Wolfy-Hyperspace

Wolfy- hyperspace

part one



Prologue



Arnold went over the digitized notes on his laptop computer, waiting for it all to 'click' into place. It just didn't make sense. John's numbers painted a picture, a picture of interstellar travel, but not as we know it. Rather, the ship would enter an altogether different universe, where no standardized rules applied. He thought back to transporter experiment that had started it all, and had taken his friend's life.



The room was a laboratory; inside it were two cubicles, and a pane of glass, protecting Arnold, who was in another room. The cubicles were also made of glass; a thin brass tube connected the two together. In the right hand cube lay Jonathon, strapped to a chair with leather restraints covering his neck, wrists and feet. A huge machine dipped down to his face from the ceiling, it looked like a death ray in that it resembled a cannon, a huge glowing bulb at the end, and was aimed at John’s nose.

“Are we ready to make history?” Arnold smiled as his voice echoed through the speakers.

“Do it.” John, however, didn’t smile, for he was worrying about having his very atomic structure dissolved and hurled across the room, and into the adjacent cubicle. He clenched his eyes shut.

Arnold pressed the enter key on his workstation in front of him, causing the lights to dim with the electric surge, obscuring the sight of John’s body ripping itself to shreds. The skin went first, tearing itself to the panes of the glass, smearing messily over all six faces of the interior of the cube, then streaking down to the floor, like reacting to an explosion in the very core of his body. The absence of skin allowed blood to propel itself onto the cube, further obscuring Arnold’s view, not that he'd like one. Finally, his bones shattered and escaped the embraces of the feeble restraints, cracking the glass and making a spiderweb pattern with the tremendous impact, before falling to the ground. John was reduced to a messy smudge and a puddle on the floor.

Then it cleaned itself up; the smudge, John, dissolved like water boils, slowly evaporating the puddle and burning the bones into ash, which vaporized and joined the atmosphere. The john-vapours traveled down to the pipes and were transferred to the next cubicle, where the process was reversed. Bones materialized from the air and joined together, they assumed the position John had been in the other cubicle, and slipped back into the leather restraints.. The air gave birth to red mess, which splashed messily onto the windows and floor, the puddle then flooded into the hollow rib cage and where limbs used to be. Some red composed itself and turned into organs, the majority entered into a newly formed circulatory system. Skin covered him. When his eyes slithered back into their sockets, john gasped for air.

The intercom system buzzed into life. “Well, how was it? Looked painful.”

The still gasping form of john thought for an answer, before forgetting the question. “I saw everything.”

“What’re you talking about, buddy?”

John tried to move, but found his body responding instead, his limbs shifting in their sluggish way. He tried again, but this time his legs moved, and then he saw nothing. John panicked. Even though his eyelids retracted themselves, his mind still convulsed in shock, and his body did the same. The leather, not firmly prepared, retreated away from him.

“He’s going into shock! Code red! Get a medical team in there!”

The medics burst into the sanitized room, carrying large boxes with red crosses on them. The medic in front wielded a large hammer, which she used to smash open the glass room which John lie in. The glass didn’t have a chance to fully fall to the floor before the medics ran into the room, they restrained his comically flailing limbs and pressed a large needle into his arm. John stopped thrashing.



Later john and Arnold were in the lab infirmary, john on his back in an uncomfortably itchy bed, and Arnold standing over him with a puzzled expression on his face.

“Are you ok?” Arnold asked him

“Yes, but I need a pen. And paper.”

“Can I ask why?”

“You could, but you would never comprehend my answer.” Arnold retained the confusion and handed him a black ballpoint pen from the desk to his left, and a single piece of paper he tore from the notepad he held in his lab coat pocket. “That’s fucking great.” John said, looking at the single piece of paper, “what the hell do I do with this? I need more paper.”

John shook his head in a frustrated way and began to write regardless. The paper tore under his pressure. He held his head in his hands, and waited impatiently for Arnold, who gave him the entire notepad. “As much as I appreciate this…” John started, “I need more.” With this he flexed his reacquired knowledge of his body and jumped to his feet. Ignoring the nurse's protests, he started to sprint into his office. Arnold followed, barely keeping up with the large bounds.

