Another piece
Sep. 10th, 2004 10:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zesty_pintoThis one I'll put effort into it just to force some life into me. Five entries for five days of a pulp horror piece.
Some wouldn't believe it, but I guess I was something of a normal person some time. They always seem to think I'm a lying sack of... well, you know, after HMAA Avalon. I suppose you wouldn't believe me either, and maybe you're looking through these words for some reason as to why I'm alive and a platoon of well-trained special unit forces are not, how I managed to escape, maybe even to see if any of this sounds remotely true. If that's the case then you should have probably stopped reading a few lines ago, because none of this is going to sound true, and neither of it will make you feel any better about what I'm going to tell you.
The day I started, I suppose, was back along day three of Project Hermes. The project was long declassified after the incident on the Avalon, though I'm sure you already have some clue as to what it's about. Project Hermes was the attempt to take a ship from the earth to the outer regions beyond the lagrange belt colonies and the Martian outposts. It was an attempt to uncover light travel, another one of those pipe dreams people dreamed about in the 20th century from all that science fiction junk they wrote back then.
After a bidding war for who would get the rights to perform Project Hermes, The United Kingdom gained the rights and the prestige of being the first lightspeed vessel ever to be made. A year later, the English were granted custody of Copernicus Colony in Section 12 of the lagrange belt. Five years later, Her Majesty's Aerospace Armada (H.M.A.A.) Avalon was sent off the ports of the Copernicus Colony. A week later, it was tested to see if light travel was possible, and was assigned to make a trip to the edge of Sol and back.
It worked, and I knew because I was one of them.
I had studied under a master's program in Photon calculus in UC/Berkeley. Some people think of it as the stuff of chaos theory, but it's not really so chaotic. Mostly just thoughts on how waves go and how to make particles move like waves under the right conditions. After trying to work for my tenure, I was offered the chance to work for the English Aeronautics department to help in the construction of the engine and some of the architectural design. After all was said and done, the ship set off for a trip that would have returned in twenty-four hours.
Of course, something went wrong. The ship never returned from the end of the solar system. It actually continued on and ended up passing by the end of the Sol system. In the next five months, the earth went into silence over wondering what happened. Fingers were pointed and people were blamed. Naturally, I was fired. Theorists attempted to figure out what happened and why things went wrong.
On December 21st, a live report was sent throughout the world. Billions of people stared at a satellite footage from the colonies of a large metal ship appearing into view. The HMAA Avalon had returned without a scrape, nor a response no matter how many times the newscaster told the world that there had been no response from the vessel. A search and rescue crew was immediately sent out to find out what happened to them, and among a number of riot-outfitted soldiers, many of them with a previous history in forensic investigations, had been sent with a few professionals that had knowledge with the vessel; the head engineer, the admiral that was responsible for the project, the programmer that helped design the navigations, and the one that helped in designing the vessel: me. Under the pressure of the world, my own dignity, and the chance of having work again, I was among one of the few to come and find out what had happened. They believed that I could find out what the problem was, that I could identify a dead body or two if we expected the worst. Since the Avalon was not outfitted to have no more than a month of emergency supplies, we had to assume the worst.
I suppose this is where the story really begins.
Some wouldn't believe it, but I guess I was something of a normal person some time. They always seem to think I'm a lying sack of... well, you know, after HMAA Avalon. I suppose you wouldn't believe me either, and maybe you're looking through these words for some reason as to why I'm alive and a platoon of well-trained special unit forces are not, how I managed to escape, maybe even to see if any of this sounds remotely true. If that's the case then you should have probably stopped reading a few lines ago, because none of this is going to sound true, and neither of it will make you feel any better about what I'm going to tell you.
The day I started, I suppose, was back along day three of Project Hermes. The project was long declassified after the incident on the Avalon, though I'm sure you already have some clue as to what it's about. Project Hermes was the attempt to take a ship from the earth to the outer regions beyond the lagrange belt colonies and the Martian outposts. It was an attempt to uncover light travel, another one of those pipe dreams people dreamed about in the 20th century from all that science fiction junk they wrote back then.
After a bidding war for who would get the rights to perform Project Hermes, The United Kingdom gained the rights and the prestige of being the first lightspeed vessel ever to be made. A year later, the English were granted custody of Copernicus Colony in Section 12 of the lagrange belt. Five years later, Her Majesty's Aerospace Armada (H.M.A.A.) Avalon was sent off the ports of the Copernicus Colony. A week later, it was tested to see if light travel was possible, and was assigned to make a trip to the edge of Sol and back.
It worked, and I knew because I was one of them.
I had studied under a master's program in Photon calculus in UC/Berkeley. Some people think of it as the stuff of chaos theory, but it's not really so chaotic. Mostly just thoughts on how waves go and how to make particles move like waves under the right conditions. After trying to work for my tenure, I was offered the chance to work for the English Aeronautics department to help in the construction of the engine and some of the architectural design. After all was said and done, the ship set off for a trip that would have returned in twenty-four hours.
Of course, something went wrong. The ship never returned from the end of the solar system. It actually continued on and ended up passing by the end of the Sol system. In the next five months, the earth went into silence over wondering what happened. Fingers were pointed and people were blamed. Naturally, I was fired. Theorists attempted to figure out what happened and why things went wrong.
On December 21st, a live report was sent throughout the world. Billions of people stared at a satellite footage from the colonies of a large metal ship appearing into view. The HMAA Avalon had returned without a scrape, nor a response no matter how many times the newscaster told the world that there had been no response from the vessel. A search and rescue crew was immediately sent out to find out what happened to them, and among a number of riot-outfitted soldiers, many of them with a previous history in forensic investigations, had been sent with a few professionals that had knowledge with the vessel; the head engineer, the admiral that was responsible for the project, the programmer that helped design the navigations, and the one that helped in designing the vessel: me. Under the pressure of the world, my own dignity, and the chance of having work again, I was among one of the few to come and find out what had happened. They believed that I could find out what the problem was, that I could identify a dead body or two if we expected the worst. Since the Avalon was not outfitted to have no more than a month of emergency supplies, we had to assume the worst.
I suppose this is where the story really begins.
