Spaceship Vision

Defying Gravity

Seven years ago:

There was no place in the universe Ethan would rather be. His laboratory was nothing more than a few pieces of sheet metal propped up by old pipes and covered with thick plastic sheets. It was the only place in the universe that was Ethan’s, and it felt luxurious.

Even the computer was magnificent. It was made of ancient parts salvaged from broken machinery, discarded tablets, and anything Nathan could scavenge from his job as an assistant mechanic for Count Pourra. The only thing not antiquated were the science books and videos on the computer. They were old. But science didn’t change. You only uncovered more knowledge and hardly anything new had been uncovered in the last century. Science had reached its zenith. Every modern book said that the only thing left was engineering. Ethan didn’t believe that.

The understanding that there was more to discover was why the oldest books were still the best. Ethan had spent the last days rereading the “Principia Mathematica”. He knew the science. But there was something magical about the book. Newton understood how the universe worked before anyone else and had changed everything with the power of his mind.

Ethan was savoring the last words of Newton’s book when Nathan entered the lab with a piece of scrap metal he would never have been able to move on Earth. Mar’s gravity made it possible. Ethan was about to tell his twin to keep his garbage somewhere else when he saw it more clearly.

“Is that a piece of gravity plating?” Ethan asked. He had become almost obsessed with the technology over the last few months, but no one used gravity plating on a planet.

“One of the Count’s warships was getting retrofitted. I offered to help for scrap. I insisted on this,” Nathan said.

“Help me get it up on the table,” Ethan said, as he grabbed the side opposite his brother to help lift, unable to stop grinning. He wanted to hug his brother, though he never would.

Nathan was still pushing the petal into place when Ethan began to pry away at the side panel to see what was inside. He had seen schematics and pictures, but it was still disappointing. The interior was mostly empty. All that the panel held were a few wires, a crystal, two computer chips, and a fuse.

“You know the explanation for how this works is wrong,” Ethan said.

“So you’ve said,” Nathan said. He glanced over Ethan’s shoulder, and the smile disappeared from his face. Ethan turned to see his tormentor approaching. Mike was a tall, fat boy in blue overalls who lived in the dormitory two domes over.

Ethan moved to keep both the table and the gravity plating between himself and Mike, and then said, “If it created a gravitational field, it would be trivial to adjust. It’d be harder to keep the field steady.” His best plan was to ignore Mike. It was a bad plan, but he had no other choice. There was only one entrance to the laboratory, and Mike was already blocking it.

“Skipping work again,” Mike said. That seemed to be his biggest problem with the twins. So far as Mike was concerned, there was only one job on Mars, and that was farming. And he believed when the twins weren’t working in the fields, it made his job harder. He was wrong on both counts.

“I just got back from helping to retrofit Count Pourra’s ship. You must have seen it land,” Nathan said.

Mike ignored Nathan. He might torment him if Ethan wasn’t there, but he knew Ethan was the easier target. Ethan almost ran, but Mike was both faster and older and when Ethan ran the torment was worse. So, he just waited. Mike grabbed the areas between Ethan's neck and shoulders. His fat fingers digging into the nerves. Ethan’s entire body felt as if it were on fire even before those fingers began to do their work.

“Let him go,” Nathan said, and he shoved Mike. The bully didn’t even rock under the blow. He was fifteen, almost three years older than them, and large for his age.

“I’m barely touching him,” Mike said, and he switched his tactic, putting his arm around Ethan’s neck. That shouldn’t be as painful, but it felt worse. Ethan couldn’t escape, and his leg and side bumped into Mike’s as well.

Nathan was about to strike him again. An attack that would just end up with both of them getting hurt. But Ethan’s fingers wrapped around the panel that he had just removed from the gravity plating. He swung up with the six inch square piece of iron and a ringing sound filled the dome as it struck Mike in the elbow.

The large boy yelped as he grabbed his elbow and stepped back, “I was just jokin’ around. No need to act like a girl about it.”

“Get out. Don’t come back unless you’re invited. This dome is our ma’s property,” Nathan said. Ethan almost pointed out that wasn’t technically true. This dome like ten others was owned by Count Pourra, but he ignored the inaccuracy.

As the boy left Ethan said, “Someday I’m going to build a ship and fly so far away we never have to see another person again.”

Now:

The laboratory was one of the most advanced ever built. It held machinery that until recently no one outside of the Accord knew existed. But now that the secret of faster-than-light travel had been exposed, the scientific revolution was beginning and the beating heart of it was in this room.

