— Edge of the Solar System

  Aric woke up mid air, drifting toward the viewport. He slowly twitched his fingers, extended them, then made a tight fist, moving his ankles until they felt right. Until he felt alive.

  He turned to the rest of the crew, they were waking up too, one by one. Outside the viewport was nothing but darkness and distant starlights stretched ahead. When he looked at the rear screen, the sun behind them had become nothing more than a dim star.

  “We are alive,” Kael exclaimed, the volume climbing with each word. “We are alive!”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Clarke muttered, rubbing his eyes as he lifted his head from the console. He and Soren were the only ones still strapped into their chairs, safety belts snug, watching the rest of the crew float like misplaced ducks. “Or we’re dead and just too stupid to realize it.”

  “Your biological signatures are within normal parameters,” Anomie replied immediately, his voice spilling out like a medical report. “Death can be reasonably ruled out.”

  “I think it’s just nausea,” Mira said, pressing a hand to her temple. “Like sitting in a car for the first time. Except this time, the car had gone somewhere it wasn’t meant to.”

  Aric nodded faintly. That tracked.

  “I did once think,” Kael continued, still half-smiling, like a patient waking from an anesthesia, “that the universe might be shaped like Earth, a globe. You can’t run forward and reach space because gravity curves you down without realizing. So maybe something similar holds us inside reality itself. And when we push against it—like rockets going vertical against gravity—we—”

  “Please stop explaining children’s theories, old man,” Clarke snapped, squinting at him. He was surely unaffected by the threadwork. “And wake up.”

  “I believe the nausea is still affecting Subject Clarke,” Anomie added, his tone almost gentle. Almost.

  But Aric only drifted to Soren’s console.

  “How are you feeling?” He asked gently.

  “Not bad, it's the best sleep I’ve ever had since grade 10.” She chuckled as she read over the data. “Our sensors suggest that, wow! The Solar parallax barely registers anymore. Whatever frame we’re using… we’re close to the Oort Cloud. Close enough that the heliosphere’s effects begin to withdraw.”

  “We…succeeded?” Aric floated from the chair, angling as if standing, and stared into the endless dark. He leaned forward, felt his balance shift, yet gravity—or the lack of it—held him suspended. His hamstrings burned like taut wires, and a strained agonizing grunt slipped from his lips.

  “It seems like we did,” Mira muttered.

  Aric’s fingers pressed on his chair as he opened a channel. “Bridge to engineering, is everything alright?”

  Jax’s idle voice came from the speaker after a brief flash of electronic hiss, “All well sir,” suddenly the hiss and crack of pressure tubes breaching and gas leaking was audible again, though soon replaced by the sound of plumbing and hammering. “We are experiencing some minor issues with the magnetic coils around the ring, and some plasma venting clogs, but nothing big.”

  He paused for another second, as if recalibrating his words.

  “I did it! Soren, I did it!” His voice thundered through the speaker, like a thousand elephants stomping in perfect sync, yet forming precise human words. “We just…traveled faster than any human in history!”

  He paused one more time, this time more like choked by his scream.

  “And Aric, I thank you for having those ideas, though Soren put them in order and rationalized it, and I did the actual engineering, you did give us the spark.”

  “I am just glad, to be welcomed aboard.” Aric smiled and nodded to himself. “Thank you, to all of you.” He stood up, walked to the centre of the bridge, hands raised slightly on his sides. Meeting everyone’s eyes and gave them a genuine warm and affirmative nod. “If there are foreign intelligence out there, or like Professor Locke has imagined, that one day faster-than-light travel becomes standard. It may be a small step for them, but it is a giant leap for us.”

  Kael raised his eyebrow. “Cheer to us. To the Odyssera, to the crew unwilling to be simply a walking shadow in this restless world.”

  “I never thought you could phrase it like that?” Melanie and Aric almost spoke at the same time at the question.

  “Well, I do specialize in more literary-based topics rather than sciencey ones.”

  “Small step for some, indeed,” Soren turned back and nodded. “But surely, a giant, giant leap, for all of us.”

  At this moment, as the bridge fell in silence. Everyone just felt a strange feeling of joy, a kind that wouldn’t come from winning a lottery, a sport tournament, graduations, or even any amount of wealth and power. They just stared at each other with a fulfilling face.

  “Well,” Aric took a deep breath. “If my calculations are even just remotely accurate, we shall see Pluto’s tail next week.”

