Beyond the Aquila Rift

0:00Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing. Another checkered flag for the books. Time to celebrate with Jamba. Jump in at JambaCasino.com. Let's Jamba. No purchase necessary, BTW Group. Boy, we're prohibited by law. CCNC, 21 Plus, sponsored by JambaCasino. Hello, I'm Wilkins, stories all the time. Glad you are here. Let's get into it. Greta's with me when I pull Susie out of the search tank. Why her? Redd asks because I want her out first. I say, wondering if Greta's jealous. I don't blame her. Susie's beautiful, but she's also smart. There isn't a better syntax runner in a shanty industrial. What happened? Susie asks, when she's over the grugganess. Didn't we make it back? I asked her to tell me the last thing she remembers. Customs, she says. There's perks on our changel. And after that, anything else? The runes. Do you remember casting them?

1:01No, she says, then picks up something in my voice. The fact that I might not be telling the truth or telling her all she needs to know. Tom, I'll ask you again. Did we make it back? Yeah, I say. We made it back. Susie looks back at the starscape. Airbrushed cross her search tankin' luminous violet and yellow paint. She'd had it customized on Carillion. It was against Redd's, something about the pink logging and take filters. Susie didn't care. She told me it had cost her a week's pay, but it had been worth it to impose her own personality on the great company architecture of the ship. Funny how I feel like I've been in that thing for months. I shrug. That's the way it feels sometimes. Then nothing went wrong. Nothing at all. Susie looks at Greta. Then who are you? She asks. Greta says nothing. She just looks at me expectantly. I start shaking and realize I can't go through with this. Not yet. End it, I tell Greta. Greta steps towards Susie. Susie reacts, but she isn't quick enough.

2:02Greta pulls something from her pocket and touches Susie in the forearm. Susie drops like a puppet out to cold. We put her back into the search tank, plumb her back in and close the lid. She won't remember anything Greta says. The conversation never left a short time memory. I don't know if I can go through with this, I say. Greta touches me with her other hand. I was just trying to ease her into it gently. I didn't want to tell her the truth right out. I know. Greta says. You're a kind man, Tom. Then she kisses me. I remembered our change ill as well. That was about where I'll start it to go wrong. We just didn't know it then. We missed our first take of slot when customs found a discrepancy in our cargo. It wasn't serious, but it took them a while to realize the mistake. By the time they did, we knew we were going to be sitting on the ground for another eight irs while inbound control process the fleet of bull carriers. I told Susie and raid the news. Susie took it pretty well or about as well as Susie ever took that kind of thing. I suggested she used the time to sky or the docks for any hot syntax patches, anything that might shave a deer or two off our return trip.

3:04Company authorized. She asked. I don't care, I said. What about Ray? Susie asked. Is he going to sit there drinking tea while I work for my tea? I smiled. They had a bigger in love, hate thing going on. No, Ray can do something useful as well. He can take a look at the queue planes. Nothing wrong with those planes, Ray said. I took off my old shanty industrial bib cap, scratched my bold spot and turned to the jib man. All right. Then it would take you long to check them over, will it? Whatever, skip. The thing I liked about Ray was that he always knew when he'd lost an argument. He gathered his kit and went out to check over the planes. I watched him climb the jib ladder tools hanging from his belt. Susie got her face mask, long black coat and left, banishing into the vapor haze of the docks. Boot heels clicking into the distance loan after she'd passed out of sight. I left the blue goose, walking in the opposite direction of Susie. Overhead, the boat carous slid in one after the other. You heard them long before you saw them. More and full citation moans cut down through the pissy yellow clouds over the port.

4:06When they emerged, you saw dark holes scoured and scarred by the block extrusions of syntax patterning. Jibs and queue planes retracted from landing and undercarriages clutching down like talons. The carous stopped over their allocated wells and lowered down a scream of thrust, docking jantries closed around them like grasping skeletal fingers. Paul Gohanling saw was planted out of their holding pens, some of them autonomous, some of them still being rude and by trainers. There was a shocking silence as the engines cut until the next carer began to approach through the clouds. I always like watching ships coming and going, even when they're holding my own ship on the ground. I couldn't read the syntax, but I knew these ships had come in all the way from the rift. Their color rift is about as far out as anyone ever grows. At median tunnel speeds, it's a year from the center of the local bubble. I've been out that way once in my life. I've seen the view from the near side of the rift like a good tourist. It was far enough from me. When there was a lull in the landing pattern, I ducked into a bar and found an aperture authority with the tukishan to create it. I sat in the seat and recorded a 30 second message to Catarina. I told her I was on my way back,

5:07but that we were stuck on an odd change or for another few hours. I warned her that the delay mic escape through to our tunnel routing, depending on how busy things were at the authorities end. Based on past experience, an eight-hour ground hold might become a two-day hold at the search point. I told her I'd be back, but she shouldn't worry if it was a few days late. Outside, a dipadoc is slouched by with a freight container strapped between his legs. I told Catarina I loved her and couldn't wait to get back home. While I walked back to the blue goose, I thought of the message racing ahead of me transmitted at light speed up system, then copied into the memory buffer of the next ongoing ship. Chances were that particular ship wasn't headed to Baranquea or anywhere near it. The aperture authority would have to relay the message from ship to ship until it reached its destination. I might even reach Baranquea ahead of it, but in all my years of delays that had only happened once. The system worked all right. Overhead a white passenger liner had been slotted in between the bolt carriers. I lifted up my mask to get a better look at it. I got a hit of ozone, fuel, and dinosaur dome. That was our change all right. You couldn't mistake it for any other place in the bubble.

6:10There were 400 wells out there, up to a dozen surface ports on every planet, and none of them smelled bad in quite the same way. Swarm, I followed the voice. It was Ray standing by the dock. He finished checking those planes. I asked. Rayshik is head. That's what I wanted to talk to you about. They were a little off alignment. So seeing as we're going to be sitting here for eight hours, I decided to run a full recalibration. I nodded. That was the idea. So what's the prob? The prob is a slot just opened up. Taurus says we can lift off in 30 minutes. I shrugged. Then we'll lift. But I haven't finished the recal. As it is, things are worse than before I started. Lifting now would not be a good idea. You know how the tower works, I said. Missed two offered slots. You could be on the ground for days. Well, no one wants to get back home sooner than I do. Ray said. So cheer up, she'll be rough in the tunnel. There won't be a smooth ride home. I shrugged. Do we care, we'll be asleep? Well, it's academic.

