Garbage collectors, the bottom of the heap in terms of jobs. Everybody needs them, and no one respect them until something goes wrong or they go on strike. Their ships may look clean from afar but they are stinky, ratty, hulks. Their ships are rank and stink to hell. Ten orbits out, the sensors tell, their odor, that stench, oh that smell, toxic waste, in space-time hell. But they fulfill a need, relieving us of our waste in as far as we know here on the planet, some uncharted place.

Most are paid by the load, they’re not on the clock, so they keep the pulse jets throbbing @ the docks. The cost for wasted fuel is offset by the amount to restart and prepare for flight.

As I mentioned the ships are for the most part pretty ratty. The airlocks barely hold, the maintenance is frequently let go until the pull from gravity from where ever they are tilts the gauges to the red danger line, and the ships can’t lift.

For many the position is a comedown. The pilots were once proud owners of bright and shiny craft, high end ships, and fast. Now, they are foul, abused, and trashed. No one plans for this career. It’s designed for careless captains that have histories and can’t fly true, or those in arrears with payments due.

Say the cook to the crews many a time, "The galley’s broken, no grub to fill, so yer empty stomachs gotta fly on pills. But who can eat when the stench hangs thick on the airlock doors, their tattered uniforms, and in their pores.

Convicts seeking a reprieve gladly from their confinement will leave and, volunteer for a one year tour. And, if they make it one full year, then sentences lifted, to home and cheer. They are the only ones that seek this job. It reminds me of stories where convicts were offered freedom if they made it through a mine field. And in so doing, making it that is, showed a clear safe path for troops to follow. The safety factor here was about the same, zero to little or none. The ships disappeared into the blackness.

This all changed when a new black dark fleet, so nice and neat, flying in formation arrived at the scene one day. The ships were clean, no radiation leaking from the engine thruster bays. These ships are quick and lightening fast. The stink of old was something past.

It was a new boss is in this space, with rules and facilities all in place. He had a contract written up. "Take the contract or fly no more. The New Black Fleet’s golden garbage galore. Learn our way and methodology, we’re dumping our loads with such profitability."

But too many ships too wrecked to join. And purchase a new one? Most captains were short of coin. That was remedied with new and special legislation. You all know money buys the next election. They actually legislated that the cost and expenses could be pushed forward putting the burden, the weight of debt on future generations.

"Debt to generations future was the rallying cry, and congresses were paid off buy and buy
"No more worries, just sign here sir.
Live a life, pay through time, sir.
And what you can’t your progeny will find, sir
upon their life,
will work your job, sir."

(And whispering in no ones ear)
"To the generations, chains that hob, sir"

These were the new rules. The rules were tight with laws that bind. Just don’t screw up
or you’re off line was the threat to anyone who wanted to unionize.

These new garbage professionals were flying high and flying proud. Their money speaks volumes, and they needed not be loud. They take no guff, they’re hard and mean, in uniforms so bright, so clean.

But its not play. There are no stops for joy, no stops for breaks. Crews are doubled; one shift is constant and awake. "Dump your loads, about the face, back for more," is the order of the day. And internally the clean ships race each other for best of breed.

Flying high and flying fast, the new boss’s concept from self made test. He put his ship and himself to best first. What he did one day quite by accident and miscalculation, he flew to the sun’s corona, a chance, a bet, and burned the bow shock’s stench and left. The ship turned black, but no more stink. He had a concept and made it stick.

A sun burnt, slide-off, for his boat and no more skunky ships a-floated.

So now there is no more scorn, no derision. Pilots want to join this business division.

All the planets, they have to pay. The garbage has to go away. There just isn’t another way. It’s a high called living for all who were in the past, in the depth of despair, derision, debt and just the darkest of the population. Even their children were once scorned.

Darkness black ship where is thy sting, not any longer with the shekels cling!

April 19 2018:

James Carrilon had one chance to save his distress call to the ages. He hid it in Dark Matter. This was the stuff that took Phyicists years to decipher, and since long term disclosure had no particular time table, James felt fine with it.

He lived other parts of his oppressed life, then passed on.

Earthdate 2034 Month3 Day 23:2300

During routine examinations of planetarty masses, we have encountered a new mass which is too regular to be naturally formed. Efforts at deciphering the artificially enhanced dark matter configuration are underway. Stand by.

Mars Date 18:4:35

After some key researched us from Earth-Prime, we were able to apply a Parallax factor that they missed, and decoded what is apparently a 28 year old distress call, plus or minus Mars Year Conversions.

The message reads:

"To whomever receives this: Check the Ratios of China to the USA, in all applicable metrics. If more than 11 of 17 metrics equal a greater than 60% supremacy then assume that the USA is in dire peril. First assumption is that the threat is not Nuclear. Instead look toward Economic Measures. Good luck. Aryeon out.

Mars Date 35:9:2

Progress is proceeding well towards establishling Chinese Colonies on Mars. Americans prove to be most capable workers.