Arnold stood outside the office getting his breath back, and staring at his friends peculiar behavior; he was writing over his huge black board, and had erased some sensitive data. On it were some diagrams, some English, and predominantly, some nonsense.

“What the hell are you doing?” Arnold said just outside the boundaries of the dusty office, he walked in, John ignored him.

Arnold looked over the untidy scrawls and immediately wished he hadn’t; there were huge quantities of algebra between words, sometimes inside the letters themselves. The letters were sometimes substituted for their numerical counterparts, with 2s for tos, and 4s for fors. Worst of all, he didn’t define values. “You’re writing gibberish if you don’t state values.” Arnold said, still glancing over the board.

“Ye…yeah…” with that, john stopped mid sentence, grabbed a piece of paper and pencil and wrote too hard on it, the paper tore a little, John carried on regardless. After he was done, he thrust the paper at Arnold, then resumed his writing. The values were jargon, and had little, if any, relevance to the actual text.

John began to use both of his hands, grasping a piece of chalk in each and writing different sentences with each hand like a man possessed.

“I didn't know you're ambidextrous.”

“I'm not. You can't tell?” John still wrote on the blackboard, never tiring, with a manic devotion.

Arnold sighed deeply at the infliction of his friend, looked over to the telephone that loomed, waiting to take john away, then made the call.



he'd had gotten john committed. Yes, he had casually thrown aside his brilliance and infinite wisdom, just because he had cared about his welfare. How foolish, idiotic, fucking stupid that decision was. The universe, or at least that deity who controls poetic justice, thought so too, as John had past away in four days due to dehydration and negligence.

Arnold thought back to the words john had said; ‘I saw everything.’

It clicked.



Chapter one



“It'll be set up in five minutes.” Arnold told himself. He was installing the newly invented generator, which he hoped would tear the universe a new space-hole. It was just a small mining ship, but it had a huge mission; it was to be the first ship to go into hyperspace. Just to Pluto, a nice safe jump. John had said the range of the jump was as infinite as space itself, but john had said a lot of things in his last days, not all of them made sense: like seeing a giant piece of cheese floating through space, and then crashing into a planet.

The ship was ready, but he needed some chump to take it on the first journey. Arnold looked around the hangar bay for someone generic enough to fit the bill. He spotted one, he was looking at the mining ships as a child presses his face against a candy shop window, Arnold could imagine drool coming from his mouth. Not a particularly handsome man, but he wasn’t ugly either; black t-shirt, grey tracksuit bottom; if this man didn’t fit into the generic column he didn’t know what did. He approached him.

“Excuse me,” Arnold said, the man turned around and looked at him, obviously embarrassed at his wishful looks at the ships. He said nothing, so Arnold continued. “I’m looking for a pilot to fly an experimental craft into space, do you have a license?”

“I do, but no ship.” He replied.

“That’ll be supplied.” Funny, Arnold thought, that was kinda implied. “The pay is 30,000 pounds for a trip to Pluto.”

“What’s the catch?”

“You’ll be using an experimental mode of travel; I tell you the details when you sign a nondisclosure contract.” The generics man face showed a mixture of enthusiasm and apprehension, or maybe he had heartburn. “It's only a mining mission.”

“Tell me more. My names Joseph, by the way, Joseph Wolfgang.” With that, they both entered a small dank office and signed a contract.



What could he do before the launch started? Joseph hated the waiting, but at least he could spend it eating. He was in the spacious cafeteria, feasting with his future crew, trying to get a good fix on them, and their personalities; nothing of interest. He looked at his watch again, five minutes until he would leave. He sipped his coffee impatiently. His crew were fine if unremarkable, a bit over enthusiastic about the whole thing, but that's to be expected. He took another sip and looked back his watch, four minutes and thirty five seconds left. He cursed the space-time continuum.

“How long do we have to wait?” said his newly appointed second in command, a man named Ben.

