NTB-2168-10-19: News Bulletin:

The Pegasus Project is ready for flight!

After more than a decade of development and debugging, Chief Project Manager Giorgio Masetta announced earlier this week that The Pegasus is finally ready for her maiden flight - for the fifth time.

In theory, the spaceship will be able to travel anywhere in the Galaxy in the blink of an eye, but the previous four flights have all failed - some spectacularly! Rumours say that this is their last chance. The project is a significant drain on finances and resources and lawmakers and government officials are now ready to pull the plug!

We quote an anonymous source inside the project as saying that "Perhaps humanity was not meant to escape our solar system?", adding that “after a decade of failures, some people inside the project consider this a last ‘Hail Mary’ attempt.”

Even more controversial are the claims we hear from another insider source that “The recent breakthrough in the plasma drive issue was thought up by a teenager with little to none experience”. They also say that “‌The crew is basically [expletive removed] themselves. Everyone who was not picked for the crew roster breathed a sigh of relief!”

In a formal statement, officials say that "This time it will work!". Optimistic or realistic? We will know at 13:00 today Universal Time, as they power up the much-derided plasma drive to push The Pegasus out towards the outer solar system.

-

Nick was supercharged, tired, hungry, thirsty, and he badly needed to pee. The entire project team had gathered in the common area, which was filled to the brim for the final briefing and official send-off. The lucky few who would crew the maiden flight stood at the front, wearing their new shiny ship suits. Dressed in red and gold, they stood to attention as the chief project manager spoke of the sacrifices of those who had gone before them, and the skill and dedication of the team since the beginning. Looking around, Nick saw a mixture of nervousness, trepidation, and excitement. Everyone was standing as straight as they could; standing firm, chests out and shoulders back.

Everyone except for Nick, that was. He was trying to make his shuffling steps as small as possible, getting more and more desperate for the bathroom with every passing minute of speech. Just go already! Goose said in his head. You're all... hooked up to the suit plumbing!

That was so not an alternative, Nick thought to himself, but tried to figure out if he could slip out for a few minutes. Around him, the team members outside the crew circle were watching the men and women in uniform closely. Most were smiling, but he caught some looks that were definitely envious.

Whatever you do! Goose said, don't think of running water!

Damn you, you ... Nick couldn't hold it any longer, and ran off toward the nearest bathroom.

Returning to the room some minutes later, Nick felt like he could walk on air with the relief he felt. He was still tired and hungry, but those were minor distractions at this point. Seeing that the PM was still droning on, Nick found Tord on the edge of the gathered crew.

Tord smiled and nodded, and quietly asked Nick, "Nervous?"

"Strangely enough, not at all. Just excited." Nick smiled. "I am confident the plasma drive fix will work. Rachel has spent the last two days looking over the calculations and test results together with the rest of the engineering crew, and the drive is purring like a kitten. Also, we have checked and double checked the astrogation data on TOI 700. The last batch of VISION data was super clean, so we’ve confirmed the target dataset down to as many decimals as we care about. We actually uploaded it into Peggy’s nav-computer earlier this morning. There's nothing else to do really than sit back and enjoy the cruise!"

Tord didn't look convinced, and said, "That’s fine. But there's something completely different that's been concerning me lately."

Nick’s attention, which had drifted back to the speech, snapped back. “What do you mean?”

"Two words; temporal paradoxes"

"Huh?" Nick responded. "Time paradoxes? Causal inconsistencies and stuff? I thought the physics geeks had ruled that out?"

"Almost. But there's this sliver of uncertainty that they keep glossing over. It's not obvious if you don't know it's there, and you need to understand some pretty heavy maths. I am just ... slightly more inquisitive, and I know the equations".

"But… I thought we’re not really travelling faster than light when using the wormhole, so the paradoxes don’t come into play?"

“It’s not that simple,” Tord said. "The theory is that the wormhole will connect two locations in space with an infinitely short tunnel. As we travel through that tunnel, the infinitely short part of that means our spatial movement is nonexistent, which cancels out the infinity in the old you-can't-travel-faster-than-light-equations. Right?"

"Yes." Nick said "So, even if light needs to take the slow route between A and B, the wormhole simply makes two positions in space that are normally very far away from each other, 'touch' across the wormhole, and we just have to step through the gate so to speak.

No time travel involved. It’s not even faster-than-light travel. We’re just messing with space geometry. Light still has to obey the rest of the physical laws, so information can't cross the paradox boundaries."

"Well. Yeah.", Tord said, looking down first and then looking back at Nick. "Only, what happens when we travel back?"

Still confused, Nick just looked at Tord, who continued.

