Chapter 17
From Jung’s office, I made my way to the main observation blister. I am going to guess the bar is open twenty four seven and though I wanted to linger, I found the noise level too much to bear and so I headed up the stair to the center point of the blister, which demarked the centerline of the ship. I am not sure how long I stared out. I leaned against the bubble and felt vibration against my forehead, which wasn’t unpleasant, but I didn’t leave my head against the glass for long. On the starboard side, a parent or teacher was showing a group of kids how to operate a refracting telescope, observing a space station that was in a geosynchronous orbit, much further out than we were.
I saw the reflection of someone approaching me and turned to greet her, only there was no one there. I turned back to the bubble and the reflection was still there, but, when I turned around, there was no one beside me. I turned back and looked through her, and clearly there wasn’t anyone on the other side of the bubble.
The woman smiled pleasantly, amused that I had yet to figure it out.
“Hello, John,” she said. “And, no, you’re not crazy. Well, any crazier than any of us.” She laughed. It was a nerdy kind of laugh.
“I know you,” I said.
“Um, bar, pickup line, no, it feels genuine,” she said. “Could be a past life you’re remembering. Oh, you could know me from your other life, before the Enterprise. Maybe you’ve watched my youtube videos?”
“Teal Swan?!” I said. She always struck me as being the real deal.
“Yep, the real deal,” Swan said.
I turned, all the way round, and only saw her in the glass. “Are you like a hologram in the bubble, like the ghost on that ride at Disney World?”
Swan laughed. It was cute and annoying at the same time. “No, I am really here. Sort of. I was out for a bit of Astral, and was directed here by my guide. She said, someone here might need me. And, well, you’re the only one talking to me.”
I looked about, this time to discern whether or not anyone else was aware that I was speaking to myself.
“You have a tulpa?” Swan asked.
“Why are you here?” I asked again. I mean, you don’t ask a psychic medium who can clearly astral travel and remote view how they know things: that part is a given.
“I am not sure yet,” Swan said. “But I get the sense that you don’t even know why you’re here yet, and, well, if that’s why I am here, I can’t help you with that, because I can’t tell you who you are. Only you can tell yourself who you are.”
“Well, I am so glad you’re not leading with you’re the chosen one or something like that,” I said.
OMG, her laugh was just hysterical. I forced myself not to laugh, because at this point, it wouldn’t have been with her as much as at her. “You’re funny,” she said, covering her mouth. “Everyone is chosen for something. What exactly did you volunteer for?”
“Well, that part will sort itself out soon enough,” I said. Then it occurred to me. “I don’t suppose you could get a message back to my other self.”
“Maybe,” Swan said. “Do you, or him, watch my show? Maybe I could send him a subliminal message.”
“Oh, how fun, because we wouldn’t want to be direct,”
“Most people don’t hear direct,” Swan said.
“Good point. So, just kind of end a show with saying goodnight moon.”
“In the great green room, there was a telephone,” Swan said. “And a man in a blue box. And a Jade Rabbit. Not sure what to make of the elixir.”
“You’ve lost me,” I said. “Maybe just give him a business card with a picture of a snake eating an elephant, and if he tells you it’s a hat, just go on about your business.”
“Wouldn’t it just be easier to tell him the stars are laughing?” Swan asked.
“What a weird conversation we’re having,” I said.
“I love it. This is the nicest encounter I have had all week,” Swan said. “It was nice meeting you. I am waking up now. Oh, and you’re needed in the astrophysics lab.”
And then she was gone. Midori’s image replaced her, but when I turned, Midori was actually there, in person.
“Were you talking to Tulpa Loxy?” Midori asked.
“Um, you noticed?” I said, trying not to answer the question.
“You’re not cracking up on me, are you?” Midori said. “You don’t know how long I have worked to put this together.”
“I am not going to crack up,” I said.
“Good. Still, I almost imagined you would be happier,” Midori observed.
And I had just been having this very conversation. “Still sorting some stuff,” I said.