What made the laboratory so important weren’t the computers or the small black box that did something that Ethan wouldn’t explain or the long staff that they had turned into a weapon similar to the massive rail gun attached to the Vision. It wasn’t even that they had stuffed it all inside a hundred-year-old cargo ship. It wasn’t even The Twin Universe Drive. It was the twins who had discovered the technology on their own and in doing so forced those who had known of the technology for three generations into the light.

Dean moved in closer to the table, where Ethan was explaining something that the teenager barely understood. He would have rather been working with Celeste. He understood how the ship’s conventional engines worked. But the captain insisted he take advantage of being on a ship with scientific geniuses.

As he moved, Ethan moved with him, keeping Dean at the same distance. Not so far away that they had to raise their voices, but with enough space to make it clear there was a gap. Why couldn’t Nathan be here today? He was far more friendly than Ethan, and Dean understood more when he explained it. But while Ethan had once intimidated Dean, now Dean just wondered why he didn’t like him.

“I’ve been able to isolate one of the micro anomalies created by the twin-universe-drive and I’m… Are you listening to me? This is important,” Ethan said. He took another half-step back, away from Dean, who had allowed his mind to wander.

“Dean! I don’t like to be ignored,” Ethan said.

Dean was about to explain how hard it was to stay focused when he didn’t understand anything Ethan said when the table exploded. Dean was knocked over backwards, hitting his head on the gravity plating that covered the lab’s floor. He laid there dazed, his eyes unfocused, until he turned his head and saw two people kneeling next to Ethan. The gravity plating was red. That wasn’t right.

“Can you hear me?” someone asked. Ethan tried to focus his eyes on the person yelling at him. It took a second to focus on the thin, short man with blond hair that bounced as he spoke. Brian, Dean thought. One of the lab assistants that had joined the crew a couple of months ago, along with almost everyone else.

“He’ll be fine,” Karina said, putting her hand on Brian’s shoulder then bending down to pull a piece of glass from Dean’s cheek. It hurt, but she said, “I don’t think any glass got in your eyes. Can you see OK?”

Dean still didn’t know what was happening, but he closed one eye, then the other. The second was blurry, but he thought that was because he was crying. He didn’t know why he was crying.

“Why are you even in here?” Brian said. He sounded angry. Had Dean caused an explosion?

“Someone get help,” Nathan said. His voice sounded closer to panic than Dean liked. Dean looked over to Ethan, and he saw things more clearly. There was blood. Too much blood. Then he saw Ethan move. That meant he wasn’t dead. At least Dean thought it did.

“You’ve got to put pressure on it,” Linda said. She was kneeling next to Ethan. Her hands were red with blood and some of it had gotten into her short black hair.

“I want to help,” Dean said. He tried to push Brian away, but he wasn’t actually holding him.

“You’re injured too, hon,” Karina said. She had a small rag that she was poking at him with. The engineer’s rag was covered in grease and dirt. Dean tried to tell her it would get infected, but he couldn’t explain it right. Dean instead focused on getting himself into a chair. It rolled away as he tried, but Brian and Karina helped him into it. From there, he could see Ethan better. He wished he couldn’t.

The blue jumpsuit both twins always wore was ripped, and his face and chest were both covered in blood. Karina began to push Dean’s chair away from the injured scientist and said, “He’ll be fine. The good news is we’ll finally be able to tell the twins apart.”

Dean was too tired to tell her how easy it already was to tell them apart. Ethan was always covered in grease, and Nathan was the one who was smiling. In fact, the only time Dean had ever confused the two was the single time he had come into the lab, and Ethan had smiled and said it was good to see him.

“Do you know what happened?” Dean asked.

“Wasn’t he telling you what he was doing?” Brian asked.

“Ya, that might be important. Were there chemicals or radiation or anything?” Karina asked.

“It was… He said something about an anomaly,” Dean said. Why hadn’t he been paying more attention? And why hadn’t Natalie been here. She would have been focused. But he knew that was wrong. The thirteen-year-old girl would have been leaning in and gotten the full force of the explosion in her face. But Dean had distracted Ethan away from the table.

“It’s always anomalies,” Brian said. He sounded angry. Dean was too scared to be angry.

“But there aren’t supposed to be anomalies. That’s why we stop every week,” Karina said.

“They come back as soon as we turn the engines back on, but they’re all microscopic. They’re not dangerous until they’re thousands of times that big. Unless Linda’s right about us all dying of cancer in ten years,” Dean said.

Dean understood most of the science better than Brian or Linda. They had been made lab assistants because they knew how to read. But the captain had insisted Dean understand basic science before the twins were on the ship. The danger of cancer was tiny. No more than from being on a planet where solar radiation could hit you.

