“Read the damn HUD! It’s all in there. Just look up to your helmet’s display.”
Seconds passed before anything happened. Then we heard his command loud and clear.
“Turn to starboard ten meters then halt.”
It was like watching a beginner at a video game causing us to chuckle quietly wondering what he would do next, but slowly his suit veered right and went out of view behind the bay wall.
“We’re coming out,” I announced. “Steer clear.”
As I pushed the joystick forward, we moved out of the bay into the darkness with Silkwood still hovering level with us at some distance off to the right of our bubble. I turned the SeaPod toward him illuminating his suit and presenting a perfect image of a space walker on a repair mission trailing a yellow tether connecting him to his spaceship.
“Looks like a scene from Gravity,” Briscoe said. “Amazing the effect a simple rope tether can add.”
“Yeah. Wish we had a camera. We could give him a selfie he’d never forget.”
“Going down to explore,” he said then he issued some more commands, which surprisingly took him directly past the submarine and down to the ocean floor landing near the monopole.
“On site, gentlemen. I made it!” his voice crackled over the SeaCom.
“I’m setting the SeaPod down about fifty meters behind you, facing our floods your direction. Narrate your findings as you go.”
The floor’s contact bumped gently through the cockpit as I released the joystick. We were stationary lying silently on the ocean floor facing him with the submarine to our left and his lights appearing as four dim dots off in the forward distance. The only sounds I could hear were our whirring air-scrubber fans and his jagged breathing sifting through the intercom’s speaker.
“Roger your command. I’m about two meters from the object and its fiery disk has gone black in the center. And I mean black. It’s the damndest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s like a hole in my vision. Just nothing there. My power meter is just barely starting to drop so I’ll continue on.”
“Okay but let us know if you get into trouble,” I added. “We’ll pull you right out.”
His voice returned with more static.
“Now standing by the three missing wheels. All around me, streams of glowing blue plasma are oozing into its black core. Having to dodge them. A forth wheel is now being pulled weirdly distorting into the hole and even the bulkhead of the crawler’s base behind the wheels is grotesquely distorting and drooping down toward it. Looking over at the sub’s hull, I see it’s sagging in on itself like a tire going flat. My surroundings remind me exactly what I’ve read about an event horizon’s predicted effects. I must be entering the Kerr ring.”
“Thank you, Dr. Silkwood for the description. Sounds like you may need to leave. Are you ready?”
“No, no. Much more to see. I’m in a wonderland of impossible physics. Going toward the black ho-ll-lll-le.”
“Did you just call it a black hole?” I asked trying to confirm his statement. A change in the intercom’s sound lowered the pitch of his voice and slowed it down into a deepening slow-motion drawl.
With no answer I asked, “How’s your suit’s HUD clock? Running backwards?”
“Oooh nooo, nnott rruunnning, iiittt’s raaciing baaackwaarrrds.”
“We’re pulling you out now, Silkwood. Clear your rope and prepare for a jolt.”
“Nooo dooo noottt dooo thhhaaaattt, I’mmm nnooott rreeaddyyy, yyyetttt.” His rapid breathing had slowed to a ghoulish roar between words.
I stared at Briscoe needing an opinion.
“What should I do, Chief?”
“Just cool your jets, Marker. Let him stay. He’s in his realm. He wants this experience before he goes back home.”
Agreeing, I nodded affirmatively.
“Well he’s getting it. When his suit alarms power failure over our SeaCom we’ll jerk him out. Give him maximum exposure until that happens. Shhh. Let’s listen.”
His roaring breaths continued until suddenly: a pause.
“Helllloo lliitttllle onnnne. Whaaat aarrre yoouuu?”
His breathing restarted.
“Whhhyyy aarrre yoouuu heeerre?”
We leaned in toward the speaker listening for a response. Nothing.
“Whhheeerrre aarrre yoouuu frrroommm?”
Again nothing sounded from the intercom but his heavy roaring breaths.
“Foouuur poooiiinnnt twwooo whaaat? Liiiighhtt yeeaarrrs? Immmposssiibblle.”
“What’s he talking about? And to who?” the Chief asked.
“Sounds like he’s hallucinating, Chief. Maybe his air mixture’s off. Could be CO2 narcosis. We need to pull him back.”
“No wait. Something’s happening.”
In the distance, the outline of his suit began to glimmer with a brilliant blue-white light illuminating the sub and crawler base with sporadic lightning flashes like those from an arc welder’s rods.
Then his deeply distorted voice replaced his uneven growling breaths.
“I’mmm cccoooommmiiinnggg iiiinnnn. Arrrrrree yooouuuu thhhheeerrrre? I’mmmmm sstttrrrrreeeettttcchhhiiinnnggg. Ooohhhh wwooooowww…….”
As his voiced tapered off, the yellow rope trailing over the ocean floor from our SeaPod to his suit suddenly jerked up from the ground and wildly uncurled, straightening until it was taut, and then yanked us forward several feet. All at once, his glow went dark and the rope slackened and gently drifted back to the bottom.
“What happened, Chief?”
“I don’t know. Call him on the SeaCom. See if he’s okay.”
In the eerie quiet, now void of his roaring sounds, I pushed the intercom.
“Are you all right, Dr. Silkwood? Please respond.”
Silence.
“Are you there, Jonas?”
Silence.
“Reel in the rope, Marker. Now! We have to pull him out before it’s too late.”
The urgency in his voice struck a chord and I jammed the Reel In icon starting a whining motor beneath our feet. With our eyes glued to the swiftly approaching rope, we watched in horror as the distant end appeared in our floods with nothing in tow, dragged across the floor throwing up silt and then drew into the reel spinning endlessly.
“Silkwood’s gone!” Briscoe said, “The rope must have broken. Let’s go get him.”
Even though I wanted to share the Chief’s optimism, I knew that Silkwood had vanished, drawn by his compelling curiosity into another plane of existence… or dimension. We were suddenly dealing with deadly consequences and I feared we would be next. Ironically, his death, or whatever it was, was the first one directly caused by the monopole.
“No, Chief. We shouldn’t return. He’s gone. I can feel it. No need to go back and jeopardize our own lives again. We have to return to the station and warn Dave of the impending danger.”
Chapter 22. Tilt
“But he warned me that he was prone to paracusia on the trip down here,” Franklin argued. “I say what he heard was from his auditory hallucinations. He told me that he frequently experienced them under stress and if that wasn’t stress I don’t know what is. He had previously heard voices in his head and his coworkers reminded him that he often answered them with nobody there. Poor soul. May he rest in peace.”
“So you think he created that conversation in his mind?” Williams asked. “From what Marker and Briscoe said it was a cogent albeit bizarre interchange between him and another entity possibly from 4.2 light years away.”
She closed her eyes for seconds then opened them wide-eyed.
“What if that object is not a God-particle or Higgs boson from the Hadron Collider accident as we suspect but rather a speck of something like a visitor from another time or dimension that drifted into our atmosphere and impacted the Pacific near us? Ever think about that?”