Earth Date 2038 Month 7 Day 4

Log: Earth Social Sciences Engineeer

My GrandPappey once told me that July 4 was supposed to be a Holiday, a day that the Americans picked to celebrate their establishment poltically from the English. We don't observe that any more. It is just another workday. Our Chinese economic overseers give us seven days off per year, so that is it. When faced with that ruthless choice, workers stopped wasting the days on Valentines, Easter, and July 4th. It is like those days went to the Dark Matter of efficiency.

Mars Date 46:11:1

CEO Council Notes

We had a hard year last year. Crops fell 12% with the bad weather, and we lost 10,000 lives or so. However, Shipments from Earth-Prime rose 6%, so we escaped the ravages of famine, barely. Barely. We need a strategy in place this year because we pulled out our last grace cards.

Earth Date 2040 Year of the Monkey

Memo: PlaneCorp CFO:

Months have been abolished. All progress is Yearly now because of excessive corruption on Quartely Reports. Monthly reports are still given to internal auditors. American Supremacy is on the decline. We had a period that we could fake it for about 20 years from 2015-2035, and then it all went downhill. Basically, too many short sighted fatcats ran off with the national budgets, and when the pieces spilled out there was nothing left. We are economically subservient to the other countries now. Germany left the EU to remain strong without the dragging influence of 6 mismanaged countries, and partnered with China in an unusual Sin-Germanic alliance. I am just a CFO, I don't know what that means 5 years out.

Prime Minister Blankiero, Brazil, AD 2057

All of this is quite easy now.

The Chinese did all the hard work, or shall we say, the easy work, by copying American Intellectual Property. Through the key signal decoded from the Dark Matter of the Cultural Prophet, we were ready for the Chinese expansion. However, absolutely everybody neglected us, so that a team of 2400 spies were able to copy and return with all significant intellectual developments worth having up until the year 2050. We will catalog those fresh recent years in due time.

With the Prophet's Warning, we laid out cultural universities subsidized by the government to catch up on a 20 year lag of innovation. We will have a new Saturn Base by 2065.

Peace,

Prime Minister Blankiero, Brazil.

"So what in Darwin's name went wrong?" Arezou Campbell looked around the room at the almost frozen faces staring back at her. "Ideas anyone? - Thoughts? - babbling metaphors?"

The small man in the back, farthest away from her angry glare shrugged his shoulders before diving in. "There are just too many variables to even give an theory. The ship was deep into unexplored territory , the neutrino-converter had been vamped-up to allow access to the unexplored region, the lidar had been re-opted for clearer diagnostics. Separately, all these factors had a proven history, but thrown in all together, the combination itself could have proved fatal."

Beb shot to his feet, banging his fist on the table. "Don't even go there, Sadgewick – the whole 'thrown together' inference, as if we just threw them out into the Leo Constellation without any forethought or planning."

"I told you it was a bad idea," the short man shot back, rising to his feet, looking at the taller man eye-to-eye.

Arezou's tone immediately became that of a counselor. "Gentlemen, gentlemen. Let's back it down a ratchet or two." The two men sat down, giving a look towards each other briefly to be sure the other was responding appropriately. "I apologize for my acquisitive tone, I'm just at the end of my rope." The CEO looked around the table and the 23 people gathered there.

"We're right there with you," said Beb, a hulk of a man, whose calm demeanor was in abject conflict with his overwhelming harsh looks.

The CEO of Armastaw Industries took a deep breath. "I've been told that we'll be able to view the ship's final minutes momentarily." Everyone sat back as though relaxing for the first time during the day-long ordeal since the loss of the starship. "Rachel, when can we expect that data?"

Almost as if by magic, a meter-tall holograph appeared over the center of the table. It was a picture of the inside of the ship. All the crew members were going about there normal tasks, checking panels and cracking jokes. It was as peaceful a scene as any of them could have imagined. It was too peaceful – perhaps. Maybe if someone had been more on guard…

"How far is this before the end?" asked Arezou to the computer running the holograph.

"36 seconds, 35…"

"Thank you, Jofer," said Arezou, returning her eyes to the scene.

Suddenly the demeanor of the crew changed. "There's something out there, sir! - or not out there."

"What is it, helmsman?" demanded the captain.

"It's an absence of material. It's absorbing the light from the Lidar instead of allowing it to bounce back. That's why we weren't receiving any information about its…"

"How large is it?" asked the captain, closing the gap between his console and the helmsman.

"It's amazing! It's as large as a planet – sir. Right here, in the middle of …"

Everything was gone.

Beb leaned forward towards were the virtual ship had been. "Did you see that? The ship exploded instead of imploded."

"Are you sure?" asked Sadgewick.

"Play the last 3 seconds back at 10% speed," instructed the CEO.

They all watched in horror as the center of the globe of virtual light began to expand, allowing the men to be pulled apart before the ship's hull lost integrity and was torn apart.

Beb was more steady now. "This was no accident – this was sabotage."

Arezou was thinking out loud now. It's as if that black shadow sucked up the ship, tearing it in all directions."

Suddenly the holograph flickered on, revealing a face whose contours could only be seen by it's negative form. "We have followed the path of this message back into your world," it proclaimed. "We apologize for any loss of life."

All were silent now, no one spoke, no one breathed.