7:10We can't leave without Susie. I heard boot heels clicking toward us. Susie came out of the fog, took her own mask aside. No droid with the rune monkeys, she said. Nothing they were selling, I hadn't seen a million times before. Fucking cowboys. Doesn't matter, I said. We're leaving anyway. Race war. I pretended I hadn't heard him. I was always the last one into a sewage tank. I never went under until I was sure we were about to get the green light. It gave me a chance to check things over. Things could always go wrong, no matter how good the crew. The blue goose had come up to stop near the A beacon at Mark the sewage point. There were a few other ships ahead of us in the queue, plus the usual swarm of A service craft. Through an obligation blister, I was able to watch the larger ships depart one by one. Accelerating at maximum power, they seemed to streak toward a complete, featureless part of the sky. The jips were spread wide, and the smooth lines of their hulls were knalled and as say good with the cryptic alien runes of the routing syntax. At 20 G's, it was as if a huge invisible hand snatched them away into the distance.

8:11At 90 seconds later, there'd be a pale green flash from a thousand kilometers away. I twisted around in the blister. There were the four shortened symbols of our routing syntax. Each room of the script was fallen from a matrix of millions of hexagonal platelets. The platelets were all mortars so they could be pushed in or out from the hull. Ask the aperture authority and they'll tell you that the syntax is now fully understood. This is true, but only up to a point. After two centuries of study, human machines can now construct and interpret the syntax within an acceptably low-failure ray. Given a desired destination, they can assemble a string of runes that will almost always be accepted by their futures or machinery. Furthermore, they can almost always guarantee that the desired routing is the one that the future machinery will provide. In short, you usually get where you want to go. Take a simple point to point transfer like the hierarchy run. In that case, there is no real disadvantage in using automatic syntax generators. But for launch trajectories, those that may involve six or seven truncits between aperture hubs, machines lose the edge. They find a solution, but usually it isn't the optimum one.

9:12That's where syntax runners come in. People like Susie have an intuitive grasp of syntax solutions. They dream in ruins. When they see a poorly constructed strip, they feel it like a toothache. They defunct them. A good syntax runner can shave days off a route. For a company like a shanty industrial, that can make a lot of difference. But I wasn't a syntax runner. I could tell when something had gone wrong with the platelets, but I had to trust that Susie had done her job. I had no other choice. But I knew Susie wouldn't screw things up. I twisted around and looked back the other way. Now that we were in space, the cue planes had deployed. They were swung out from the holon triple hundred meter long jibs, like the arms of a grapple. I checked that they were locked in their fully extended positions and that the status lights were all in a green. The jibs were raised area. He'd been checking the alignment of the ski-shaped cue planes when I ordered him to close up ship and prepare to left. I couldn't see any visible indication that they were out of alignment, but then again it wouldn't take much to make our tripome bumper than usual. But as I told Ray, who cared? The blue goose could take a little tunnel turbulence it was built to.

10:16I checked the surge point again, only three ships ahead of us. I went back to the surge tanks and checked that Susie and Ray were alright. Ray's tank had been customised at the same time that Susie had had her done. It was full of images of what Susie called the BMV, the Blessed Virgin Mary. The BMV was always in a space suit, carrying a little space to do Jesus. Their helmets were airbrushed gold halos. The artwork had a cheap hasty look to it. I seemed Ray hadn't spent as much as Susie. Quickly I stripped down to my underclothes. I plundered into my own unpainted surge tank and closed the lid. The buffering gel slushed in. Within about 20 seconds I was already feeling drowsy. By the time traffic control gave us the green light I'd be asleep. I've done it a thousand times. There was no fear, no apprehension. Just a tiny flicker of regret. I've never seen an aperture. Then again, very few people have. Witnesses reported donut-shaped lump of dark contrite asteroid about two kilometres across. The entire middle section has been cored out, with the inner part of the ring-face but

11:16a quicksotic matter machinery of the aperture itself. They say the cumata machinery trinkels and moves all the while, like the ticking innards of a very complicated clock, but the monitoring systems of the aperture authority detect no movement at all. It's alien technology. We have no idea how it works or even who made it. Maybe in hindsight it's better not to be able to see it. It's enough to dream and then awake and know that you're somewhere else. Try a different approach. Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing. Another checkered flag for the books. Time to celebrate with Jamba. Jump in at JambaCasino.com. Let's Jamba. No purchase necessary. BTW Group. Boy, we're prohibited by law. CCNC. 21 plus. Sponsored by JambaCasino. Tell her the truth this time. We shall take it easier than you think. There's no way I can tell her the truth. Reddick leans one hip against the wall, one hand still in her pocket. Then tell her something halfway truthful. We implomb Susie and hole her out of the search tank. Where are we? She asks. Then to Greta. Who are you? I wonder if some of the last conversation did make it out of Susie's short term memory

12:19after all. Greta works here, I say. Where is here? I remember what Greta told me. A station in Shattersector. That's not where we're meant to be, Tom. A nod. I know. There was a mistake. A routing error. Susie's already shaking her head. There was nothing wrong. I know. It was your fault. I help her in her ship clothes. She's still shivering, her muscles reacting to movement after so much time in the tank. This syntax was good. Then what? The system made a mistake, not you, Shattersector. Susie says. That would put us about 10 days off our schedule, wouldn't it? I try and remember what Greta said to me the first time. I ought to know this stuff by heart, but Susie's the routing expert, not me. That sounds about right, I say. But Susie shakes her head. Then we're not in Shattersector. I try to sound pleasantly surprised. We're not. What? I've been in that tank for a lot longer than a few days, Tom. I know. I can feel it in every fucking bone in my body, so where are we? I turn to Greta.

13:19I can't believe this is happening again, ended, I say. Greta steps towards Susie. You know that, as soon as I woke up, I knew everything was wrong, cliché. You probably heard it a thousand times and a thousand bars across the bubble, wherever ship crew swapped all tails for the flat. Companies subsidized beer. The trouble is that sometimes that's exactly the way it happens. I never felt good after a period in the surged hank, but the only time I had ever come around feeling anywany of this bad was after that trip I took to edge of the bubble. Molling this, but knowing there was nothing I could do about it until I was out of the tank, it took me half an hour of painful work to free myself from the connections. Every muscle fiber in my body felt like it had been shredded. Unfortunately the sense of wrongness didn't end with the tank. The blue goose was much too quiet. We should have been heading away from the last exit aperture after our routing, but the distant, comforting rumble of the fusion engines wasn't there at all. That meant we weren't freeful. Not good. I floated out of the tank, grabbed a handhold, and levied myself around to view the other two tanks. Raised large as BMV stared back radiantly from the cowl of his tank.

14:21The bio indices were all in a green. Ray was still unconscious, but there was nothing wrong with him. Same story with Susie. Some automated system had decided I was the only one who needed waking. A few minutes later I had made my way to the same observation blister I used to check the shape before the surge. I pushed my head into the scuff glass half dome and looked around. We'd arrived somewhere. The blue goose was sitting in a huge zero gravity parking bay. The chamber was an elongated cylinder, hexagonal and cross-section. The walls were a smear of service machinery, squat modules, sneaking umbilical lines, the retracted cradles of unused docking berths. Whichever way I looked, I saw other ships locked into cradles. Every make and class you could think of, every possible configuration of whole design compatible with aperture transitions. Service lights through a warm golden glow on the scene. Now and then the whole chamber was bathed in a stuttering violet flicker of a cutting torch. It was a repair facility. I was just starting to mull on that when I saw something extend itself from the wall of the chamber. It was a telescopic tucking tunnel cropping toward our ship.