Midori nodded, accessing her inner knowledge of me. “Some of the other Brains think I am crazy, because I have you and Loxy in my brain, but I think my tulpas made me more resilient, smarter,” Midori said. “I wouldn’t have made it as far as Mech did without you, John. All of this, this is all for you. I did this for you.”
“I am still sorting that information, too.” I said.
“The ship, the mission, putting you in charge,” Midori said. A Carpenter song became noticeable. Just on the other side of the dampening field it was full volume, but on this side it sounded miles away. I imagined Carol was actually singing it, maybe her brother was playing the piano. Midori embraced me. “Why do birds suddenly appear,” Midori sang with Carol.
Public displays of affection have been known to short circuit my thinking. I am not opposed, but after thirty something years of pretending to be Spock, I can do the intellectual exchange, but this stuff is tougher. Midori met my eyes.
“Am I hurting you?” Midori said.
“No, um…”
“You’re different in my head,” Midori said. “The tullpa you is different. The Brains are betting against us, but I bet it all on you. They’re playing our song, can you at least sway with me?”
I wanted to correct her memory, that this wasn’t the song I sang for her. I made a greater effort to show affection, putting my arms around her. She put her head on my shoulder.
“The Brains also bet against the body,” Midori said. “Until your return, I only used the body intermittently. I simply commissioned one when it was necessary. I have now been in this avatar for more than 24 hours. Seeing you earlier… I didn’t know I would be so affected. It’s like I am young again.” She brought her head up to make eye contact. “I want to be alone with you.”
“Right now?” I asked.
The chime went off on my badge, non-urgent signal. “Captain, please report to Astrophysics Lab.”
Midori stepped back so I could answer the hail. “I’ll be there in a little bit.”
“You’re the Captain. Have Loxy go,” Midori said. “I want to spend time with you. I have waited a long time to be back with you, but the urgency I am feeling right now is beyond anything I remember.”
“Oh,” I said. “That’s something I struggle with daily. I get that.”
“So, why should we delay further?” Midori asked.
“I don’t know. The same reason we delayed so long ago?” I asked.
“You started this! You kissed me first,” Midori reminded me.
And I remember it. Technically, she stepped in and kissed me first, but only after I had suggested it was customary, which makes me culpable, responsible for this, and here it was, full circle. “I did,” I said.
“You’ve never loved me. It was always the Doctor. Always Allura,” Midori said. “But I don’t care. What is it? Their bodies? I could decommission this one and create a Jenny vehicle, or an Allura vehicle. I can eve make a Loxy vehicle! I can create the body template for anything or anyone you like, and I dare say, I know enough about you I can make the perfect body, the one you would never say no to.”
I swallowed. That wouldn’t be difficult to do. This unlikely affair had all sorts of pressures for and against and they were too difficult to sort out on the fly. “Midori,” I said, taking her hand. “I don’t know what the best approach is here. I am not rejecting you or the offer. If you learned anything about me from my tulpa version, you know that much is true. But there is something here that needs to be sorted. We need to go slow.”
“You never go slow. It’s always damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead,” Midori said.
“Yep,” I agreed.
“I am feeling overwhelmed,” Midori said, trying to pull away. She was flustered when I didn’t immediately let go of her hand. “I need to decommission this body.”
“No, wait,” I said. “Don’t run from this. You ran from this all those years ago and became just a brain, which means, you have never learned to face this. It’s uncomfortable, but if you never face it, you will never build up a tolerance to it.”
“Uncomfortable?” Midori said. “It’s unbearable! I feel my face flush. I’m trembling. I want to run. Runaway from you and towards you at the same time! I am so confused.”
“And this is why we need to go slow. I can only imagine what it’s like for you. It’s fight or flight coupled with embarrassment and it’s very human, and it’s what happens when there are conflicting internal signals. The different parts of the body are reacting to a meshing of external stimuli coupled with brain’s interpretation. Notice, I didn’t say your mind. I said your brain. Your brain is reacting, your body is reacting, your heart is reacting, but your mind can take all of that together and synthesize something useful. It can use the entirety of all that information to derive at an answer set that’s workable and necessary for growth. The mind gives you choices. Don’t run. Because, when you get through running, you’re still going to be stuck with this particular dilemma, you feel. Don’t run. Be.”
