Born in Brightness
Chronicles of Expansion: Humanity’s (Accidental) Journey to the Edge of Space
Chapter 3 – Born in Brightness
In the year 832 SA, all antimatter shields surrounding Exodus 7 collapsed, leaving the ship and its crew at the mercy of the cosmos. What caused this malfunction, and where the Exodus went next remains a topic of debate to this day.
At first, none of the survivors could explain what had awaken them from stasis so far ahead of schedule. Whatever it was, the ship had not been ready. A preliminary review revealed the extent of the damage, from images of stasis chambers scattered across the lower levels to the loud, incessant warnings of entire modules destroyed or missing. Any module housing living quarters would have had at least a thousand tripulants. The losses were incalculable. The mission was over.
Looking out a tiny window in the mess hall, Dr. Kate Farnsworth could see dark hexagonal holes where the missing modules used to be. At least half of the surviving ones had been damaged as well. To top off the grisly composition, hundreds of frozen victims floated aimlessly in the distance, radiating outwards from the ship, and disappearing into space. A clear sign the gravity generators were offline, which wasn’t supposed to happen so far away from anything, and an urgent call to reset them. She suspected the AM turbines were not working either, but without any reference points and a broken navigation panel, nobody could tell. It’s not like they made any noise; she had made sure about that from day one.
There were a few other things Kate knew for sure. The Exodus was accelerating. Decades earlier, it had been her research team that made the breakthrough discoveries leading to third generation antimatter propulsion systems. That’s the same propulsion systems now used on the entire fleet. If there was anyone who could spot a problem with them, it’d be her. She tried to remember the celestial pathway from Earth 24 to a destination deep in uncharted space. Nothing had shown up on the surveys. No pit stops to make between points A and B, which begged more than a few questions, such as, what was pulling on them, and where could it be dragging them to?
Within hours, a team of experts had been assembled. Kate was in it, along with three other scientists and a group of Conglomerate officers. Their tasks, to determine what had happened, what was happening, and what could be done to contact the nearest human colony. Their efforts would be in vain. All communications were down. None of the science seemed to work, and it didn’t take long for the Congs to step aside and focus on securing control of the Exodus. Her authority and that of her colleagues didn’t last much longer. Rank was about to become obsolete.
As the ship accelerated further over the next few e-days, the effects of extreme g-forces weighed heavily on all its tripulants alike. The incident had killed over half the crew. Gravity drove many of the survivors to suicide. Bringing the generators back online produced mixed results. Most of module 305 had fared ok, but there were still a few rooms where you could walk freely along the walls and ceilings.
On the third e-day, they reached the anomaly. From what they could gather along the final, neck-breaking leg of their approach, it was an uncharted, wandering quasar. A gravitational prison that locked them into orbit the moment they arrived. There was no escaping the blinding light, nor the violent palpitations of energy pillars piercing deep space’s interminable darkness. Many of the window shields were broken. Shadows turned into prime real estate. Light, into the definitive trait of a new form of hell.
Early on, symptoms were the same for the whole crew. Dry eyes and blurry vision. Constant blackouts. A brutal headache pulsating to the quasar’s maddening rhythm. Interlacing bouts of hysteria and euphoria. Thirst. No appetite. Insomnia. Despite sharing the markings of this common disease, a week later everyone aboard the Exodus began experiencing their own versions of hell. For Kate and many of her scientists, their struggle to get the generators working had paid off, but left behind a void where inhuman thoughts festered unchecked. Dark ideas were born in the light, blinded and hungry, focused on striking at anyone moving nearby. Deadly contraptions, designed to hurt, not kill. Soon, no semblance of order or purpose remained.
For all their talk of duty and discipline, Congs didn’t fare much better. If anything, testosterone to spare and a violent nature proved inadequate for long-term survival, and following a months-long struggle for supremacy, dozens of Cong bodies were hanging from the mess hall’s glass ceiling. The smell alone was enough to keep everyone else at bay. Thus, before the first anniversary of the event, the once unquestionable authority of the Conglomerate came to an unceremonious, bloody, and dismembered end.
Within a decade, monsters started giving birth to monsters. Medical stasis chambers took care of raising and nurturing any newcomers, readying them for hell in a matter of months, not years. These feral children, malleable and ruthless by nature, fitted right in. It was one of them, a boy, oblivious to where food came from, who opted for opening all hatches below the mess hall, shooting most of the Exodus supplies out into space. They were probably behind the sabotage of the ship’s audio system as well, which started playing The Last Child on a loop at around this time. For them, the song in the background must have felt as natural as the songs of birds back on Earth 24. For everyone else, not so much…
Years of rationing and torturous noise opened the gates to yet another a new inferno. One in which hunger and insanity turned monsters into nightmares, and nightmares into reality. Groups of cannibals, led by surviving Congs and their lackeys, roamed the ship’s corridors looking for prey. Everyone else hid from the ominous long shadows, using mirrors and shiny metal to reflect light and camouflage in the brightness.
It took everything for Kate to survive, and she wasn’t sure if anyone else had made it. Not after what she did. The first time she got caught, they traded favors. Three cannibals lost their lives, including one who had once been her student back on Earth 24. She lost one of her eyes. The next encounter proved costlier for everyone involved, and losing her left arm to a waist-tall cannibal had been the last straw. That same night, hiding among reflections, Kate ran across the entire ship with her mind set on a single, final goal. To turn off the gravity generators. If her calculations were correct, the quasar would take care of everything else, leaving her to sleep in peace and silence in her stasis chamber. All she had to do was return to her quarters before the generators went offline. Not a bad plan.
Kate ran, shone, and reflected the world around her with every step, slipping twice past groups of hungry villains and once stumbling upon the corpse of a man she thought she may have known. There was no point in stopping. No way of looking back. Blinded by the light, the former professor moved forward until reaching the main command center. Turning off the generators was simple. She had designed and installed them herself. Programming a makeshift timer proved a bit more challenging, but she was the mission’s leading scientist. If not her, who could set the stage for what was to come. Dripping blood from open wounds, holding her breath, and shielding her eyes, she made it back just in time to step into the stasis chamber. The countdown began soon thereafter. “Generator turnoff sequence initiated. Ten. Nine. Eight…”
Years later, when Kate emerged from her slumber, there was darkness. And confusion. She couldn’t tell if it was the ship or her mind still playing The Last Child. Her first instinct was to reach for a red blinking light, which immediately turned on the intercom screen. Could she be dreaming? Afraid conditions wouldn’t last, she started transmitting right away. To whom, she didn’t know. How could she best tell the Exodus story without making the crew seem like the beasts they had become?
Midway through her transmission, there was a loud noise outside the door. Metal against metal, but how? It had been decades since she last saw anyone, and she had made sure to amp the gravity up outside her quarters. Whoever was there would be out in ice cold space, unable to breathe, or move, or bang against the door. Convinced she was indeed dreaming, Kate continued transmitting up until the door opened behind her. The creatures that came inside, if you could call them so, were not human, nor did they belong in hell. In a way, this story is about humanity’s first meeting with them and everything that happened afterwards.
These are our true chronicles of expansion…