15:22Through the windows inside of the tunnel I saw figures floating, pulling themselves long hand over hand. I sighed and started making my way to the airlock. By the time I reached the lock, they were already through the first stage of the cycle. Nothing wrong with that. There was no good reason to prevent foreign pod as boarding a vessel, but it was just a tiny bit in polite. But perhaps they'd assumed we were all asleep. The door slid open. After awake a man said, Captain Thomas got all pet of the blue goose, isn't it? I guess so. I said, mind if we come in. There were about half a dozen of them, and they were already coming in. They all wore slightly time worn osher overalls, flashed with too many company sigils. My hackles rose. I didn't really like the way they were barging in, what's up? I said, where are we? Where do you think the man said he had a full face of stubble with bad yellow teeth. I was impressed by that. Having bad teeth these days took a lot of work. It was just since it's seen anyone who had the same dedication to the art. I'm really hoping you're not going to tell me we're still stuck in our changel system. I said, no, you made it through the gate. And there was a screw up, rotting air.

16:23You didn't pop out of the right aperture. Oh, Christ, I took off my bib cap that never rains. Something went wrong with the insertion. Right? Maybe, maybe not. Who knows how these things happen? All we know is you aren't supposed to be here. Right, and where's here? Some lucky station, Shattersector. He said it as though he was already losing interest. As if this was a routine he went through several times a day. He might have been losing interest, but I wasn't. I'd never heard of some lucky station, but I'd certainly heard of Shattersector. Shatter was a case supergiant out toward the edge of the local bubble. It defined one of the 70 odd navigational sectors across the whole bubble. Did I mention the bubble already? You know how the Milky Way galaxy looks. You've seen it a thousand times in paintings and computer simulations. A bright central bolt at the galactic core, with lazily curved spiral ons flowing out from the hub, each are uncomposed of hundreds of billions of stars ranging from the dimest, slow-burning dwarfs to the hottest supergiant's teetering on the edge of supernova extinction. Now zoom in on one arm of the Milky Way. There's the sun, orange yellow, about two-third up from the center of the galaxy,

17:23and folds of dust swaddled a sun out to distances of tens of thousands of light years. Yet the sun itself is sitting right in the middle of a four hundred light-year white hole in the dust, a bubble in which the density is about a twentieth of its average value. That's the local bubble. It's as if God blew a hole in the dust just for us. Except, of course, it wasn't God. It was a supernova about a million years ago. Now look further out, and there are more bubbles. There are walls into sexting and merging, forming a vast froth like structure tens of thousands of light years across. There are the structures of loop one and loop two in the lean blood ring. There are even super dense knots where the dust is almost too thick to be seen through it all. Coals like the towers were row of fuchsia dark clouds, or the aqua rift itself. Lying outside the local bubble, the rift is the furthest point in the galaxy we've ever traveled to. It's not a question of endurance or nerve. This simply isn't a way to get beyond it, at least not within the faster than light network of the abdelinks. The rabbit-warren of possible routes just doesn't reach any further. Most destinations, including most of those in the blue goose's itinerary, didn't even

18:24get you beyond the local bubble. For us, it didn't matter. There's still a lot of commerce you can do within one hundred light years of earth. The shatter was right in the periphery of the bubble, where dust density began to ramp up to normal galactic levels. Two hundred twenty-eight light years from other earth. Again, not good. I know this is a shock for you, but it's not as bad as you think it is. I look to the woman who had just spoken. Medium height, a kind of face they called oven, was slanted, ash grey eyes in a bar of shoulder-length chrome white hair. The face is chewing the familiar. It isn't. I wouldn't say so, Tom. After all, it's given us the chance to catch up on old times, hasn't it? She smiled. Greta? I asked disbelievingly. She nodded. For my sins. My God, it is you, isn't it? I wasn't sure you'd recognize me, especially after all this time. You didn't have much trouble recognizing me. I didn't have to. The moment you popped out, we picked up your recovery, transponder, told us the name of your ship, who owned her, who was flying it. What you were carrying, where you were supposed to be hid it.

19:25When I heard it was you, I made sure I was part of the reception team. But don't worry, it's not like you've changed all that much. Well, you haven't either, I said. It wasn't quite true, but who honestly wants to hear that they look about ten years over than the last time you saw them, even if they still don't look all that bad with it. I thought about how she had looked naked, memories that I'd kept buried for a decade spilling into daylight. It shined me that they were still so vivid, as if some furative part of my subconscious had been secretly holding them three years of marriage and fidelity. Greta half-smiled. It was as if she knew exactly what I was thinking. You were never a good liar, Tom. Yeah, guess I need some practice. There was an awkward silence. Neither of us seemed to know what to say next. While we hesitated, the others floated around us, saying nothing. Well, I said, who'd have guessed we'd end up meeting like this? Retired nodded and offered the palms of her hands in a kind of apology. I'm just sorry we aren't meeting under better circumstances, but if it's any consolation. What happened wasn't an older fall, we checked your syntax, and there wasn't a mistake. It's just that now and then the system throws a glitch, funny how no one likes to talk

20:27about that very much. I said it could have been worse, Tom. I remember what you used to tell me about space travel, yeah. Which particular pearl of wisdom would that have been if you're in a position to moan about a situation? You've got no right to be moaning, Christ. Did I actually say that? And I bet you're regretting it now. But look, it really isn't that bad. Your only 20 days off schedule. Colding says you'll only need a day of damage repair before you can move off again. And then another 20 minutes 25 days before you reach your destination, depending on routing patterns. This list in six weeks, so you lose the bonus on this one. Big deal. You're all in good shape and your ship only needs a little work. So why don't you just buy the bullet and sign the repair paperwork? We're not looking forward to another 20 days in the surge tank. There's something else as well, which is I was about to tell her about Catarina, how she'd have been expecting me back already. Instead, I said, I'm worried about the others, Sissy and Ray. They've got families expecting them. They'll be worried. I understand. Sissy and Ray. They're still asleep, aren't they? Still in the surge tanks, yes. I said, guardedly. Keep them that way until you're on your way. There's no sense in worrying them about the families. Either it's kinda. If you say so, trust me on this one. Tom.