  “It is truly…remotely accurate,” Soren said. “We are in Pluto’s orbit but it is not till next months would we see it behind us.” She paused. “Assuming if no displacements occur from now on.”

  Mira cut in. “I’ve intercepted several transmissions from stations and deep-space vessels. We’re only days behind the Challenger’s progress. Enterprise is still searching for the dark-matter object with no luck yet, and also confirmed to be decommissioned soon.” She blinked, then added, “And the closest federal cruiser is farther away from us than we are from the satellites. We’re safe from being chased again—for now.”

  Kael cleared his throat. “She’s right. And it’s very unlikely anyone would pursue a civilian ship that looked destroyed rather than escaped.”

  Soren frowned. “It’s only a matter of time before they realize we didn’t blow ourselves up. The ripple across the threadwork has probably already been noticed.” She shrugged. “Even then, the closest ships—aside from the Challenger—would still be days, if not weeks, away from our current position.”

  “That’s good enough,” Clarke said calmly. “Probably a good idea to give the engine a rest before we enter the threadwork again?”

  “Until then, I would like to meet the crew of our ship, and definitely our doctor Elen Avaris.” Aric said as he approached the exit near the end of the bridge. “Soren and Clarke, do you two mind guard the bridge for a while?” He asked patiently as he looked back.

  “Of course,” Clarke responded instantly like a bolt of lighting.

  “My pleasure.” Soren followed. “Jax…he was just scaring you to stay on the bridge earlier, he had put self-printed maps around many halls, there it maps which compartment are not life-supported, which are rough for traveling and which are your quarters and all the places you need to know.”

  “Got it, tell him I appreciated it.”

  Kael, Melanie and Mira left their post one by one as they followed behind Aric. As they drifted in the dimly lit hallway, they did see a map taped on the wall. It is truly self-printed, most were on brittle papers, perhaps been around his storage since the early twenty-first century. On it mapped out quarters with their names printed within, every long stretchy hallway, which ones are out of service, which ones are used to stack cargo boxes, which ones are life-supported.

  “Hum, theres only so many places to go to.” Melanie frowned.

  “Well, Jax did say about going to slowly upscale those areas when he has time on this journey.” Kael responded with a growly voice. “Let's go see our rooms.”

  They soon parted ways, Melanie and Kael went for their rooms, Mira decided she would look around, and feel what it is like to be home again, to be without much gravity again. While Aric headed straight for the hospital tube.

  The corridors had a minimalist design, grey metallic floor, so are the walls and the ceiling, white and yellow and blue lights lit from above, around and below. But some parts are dark, or only dimly lit, usually at the end of hallways or turning points where the it links to the off-service junctions.

  Sometimes Aric felt a bit spooked by it, as if the next second someone or something would be standing on the edge of the hall, staring at him, and before he knew it, charge at him. Nevertheless he was initially surprised by how large Jax and his man designed the ship, 300 meters in length, and wide enough to feel lonely, why so large for so few crew? He’d bet of they had more than 50 crewman overall, perhaps not even 40. He guessed stocking cargo for deep space travel might be factor one, but would it be all? Perhaps not. He thought as he floated through the hallway.

  Back on the bridge Soren’s smile faded almost instantly as the door swept shut behind Aric.

  “Why did you follow me here?” She frowned and pressed her lips at Clarke, who is returning a funny grin before approaching her. “I told you I am not interested in someone, not saying you are a bad person or something.”

  “I know,” he said…teasingly, but also in a strangely calm way. “You didn’t think it was, purely for you, did you?”

  She sighed. “What else could it, you think it is going to be a fun ride?”

  “No,” he sat on the spare chair connected to the console beside her. “I…I want to do something with my life too,” he looked at her in the eyes. “Let’s be real, who want to be ordinary in their twenties.”

  “You know this could be a potential one way trip.” She raised an eyebrow.

  “I know, but a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” He chuckled. “And you are aboard too…I know you don’t have feelings for me, yet. But I assure you that, if you don’t like me, by the end of our journey, I would not force it.”

  Soren gave a warming smile back before they nodded to each other and had a somewhat awkward fist bump. But Clarke’s face then turned slightly more stern and serious, as if he have felt he forgot his ID at home on a flight.

  “You know…” he frowned and circled his finger in the air. “I know Aric originally thought of the all this…and Jax had the design because of lack of resources but also Aric…and you…and your vision, but I swear to God I have saw them somewhere before.”

