplace. Alex’s words brought everyone back to the gravity of the moment.
Ares, who had been standing motionless by the viewport, turned around. "We are leaving the world in your hands," he said, looking at Mark. "Don’t break it."
"You wound me," Mark smiled. "I’m going to polish it, wrap it in velvet, and put it on a shelf. It’ll be like new. When you get back, you won't even recognize the place."
Time was running out. We stood up. Kenji Tanaka walked over to the fireplace and rested his metallic hand on it, as if saying goodbye to an old friend.
Alex stepped toward me. Grover, sensing the shift, sat down between us.
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We "smiled" at each other.
"Hey, you two," Mark interrupted our private channel. He had turned serious. "One last question—the most important one. What are you going to feed Grover out there?"
I looked at Alex. He looked at me.
"He has a universal matter converter," Alex finally answered with a perfectly straight face. "He can live on asteroid dust. Or the existential doubts of the crew. I imagine we’ll have plenty of both during the trip."
Mark burst out laughing.
It was the perfect moment to leave. We stepped into the airlock. The Harbinger — a top-tier shuttle — was waiting for us. Its engines ran on antimatter annihilation, the most expensive and fastest way to travel within the system. We were being sent off with royal honors.
The ship detached from the Dumpling, and the cabin walls turned transparent, becoming full-view displays. The ascent began. At first, we saw only the raging orange haze of our home. It streaked past us, laced with giant, silent bolts of lightning — static discharges hundreds of miles long. Then the fog abruptly thinned, and we burst into the upper layers of the atmosphere. Below us, as far as the eye could see, stretched an infinite, shimmering ocean of clouds.
And then, as we gained altitude, they roared into view. The Rings. Not the thin line seen from Earth, but a gargantuan, dazzling arch spanning the entire sky. We could see their structure: thousands of icy ribbons separated by dark gaps, casting a sharp, titanic shadow across the planet's disk. We rose through that shadow, and for a moment, the world around us turned monochrome.
Our path led to the orbital spaceport near Iapetus. The Harbinger slowly drifted into its starting position on one of the local Light Highway lines heading toward the inner system. While we waited for our window, we watched the life of this massive transport hub. A vast cargo ship was slowly approaching a neighboring terminal, its holds filled with rare metals mined from the Asteroid Belt. A short distance away, a sleek luxury liner bound for the orbital resorts of Jupiter was taking on passengers. We saw them — a few NDM-humans who had chosen eternal life for the sake of contemplating beauty rather than great deeds. They simply stood at the panoramic windows of the departure lounge, gazing at the rings, preparing for their vacation.
Our window opened. There was no countdown. Just a flash behind us.
The ship lurched forward with staggering force. An acceleration of twenty gees pressed our heavy chassis into the cradles. It wasn't a soft start; it was a shove of pure light, caught by the resonator of the local Light Highway. The wall-screens showed Saturn and its glowing rings shrinking at a terrifying rate, transforming from an all-encompassing panorama into a bright disk, and then—into just another point of light on the velvet of the cosmos.
We were on our way.