21:27This isn't the first time I've handled this kind of situation, doubt it'll be the last. I stayed in a hotel overnight, in another part of some larky. The hotel was echoing. Multi-level prefab structure, sunk deep in a bedrock. It must have had a capacity for hundreds of guests. But at the moment, only a handful of the rooms seemed to be occupied. I slept fitfully and got up early. In the atrium, I saw a bit capped walker and rubber gloves removing disease carp from a small ornamental pond, watching him pick out the ailing metallic orange fish. I had a flash of deja vu. What was it about? Dismal hotels and dying carp, before breakfast, bleakly allowed, even though I didn't really feel as if it had a good night's sleep. I visited Colding and got a fresh update in the repair schedule two or three days. He said it was a day last night, colding short, you've got a problem with the service. Find someone else to fix your ship. Then he stuck his little finger into the corner of his mouth and began to dig between his teeth, nice to see someone who really enjoys his work. I said, I left Colding before my moot worsened too much, making my way to a different part of the station. Greta suggested we meet for breakfast and catch up on all times. She was there when I arrived, sitting at a table in an outdoor terrace under a red and white striped canopy, sipping orange juice, the buffus was a doned several hundred meters

22:29wide, projecting a cloudless holographic sky. It had the hard, an amable blue of midsummer, has the hotel. She asked after I ordered a coffee from the waiter, not bad, no one seems very keen on conversation though, visit me or does that place have all the cheery ambience of a sinking ocean liner, it's just this place. Everyone who comes here has pissed off about it. Either they got transferred here and they're pissed off about that, or they ended up here by routing error and they're pissed off about that instead. Take your pick. No one's happy, only the ones who know they're getting out of here soon. Would that include you? No. She said, I'm more or less stuck here, but I'm okay about it, I guess I'm the exception that proves the rule. The waiters, with glass manquins, the kind that had been fashionable in the core wells about 20 years ago, one of them placed a quass in front of me, then poured gold in black coffee into my cup. Well, it's good to see you too, Tom. Greta finished her orange juice and then took a corner of my quassifer herself without asking. Rubble Wallace here from 2311 Racing. You know what's slower than a pace car? Waiting at the car wash. That's when I fire up Chamba Casino.

23:30It turns those slow minutes into fast fun. With new games every week, you'll never get bored. Next time you're stuck in the slow lane, speed up with Chamba. Play now at chambacasino.com. Let's Chamba. Sponsored by Chamba Casino, no purchase necessary, VGW GroupFord, where prohibited by law, 21 plus terms and conditions apply. I heard you got married, yes. Well, are you going to tell me about her? I drank some of my coffee, her name's Catarina, nice name. She works in the department of biorumidation on Kagawa. Kids. Greta asked, not yet. It wouldn't be easy, the amount of time we both spend away from home. Hum. She had a mouthful of gossip, but one day you might think about it. I mean, nothing's ruled out, I said, as flattered as I was the sheer to go, was taking such an interest in me. The surgical precision of her questions left me slightly uncomfortable, there was no thirst and power, no fishing for information, that kind of directness and nerve, but at least it allowed me to ask the same questions, what about you then? Nothing very exciting. I got married a year or so after I lost soy, a man called Marcel, Marcel, I said,

24:31ruminatively as if the name had cosmic significance, well, unhappy for you. I take it, he's here too, no. Our work took us in different directions. We're still married, but Greta left the sentence hanging, it can't be easy, I said, if it was meant to work. Greta found a way, anyway, don't feel too sorry for either of us, we both got our work, I wouldn't say I was any less happy than the last time we met, well, that's good, I said. Frida leaned over and touched my hand. Her fingernails were midnight black with a blue sheen. Look, this is really presumptuous of me, it's one thing asking to meet up for breakfast, it would have been rude not to, but how would you like to meet again later, it's really nice to eat here in the evening, they turn down the lights, the view through the dome is really something. I looked up into the endless holographic sky, I thought it was faked. Oh, it is, but don't let that spoiler for you, she said. I settled in front of the camera and started speaking. Katarina, I said. Hello, I hope you all right by now, I hope someone from the company will have been in touch, if they haven't, I'm pretty sure you'll have made your own inquiries, I'm not sure what they told you, but I promise you, we're safe and sound and that we're coming home,

25:31I'm calling from somewhere called Samaki Station, a repair facility on the edge of Siddosecta, it's not much to look at, just a warrant of tunnels and centrifuges dug into a pitch-black D-type asteroid, about half a light year from the nearest star, the only reason it's here, all is because there happens to be an aperture next door, that's how we got here in the first place, somewhere or another. Leguce took a wrong turn in the network, what they call a rotting air, the goose came at last night, local time, and I've been in a hotel since then, I didn't call last night because I was too tired and disoriented after coming out of the tank, and I didn't know how long we were going to be here, it seemed better to wait until morning when we'd have a better idea of the damage to the ship, it's nothing serious. Just a few bits and pieces buckled during the trance, it means we're going to be here for another couple of days, called him, he's a repair chief, says free at the most, by the time we get back on course, however it will be about 45 days behind schedule, I paused, I in the increment and cost indicator, before I sat down in the booth, I always had an eloquent and economical speech queued up in my head, one that conveyed exactly what needed to be said, with a measure and grease of a soliloquy, but my mind always dried up as soon as I opened my mouth, and instead of an actor I ended up sending like a small-time thief concocting some fumbling alibi in the presence of a quick-witted interrogator, I smiled

26:34awkwardly and continued, it kills me to think this message is going to take so long to get to you, but if there's a silver lining, it's that I won't be far behind it, by the time you get this, I should be home only a couple of days later, so don't waste your money replying to this, because by the time you get it, I'll already have left some ackey station just stay where you are, and I promise I'll be home soon, that was it, there was nothing more I needed to say other than, I miss you, to live it after a moment's pause, I meant it sounded emphatic, but when I replete a recording, it sounded more like an afterthought, I could have recorded it again, but I'd diverted that I would have been any happier, instead, I'd just committed a disgusting message for transmission and wandered how long it would have to wait before going on its way, since it seemed unlikely that there was a vast flow of commerce in and out of some lackey, our ship might be the first citable at Ban Vessel, I emerged from the booth for some reason, I felt guilty, as if I had been in some way neglectful, it took me a while before I realized what was plain on my mind, I told Katerina about some ackey station, I'd even told her about colding and the damage to the blue goose, but I hadn't told her about Greta, it's just not working with Susie, she's too sweet, too well attuned to the physiological correlatives of surge tank immersion, I can give her all the reassurances in the world, but she knows

27:34she's been under too long for this to be anything other than a truly ethics grew up, she knows that we aren't just talking weeks or even months of delay here, every nerve in her body is screaming that message into her skull, I had dreams, she says, when the grogginous fades, what kind dreams that I kept waking dream that you were pulling me out of the surge tank you and someone else, I'd do my best to smile, I'm alone, but Greta isn't far away, the epidemics in my pocket now, personally, I always get bad dreams coming out of the tank, I say, these felt real, your story kept changing, but you kept telling me we were somewhere, we'd gone a little off-course, but that it was nothing to worry about, so much for Greta's reassurance that Susie will remember nothing after our boarded efforts at waking her, seems that her short-term memory isn't quite as fallible as we'd like, it's funny you should say that, I tell her, because actually we're a little off-course, she's sharper with every breath, she was always the best of us at coming out of the tank, tell me how far Tom, farther than I'd like, she balls her fist, I can't tell if it's a aggression or some lingering neuromuscular effect of her time in the tank, how far beyond