  Soren thought for a second. “No way, I’ve studied many theoretical ship designs and FTL travel theories but never had I stumbled across this. Well, threadwork was discovered by quantum scientists,”

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  “Yeah I know, during the deep observation of quantum entanglement right?” He chuckled.

  “Bingo, you score full mark on the freshman quiz.”

  He let out another small laughter. “No, its not in the university database, I once did a sneak dive into the government space department programs, using Pluto II’s master card,” he whispered to her ears though no one was in the room with them. “I hacked the network through the card’s information, and found something called The Directive Files. And it seems to be highly classified but I did took a glimpse of like some record of faster-than-light flight done in the past by them, and had I believe it showed a ring-shaped hull design.”

  “I don’t think anyone I know in the university or the Pluto II or any other major technological facilities I worked on knows about it.” She gasped. “If it is real what you saw.”

  “I don’t even know…it has been a hot minute, technically three years.” He wiped his forehead and eyes with his hand as he framed his elbow on the console’s edge. “I could have just got into some deep-fake sites made by some boringly committed teenagers too.”

  “Logic tells me it could be a fraud.” She took a small breath and looked at him again. “I hope we can discuss more about it, but as for now, it might be better for you to watch on the radar for any small debris or meteor heading our way.”

  He swallowed. “Yeah, good call. Almost forgot why are we left here.” Then he turned to Anomie, standing in the corner like a statue. “You are not about to record that part aren’t you?”

  The bot stayed silent for what felt like a minute, but just as Clarke was going to assume he was powered off, a mechanical voice came through his voice box.

  “That is not mine to decide, and though I have a job as monitor, I am also a gentlemen, and would not intentionally make anyone’s life worse.”

  Soren almost let out a high-pitched grunt as she tried to hold her laughter.

  — Hospital tube

  Aric floated down the corridor, passing dim junctions, until the door with the sign: hospital tube, opened before him.

  The door panels swept apart with a smoothing sound of shuffle, and through it came Aric, from the dimly-lit corridor to the brightly-lit hospital tube. A room full of isolated regenerative-tubes on the one end, on the other a series of tiny anti-contamination pods.

  Under the blinding white light from the ceiling and the floor, Aric felt as if he was drifting in an abyss the entire time, even the brighter-lit bridge now felt like a coffin.

  The hospital tube, though called tube, is a circular sector of the ship, built within the heart of the primary hull, connecting closely to the bridge and close enough to the engineerings. He slowly marched through the circle, from tube to tube, from pods to pods, from surgery laser knives to antibody injection needles, all good stuff, he thought. But where is the doctor?

  “Are you looking for me, captain?” Suddenly A door from the wall opened and an elderly woman with tanned skin and dark brown eyes walked out. Her hand folded together on her stomach as she smiled at Aric. “I am Elen Avaris, you can just refer to me as medic Avaris or doctor Avaris.”

  Seeing her presence, Aric let out a breath of relief and said. “That works with me, I am Aric Cole, the current captain of the starship Odyssera.” He held out his hand. “How are you standing?”

  She shook it gently and responded lightly. “The ground is magnetized here, and most of your shoes have steel in them.”

  “I see,”

  “You said you are the current captain?” She raised an eyebrow. “Is the bridge crew planning on swapping their captain once in a while?”

  “No, no, no, I just don’t, honestly know if I am well suited for the job.” He chuckled.

  “You are not one of those very assertive mainstream captains, huh?” She grinned playfully. Despite of her relative old age, somewhere around perhaps 60 or 70, she seems quite playful and flexible in motion.

  Aric looked embarrassed briefly, or to be considered surprised. “Well,” he pressed his lips and spread his arms and looked to the ground. “I don’t know how those mainstream captains lead, but I don’t like to act with prejudice or like a mean person in general for sure.” He then eyed their surrounding. “I didn’t know Jax was able to purchase all those expensive medical instruments.”

  “I brought those aboard.” She said calmly. “I am fairly well-known in the field, and theres five major planetary hospitals under my name, so Jax’s wallet isn’t responsible for everything you see aboard.”

  “I suppose Professor Locke and many others also funded?”

  “Indeed,” she nodded. “So… you’ve achieved faster-than-light travel?” She tilted her head, curious.

  “Long story,” he said, pride flickering in his voice. “But yes. The nearest deep-space cruiser is now days to weeks away… and we’re still moving. Surprised or impressed?”

  She smiled, a faint curve that held both amusement and respect. “I am. Though I’ve seen many remarkable things born out of… accidents, in a way. Still, congratulations, Captain Cole.”