Without looking at his watch, the bored face of Joseph responded, “about four minutes ten seconds,” much to the amusement of those around him, who smiled at his impatience. Joseph sipped the ever draining coffee, and sighed.

It being time or not, Joseph grew tired of their chatter. “We should go.” He stated plainly, the crew lifted themselves out of their chairs and followed his lead to the ship.



It was indeed a small ship; the engineering labs held the small generator, its purpose to puncture a hole into reality. Everything about the ship was small, but the corridors were large enough for three people side by side, to combat cabin fever, Joseph thought.

This was it, they were to enter a different universe, full of god knows what, just to get to Pluto. That, and to get his name in the record books.

Joseph walked down the brightly lit corridor; most ships just had one, and branches to lead to main stations, unlucky people had to walk through three rooms to get to theirs. His were crew dissipating as they reached the turn off point to their stations.

The bridge stood with an intimidating smirk, the anti-corridor, if you will. Joseph ignored its attentions and strolled happily towards his command station. It was a half-chair, like an extended stool, it stretched up so Joseph rested on his feet on the floor as well sitting down, the command keys to his left and right arranged themselves in a primitive button system. The newer ships had virtual reality operating systems, something akin to windows; but not this one, it was ancient. He wondered where Arnold had acquired it. Then he wondered why the first hyperspace test was getting so little attention, and why the public was so much in the dark. He pushed his thoughts out of his mind; nothing was tarnishing his enjoyment. So he pressed the communications button to his left instead.

“All stations report progress, virtual format please.” His command echoed around the ship. The panel of lights to his left lit up green, each representing a station saying everything was fine and dandy.

He smiled to himself, then pressed the button next to the communicator. “All systems are ready. Do I have clearance to launch?”

“Clearance authorised. Good luck, captain.” came the reply. Joseph smile broadened until it threatened to fall off his face. It made good on its threat and fell, but luckily, his professional cool replaced it.

“All stations, prepare for launch.”

On the outside, the ship was rectangular shape, but had engines on the bottom to give it it's thrust, which they did now. Mining lasers protruded from the sides, normally, they used on Mars and the odd moon of Jupiter, but now they could prospect Pluto, a feat normally left to government officials, and ships with huge cargo holds. The planet was normally so distant, it'd actually be a loss to haul back a cargo of god knows what, unless, of course, Pluto happens to have an excess of platinum or gold so far undiscovered.

The ship gained altitude and mocked gravity as it entered space, roaring at the inhabitants of the earth and shouting its superiority with the blue flame of the thrusters.

“We are free of the atmosphere, sir.” Ben said, to the back and left of Joseph.

“Excellent. Engage the generator.”

A strange thing happened then; beams of light came from the lasers and struck the space dead ahead of the ship. The lasers griped a small hole in the universe and stretched it like you worsen a hole in a sock. The cold hard vacuum of space seemed to be sucked through a stronger, harder, vacuum of space. The lasers continued their torture of existence until the hole was big enough to fit the ship, then they ceased. The ship zoomed through in defiance of natural law.





Chapter two

It was true Joseph didn't know what to expect, but here he was, floating around the bridge in zero G. He swam down to his chair using an ineffective arm motion, grabbed the seat and tried to sit himself down. He failed. Annoyed, he pressed the communication button, a too-familiar anger warming up his brain. “Engineering, you better have a decent excuse why the artificial gravity is malfunctioning.” He floated away despite his best efforts not to.

“According to the read-outs, artificial gravity is working fine, sir.” The head engineer, lieutenant Ephron, stated. Before Joseph could order the obvious, she chimed in again. “We're working on it now, sir.”

“Be quick about it, I can't float around all day waiting-...” Joesph's mouth dropped as he looked through the view screen in front of him, instead of the conventional and logical black, the space outside the ship was maroon red. Joseph had never seen a sight like it, it extended as far as the eye could see, and probably further.

“Sir?” Ben's voice said, now floating to the back of him.

“You can't see that?” he pointed to the red abyss, trying to reel his chin up to join the rest of his skull.

“What am I supposed to be seeing, sir?” Ben responded.

