“Wow, lucky you! You got a whole window cabin and everything.”
Vertan looks around Hilgo’s cabin. Although just a little more expensive, it was significantly bigger than Vertan’s, having been booked at the last second. Outside the window, the two were able to make out Ulminh, a round, blue ball, growing ever smaller into the distance. They can just make out Dulski Extragalactal Spaceport in orbit above, though their continent is now hidden on the other side facing the sun. Instead, they are treated to a view of the many city lights lit in the night from the other side of their world.
Looking upwards to the other end, the two are able to look up towards the gateway. Back on Ulminh, the gateway had only appeared to be a small ring in the sky, even overshadowed by the other moons, but up close, they now clearly see how truly gargantuan the megastructure really is. It seemed that it could engulf a small country within its diameter.
Other asterships continued to appear to either materialize out of nothing, or disappear and fold into the void as they arrived or departed through the gateway. Vertan and Hilgo continued to marvel at their surroundings as the astership Olgar continued making its way up to the gateway, too immersed by the experience to heed any attention to the briefing announced over the speakers. Finally, the Olgar reaches the gateway, and passes through its colossal structure.
At first, nothing seems to happen. But then, to their observation, their homeworld began to fade into a deep red darkness, eventually diving into pitch blackness altogether. In front of the ship, clusters of stars began warping and converging towards a single point, becoming ever brighter and more vibrant. Reality appeared to morph and compress, and planets and stars that began to pass by in quick fashion appeared stretched and distorted. Their conventional senses of the laws of time and space broken, Hilgo closes the window, dizzy from the disorienting experience.
“Hoo!” exclaims Hilgo. “Maybe not so much, I think I need to lie down after that.”
Vertan sat down on a chair by Hilgo’s bedside, checking the last messages his mother had sent through StarComms before leaving. They wouldn’t be able to send anything through now; without specialized equipment, ordinary communication during superliminal travel across spacetime is still largely inaccessible. They’d have to wait until they land, after they go through the gateway on the other end and reenter realspace. Although the speed of light now appears to be a snail’s crawl compared to them, their flight time would still take over ten hours to cover the 50 million light-year distance to their destination.
Message me as soon as you get there! - Mother
“Hm?” Vertan looks up. “What did you say, Hilgo?”
Hilgo appears to be missing from the room.
“Hilgo?”
Coming out of the bathroom, Hilgo finishes wiping his face on a towel, and lets out a deep exhale.
“Oh, sorry, yeah,” Hilgo replies. “I just threw up a little bit.”
“Really?” says Vertan. “Are you good?”
“Haha, I am now.”
“Was it that bad?”
“It wasn’t for you?”
“I mean, I found it disorienting, but it was pretty cool!”
“Well yeah, it is cool, but I swear that threw everything in my brain off!”
“Oh come on, we’re fishermen, we’re used to the motions of the ocean by now, aren’t we?”
“Well yeah, but this is different here!”
“I think you’ve just gotten soft ever since we’ve invested in Boaty, we don’t have to float on the water anymore.”
“Hey! We don’t watch reality fold in front of our eyes when we go fishing, that’s gonna take at least some adjustment.”
“Haha, I’m just teasing ya Hilgo! How you feeling now? You feeling better? I’m about to grab some food myself, I’m getting hungry.”
“Feeling better, and count me in! I haven’t eaten since the early morning.”
“Do you know where food would be?”
“I was about to ask you.”
“How would I know?”
“I don’t know, you haven’t checked when I was throwing up?”
“No, I was checking my mother’s messages. Where’s your room’s holoscreen anyway?”
“Nah, you got that, you’re better than me with that type of stuff.”
“No, you look it up.”
“No, you look it up.”
Vertan rolls his eyes, gets up from the chair, and searches the room for the holoscreen. It seemed that out of aesthetic purposes and convenience, its controls have been tucked neatly behind a rolling cabinet door, and with a flick of a switch, the holoscreen blips on, no static or flicker like how they were used to.
“Woah, it comes in color, too!” Hilgo exclaims giddily with amazement. “And the resolution’s so good on this one.”
“I’ll say!” Vertan replies. “Now how would I find things on here?”
“Oh, try tapping on that map icon over there!”
“The what icon?”
“The map icon.”
“Where is that?”
“It’s up there, by the settings.”
“Where is—oh, I see it. Ah—damn I pressed the one next to it.”
“Yeah, go back.”
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“Yeah, lemme just—damn it! I mistapped it again. What the hell?”
“Vertan, come on, give it here, it’s right—oh what the hell, is this thing off?”
“Try tapping it a bit more to the left, maybe you’ll catch it.”
“Yeah, lemme try that—hey it worked!”
“Hey! Nice.”
“Nice, alright, let’s zoom out a bit.”
“Wow, that’s big.”
“You think we’ll get lost on here?”
“Nothing we can’t figure out, right?”
“Ooh, I found it! Food court is down on Level G over here.”
“No way! They have Guryani steak?!”
“No way, they do?!”
“You know what I’m getting!”
“You can afford that?”
“I can afford it once!”
*****
Following a full meal, the duo had explored the ship’s various amenities before making it back to their cabins. It had been a long day so far for them, and growing sleepy from a full stomach, the two looked forward to some rest before they arrived.