  “Just call me Aric,” he said with a small grin.

  She then stepped aside and took another step towards the door when the door she came out of opened once again, revealing a section within the circular structure outside. Inside there were even more shelfs of well-protected medical supplies and biological samples in meteor-proof boxes. Also enclosures of many plants, fungi, bacteria and protists. Even a small red goldfish inside a glass tank. “Do you want to take a look inside as well?”

  Aric nodded swiftly. “Of course.”

  In the following half-an-hour, doctor Avaris spoke about each medicine and each organism samples she brought aboard, from the spiky cactus from her homeland in Egypt, to the thermophile and halophile bacteria specimens from the hot-springs of Mount Fuji and cold waters of the Mariana Trench. On the walls hung many of her photographs, from all around the world, with the world’s elite federal governors, biologists, chemists and astronomers. Yet she spoke very lightly of them, as if those moments weren’t rare or exceptional in her life.

  “By the way, I need to collect a series of DNA from your body.” She said as she pulled out a small needle from a cage and pointed to Aric’s arm. “Don’t worry, these are pain-free and self-sanitized.” She began unplugging the cap even before Aric had a chance to respond.

  “Of course not,” he let out a sarcastic laugh. “Why would I be afraid of needles? Lol.”

  “Just in case you wonder,” Avaris smirked as she unscrewed the sanitize layer. “It is a counter-measure to chromosome and genome damage by radiation or some possible alien viruses.” She then attached a glass tube with a pop sound to the bottom of the needle. “Soren, Jax and his men already had their samples locked inside that radiation-proof box.” She pointed to one of the metallic lockers on the shelf. “Now I just need from the rest of the bridge crew.”

  “I appreciate your carefulness.”

  “Thank you.” He smiled, but then noticed a strange looking object hanging on her lab’s wall. It appeared like those alters used by some wizards or spiritual people. It's covered in a shiny yellow paint, oval-shaped and acted like a mirror. In the centre is an eye of Horus craved out.

  “What’s that?” He asked curiously.

  “Oh, it's just a decoration,” she responded with a light chuckle, and also stared towards the mirror-liked object. “I call it Aegis. It is made of smart-material that adapts when exposed to radiation or bio-chemical hazards, it will change colour from gold to pale-grey.”

  “Cool,”

  “I can put one in your quarter too, if you wish.”

  “That would be helpful, Thank you then.” He nodded.

  “You're welcome.”

  Aric then frowned a little, a question logged in his head for a long time, he needs an answer this time.

  “So, I see that you are a globally reputable doctor and physician, why did you sign up to be onboard a vessel like this? You do know that we are not sent by the government officials or super wealthy organizations, right?”

  “Well,” she paused her movement, and through her frozen pupils, it felt to Aric as if her soul also froze for a brief moment. Then she looked at him in the eyes and said. “It’s a long story, but when I was little, I was told that inner peace and fulfilment comes from success, comes from being better than others, being the top of the society. Which I strived for it.”

  “And you did reach it.” He muttered. “How did it…”

  She sighed in a semi-dramatic tone, cutting Aric off mid-sentence as if not knowing he was about to speak. “I did feel the dopamine, serotonin, endorphins and oxytocin rushing through my brain, and it felt biologically…good.” She chuckled awkwardly while Aric desperately tried to recall those terms for a second. “Good to feel that you accomplished something, you are better than others at certain fields.”

  “I suppose so?” Aric said, but his face unintentionally got slightly tenser.

  She paused for a second as she saw his face, then let out another soft sigh. “However, I realized something much later in life. After I lost my husband in a lab accident, and it was not even something very big like an explosion, he simply dropped some benzene on his forehead, and he was gone.” She looked down and turned her face slightly. “At that moment, I realized how fragile life is, we are so biologically, chemically and psychologically complex, yet the smallest chemical leak, radiation, bacteria or even blunt force could destroy all that we’ve built within us.”

  “I wondered about the same question as a teenager.” Aric said slowly, his face begin to relax. “I am sorry for your husband by the way.”

  “And it was that incident, I realized that the foundation of my identity and sense of worth was but a walking shadow, fate can lift us up, give me a smart brain, healthy body, good family and opportunities, a mind capable of hard grind. But it also can take it all away just as fast as it came.” A tear rolled down her eyes. “And if all the values I see in myself was through defeating others, one day I will be the beaten one, and one day I will be forever away from the top. Then I will cripple, forever.”