Joseph swivelled himself around, in the air, making himself look even more foolish. “look, space is red.” he pointed in its direction.

“Are you joking, sir?”

“Are you blind?” he swam back to his chair, using the same arm strokes. “Engineering, where is my gravity?”

“It doesn't make sense, sir; everything came back positive on the software, so we checked the hardware; the machine is working perfectly. We should have it, there's no reason why we shouldn't.” Ephron replied.

“Understood. Check everything twice.”

“Yes, sir.” the communication ceased.

He sighed a heavy sigh, and pressed the same button, “lieutenant, forget about it. Just get us out of here.”

“Yes, sir.” Joseph tried to sigh again, but found his breathing prohibited too many in such a short time. So he settled for silent seething instead.

Joseph lowered his eyebrow and gazed into the apparently red space in anticipation. Nothing happened.

“Lieutenant! I am losing my patience!” Joseph said through gritted teeth.

“It’s of no fault of mine, sir! The system should be working, the same as the artificial...-”

“...gravity, yeah. Fix it; we can't stick around here all day.”

Floating was uncomfortable, just hanging around, without any supports coming from anywhere, Joseph found himself continually turning upside down. He didn't allow himself to, of course, it would be undignified for a captain to command a ship on his head. He turned himself around and looked at Ben; he seemed nauseous, and his forehead almost touched the ceiling. Joseph yawned and began to play with the fibers of his T-shirt.

“What’s that?” the floating Ben said, looking at him, Joseph saw his hand pointing at the viewer. Joseph followed it, and saw a curious brown dot enlarging itself on the glass. At first he thought it was just a smudge, but it turned itself into a shape, dispelling any denials about its outside existence. Joseph scratched his head in total confusion.

It was a giant worm, except that it appeared to live in this version of space, and seemed to be moving towards them, no other worm did that. The image on the screen was appalling, it had full form and an undue amount of darkness about it. The creature held the darkness where the teeth should have been, Joseph was infinity relived as he failed to spot any white blemishes to this perfect void.

Joseph scratched his neck and watched the entity charge towards them, unsure of what to do. “We should probably get out the way.” He said, surprising even himself with the calm of the words, “Let's try a 90 degree turn.” he pressed the commands into the console. The engines roared and the floor shook, but they didn't move.

“Remind me to fire that engineer when we get back.” he said to no one in particular.

Joesph saw the wall of nothing push into the ship, with the darkness came gravity. It was a funny sensation to have one side of your body fall to the floor with full artificial weight, and the other still wanting nothing to do with it, but this is what happened. Joesph landed on his stool and promptly bounced off, leaving him sitting on the ground in front of it.

The communicator came to life, “sir, the artificial...-”

“Shut up.”



chapter three.

So much for clean and easy. Joseph sighed a sigh full of doom. He'd lived a full life, if not particularly a very long one. He looked at the ceiling, half expecting digestive fluids to seep through the metal panels, but there were none. He pressed the communicator again, “try to get us out of here, lieutenant.” he pressed it again to turn it off, and to save himself her response.

Joesph looked down from the ceiling to the floor. He felt strange, and then he looked at his feet, which were hovering three inches above the ground. He groaned, as a nice change of sighing.

The ceiling became the floor. Joesph shouted expletives as his head cracked violently on the new floor, his legs followed with a remarkable 180 degree turn in mid air. He was now lying on the floor. Joseph didn't try to stand, for fear of falling back onto the old floor, but he put his hand to his head for the same reason. After a few seconds he was standing, but of no fault of his own. It turns out that the walls also fancied themselves as floors, and were acting out their desires, must to Joseph's annoyance and confusion. He then fell forward, as if somehow standing on the ceiling, this time he caught hold of the captains chair, and groaned as his feet swung around again. He watched as Ben haplessly fell onto his face.

The lights flickered, they didn't dim, or even turn themselves off temporarily, they flickered in a different way. Black became white, green became blue, and Josephs eyes and mouth screamed in confusion and fear. He covered his eyes and fell to the floor, now situated on the right wall.

