Story © by Jim Bearden 1998
All Rights Reserved
Page by Jilli
DARTEX
aka Jim Bearden
IN THE ENDING
Space. A cold empty void. No stars, no light; a vast empty nothing for as far as the eye could see. Darkness was its comforter, and silence its companion.
Into this emptiness sailed a huge ship, its size incredible. It passed slowly along. On ts side was hugely painted its name; New Eden. It was the last ship sent out into space from earth, years before.
The failing resources of the planet and overpopulation had forced the Eden project on mankind. This was their last, best hope. After years of debate they finally agreed to build a great spaceship and pick a man and a woman to travel to the nearest solar system which would support human life. They were to be fruitful and multiply. They would pick the finest example of mankind and with the help of each other would see to it that our race would live on. At least this was the plan, they ran tests to see who was the most qualified to represent the human race. After years of testing they finally picked two the world government could agree on; Col. Adam Taylor and Captain Eve Matheson. The ironic name choices pleased most people and all was accepted and plans were made.
They planned and built the largest spaceship they could conceive and stocked it with a lifetime supply of food and equipment. The newly designed deep sleep modules were added in the hope that the chosen could sleep out the long journey through the galaxy and age but minimally.
The ship was huge and every possible thing that could be useful was incorporated into its design, gardens, lakes, parks and all the technology they could plan and design. There were automated hospitals and schools, to care for the off spring expected of the pair. All mankind's amassed knowledge was stored in its massive computers. All of this took years to complete. It was the greatest achievement of modern man and a tribute to human ingenuity. When it was launched the whole world watched with the hope born of desperation and the wish's of the entire human race.
The New Eden traveled the stars for seventy-eight years and as it neared its destination, systems began to come back to life in the great ship. Lights flickered and machinery hummed into action again after their long programmed silence. Deep in the heart of the ship the living quarters began to run again. There was a majestic glory to the way everything came on again so smoothly after the long years, and the great ship lit up from end to end. The computer was working smoothly and one after the other all the systems came back online. On the bridge, control panels reset themselves and the ship slowly took command of itself again. Inside a small chamber the deep-sleep modules vibrated into life. Gasses were forced into the chambers and slowly fluids were pumped back into bodies lain dormant for years. The doors to the chambers slowly raised and a slight mist whooshed out into the room. After a few minutes the mist cleared and there was silence.
A soft cough came from one of the modules and then a spasm of deep throated coughs. Col. Taylor sat up and looked around. He sat there for a few minutes and slowly inhaled and exhaled deeply, then stretched and started to unhook himself from the electrodes and I.V's. Part way through disconnecting himself he paused, puzzled. Something was wrong. The other module was open, but there was no movement or sounds. He finished disconnecting himself and crawled slowly out of the module. His legs would not support him and he sagged slowly to the floor. This was not as easy as it was in the test runs, he realized as he sat there on the cold floor waiting for his legs to feel like they would support him. Leaning heavily on the sleep module he staggered to his feet.
He was in what the scientist called a sleep suit, basically shorts and T-shirt with electronic hook ups. He wore no shoes and the floors were damn cold. He hobbled across the chamber to the other sleep unit and looked inside. His mind went blank as he stared at the dried husk that used to be Captain Eve Matheson.
Something had gone horribly wrong, he understood, but how could this be? The sleep unit had malfunctioned in some way and she had died in her sleep. From the look of things it had happened long ago. This could not be, his mind argued with the obvious, how could things have gone wrong right in the opening stages of the plan? This was not planed for and there were no backups for such a terrible accident. Col. Taylor limped over to the bench beside the wall locker and sat down. He opened the locker and started to pull his uniform on. He was in a daze as he dressed. What would he do now? All their plans went right out the window with one fatal mistake. All mankind's plans. This was hopeless, no way to correct it and no way to send for another mate from earth. Besides, he would have to go back into stasis and wait for her to get here from earth. He was not eager to go back in deep sleep after seeing Eve.
When he was dressed he went back and closed her sleep module. Turning he started to make his way to the bridge. As he walked he talked to the computer, "Father, tell me what happened to Captain Matheson?" The computer whined for a minute and then replied, "Her sleep module suffered a fatal error."
He walked on slowly, "Father what caused this?" The cool and synthetic voice of the computer answered him, "A collapse of the helo-mastic stabilizer caused the fatal error and concurrently the death of Captain Matheson" He made it to the ship trans riders, stepped aboard, sat down and buckled in. "Bridge," he said and the trans rider took off very fast down the huge hallway. "Father, what is our location?" he asked as he glided along. The reply was as bad as the death of Eve, "We are nowhere." "Father, what do you mean nowhere?" The trans rider pulled to a halt in front of a large door marked 01. He unbuckled and stepped out. The doors opened by themselves in front of him as he strode through and into the bridge area.
"We are in no known space sector." Father answered. This was turning into a nightmare. It was not possible. Father must be malfunctioning, he tried to convince himself. Walking to the raised command area, Adam sat down. He turned on the display panels in front of him and they all came on instantly, all showing blank screens. Not even the digital distance monitors were working.
"Father how is this possible?" he asked as he double checked all the equipment. There was nothing wrong with the monitors. There was simply nothing out there.
"Forty-three years after leaving the Earth the entire galaxy vanished." He was stunned. Gone... how and why?. Everybody and everything gone? This was almost more than he could deal with.
He sat back in his chair and let it slowly sink in. What to do now?
"Father?" he said.
"Yes," came the reply almost immediately. If Father was shaken by the news, it didn't show. Of course, the computer had been given decades to get over the surprise.
"Explain what has happened." He held his breath.
"Insufficient data." was all the computer said.
Did the world end like the bible said it would, Adam wondered?
"Father, from a biblical stand point, best theory you have".
The computer was silent for a few minutes and then the far-away voice spoke to him, "Your God has ended it all, and mankind is no more."
He sat staring at the blank monitors and wondered if this could be true. He never could have even imagined this in his wildest dreams; alone on a space ship from nowhere and going nowhere.
The computer was humming and system lights were on but there were no displays, nothing. The entire situation was hopeless and he was at a loss at what to do or say. The ship was equipped with enough supplies to last him several lifetimes. Did he want to live this way? Alone and going nowhere. All around him lay the emptiness of space; no lights, no life and lonely. This was a nightmare dreamed by a madman and told to nobody. How could he survive the solitude. He got up and started to wander the ship, his thoughts drifting into nothing to be shared with nobody. And then it came to him like a flash; he would not live like this. He would end it himself. He could not live alone and would not. He made his way back to the sleep modules and looked down on the thing that was Eve. "You were the lucky one. I hope you didn't suffer too much," he told her as he shut down the lights and left the chamber.
The trans-rider carried him back to the bridge. He took a deep breath and started the self-destruct sequence. With a sureness only those who have accepted things have, he finished the setup and sat back in his chair as the countdown started.
"Self-destruct in five minutes..." He looked around at all of mans great technology and grinned. We thought we knew it all, and in the end we knew nothing at all. He was the last of an arrogant species and he would be gone soon. "Self-destruct in four minutes..."
He leaned back in his chair and made himself ready. From a table beside the command chair he made a choice of black coffee, with a flash a cup slid out and he savored the smell, strong and steaming. He sipped the coffee and relaxed.
"Self-destruct in three minutes..."
He smiled at his situation and said, "Father, tell me a story."
The cold metallic voice obeyed, searching its memory banks in an instant for something appropriate to the situation. He sipped his coffee as Father started to speak.
"In the beginning, there was...."
The End
Dartex, simple member of a writers club.
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