"It’s complicated to explain without a whiteboard and a few metres of maths, but conceptually… We've seen the other star system, right? We've gathered observational data. We fly back. We return with information from A to B, and information shouldn't be able to travel faster than the speed of light. That's where we end up with grandfathers who are very confused about why they are chased by their unborn grandchildren."

"Huh." was all Nick said. He was following the argument, but hadn't been able to think through the implications yet. Grandfather time paradoxes always made his head hurt, so he had come up with his own theory years ago.

“Look,” Nick started. “I’ve thought about this, and… This is pretty simple.”

Nick sent him an incredulous look, so Nick continued, “Well. Perhaps ‘simple’ isn’t the right word. But… Either time travel exists, or it doesn’t. For the sake of argument, let’s go with the first alternative. And if time travel exists, it either creates paradoxes, confuses grandfathers and rips the space-time-continuum, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, that suggests that the Universe covers up the whole mess with some weird not-yet-discovered physics.”

Nick paused to draw breath, and Tord motioned for him to continue.

“Lastly. Either someone has already tried time travelling, or they haven’t. My guess is that, Fermi paradox aside, life is abundant in the Universe, and it’s had plenty of time to evolve intelligence. Chances are, we are not the alpha dog in our neighbourhood, and that plenty of civilizations out there are far beyond us in technology. So. To conclude….”

But Tord had obviously been paying attention. His eyes focused on something in the distance as they sparkled with thought before he completed Nick’s argument. “So to conclude… since there are more advanced civilizations out there; if time travel is possible, they have already done it. And since we are still around, the result of time travel doesn’t create Universe destroying paradoxes.”

“That’s exactly it,” Nick smiled at Tord, pleased that he followed the argument, but Tord wasn’t finished there. “Of course, the consequences of messing with time can be more localised. At microscopic scales, it’s possible that the effects are cancelled out before anything really happens. But on the macroscopic scales… There are still too many unknown variables in the equations. Your little theory makes a certain kind of logical sense, but I have yet to see logic that can beat maths in a fight.”

Nick nodded slowly. “I guess we will know in one way or another in a few weeks”.

Nick tuned back to the Project Manager’s voice just as he was finishing his speech.

“For us who stay behind, the wait will be long. And you will be in our thoughts until we see your sails again, on the horizon. I will leave you with these words that were written over two hundred years ago, for an entirely different kind of journey.

Guided by the Lonely Star,

Beyond the utmost harbour-bar,

I’ll find the heavens fair and free,

And beaches of the Starlit Sea.

Ship, my ship! I seek the West,

And fields and mountains ever blessed.”

The double doors behind the podium opened, and the crew made their way towards it. As he was walking, Nick heard a single clap begin behind him, and then another, and then an avalanche of applause washed over him and the rest of the crew. A shiver went down his spine as he swallowed, and if possible, his back stood even straighter.

This was it. Nick and the rest of the crew followed a corridor towards the departure area. It all felt like an out-of-body experience. Nick could see himself walking in the crowd, just one of over two hundred eager faces. He saw his own straight back mirrored by his crewmates and noticed that they had adopted a strange walk; mixing a formal march with eager shuffling. He fought to keep the grin off his face as he was reminded of penguins walking over the ice.

To dampen the fit of giggles that he felt bubbling under the surface, Nick thought about the conversation with Tord. Goose, do your People have any theories or hypotheses about time travel, and the associated paradoxes?

Yes. Several. It’s actually a very popular topic. One of the more supported theories is that time protects itself. To avoid causality paradoxes, there is a yet unknown fundamental mechanism in the universe to cancel out the risk of temporal loops.

Nick considered that. To be honest, Goose.. That sounds almost like the theory that I shared with Tord. He wasn’t convinced, and hearing you say it now… it sounds very much like hand-waving the question away rather than a serious attempt at explaining it, he said, and continued. You know, a guy called Stephen Hawking… he lived a while ago, in the early space age, he suggested a Chronological Protection Agency, flying around space to protect the timeline. I don’t think he was serious, but...

That is just absurd, Goose said.

Nick was about to respond when the procession broke into a large cavernous area. Lined along one wall with small oval windows into space, the large room had high ceilings filled with heavy lifting machinery. They had used the area for storage and logistics until this week. Now it was their departure area, and the airlock surrounded with blinking red lights captured everyone's attention.

“Gentlemen. Ladies.” A man dressed in the red and gold uniform, with the blue trimmings that marked him as part of ship maintenance, was waving for their attention. “The Pegasus is waiting.”

Having captured everyone’s attention, the man looked up and smiled as he continued. “We are still bringing over the last of the supplies. I’ve been told it will be another fifteen minutes, and then we can start moving you over to the ship by shuttle. I will ask you to form up by departments, and queue up according to the list that I will share with you all in a moment.” Looking around at them, he continued. “Are there questions?”