28:34the bubble, beyond the bubble, yes, her voice grows small and childlike, tell me Tom, are we beyond the rift, I can hear the fear, I understand what she's going through, it's a nightmare that all ship crews live with on-ever trip, that's something we'll go wrong with the routing, something so severe that they'll end up on the very edge of the network, that they'll end up so far from home that getting back will take years, not months, and that of course, years will have already passed even before they begin the return trip, that loved ones will be years older when they reach home, if they're still there, if they still remember you or want to remember, if they're still recognisable or alive, the aqua rift is short and for the trick no one ever hopes to make by accident, the one that will screw up the rest of your life, the one that creates the ghost you see haunting the shadows of company bars across the whole bubble, men and women, ripped out of time, cut the drift from families and lovers by accident of alien technology we use but barely comprehend, yes I say, we're beyond the rift, Susie screams knitting her face into a mask of anger and denial, my hand is called round a hypodermic, I consider her using it,

29:40I received a new repair estimate from colding, five, six days maybe, this time I didn't even argue, I just shrugged and walked out and wandered how long it would be next time, that evening I sat down at the table where Greta and I had met over breakfast, the dining area had been well lit before, but not only elimination came from the table lamps and the subdue lighting panels set into the paving, in a distance for gas mana quen cycled from empty table to empty table, playing a stirris on a glass guitar, there were no other patrons dining tonight, I didn't have to wait long for Greta, I'm sorry I'm late Tom, I turned to her as she approached the table, I liked the way she walked in the low gravity of the station, the way the subdue lighting traced the arc of her hips and waist, she eased into her seat and leaned toward me in a manner of a conspirator, the lamp on the table threw red shadows and gold highlights across her face, it took ten years off her age, you aren't late I said, and anyway I had the view, it's an improvement isn't it, that wouldn't be saying much I said with a smile, but yes it's definitely an improvement, I could sit out here all night

30:42and just look at it, in fact sometimes that's exactly what I do, just me in a bottle of wine, I don't blame you, instead of the holographic blue that the dome was now full of stars, it was like no view I'd ever seen from another station uship, there were furious blue white stars embedded in what looked like sheets of velvet, there were hard gold gems and soft red smears, like fingers smears in pastel, there were streams and currents of fainty stars like a myriad of neon fish caught in a snapshot of frozen motion, there were bluffs of osher dust, so rich and redimensional structure that they resembled an exuberant impasto of all colors, contours light years thicklaed on with a trowel, red or pink stars burned through the dusk like lanterns, often worlds were caught erupting from the towers, little sperm like shaped trailing visor of dust, here and there I saw the tiny eye like knots of birthing solar systems, there were pulsars flashing on and off like navigation beacons, the differing rhythm seemed to set a stately tempo for the entire scene, like a death of slow waltz, there seemed too much detail for one view and overwhelming abundance of

31:42richness, and yet no matter which direction I looked, there was yet more to see, as if the dome sensed my attention and concentrated its efforts and spot where my gaze was directed. For a moment I felt a lurching sense of dissonance, and though I tried to stop it before I made a fool of myself, I found myself grasping the side of the table as if to prevent myself from falling into the infinite depths of the view, yes, it has that effect on people grudder said, it's beautiful I said, do you mean beautiful or terrifying? I realised I wasn't sure, it's big was all I could offer. Of course it's faked, Kareta said, her voice off now that she was leaning closer. The glass in the dome is mott, exaggerates the brightness of the stars so that the human eye registers the differences between them, otherwise the colors are on to meelistic, everything else you see is also pretty accurate if you accept that certain frequencies have been shifted into the visible band and the scale of certain structures has been adjusted, she pointed out features from my edification that's the edge of the tourist dot cloud with the plates just poking out. That's a filament of the local bubble. You see that open cluster? She waited for me to answer, yes I said, that's the hides, over there you've got Beetlejuice

32:45and Pulatrix, I'm impressed, you should be, it cost a lot of money, she leaned back a bit so that the shadows drop across her face again or are you alright Tom? You seem a bit distracted, aside I just got another prognosis from your friend calling, that's enough to put a dent in anyone's day, I'm sorry about that, there's something else too, I said, something that's been bothering me since I came out of the tank, Manekwin came to take our order, I like gratitude for me, you can talk to me about it, whatever it is, she said when the Manekwin had gone, it isn't easy, something personal then, is it about Katarina, she bit her Tom, no sorry I shouldn't have said that, it's not about Katarina, not exactly anyway, but even as I said it, I knew that in a sense it was about Katarina, how long it was going to be before we saw each other again, go on Tom, this is going to sound silly but I wonder if everyone's being straight with me, it's not just colding, it's you as well, when I came out of the tank I felt the same way I felt when I had been out to the rift, whereas if anything I felt like I'd been in a tank for a long,

33:48long time, it feels that way sometimes, I know the difference creda, trust me on this, so what are you saying, the problem was that I wasn't really sure, it was one thing to feel a vague sense of an ease about how long I'd been in the tank, it was another to come out and accuse my host of lying, especially when she had been so hospitable, is there any reason you'd lie to me, come off it Tom, what kind of question is that, as soon as I had said it, it sounded absurd and offensive to me as well, I wished I could reverse time and start again, ignoring my misgivings, I'm sorry I said, stupid, just put it down to messed up by rhythms or something, she reached across the table and took my hand as she had done at breakfast, this time she continued to hold it, you really feel wrong don't you, coldings games aren't helping, that's for sure, the waiter brought a wine, setting it down, a bottle chinking against his delicately articulated glass fingers, the mannequin poured two glasses and a sampled mine, maybe if I had someone else from a crew to bitch about it all with, I wouldn't feel so bad, I know you said we shouldn't wake Susie and Ray, but that was before a one day stop

34:53of return into a week, redash rogged, if you want to wake them, no one's going to stop you, but don't think about ship business now, let's not spoil a perfect evening, I looked up at the star escape, there was heightened with the match shimmering intensity of a van Gogh night scape, it made one feel drunken ecstatic just to look at it, what could possibly spoil it? to chill out and enjoy a few minutes for yourself, let's chombo! No purchase necessary, VGW Group Voidware prohibited by law CTs and Cs 21 Plus sponsored by Chomba Casino, I asked, what happened is that I drank too much wine and ended up sleeping with Greta, I'm not sure how much of a part of the wine played in it for her, if her relationship with Marcel was in as much trouble as she'd made out then obviously she had less to lose than I did,