“Sir, we have a hull breach in engineering!” a voice came from the speaker. Yells and screams of people falling came through the speakers, Joesph closed his irritated eyes. He tried to respond to Ephron, but there was also a hull breach in the bridge. A small hole in the metal above his head could be seen, which incidentally, held its original title of ceiling. Joesph used this time to jump to the floor and grab onto his chair..



Black liquid seeped through and dropped onto his chair. Joesph's eyes widened as he stared at it, fully expecting it to burn and digest the chair, ala Aliens. But it began to take on a shape of a creature, wings and everything. It composed itself for a while, then flew around in its form for a bit. Soon, the bridge was full of flying insects made of black slime, but Joseph clenched his eyes shut to the magnificent scene, he'd shut them again when white became black, and black just stayed black. He'd shut them to protect his sanity. It only helped a little.

A black slimy butterfly landed on his arm, which was already being used to rotate his body as the ceiling became a wall, the sticky sensation it produced caused him to open his eyes. He was thankful that only red was black now, what he wasn't thankful for was that a fairly large swirling hive of insects now populated his bridge.

“hull breach in residential cabins!” came an unfamiliar voice on the communicator, before a scream replaced it.

Joseph looked to see where Ben was, he didn't have to look hard; his unconscious figure fell on its head as gravity shifted again.

He hadn't noticed the social gathering of black things on his head, but when one fell onto his nose, he did. In shock he loosened his grasp of the chair, regretted it, and put his arms over his head and curled into a falling ball. It landed onto the wall, or floor, that contained the corridor. He crawled along the new floor, jumped down the corridor-hole, and hoped gravity wouldn't invert. It didn't, and Joseph found himself on a, too fast, journey down the ships wide corridors.

He landed in the back of the ship, on his right leg, which protested over this and suddenly broke itself out of spite. He sat on his arse staring in numb shock at the piece of his skeletal system poking it's head out for air. Now wasn't a good time for air, not with gravity acting like a cement mixer.

Gravity didn't seem to budge though, it seemed to like the position it was in now, and so, his leg didn't have to move, or become crushed.

The drawback to this as that the black creatures had become interested in him, and now flew silently towards him. The colour red took this moment to come back from darkness, and the airlock chamber sign now illuminated itself for Joesph's viewing pleasure. He struggled towards it, but his bones, particularly those in his busted leg, refused to work right, and issued him with crippling pain for the attempt. He was forced to stare at both his potential salvation and his inevitable doom. The moths approached him.

They were curious at his wounds, taking their time to land directly on his wounded skin, foiling any terrified attempts to shoo them away by simply losing their solid form, and regaining it when his hand passed through them. The insects on is leg stopped having structure completely, and decided instead to merge into one, over both his skin and the protruding bone. Joseph put his head to the wall, and screwed his face into a face ball, made of his face. Then something unexpected happened, any blood not encased by the black smudge slithered back into it, the pain stopped, and his paralysed toes regained their ability to wiggle. He gasped in surprise and undid his fine face ball trick, gawking at the smudge break back into their dozen or so flying forms, and revealing a perfectly healed right kneecap.



But there was a difference, the tracksuit bottoms he wore, once grey, now had white text over them. He couldn't read it, it wasn't English, in fact it looked more Japanese than English. He ignored it, and instead gazed at the much more interesting sight of the smudges attach themselves to the wall, or, originally, roof. The metal disintegrated under their touch and crumbled like ash onto the floor. They disappeared.

He sighed in relief, closed his eyes lightly, got to his feet, and noticed there was no ship in front of him. What was in front of him was a rapidly disappearing ship. Joseph panicked again and began to run, to where he didn't know. But it turned out it didn't matter, Joseph disappeared too.



Chapter four



Joseph took a gasp of breath. He looked in front of him, gravity was normal, walls were walls and floors were floors, and there was indeed a ship there. He also noticed a few confused crew members pile into the corridors. He made his way to the bridge, trying to get his head around what had happened, or more accurately, to pass what had happened off as a dream. No such luck, Ben was still unconscious, his body pressed up against the right hand wall.



Outside the viewer was Pluto.