Deep Space Debris

As we eased our wheel-shaped ship into a distant orbit to the colorful black hole in the NGC1999 nebula, I tightly gripped the arm of my control room chair. The orange-reddish hellish phenomenon was swallowing everything in the vicinity and my mind was fixated on the big question of the hour, “How close is safe?”

“Orbiting at 35 million kilometers,” said starship navigator Quackenbush. “For a black hole this size, NASA recommends the safe innermost stable circular orbit to be 20 million kilometers away.”

”It’s our lives that are on the line here, not theirs,” I said coldly. “This black hole is a monster and they really don't know what the safe orbit is.” The thing reminded me of a childhood nightmare I once had about a multi-colored monster under my bed. I forced the childhood memory and anxiety from my mind.

I and our two nervous control room officers knew no one has ever been this close to a black hole before. Our ship, the Magellan and our small crew of eight, were 1,500 light years from Earth exploring stars in the Orion constellation. We had been on our deep space exploration mission for four years and were getting homesick. After we finished this black hole science research, we were scheduled to return to Earth.

“Captain Conrad, I'm picking up some weird X-rays,” said Carter, my science officer said. “This could be a temporal rift in space or time dilation.” Carter, with her long blond hair, was even smarter than she was pretty. I took her warning seriously.

“Raise orbit to 40 million kilometers,” I said quickly. I missed Carter. In the first year of our mission, I started a wonderful relationship with her. But in the second year, she left me for our chief engineer. On a small starship like ours, everyone knew each other's business and it was essential to put personal issues aside and work side by side with ex-lovers and rivals.

“Moving to 40 million kilometers,” said Quackenbush. “Wait...I'm picking up some debris.”

“What do you mean debris?” I asked. I scolded myself letting myself get distracted by thinking about Carter.

“There is scattered metallic material debris 100 kilometers away. I'm guessing it might be an alien ship that was hit by an object falling into the black hole.”

“Let's pull closer and have a look. Activate the outside cameras so we can get a visual.” As we edged closer, we could clearly see the large debris field of a doomed, dead ship. Part of the horrific wreck showed an intact circular metal hull similar to ours. But most of the debris was shapeless, shattered pieces. No living thing could have survived this wreck. As I looked past the torn and shattered metal parts, I was stunned and confused to see the word NASA proudly painted on what appeared to be a metal hull part.

“How could an Earth ship be way out here?” said Carter.

“Fire the Faster Than Light engines and raise orbit to 80 million kilometers!” I said in a loud voice. A horrible realization had just hit me.

“But...what is it?” said Quackenbush.

“Now!” I yelled. My voice echoed off the metal walls of the small, utilitarian control room. The ship almost instantly jumped to Faster Than Light speed and almost immediately doubled the distance from the black hole.

“What happened?” said Carter.

“It is what is about to happen,” I explained. My heart was still thumping in my chest. “The wrecked alien ship we were just looking at is our ship! Because of time dilation, we got to see our future. In the near future, there will be a catastrophic event at that location that will destroy our ship. If we stayed and looked closer, we would have found our bodies in the wreckage.”

There was an awkward moment of silence as the three of us pondered the existential nature of reality.

“We can't die now. We would have missed the end of mission party back on Earth.” I said, trying to put some levity in our stressful situation.

“By the way,” said Carter. “I'm now seeing several asteroids just passing through our previous location and falling into the black hole. I might be seeing the catastrophic event that would have wiped out us out.”

“This black hole is a monster. Let's launch the unmanned probe into the back hole and collect some scientific data and then get the hell out of here.”

Carter launched one of our two unmanned probes on a direct path into the black hole. The pre-programed scientific probe jumped at light speed to 100,000 kilometers from the black hole's maw. Then it slowed to space normal speed on it's one way mission into the hole. We planned to sit back for the next several hours in our safe distance and collect the probe data. Once it passed into the black hole's event horizon, it would be destroyed. I was tired. I had been up for the past 18 hours. But something told me to stay in the control room until we left the crazy black hole region. After an hour, we got another unexpected surprise.

"Captain Conrad, I'm picking up another ship orbiting 35 million kilometers from the black hole.” said Quackenbush.

“I'm getting a signal from the other ship. They've spotted us,” said Carter. “I'll put it on audio

When the other ship's audio message played in our control room, I got the shock of my life. The voice in the message was my voice.

This is the starship Magellan. We are on a peaceful mission.Then the message then changed to a pre-programed friendship message in English, Spanish, French, Russian, Arabic, and Chinese. It was the pre-programmed NASA message that was to be used when encountering an alien vessel.

“It's the temporal rift-time dilation effect again,” I said to Carter. “It's us. The other ship is us an hour ago when we first dropped out of Faster Than Light and entered orbit. Let me talk to the other ship.” She made a few adjustments and pointed go to me.