35:56yes that made it alright didn't it, she ate the seductress her own marriage erect, me the harpers victim, I'd lapsed but it wasn't really my fault, I'd been alone, far from home, emotionally fragile and she had exploited me, she'd soften me up with a romantic meal her trap already sprung, except all of that was self justifying bullshit wasn't it, if my own marriage was in such great shape why had I failed to mention Greta when I called home, at the time I justified that omission as an act of kindness toward my wife, Katarina didn't know that Greta and I had never been a couple but why worry Katarina by mentioning another woman even if I pretended that we'd never met before, except now I could see that I'd failed to mention Greta for another reason entirely, because in the back of my mind even then there had been a possibility that we might end up sleeping together, I was already covering myself what I called Katarina, already making sure there wouldn't be any awkward questions when I got home as if I not only knew what was going to happen secretly young for it, the only problem was that Greta had something else in mind, Tom Greta said nudging me toward rakefulness, she was lying naked next to me,

36:59leaning on one elbow with the sheets crumpled down around her hips, the light in her room turned her into an obstruction of milky blue curves and deep violet shadows, with one black nail finger she traced a line down my chest and said there's something you need to know, what, I asked, I lied, cold and lied, we all lied, I was too drowsy for her words to have much more than a vaguely troubling effect, all I could say again was, what, you are not in some lackey station, you're not in shader sector, I started waking up properly, say that again a routing error was more severe than you would let to believe it took you far beyond the local bubble, a group for anger, even resentment but all I felt was a diseng sensation of falling, how far out, farther than you thought possible, the next question was obvious, beyond the rift, yes, she said with a faintest of smiles as if humoring me in a game whose rules and objectives she found ultimately demeaning, beyond the aqua rift, a long, long way beyond it, I need to know Greta, she pushed herself from the bed, reached for a gown, then get dressed, I'll show you,

38:02I followed Greta in a days, she took me to the dome again, it was dark just as it had been the night before, with only to lumblit tables to act as beacons, I suppose that the elimination throughout to Mackey station, or wherever this was, was that the women of its occupants and didn't necessarily have to follow any recognizable deonal cycle, nonetheless, it was still unsettling to find a change so arbitrarily, even if Greta had the authority to turn out the lights when she wanted to, didn't anyone else object, but I didn't see anyone else to object, there was no one else around, only a glass mannequin standing at attention with a knockin over one arm, she sat us at a table, do you want a drink, Tom, no thanks, for some reason I'm not quite in the mood, she touched my wrist, don't hate me for lying to you, it was done out of kindness, I couldn't break the truth to you in one go, sharply I would drew my hand, shun an hybrid, a judge of that, so what is the truth exactly, it's not good, Tom, tell me, then I'll decide, I didn't see her do anything, but suddenly the dome was filled with stars again just as it had been the night before,

39:03the view lurched, zooming outward, stars flowed by from all sides like white sleet, nebulae ghosted past and spectral wisps, the sense of motion was so compelling that I found myself gripping the table seized by vertigo, easy Tom Greta whispered, the view lurched, swerved, contracted, a solid wall of gas sland passed, now suddenly I had the sense that we were outside something, that we had punched beyond some containing fear to find only in vague ox and knots of cuddled gas were the indistella gas density increased sharply, of course it was obvious, we were beyond the local bubble, and we were still receding, I watched the bubble itself contract becoming just one member in a large froth of forwards, instead of individual stars I saw only smudges and motes, aggregations of hundreds of thousands of sons, it was like pulling back from a close-up view of a forest, I could still see clearings but the individual trees have vanished into an amorphous mass, and we kept pulling back, then the expansions slowed and froze, I could still make out the local bubble but only because I had been concentrating on it all the way out, otherwise there was nothing

40:07to distinguish it from the dozens of surrounding voids, is it how far out we've come, I asked, Greta shook her head, let me show you something, again she did nothing that I was aware of but the bubble I had been looking at was suddenly filled with the skin of red lines like a child scribble, aperture connections I said, as shocked as I was by the fact that she had lied to me, and as fearful as I was about whether truth might hold, I couldn't turn off the professional part of me, the part that took pride in recognising such things, bread and ordered, those are the main commerce routes, the well map connections between large colonists and major trading hubs, now I'll add all map connections, including those that have only ever been traversed by accident, scribble did not change dramatically, it gained a few more wild loops and hair pins, including one that reached beyond the wall of the bubble to touch the sumward end of the aqua rift, one or two other additions pierced a wall in different directions, but none of them reached as far as the rift, where are we, we're at the end of one of those connections, you can't see it because it's pointing directly toward you, she smiled slightly, I needed to establish the

41:08scale that we're dealing, how wide is the local bubble tom 400 light years give or take, my patience was wearing thin but I was still curious, sounds about right, and while I know that aperture travel times vary from point to point, with factors depending on average apology and syntax optimization, isn't it the case that the average speed is about 1000 times faster than light, give or take, so a journey from one side of the bubble might take, what half a year, say five or six months, a year to the aqua rift, you know that already grader, we both know it, alright then consider this, and the view contracted again, the bubble to windling, a succession of overlaying structures concealing it, darkness coming into view on either side, and the familiar spiral swirl of the Milky Way galaxy limelight, hundreds of billions of stars, packed together in forming white lanes of cease-view, this is the view, grader said, it harnessed of course, brightened and filtered for human consumption, but a few had eyes with near perfect quantum efficiency, and if they happen to be about a meter wide, this is more or less what you'd see if you stepped outside the station, I don't believe you, what I meant was I didn't

42:09want to believe her, get used to it Tom, you're a long way up, the station's orbiting a brown dwarf star in the large Magellanic Cloud, your 150,000 light years from home, no I said, my voice little more than a moon of abject childlike denial, it felt as though you'd spent a long time in the tank, you were dead right, subjective time, I don't know, here is easily maybe a decade, but objective time, the time that passed back home, is a lot clearer, it took blue goose 150 years to reach us, even if you turned back now you'd have been away for 300 years Tom, Katarina, I said her name like an invocation Katarina's dead, were tear told me, she's already been dead century, how do you adjust to something like that, the answer is that you can't count on adjusting to it, at all, not everyone does, grader told me that she had seen just about every possible reaction in the spectrum, and the one thing she had learned was that it was next impossible to predict how given individual would take the news she had seen people adjust to the revelation with little more than a world worry shrug, as if this were merely the latest in a line of going surprises life had thrown at them, no worse in its way than illness or bereave until any number of personal setbacks,

43:11she had seen others walk away and killed themselves half an eye or later, but the majority, she said, did eventually come to some kind of accommodation with the truth, however faltering and painful the process, trust me Tom, I know you now, I know you have the emotional strength to get through this, I know you can learn to live with it, but why didn't you tell me straight away, as soon as I came out of the tank, because I didn't know if you were going to be able to take it, you waited until after you knew I had a wife, no, they waited until after we made love, because then I knew cutery couldn't mean that much to you, fuck you, fuck me, yes, you did, this is the point, I wanted to strike out against her, but what I was angry it was not her insinuation, but the gold harder truth of it, she was right and I knew it, I just didn't want to deal with that, any more than I wanted to deal with the here and now, I waited for the anger to subside, you say we're not the first, I said no, we were the first, I suppose, the ship I came in, luckily it was well equipped, after the routing error, we had enough supplies to set up a self-sustaining station on the nearest rock, we knew there was no going back, but at least we could make some kind of life for ourselves here, and after that, we had enough to do just keeping ourselves alive the first few years, but then another ship came through the aperture, damaged, drifting, much like blue goose, we hauled her in warm to crew, broke the news to them,