Nobody spoke up, and the man nodded to them and looked down at a computer terminal. The crowd shifted around as people found their departments to group up and Nick opened the message that he had just received. The Shuttle Embarcation Schedule said that as he was on the bridge crew, he would be last to board. Strange, Nick thought. I’d think the Captain and the rest of the bridge crew would board early.

As there was no urgency to form up for boarding, Nick found himself drawn to the windows. He had to bend down to look through them; and there she was. Floating just outside. Framed by a background of stars, she was simply beautiful.

Tord had told him that while the drive engineers had spent the last decade troubleshooting the plasma drive, the rest of the engineers and mechanics had not been idle. It had almost been like a competition between the different teams. How they could make her look her best. Week after week, month after month, they had painted and decorated every inch of the core vessel. No utilitarian black and grey carbon and steel in sight; no clunky bulkheads bolted together at sharp angles. The Pegasus was sleek, with clean and flowing lines. On the outside she was so white the reflected sunshine almost made her painful to look at, with red and gold detailing in subtle shades. I wonder how much money they have spent on making Peggy look her best, Nick thought.

Surrounding the main vessel was a superstructure, which had a harder and more utilitarian look. Beams and girders were joined to form a skeletal framework that enveloped the core vessel, almost like a birdcage. The superstructure served both as extra shielding and storage capacity, but more importantly, it hosted the power nodes that would generate the wormhole.

This was science fiction brought to life, and he couldn’t wait to see what she looked like on the inside.

Tord had ambled up to him.

“She looks so... Small.” he said.

“Small?” Nick answered. “Must be a trick of perspective. She’s actually…”

“200 metres long. Yes, I know, “ Tord said and smiled. “But still. We will be on board for a long time, and far away from home. Even that size is going to feel cramped, eventually”.

“Sure. But we’re going to fly her with what… a quarter of the normal crew complement? That should…”

Nick trailed off as he noticed Jessica waving at him to join her. What could the astrogation department head want with him now? Surely it was too early to get in the queue for boarding? He hoped nothing was wrong with the TOI 700 astrogation data package he had prepared!

“Can you follow me for a minute, please?” she asked, and led him over to a small room at the back of the large hall. That is strange, Nick thought. Jessica is never this brusque. She opened the door and ushered him inside, closing the door behind him and remaining outside herself.

Looking up, Nick noticed the four men around the table in the room a second before everything went black.

-

Rashi was chatting with Alice when she tracked Nick from across the room as he made to join Jessica. Something was strange with Jessica’s body language as she led Nick into the room, but Rashi didn’t have time to consider it before a message from Sae interrupted her thoughts.

“Guys, we have a problem.“

Rashi looked up and found Sae in the crowd, meeting her eyes. “What’s happening?”

“Just picked up something on the security channel, “ Sae began, and before Rashi could ask Sae what she was doing listening in on the security channel, she continued. “They are holding the launch. Four guys arrived an hour ago on a long distance shuttle, with enough clout to override the chief project manager. The higher-ups are not happy.”

Oh no, Rashi thought, looking at the door where Nick had disappeared a moment ago, and tried to message him. “Nick? You there?”

No response.

“Sae, Nick was just taken into that room over there, and he’s not responding to messages!” Rashi could feel the now all too familiar feeling of dread approaching.

Sae looked ‌calm as she answered. “That explains things. I’ve checked some surveillance cams. Our friend from Enceladus is here.”

“Mr. Garner? Here? We need to do something!” Rashi wanted to rush into that room and do… something.

“I’m not sure what we can do.” And now Rashi could see Sae’s layer of calm was actually very thin. ”Nick will have to manage for now. It’s probably just a matter of time before they come for us as well. They probably got to Nick first, since he has Goose and the nanomachines. I think we need to get out of here.”

Rashi looked around nervously, but couldn’t see anything else out of the ordinary. She tried to think, but her brain simply kept pushing back on any attempts at using it for anything useful.

A moment later, Sae said, “I’ve tapped into some messages! Some managers really high in the chain are going at it. Pegasus management is demanding that security release the departure hold immediately, and security keeps escalating the issue to get guys with longer and longer ties involved. Things are going to hell fast, and it looks like there’s going to be a proper boardroom brawl… Give me a minute, and I think I can hack those cameras so we can be a fly on the wall…”

Suddenly, a message appeared in their mindpals.

All hands: Please assemble for departure. First group will leave by shuttle in three minutes.

Sae looked dumbfounded at Rashi. “What. The. Fuck?”