Arch/Eternal - Chapter Fourteen

Pizza Planet

Skip this part if you’re caught up!

This is Arch/Eternal, a sprawling novel-in-progress in the genre of philosophical sci-fi. Think Dune meets Harry Potter, and maybe channeling a little bit of Dan Simmons.

If you’d prefer to start from the beginning, here’s the Prologue.

And if you want to follow along with the world-building behind the story, take a look at the companion series shamelessly titled A Terran’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Finally, here’s a short summary of what’s happened up to this point, to save you from having to click on a bunch of links to figure out what the hell is going on:

Earth is a protected (read: ignorant) planet nested within a galactic community known as the Fellowship. Historian/researcher Rita Freeman is a secret ambassador of this organization, who spends a lot of her time on other worlds. In an effort to help Earth become a full citizen planet of the Fellowship, and to rescue its people from total self-destruction, she is on a mission to recruit and guide talented young people to build a better society.

One of these is Jackson River, who grew up with his grandmother in Wind Valley, a tiny desert town lodged deep inside a northern Arizona reservation. His family history is tragic, and when he was 11, he also lost his best friend, Andre, after an episode of severe bullying. Shortly thereafter, he met Rita, who became a mentor.

Another is Esther Quinn, who grew up in an idyllic home in Connecticut. Both her parents are professors, and her older brother, Adam, is an impossibly gifted genius. When she was 11, Adam was recruited by Rita to become the founder of a new movement called Cubensia. Years later, Esther moved to Boston to join him.

In the previous chapter, Jackson, Esther, and Deek headed to a Cubensian launch party, only to discover that the entire city block had been destroyed. Esther led a desperate and futile search for her brother and their friends, before the three of them realized the Cubists themselves might have been the target, and decided to regroup back at Jackson’s dorm, where Rita was waiting for them on the roof with a spaceship.

She tells them all about the competing galactic empires known as the Fellowship and the Confederacy, as well as the Firstborn, a powerful race of beings at the head of each empire, respectively called archs and eternals. Esther grieves the loss of her brother, Adam, and is vocally suspicious of an arch named Morning who was bonded to him, and should have protected him from what Rita claims was an attack by an eternal in Boston. Meanwhile, the ship carries them to an interstellar gate hidden on the “dark” side of the Moon…

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Pizza Planet

YOU’RE UPSET.

Of course I’m upset. I don’t know how to keep writing about this stuff. It’s tangled and frustrating and absurd.

TRY TO EXPLAIN.

Alright, how about this.

In the span of less than 30 minutes, I was told my brother and many of my friends had been murdered in what looked like a carpet bombing of downtown Boston, and then got on a spaceship to fly to the Moon. Or what turned out to be an interstellar gateway built into the far side of it. 

It was the worst night of my life, and somehow it ends up sounding like the beginning of a sci-fi adventure written by a seventh-grader. 

DID IT FEEL LIKE AN ADVENTURE?

Obviously not, Sky. Obviously it did not feel like a fucking adventure.

It was mostly talking, actually. Mostly me covering the chasm of horror in my heart with all the rage I could muster, and flinging it at Rita. And then her responding by cooking for us, and telling us about two different galactic empires and the superpowered aliens who controlled them. 

See what I mean? I’m forced to consider my audience. Who will be reading this? I have to assume it could be someone who doesn’t know anything about all this space operah bullshit. I have to assume that my profound personal tragedy, the shattering event of my brother’s death, will be overshadowed by details which can’t help but inspire strong incredulity, if not outright dismissal.

If I sound like I’m whining, it’s because I am. Things don’t happen cleanly enough. A story ought to do justice to tragedy. People ought to be prepared for gigantic revelations. My grief was stolen by grand galactic drama.

But Rita did her best. She did. By making that meal. It was hard to appreciate it in the moment, but I guess that’s how it goes. Experiences acrue their full signficance only in retrospect. Memory, being what it is, edits out almost everything, so it helps to pay attention to what it leaves in.

Like Deek’s hand holding his fork, trembling on the table to my left. The way he set it down with a clatter and grabbed my hand. When I looked over at him, he didn’t look up, but I could see the way his lips were tightened, eyes moistened. And I remember the distinct impression I had that we — Adam and I and the rest of us — had been a family to him, a displaced Indian kid from Brooklyn with the heart of an artist. The feeling that choked my heart in that particular moment was, of all things, gratitude. I was grateful to have Deek next to me. Grateful he had known Adam. Grateful he felt some of the hurt I felt. Some of the helpless, overwhelming loss. The denial. Maybe even some of the rage.

During that communion, my fresh grief distilled into a razer sharp thirst for retribution. I remembered how I felt at that lacrosse game half my life ago. The commitment I had made back then to stay my hand from violence tore away like cobwebs before a strong wind.

Before the meal was over, I knew I would go to war.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?

We went to Priezh.

I remember, by the time we were done eating, the Moon was a lot bigger, and Earth was a lot smaller. I was no expert in the physics of propulsion, but it seemed to me we were moving a lot faster than should have been possible. 