  She held onto his hand. “So I volunteered for this journey, not on any strict government vessel but on one that is outside of normal rules and expectations.” She took a deep breath. “To see a bigger world outside of just winning and losing, outside of the pie of success, outside of ourselves.”

  Aric suddenly felt out of words to say, as if anything he said would be potentially offensive or traumatic. The only phrase he manage to squeeze out his throat is: “You are very experienced, very wise,” he said softly. “And I really, authentically, sincerely look forward to having you as part of this new space family.” Just as he saw her smile and wanted to say more he felt an excruciating pain on his leg. “Ah!” He screamed and immediately covered his leg with his arm, almost falling over.

  “Oh wait sorry,” she covered her mouth as she peeked at his leg where her needle struck, she immediacy pulled the needle out but then the blood begin pouring out like rivers of red, floating as droplets into the air. “I forgot to turn on the desensitize mode!” Then she repaired the tissue with a makeshift cellular-growth ray. Afterwards she slowly collected a sample of stem cells and genetic informations from his arm with care, and it did not hurt this time.

  The two stared at each other for a second before breaking into a mutual laughter that could be heard outside of the hospital tube.

  — Lobby Area.

  After what felt like twenty-minutes of drift in nostalgia, Mira came to a brightly lit open space, with brown and whitish-brown soft couches and sofas floating orderly in the air, designed clearly by someone who know life in space. On the big wall is a giant screen, and beside it are two carved out windows showcasing the dark space outside. She thought of an excellent movie-night idea.

  With excitement she hopped up from the floor and glided to the floating sofas, in the centre of every four sofas is a table; attached to the floor or the wall if not the ceiling. The fabric still felt as soft as she remembered, and the as she smelled the material, the little furs on its surface still made she sneeze like a little child she was. She was told that the furnitures on Earth are no longer easy to get dusty. A special material absorbs the dust and makes it a part of its own as it glued them to its surface.

  “What are you doing there?” Suddenly she heard a voice asking, looking down, there’s Jax, with his face covered in dark chemical of some sort.

  She immediately hid her face behind the sofa, but then slowly revealed herself.

  “Just chilling,” she responded.

  “So, you are Mira Brooks? Right?” He asked loudly, so loud she doubt if working with machines made his ears deaf or something, but most modern machines are soundless by design, unless he’s using the most primitive type.

  She nodded.

  “You are the communicator?” He tilted his head.

  She nodded again.

  “That’s a weird choice for a communicator…” he muttered to himself and wiped his hair. The two stood in silence for what felt like a minute. Then looked to her again from the floor with his magnetized shoes. “What do you communicators do? I suppose pretty lame compared to something like dealing with reactors and over-pressurized pipes.” Seeing no response, he’s smirk lingered slightly, then he had to lower his face as well. “Well then, based off your height and youthful appearance…despite your height, I could assume you are a space-boomer?”

  She one again returned with a nod.

  He let out a heavy sigh and shook his head slowly. “So you never saw Earth? Let me guess, your parents were married on one of those deep-space cruisers or cargo vessels, right?”

  This time she did not return with a simple gesture but actually spoke in a soft, somewhat high-pitched voice. “The marriage was in Saturn IV station.” She paused briefly. “They did meet each other on the Austrina, a deep-space survey vessel.”

  “I guessed.” He squeezed his fist, sweat streaming out through his glove, floating in droplets in the air. He instantly took out a small vacuum cleaner and sucked them in. “Sorry, there was a chain of pressurization and energy-damper issues after the threadwork jump. Still can’t believe the dreamer’s idea worked. But I will be the one to claim the actual Nobel prize, lol.” He then snapped his fingers. “Do you enjoy the company from your fellow bridge crew?”

  She hesitated for brief moment. “Yeah, they are all interesting, especially Anomie.”

  “The bucket-head?”

  She nodded in the distance.

  ‘What a weirdo?’ He thought to himself. ‘Is this common in space-boomers? Replace pets and kids with bots or whatever…’

  Then suddenly Soren’s voice came through the speaker.

  “All bridge crew please return to the bridge within the following five minutes.” She repeated it once again before closing the cast with a call specifically to Aric. “Captain Cole, we’ve located one of the supposedly-destroyed satellites, but the data is insisting that they are still intact.”

  “Well, I guess we all got a place to go now.” He muttered as he waved goodbye and turned to leave.

  Mira returned with a hand wave of her own.