Vertan lay in his cabin bed, scrolling through the holoscreen which he had set to project across the room closer to him. Hilgo might be watching one of the many shows and films provided in the entertainment section, but Vertan was more interested in learning about their flight and travel details. There was to be a layover stop in Galaxy Hedra, before a final hour-long flight to Headworld Suprima, Alpharion. Right in the heart of the Great Triangle.
Vertan had read extensively about the Coalition, as well as the Great Triangle, and often dreamt about traveling there, a dream that was now coming true. The most advanced and developed domains of the Myriad Worlds all come together in one of the greatest, densest economic and cultural hubs. The Ulminh system, he thought, could never come close to competing precisely because they sought unambitious terms of their own, untied to collaboration and cooperation with others. Gahn seems to favor this view though; no wonder why he’s of rank there.
Message me as soon as you get there! - Mother
Vertan once again feels a slight twinge of guilt for being somewhat irritated by this. His mind is at peace now, with his nagging mother out of the picture. But what kind of mother-son relationship is that in which he feels rest and peace of mind without her there?
Looking at the message open on his StarComms, he flicks it off, the holoscreen disappearing into the small device.
“At least you have a mother and got to know your father before he left,” Hilgo had said. “I always wondered what that would be like.”
Vertan’s mind flew back to how everything went the past few weeks before their flight. Sure, Mother Zviedal was annoying, she’s always annoying and nagging. But could his reactions have been less harsh?
It was now that Vertan’s head could have the time and space to sit with it that he remembered how meals would sit ready for him downstairs at just the right times. Or how despite never asking for the favor, his clothes would sit folded neatly on his bed whenever he came home from a long day of work. Was it really nagging, or rational fear of letting her only son go?
.He wonders if he might have had too much pride to admit any wrong, or that Hilgo was right over him in this instance. Strength, Hilgo had argued, is about the capability of doing what’s hard, and it seems like it was typically too easy for him and his mother to stay angry at each other as opposed to working towards any genuine apology. Their egos wouldn’t allow it.
His eyes drooping, Vertan began dozing off into sleep, his conscious thoughts mixing into dreams that slowly took over his mind.
*****
“Wow, I can’t believe we’re almost there already,” says Hilgo.
“Crazy, right?” replies Vertan.
The two began making their way back to the astership Olgar as they finished their layover stop in Galaxy Hedra. Above what appears to be a remote moon and planet, it would’ve taken too much time to go down to the surface and tour, and so most of their stay has been spent walking around and exploring the food and shopping centers at the extragalactal spaceport there.
“Our galaxy is so far back already,” Hilgo continues. “I wonder what must be going on over Ulminh right now.”
“My mother’s probably getting ready for bed,” says Vertan. “Amazing how they time it. In the old days, this kind of travel would have put us off by decades or even centuries. Imagine coming home to a different place.”
“I can’t imagine. All our friends would be long dead!”
“Right? Traveling near the speed of light let alone beyond it would slow time for us as everything else goes by. Time dilation makes it feel short for us while lifetimes go by for everyone else. These days, they counter and even surpass that by—”
“Where did you even learn about all this, anyway?”
“Well, I read about it.”
“Nerd.”
“Okay buddy.”
“Save that for later, man, I’m trying to enjoy the view before we leave again.”
“It’s interesting to me! Are you going to finish that?”
“Hm? Oh, the kebab? No, you can have it here.”
“Mmm, thanks.”
“What a pretty sight it is to get to see another world outside our own, huh?”
“It sure is, but who lives here though?”
“Huh?”
“Like I kind of get the feel that this place only exists for travelers like us.”
“Things don’t need people around them to make it beautiful, you know.”
“I know, I know, I’m just commenting.”
“I’d argue it retains the natural beauty of it all better that way, having less things to clutter it all up.”
“I like my planets habitable.”
“Hey, where’s my ticket?!”
“What?”
“My ticket! I can’t find it.”
“You can’t scan to get back in if you don’t have it, Hilgo.”
“I know! You don’t have to tell me.”
“Did you take it out at all earlier?”
“No, I swear I didn’t! You paid for the kebabs earlier, remember? I haven’t gotten anything out of my pockets.”
“Do you remember if you dropped anything?”
“How am I going to remember that?
“Okay, uh, I don’t know, try to remember our walk through the spaceport, is there any part of it you remember?”
“No I don’t! You’d think these days you can just get by with facial recognition.”
“People have scammed those before, you know?”
“Ok that’s enough, stop, the ship is leaving in a few minutes and—oh, there it is.”
“By the cosmos—you’re kidding me, it was in your coat pocket the whole time?”
“I had trouble finding it.”
“Pft, alright man, come on, let’s go.”
“Alright, alright, alright.”
Boarding the astership, they once again leave through the gateway, this time less disoriented looking out the window as their layover stop disappeared behind them.
An hour passes before the astership slows, the stars brightening from the red darkness behind them, and all of the stars in front dimming and scattering from their concentrated cluster in front. Reality rearranged itself to become coherent again.
Passing through the gateway, in the distance, they could make out a planet densely packed with cities stretching beyond its atmosphere, constructed megastructures and satellites orbiting it and each of its moons. Multiple other gateways in orbit can be seen with a plethora of ships beginning or ending their journeys. Beyond it, a proportionally large structure surrounds its binary stars, providing power and resources to its surrounding worlds. Space is vast and empty, but here, it is crowded and teeming.
Over the overhead speakers, the captain announces, “Welcome to Headworld Suprima, Alpharion.”