Jackson called that out first. “So, it really looks like we’re accelerating, but I don’t feel anything.” 

“You are correct,” Rita said. “We’ve been accelerating at a constant rate of about one gee since we left the surface.”

“A part of me doesn’t really believe we’re moving at all,” Deek said. “I mean technically this could just be a simulation. Doesn’t Disneyland have a ride like this?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Except with hydrolics that sell it better.”

Rita smiled. “The ship uses something called a ripple drive to create a tiny gravitational wave — a ripple — toward which it continuously falls.”

“Shouldn’t we be weightless, then?” That was Jackson again, the space nerd.

“The shape of the wave itself can be calibrated to influence the velocity of the whole ship, while still preserving a comfortable sensation of gravity inside.”

“Sounds convenient,” Deek said.

“Convenience is the product of generations of refinement.”

“What’s the power source?” Jackson asked. “Is it fusion?”

“I’m told fusion wouldn’t work. Primarily due to scale and volatility. Instead, it’s powered by something theoretical phsysicists on Earth might call zero-point energy, but that would probably be an oversimplification. As far as I understand, it’s more about applying the right algorithm than pumping in more energy or extracting more fuel. Most people, myself included, don’t really know how it works. Just that it works. Sort of like how most people couldn’t effectively explain how a combustion engine spins the wheels of a car, or how their smartphone works. Most technology emerges from a community of specialists, to the benefit of everyone else.”

Ripple drives and zero point energy. 

We were in the clutches of technology so advanced that it was, as Arthur C. Clarke had predicted, indistinguishable from magic. We let the topic drop.

At the halfway point between Earth and the Moon, the ripple drive inverted the wave pattern, so that the ship began to accelerate in the opposite direction — or, in other words, it started to slow down at the same rate it had been speeding up. Otherwise, Rita explained, we would have rocketed past the Moon with far too much velocity. 

Our objective was a gate that was built into its “dark” side. Since Earth’s Moon is tidally locked, one hemisphere always faces the Earth, and the other side always faces away. So, if you want to hide something on the Moon, you want to put it on the side that millions of telescopes aren’t constantly pointed at. 

“It only had to be hidden well enough that no one would find it by accident,” Rita told us.

“How long has it been here?” Jackson asked, staring at the swiftly approaching surface as we began a tight orbit to the other side. He spoke in hushed, reverential tones. Having spent his whole life hoping for the chance to be some kind of astronaut, this probably wasn’t how he imagined it would go.

“A long time,” Rita said, declining to elaborate.

Each empire — the Fellowship and the Confederacy — used its own system of networked portals, or gates, for interstellar travel. In theory, each network was completely inaccessible to the other. And since gates were the only means of faster-than-light travel, this network security effectively insulated the empires from one another. Even though, as we’d seen on the map, their respective domains appeared totally enmeshed, the reality was that any two star systems were so incredibly far apart as to render interstellar conflict completely impractical without the use of gates. Not that it never happened. There were plenty of points within that tangled web of territory that were just close enough to tempt the people on the worlds they occupied into war. But it’s hard to mount a surprise attack if your enemy can see you coming for years.

This gate on the other side of the Moon would transport us to another one in orbit around a Fellowship planet called Priezh, many thousands of lightyears away. The instant we’d passed through, the Moon-gate would become inoperable, just in case we were being followed by whatever entity had blown up Boston. Rita thought it was vanishingly unlikely that the portal network had been compromised, but she wasn’t willing to risk being wrong. Especially since her best working theory was that an eternal had somehow made it to Earth. 

Above us, the Moon continued to bloat until we began to spiral toward the far side. As we got close to the surface, I could see we were approaching the ridge of a huge crater. The ship must’ve been brightening the display, since there couldn’t have been enough light to see by. Still, under the ridge, it was a perfect black, which grew until it became apparent that the opening was many hundreds of meters tall, and a thousand times as wide. 

Nothing indicated our passage. No hum or shiver. We simply plummeted toward that low ridge and slipped through into pitch black. 

After a split second, the blackness blinked away to reveal another universe. 

Above us, too many stars — a riot, a cacaphony, a disaster. It was oppressive, hostile, beautiful to the point of pain and terror. I had to look away.

Below us, a terminus of daylight swept toward us under a small, fierce sun, revealing an unfamiliar planet, all red and streaked with white. It filled the floor and grew larger. 

“Welcome to Pizza Planet,” Rita said. 

The resemblance was obvious — marinara surface, with white mozzarella clouds — but diminished as we got closer, and could see the geographical contours of the surface. As we cut through the outer layers of atmosphere, it started to sink in that we were about to set foot on this alien world. 

“I don’t see any cities,” Jackson said. “Or trees, or…”

“It looks like Mars,” Deek said. 

Rita nodded. “Priezh is quite different than Mars — for one, it’s geologically active, and has a much thicker atmosphere of mostly nitrogen and carbon oxides. But it is just as dead. Nothing lives on the planet that we didn’t bring to it. And as far as we can tell, it never had its own biosphere.”

“Why?” I asked. 