"Hello. Why did you kill our crewmen?" whispered Arezou to the dark form.

"We are a lifeform living here, in the absence of light and life. Time with us moves 1000 times slower than you can envision – and the light bringer was killing us, as one after another of us absorbed as much light as we could and then desentagrated of over exposure. Hundreds of us dissolved, and we had to fight back. Once again, we are sorry for your loss of life. We are death itself – but we had no choice."

The CEO was beginning to understand now, amazed at discovering a new lifeform. "How can you be death?"

"Before your galaxy was formed, the tip of our galaxy collided with another one. Our people tried to escape away from the carnage, but all of those left in the stellar system were killed by the effects of the gravitational pull of the stars passing through the edge of our galaxy."

"How terrible for you!" said Beb.

"It was even worse than that. All of the souls from our stellar system were pulled from our dead planet – out here, into the void. We are the dead now – floating here between the stars."

"We are happy to meet you," said the CEO finally. "May we talk with you further?"

"It matters not to us," was the reply. "As we are the dead – the left behind."

Sadgewick was excited now. "We have the ability to harvest mind-waves and save them in digital form. Perhaps we could allow you to live in a new reality – a virtual one – a virtual universe."

The voice was silent for a moment. "We will talk again with you, bringers of life, bringers of light."

And both cultures breathed easy for a moment, smiling at their discovery of each other.

"How might it have happened? "Brett, the young fair-haired technician asked his captain, while looking at the monitors on the main deck of the starship.

"The explanation resides in the laws of faster-than-light space travel itself…" Klew, a tall man, two weird orange eyes, half-human and half-Lrt ( a species living on a system 1,000 light-years away from Earth ), scratching at his green beard while staring at the big dark object showed on the main screen, being only 1 billion space miles outside.

"It has already started attracting our vessel, captain…"the tone in Agb’s voice, the female hairless all-Lrt attendant, was worried" We can’t resist for too long…"

"I know, I’m just thinking of it…"

Klew was aware of what was occurring, but he had never thought it could have happened just today.

The principles of physics were well known, actually. Since the ancient days when humanity had discovered that the lightspeed limit was breakable thanks to high-tech accelerators which could spin the particles faster than light, this way creating the base for almost unlimited travel across space, the scientists had discovered that such find wasn’t without consequences…

Every time you spin something faster-than-light, something else comes with it, that is: dark matter.

As this has stayed undetected for long cause of the old-fashioned machinery that was available at the time the first experiments took place on Earth-- but it still exists-- every single movement of some object through space, travelling at faster-than-light speed, makes so that some dark particles move along with it. You could call that a sort of dark dead-weight.

And the farthest away you spin something and the bigger that becomes, as every single particle is associated to a dark equivalent one… so, you let some matter more travel other than the thing ( a starship, a space-station, etc.) you want to move elsewhere across the planets. And such a dark matter multiplies itself as long as the faster-than-light space travel continues…

Their mission was probably the one meant to go farthest than ever, to reach the uttermost point within the galaxy that no Human, Lrt, Ulj or any other alien species within the Interplanetary Confederation had ever gone to so far, and then the unexpected result had been even greater than any other time before.

Already over the course of some other missions which had gone very far away from Earth there had been some strange observations: dark objects outside the vessel, unknown and with a high density, completely black in color and sphere-sized. Most of them were small, but the farthest the starship went and the bigger they appeared in a way…They were a nuisance easily negligible, commonly, but this time things were different…

As their space travel was meant to explore the farthest recesses of their galaxy and they had gone to the most distant place ever reached by any other known vessel so far, the dark thing that had appeared, coming out from nothing as their starship had completed the quantum-translation in space had resulted to be bigger than any other similar object seen before.

And that enormous black sphere out there, four times the size of the most massive known star, was just attracting their vessel now by means of such an enormous gravity that their planetary engines ( that is the ones used for ordinary travel when not in faster-than-light mode…) were unable to escape from it.

Their end was near, as the crew aboard had already noticed…all of them were going to die cause of the terrible collision soon.

But there was a chance, maybe.

Klew turned and addressed all the four crew members on the main deck.

"Captain speaking" the man said, a reassuring voice" We are going to hit the big black body generated cause of our recent space travel… "It can’t be helped as our planetary engines are not powerful enough to escape its attraction…"

There was a long pause afterwards.

"But we have got a way to make it, that is spinning our starship again via our faster-than-light propulsion. This will allow us escape from this place, but in order to do so we will be translated to another farther point in space and then the problem will occur again, likely bigger than this one…"

"So what could we do, Sir?" the technician interrupted him.

"Travelling at faster-than-light speed, spinning us to the extreme recesses of space, being always on travel, because if we only stop our course we’ll be trapped again next to such a danger outside…the one we could never escape from, at that time…"

There was another pause then.

"Are you with me?" the captain asked.

"What else could we do, Sir" Brett replied along with all the deck crew "At least, HomeCentral on Earth will be able to find a way to save us, to try a solution that will put all this to an end…"

The captain smiled. "Postponing forever the inevitable".Maybe it was so, but they were going to be travelling for a very long time without a single stop before that would happen, going even to the end of space, for sure…