44:13had they take it about as well as you'd expect, Greta laughed hollily to herself, a couple of them went mad, another killed herself, but at least a dozen of them are still here, in all honesty, it was good for us that another ship came through, not just because they had supplies we could use, but because it helped us to help them, took our minds off our own self-pity, it made us realise how far we'd come, and how much help these newcomers needed to make the same transition that wasn't the last ship, either, we've gone through the same process with eight or nine others since then, Greta looked at me, her head cocked against her hand, there's a thought for you, Tom, there is she nodded, it's difficult for you now, I know, and it'll be difficult for you for some time to come, but it can help to have someone else to care about, it can speak with the transition, like who, I asked, like one of your other crew members, you could try waking one of them now, Greta said, Greta's with me when I pull Susie out of the search tank, why her, Greta asks, because I want her out first, I say, wondering if for it is jealous, I don't blame her, Susie's beautiful, but she's also smart, there isn't a better syntax runner in a shanty industrial, what happened? Susie asks, when she's over the grauginess, did we make it back? I asked her to tell me the last thing she remembers, customs Susie says, those pricks on our changel, and after that, anything else, the runes,

45:17do you remember casting them? No, she says, then picks up something in my voice, the fact that I might not be telling the truth, or telling her all she needs to know, Tom, I'll ask you again, did we make it back? A minute later, we're putting Susie back into the tank, that hasn't worked this first time, maybe the next try, but it kept not working with Susie, she was always more clever and quicker than me, she always had been as soon as she came out of the tank, she knew that we'd come a lot further than she had her sector, she was always head of my lies and excuses, it was different when it happened to me, I told Greta, when we were lying next to each other again days later, with Susie still in the tank, I had all the nagging doubts she has, I think, but as soon as I saw you standing there, I forgot all about that stuff Greta nodded, her hair fell across her face and disheveled, sleep-matic curtains, she had a strand of it between her lips, it helped seeing a friendly face took my mind off the problem, that's for sure, you'll get there in the end, she said. Anyway, from Susie's point of view, aren't you a friendly face as well? Maybe, I said, but she'd been expecting me, he were the last person in the world I expected to see standing there, Greta touched her knuckle against the side of my face, her smooth skin slid against double, it's getting easier for her, isn't it? I don't know, I said, you're a strong man, Tom, I knew you'd come through this, I haven't come through it yet,

46:20I said, I felt like a tightrope walk a half way across Niagara Falls, it was a miracle I'd made it as far as I had, that didn't mean I was home and dry, it's still, Greta was right, there was hope, I'd felt no crushing spasms of grief over Katerina's death, or enforced absence, or however you wanted to put it, all I felt was a better sweep for Greta, the way one might feel about a broken air limo long lost pet, I felt no animosity toward Katerina, and I was sorry that I would never see her again, but I was sorry about not seeing a lot of things, maybe it would become worse in the days ahead, maybe I was just postponing a breakdown, I didn't think so, in the meantime, I continued trying to find a way to deal with Susie, she had become a puzzle that I couldn't leave and solve, I could have just walk in her up and let her deal with the news as best as she could, but the scene cruel and insatisfactory, Greta had broken it to me gently, giving me time to settle in my news surroundings, and take that necessary step away from Katerina. When she finally broke the news, as shocking as it was, it didn't shatter me, I'd or- Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing, victory lane? Yeah, it's even better with Jamba by my side, race to chumpacaceno.com, let's Jamba, don't purchase necessary, VTW Group, void, we're prohibited by law, CT and C's, 21 plus, sponsored by chumpacaceno.

47:24Pretty been primed for it, this thing taken out of the surprise, we Greta obviously helped, I couldn't offer Susie the same solace, but I was sure that there was a way for us to coax Susie to the same state of near acceptance, time after time we will occur and try to a different approach. Her other said there was a window of a few minutes before the event she was experiencing began to transfer in a long-term memory. If we knocked her out, the buffer of memories in short-term storage was wiped before it ever crossed the hippocampus in a long-term recall. Within that window, we could wake her up as many times as we'd like to try and end those permutations of the Revivalson area. At least, that's what Greta told me. We can keep doing this indefinitely, I said. Why not, I mean, isn't she going to remember something? Britta shrugged. Maybe, but I doubt this she'll attach any significance to those memories. Haven't you ever had fake feelings of deja vu coming out of the surge tank? Sometimes, I'm motted. Then don't sweat about it. She'll be alright. I promise you. Perhaps we should just keep her awake after all. That would be cruel. It's cruel to keep waking her

48:25up and shutting her down like a toy doll. There was a catch in her voice when she answered me. Keep at it, Tom. I'm sure you're close to finding a way in the end. It's helping you focus an on Susie. I always knew it would. I started to say something, but Greta pressed a finger to my lips. Britta was right about Susie. The challenge helped me, me taking my mind off my own predicament. I remembered what Greta had said about dealing with other crews in the same situation before Blue Goose put in. Clearly, she had learned many psychological tricks, gambits, and shortcuts to assist the transition to mental well-being. I felt a slight resentment at being manipulated so effectively, but at the same time, I couldn't deny that worrying about another human being had helped me with my own adjustment. When, days later, I stepped back from my immediate problem of Susie, I realized that something was different. I didn't feel far from home. I felt, in an odd way, privileged. I'd come further than almost anyone in history. I was still alive, and there were still people around to provide love and partnership in a web of social relations. Not just Greta, but all the other unlucky souls who had ended up at this station. If anything,

49:28they appeared to be more of them than when I had first arrived. The corridors sparsely populated up first, were increasing the busy, and when we ate under the dome, under the Milky Way, we were not the only diners. I studied the Lamplett faces, comforted by the vague familiarity, wondering what kinds of stores they had to tell, where they come from, who they had left behind, how they had adjusted to life here. There was time enough to get to know them all, and the place would never become boring. For at any time, as Greta had intimated, we could always expect another lost ship to drop through the aperture. Tragedy for the crew, but first challenges, first faces, fresh news from home for us. All in all, it was really so bad. Then it clicked. It was the man cleaning out the fish that did it in the lobby of the hotel. It wasn't just how familiar the process was, but the man himself. I'd seen him before. Another pond full of disease cop. Another hotel. Then I remember Colding's bad teeth, and recalled how they'd reminded me of another man I'd met long ago. Except it was another man at all. Different name, different context, but everything else was the same. And when I looked at the other diners, really looked at