“Starship Magellan, we are the starship Magellan in a time line that is about one hour ahead of you. You are in danger. I advise you to immediately increase orbit to 80 million kilometers and we meet,” I said, knowing that the captain of the other Magellan would recognize my voice as his. There was no immediate response as the other ship's control room crew was trying to digest the craziness of what I had just said.

“Give them time to respond,” I said to Carter. “They will need it.”

“I just got a wild thought,” said Carter. “The temporal rift has shifted time lines. How do we know if they are in our time line or if we are in their time line?”

“I don't know,” I knew we would never the know the answer to that question.

“Picking up some weird X-rays,” said Carter. This could be another time dilation.”

"Now I'm picking up another ship dropping out of Faster Than Light speed,” said Quackenbush.

“There are three ships orbiting the black hole that are really us,” I said. “Forget about the unmanned probe. Power up the Faster Than Light engines and get us the hell out of here!” I quickly turned on the audio.

“This is the starship Magellan to all ships orbiting the black hole. This area has an unstable time phenomenon. We recommend you leave immediately,” I said quickly. A second later, our engines kicked in and we were flashing our way back to Earth.

“I'm glad we got out of there with our lives. But I regret not meeting the crew on the other ships. It would have been an unusual experience meeting ourselves,” Carter said. “It would be like having a twin.”

“I think you will get that chance,” I said as I curiously looked at the long-range scanner. “I see two duplicate Magellan ships that have our twins on them following us back to Earth. We all came from slightly different time lines. But now we remain on the same time line.” I pondered if we are now on our original time line or the time line of one of the other ships or if we all are in the time line of the destroyed debris ship.

“When we get back to Earth, it certainly will make the end of the mission party back on Earth interesting,” said Carter with a smile.

******

It certainly was a party to remember. I and my two temporal rift twins made a point of walking into the huge banquet room together. There was a loud round of applause from the crowd of NASA ground crew, astronauts, and the media. The three of us were a little embarrassed at the attention. But the exuberance from NASA and the media was understandable. We were a successful mission and everyone loves a success. But more fascinating to everyone was the fact that, to everyone's shock, we returned from deep space with three ships and three crews. I and my two doppelgangers, had instantly became best friends as we all had the same likes. We decided to get a bigger apartment and live together on Earth. My family was shocked to have three of me now. In time I imagine they will get used to it.

Because some kind of identification was needed, someone came up with a pragmatic number designation after all our names. Because we were the first ship to orbit the black hole and not be destroyed, our crew had the designation of 1 after our names. The second ship that dropped out of Faster Than Light had the designation of 2 after their names. The third ship that appeared had the designation of 3 after their names.

Conrad 3 was wearing my favorite red shirt. But I didn't say anything to him as I reasoned that it also his favorite shirt and it also belonged to him. I was wearing my blue shirt and I suspected Conrad 2 wanted to wear that one. The shirt situation was part of much a bigger issue. We haven't resolved yet how to divide up all our possessions. Everything I had that I valued now had two other guys that valued and wanted it too. I was forced to conclude possessions is something that will take time to figure out.

A waiter led us to a table in the front. As Conrad 3 ordered the same Gin and tonic drink for all three of us, I noticed that, at the table next to us, I all three of the Quackenbushs were already drunk. I made a mental note to make sure they all got a safe ride home. They were good men―just at times, a little too human.

After an hour of listening to Earth-based mission control leaders that I haven't seen for four years make self-congratulatory, boring speeches, a crazy idea germinated in my head. I looked over the room and patiently waited until the perfect moment to try out my bold idea. Logically, I knew this probably wouldn't work. But I'm an optimist by nature and I also had a few drinks in me. Some spark deep within me compelled me to try. Carter 1 and I had broken up long ago and she made it very clear that she was not interested in me. However now, due to a once in a lifetime rift in time, I had a unique second chance at a relationship with Carter 2 or maybe Carter 3.

I spied Carter 2 walking alone to the cake table. Her tight black dress was making her long blond hair seem more blond. I strategically made my move and quickly walked over to her as she cut a piece of spaceship-shaped cake.

“Quite a party...don't you think?” I said to Carter 2. “I'm Conrad 1.”

“Fantastic party. I'm Carter 2. “I was on the second ship

“Maybe we can get together for cup of coffee sometime,” I said, attempting to sound charming.

She smiled which left me momentarily confused. I took a step back. Was her smile a sign of interest and acceptance or a smirk-smile of incredulity and rejection?

THE END

Bio: Gordon Rowlinson is a writer and retired pension consultant and income tax guy during tax season living on the South Shore of Massachusetts. His book can be purchased at:
Time Wars and other Sci-Fi Tales

E-mail: Gordon Rowlinson

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