“Anomalies don’t cause explosions,” Dean said. The twin universe drive let them travel faster than light by going partway into another universe. A universe where the speed of light was much higher. But it was a single universe with universal laws. They would know if something in that universe could cause an explosion, and if they didn’t, Henry—who was from that universe—would warn them.

Dean was still looking at the table, stunned, trying to figure out how it exploded when HR6 entered the room. He was moving in the odd, stilted way he did when he was pushing the limits of his physical body. The robot had been designed to work in an FTL field. His processors used light. So, with some extra technology Dean didn’t understand, that light worked at the speed of light for the universe the drive was in, even though most light in the ship moved its normal speed.

Dean didn’t know how fast he had been before, but the Twin Universe Drive was thirty times faster than the field HR6 had been originally intended to work in. That meant HR6 thought thirty times faster than he had been designed to think.

“Step back,” the robot said. HR6’s voice was squeaky, like it often was when he was moving at maximum speed.

The humans around Ethan moved away. The robot wasn’t a doctor, but he was the closest thing they had to one on the Vision. That was because he could download anything he needed from The Vision’s medical library.

The robot bent down next to Ethan, and one of his eyes brightened. They always glowed, but this time one was as bright as a flashlight. HR6 then looked first in one eye and then in the other. “His eyes are dilated, and he’s breathing. That means he should be fine, but he is losing blood. Do you know what blood type he is?” HR6 said.

“Same as mine, Type A,” Nathan said.

“You will come with me in case we need to transfuse,” HR6 said. He spoke with total calm. That was easy for HR6. Any emotion in his voice was a choice. That calm seemed to help.

“Yes. Yes, of course,” Nathan said.

“I’ll come too,” Dean said, and he stood. His legs almost gave out, but he hid it. He’d probably need the robot’s help once he was done with Ethan. But right now, he just wanted to make sure Ethan was OK.

“I can help,” Karina said.

“I’ll be fine,” Dean said, though the chair rolled under his weight as he used it to support himself. He hoped they weren’t going too far.

He made it to the door of the laboratory before Nathan put an arm around his waist. With that help, they moved down the hall faster. Dean wanted to walk on his own, but he let Nathan help. Don had taught him than in a crisis people did better when they had something specific to do. It was even better if it was useful.

As they exited the room, the captain arrived. He was wearing his coat, his gun and boxer shorts. “What happened?” he asked.

“There was an explosion,” Nathan said.

“Was it intentional?” Don asked, his hand leaning against his gun.

“We’re not trying to blow up anything, Captain,” Nathan said. He was smarter than that, but he was also clearly shaken.

Dean didn’t want to draw anyone’s attention away from anyone who knew more, but he said, “It was right in front of Ethan. If he hadn’t turned to talk to me, I think it would have been worse. And all he was doing was testing an anomaly.”

“I don’t see how that could cause an explosion,” Nathan said.

“So, was it intentional?” Don asked. By now HR6 had picked up Ethan and was moving towards one of the larger quarters that had been turned into an infirmary.

“Who would want to hurt us?” Nathan asked. Dean could think of a few names and he knew The Captain had a longer list.

Don looked at Dean and Dean said, “It’s possible.”

That was good enough for the captain, who walked into the laboratory and said, “No one leaves this room until I’m done with you.”

The captain’s voice cut off as the door shut and Nathan helped Dean towards the infirmary. Dean was already feeling stronger.

“He’s going to be fine. You just need to relax,” Dean said.

“He’s the one who figured it out, you know. I was there. But he saw the field, understood the drive. All I did was build it. I don’t know what I’d do if…”

“You’re not going to find out,” Dean said, but he felt stupid saying it. He was only thirteen. What did he know about any of this?

Nathan squeezed Dean, who tried his best not to wince, and Nathan said, “I’m going to have to run the lab by myself for a few weeks.”

“And I won’t get any lessons from him,” Dean said. He had never pretended he didn’t like Nathan’s lessons better. Mostly because he understood what Nathan was saying more of the time.

A few minutes later, Nathan was lying on a bed next to his brother. Dean didn’t much like seeing the blood, but he sat between the two of them. If someone tried to hurt them, Dean would protect them. HR6 ran his hands across Ethan’s side and said, “I believe the danger is eliminated. I will watch him, but there should be no permanent damage except a few scars.”

Most of the sickness Dean felt went away once he knew Ethan would not die. And he believed it. HR6 didn’t lie.

The robot then turned on Dean and said, “And you are going to need stitches.”