Rita shrugged. “We still don’t know why life sparks on some worlds and not on others.”

Frankly, the way that the ship moved made it seem fake. While we sat comfortably on leather couches, Pizza Planet ballooned to fill our whole display before we smashed into the atmosphere, hurtling toward the surface at an oblique angle, enshrouded in brilliant plasma. 

We felt none of these violent forces, but it sure was a hell of a show.  

The plasma dissipated as we slowed, and most of the stars above were lost to a cool blue sky. We could see the red surface, with its mountains, valleys, and rivers rushing by.

The ship continued to bleed off velocity until we were zooming over cracked flatlands, swiftly approaching a collection of rocky formations in the distance. 

Suddenly, Priezh’s bright daylight dimmed, and we found ourselves once again entombed in comparative darkness. Rita had switched off the display. 

She handed each of us two tiny slivers the shape and size of a thumbnail clipping, and instructed us to place them in our ears. 

“None of the people you are about to meet are Terran, or speak any of Earth’s languages. Once you have been properly suited, these won’t be necessary, but until then, they’ll ease the friction of communication. It might be a bit unsettling at first — everyone will sound dubbed over — but you’ll get used to it.”

“Wait,” Deek said, “you kinda blew right by the part about how we’re going to meet aliens?”

“From Priezh’s perspective,” Rita clarified, “all of us are aliens.”

It was obvious Deek was unsatisfied with that clarification, but Rita had moved on.

“As an added precaution, we have severred Priezh’s gate from the Fellowship’s portal network. Thankfully, we aren’t too far from another waypoint, which I’ll be using to meet with others who have a vested interest in the situation on Earth. The round trip will take me approxiatley two weeks, during which time the three of you will receive training here at the school.”

“What kind of training?” Deek asked.

“Vigorous,” Rita answered.

“Hang on,” I said. “If there are other people with a ‘vested interest,’ can’t you just, like, make a phonecall and send in the cavalry?”

“Unfortunately, no. Not without local access to the portal network.”

“Well then why not just turn on the gate for data?” Jackson asked, looking eager to help. 

Rita shook her head. “That’s not how it works. A gate is either open or shut. On or off. In the end, everything is data.”

Of course our list of questions was bottomless, but Rita firmly indicated that the conversation was over by standing up and gesturing for us to join her in the center of the room — the same spot that had once upon a time lifted us up into the ship to begin with. 

As it started its descent , the pressure differential sent warm air from the interior flowing down around us on its way out of the ship. It wasn’t until the platform had nearly reached the floor that we felt the bitter air outside. 

As we reflexively hugged ourselves against the deep chill that Rita didn’t seem to notice, we took stock of the cavernous hangar where the ship had parked, which looked like it could fit dozens just like it. But there were only three others that I could see, each of them similar to Rita’s in style and “color” (if that’s what you could call the matte sheen that made the hull hard to look at), but much larger. 

Poe was waiting for us on the floor of the hangar. As soon as I saw him, I took an involuntary step backward. He must have been nine feet tall, with broad, powerful shoulders and enormous hands, like a comic book character. He was bald, with vaguely Russian features — a broad face and wide-set, narrowed eyes. The profound bass of his voice conjured a mental image of some kind of hostile elephant.

“Krohal avol abec Welcome dhereesh to Priezh,” he said. I could see what Rita meant with the dubbing. Somehow I thought it would be a direct replacement, but instead I had to try to tune out the language I couldn’t understand. 

“Thank you,” I said reflexively, trying to keep my teeth from chattering. The other two stared, frozen on the platform. Gratefully, if my voice was being translated for this comically large man, I couldn’t hear it. 

Rita laid her hand on my shoulder. “Poe, this is Esther Quinn, Deepali Khan, and Jackson River. I’ll trust you to prepare them as best you can in the short time you have. And thank you, once again, for being available on such short notice.”

“Soh beroh It will be sharowah-trez my honor,” Poe said. 

Rita turned to the three of us. “You will be safe here. Poe is exceptionally good at what he does. Do your best to learn what you can from him, and trust that whatever he requires is in your best interest.” As she spoke, she shuffled us off of the platform. “I can’t promise that the next two weeks will be pleasant, but I believe you will be grateful, in the end, for the time you spend here.”

“Is this some kind of boot camp?” Deek asked, shivering despite himself. 

“Oh, nothing so barbaric as that,” Rita said, as the platform started to ascend. “But much, much more difficult.”

Wait—

“We’ll see each other again very soon,” she said, and then she was inside the ship. The round opening into which the platform had ascended resealed itself, and the ship glided away and up toward a fold in the ceiling that I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. 

“Awjhe Come,” Poe said, then turned and walked away. 

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is an incredibly reliable predictor human behavior. We had just been dropped onto a different planet, thousands of lightyears away, with almost no explanation of what we would be doing there. Anger, curiosity, hope, fear…all of it collapsed before the escalating urgency to find warmth. 

Which is why, when this monstrously large man started walking away, we didn’t hesitate to follow him. 

It was too damn cold not to.

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