50:29them, there was no one I couldn't swear I hadn't seen before. No single face that hit me with a force of utter unfamiliarity, which left Greta. I said to her, over wine, under the Milky Way, nothing here is real, is it? She looked at me with infinite sadness and shook her head. What about Susie? I asked her. Susie's dead. Ray is dead. They died in their surge tanks. How? Why them and not me? Something about particles of pain blocking intake filters. Not enough to make a difference over short distances, but enough to kill them on the trip out here. I think some part of me had always suspected. It felt less like a shocked and brutal disappointment. But Susie's seen so real, I said. Even the way she had doubts about how long she'd been in the tank. Even the way she remembered previous attempts to wake her. The last mannequin approached our table. Greta waved him away. I made her convincing the way she would have acted. He made her. You're not really awake, Tom. You're being fed data. This entire station is being simulated. I sit my wine. I expected it to taste suddenly thin and synthetic, but it still tasted

51:35like pretty good wine. Then I'm dead as well. Know you're alive. Still in your surge tank. But I haven't brought you to full consciousness yet. All right. The truth this time. I can take it. How much is real? Does the station exist? Are we really as far out as you say? Yes, the station exists. Just as I said it does. It just looks different. I net as in the large Magellanic cloud. And it is orbiting a brown dwarf star. Can you show me the station as it is? I could, but I don't think you're ready for it. I think you've found it difficult to adjust. I couldn't help laughing. Even after what I've already adjusted to. You've only made half the journey, Tom. But you made it. I did Tom, but for me it was different. Brett smile. For me, everything was different. Then she made the light show change again. None of the other diners appear to notice as we began to zoom in toward the Milky Way, crashing toward the spiral, roaming through shows about lying stars and gas clouds. Familiar landscape of the local

52:37bubble loomed large. The image froze. The bubble won amongst many such structures. Again, it filled with the violent red scribble of the aperture network. But now the network wasn't the only one. It was merely one ball of radiance amongst many, spaced out across tens of thousands of light years. None of the scribbles touched each other yet. In the way they were shaped, in the way they almost butted against each other, it was possible to imagine that they had once been connected. They were like the shapes of continents on a world with sictonic drift. It used to span the galaxy at a set. Then something happened. Something catastrophic, which I still don't understand. A shattering into vastly smaller domains, typically a few hundred light years across. Who made it? I don't know. No one knows. They probably aren't around anymore. Maybe that was white shattered out of neglect. But we found it, I said. The part of an era still worked. All the disconnected elements still function. You can't cross from the main to the main, but otherwise the apertures work as they were designed to, firing of course the occasional writing

53:38error. All right. If you can't cross from the main to the main, how did blue goose get this far out? We've come a lot further than a few hundred light years. You're right. But then such a long distance connection might have been engineered differently from the others. It appears that the links to the Magellanic Cloud were more resilient. When the domain shattered from each other, the connection's reaching beyond the galaxy remained intact. In which case you can cross from domain to domain, I said. But you have to come all the way out here first. The trouble is, not many want to continue the journey at this point. No one comes here deliberately, Tom. I still don't get it. What does it matter to me if there are other domains? Those regions of the galaxy are thousands of light years from Earth and without the apertures we'd have no way of reaching them. They don't matter. There's no one there to use them. Gratis smile was cacadish in knowing. What makes you so certain? Because, if there were, wouldn't there be alien shits popping out of the aperture here? If told me blue goose wasn't the first through, but our domain, the one in the local bubble, must be at numbered hundreds to one by all the others. If there are alien creatures out there,

54:42each stumbling on their own local domain, why haven't any of them come through the aperture the way we did? Again, that smile. But this time, it chilled my blood. What makes you think they haven't, Tom? I reached out and took her hand the way she had taken mine. I took it without forests, without malice, but with the assurance that this time I really sincerely meant what I was about to say. Her fingers tightened around mine. Show me, I said. I want to see things as they really are. Not just the station. You as well. Because by then, I'd realized Gratis hadn't just lied to me about Susie and Ray. She'd lied to me about the blue goose as well. Because we were not the latest human ship to come through. We were the first. You want to see it? She asked. Yes, stole of it. You won't like it. I'll be the judge of that. All right, Tom. But understand this. I've been here before. I've done this a million times. I care for all the lost souls. And I know how it works. You won't be able to take the reality of what's happened to you.

55:42You'll shrivel away from it. You'll go mad. Unless I substitute a calming fiction. A happy ending. What tell me that now? Because you don't have to see it. You can start to know where you are with an idea of the truth and inkling. But you don't have to open your eyes. Do it, I said. Gratis shrieked. She poured herself another measure of wine and made sure my own glass was charged. Yeah, for it. We were still holding hands. Two lovers sharing an intimacy. Then everything changed. It was just a flash. Just a glimpse. Like the view of an unfamiliar room if you turn the lights on for an instant. Shapes and forms. Relationships between things. I saw caverns. Wormed out. Unlinked. And things moving through those caverns, bustling along with the frantic industry of moles or ceramides. The things were seldom alike, even in the most superficial sense. Some move vibe propulsive waves of multiple clothe limbs. Some wriggled to move placks of carapace grinding against the glassy rock of the tunnels. The things move between caves in which

56:44lay the hulks of ships, almost all too strange to describe. And somewhere distant, somewhere near the heart of the rock, in a matriarchal chamber all of its own, something drummed up messages whose companions and help us, stiffly articulated, although like volumes beating against stretched upon a finely vain skin. Something that had been waiting here for centuries. Something that wanted nothing more than a care for the souls of the lost. Katarina's was Susie when they pulled me out of the search tank. It's bad. One of the worst revivals I'd ever gone for her. I feel as if every vein in my body has been filled with finely powdered glass. And for a moment, a long moment, even the idea of breathing seems insurmountably difficult, too hot, too painful even to contemplate. But it passes, as it always passes. After a while, I cannot only breathe that I can move and talk. Where? Easy, skip. Susie says. She leans over the tank and starts unplugging me. I can't help but smile. Susie's marked. There isn't a better syntax runner in a shanty industrial, but she's also beautiful. It's like being nursed by an angel. I wonder if Katarina is jealous.

57:45Where are we? I try again. It feels like I was in that thing for an eternity. Did something go wrong? Minor routing error, Susie says. We took some damage and they decided to wake me up first. But don't sweat about it. At least we're in one piece. Routing errors. You hear about them, but you hope they're never going to happen to you. What kind of delay? 40 days. So are you, Tom. Van goes our bonus. In anger, I hammer the side of the sewage tank, but Katarina steps toward me and places a common hand on my shoulder. It's all right, she says. Your home and dry. That's all that matters. I look at her and for a moment I remember someone else. Someone I haven't thought about in years. I almost remember her name and then the moment passes. I nod. Home and dry. And that is the end. Thank you for listening and I will see you in the next one. Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing. Victory Lane? Yeah, it's even better with Chamba by my side.

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