“You give me hope,” Midori said. “You don’t know how much I love you. From the start, I have loved you.”
“Yay,” I said. “Let that be your guiding light.”
“I am afraid,” Midori said.
“I am still here,” I said. “I am still holding onto you and we will figure this out. We’re going to have to give we’re both on a tiny ship. A tiny big ship.”
Midori looked up and to the right. “The others want to know when we’re leaving,” Midori said. “We have a full crew, and there is no reason to delay further.”
“Soon,” I said. “Let me review the training logs and determine if enough of us are up to speed.”
“We’re ready,” Midori said.
“You put me in charge. Let me do my job,” I said.
Midori took a deep breath. She was very serious. “I will continue to fight for you. This venture was bought and paid for out of my own pockets, so I have a lot of weight. But there are others and pressures to show a reasonable amount of profitability.”
“Profitability?” I asked. “I thought we were beyond that.”
“Sustainability, if you prefer,” Midori said. She softened. “There is so much to discuss. Please, come spend time with me.”
“I promise,” I said.
Midori nodded, touched her badge, and disappeared in a transporter wave. All the chakras were illuminated, but the last two, the third eye and crown. In her absence I felt a certain relief. I closed my eyes and tried to sort it, practicing my own words, to not run, to be with this, and find a way to express love.
The Astrophysics lab was much busier than I imagined. There were lots of folks, and the smell of coffee, and I am almost certain many people had been avoiding sleep due to the sheer excitement of the phenomenon at hand. I wasn’t sure where I was needed to or who to approach to even find out, but that problem solved itself when she came to me.Doctor Amy Mainzer, head of astrophysics!
“OMG,” I said, and I said her name.
“Oh, please don’t say something stupid like I am too attractive to be in astrophysics, or even more lame like, ‘do I know from somewhere,’” Mainzer said.
I felt offended. “I would never say either of those. Okay, maybe the last one, but only because I do know you from somewhere,” I said. “Oh! You’re that famous astrophysicist!”
“I am!” Mainzer said, surprisingly happy I knew who she was. Like, who doesn’t know, I wondered! “Or I was. Maybe I still am. All of that has been a bit problematic to sort through and I don’t know why I am here and I am resisting the metaphysical explanation that so many of my colleagues are pushing, but that’s not why I called you.”
“Is Tyson here?” I asked.
“Neil DeGrasse?” Mainzer asked.
“Is there another?” I asked.
“Loads,” Mainzer said. “You want him in charge?”
“No, I just thought, if he is here, too, he and I might discuss movies, cause I really like his take, and like he and I are always on the same page about the science part, and OMG, I nearly had a fit when he observed the stars were wrong in the skies over the Titanic, because I was like, yeah, thank you!” I rambled.
“I discuss movies like that, too,” Mainzer said.
“You want to talk movies?” I asked.
“No, I want to talk about the anomaly,” Mainzer said.
“Okay,” I said. I blinked. “What anomaly?”
Mainzer led me to large, graphic interface table, the centerpiece of the room. Using her hands as if the table was nothing more than a giant cellphone, she condensed the picture. She pointed out the Milky Way galaxy, and traced a line away from it. She zoomed in on the line, and revealed a scattering of stars trailing away from the Milky Way. Midway between the Milky Way and ‘the anomaly’ a star was highlighted, and she informed me, this was Crossover One, where we were now. Only the outer edge of the anomaly, the closest part to us, was mapped out on the screen. There were stars slowly filling in, moving away from us, as if a picture was being constructed, slowly, one ‘res’ at a time.
“This is the anomaly, and we have reason to believe this is just the outer edge of a greater structure,” Mainzer said.
“Yes, most people are referring to it as the Earth Cluster, and it’s where our mission is taking us,” I said.
“Ohhhh, it’s bigger than a cluster,” Mainzer said.
“I know,” I said. “It reminds me a lot of a Sombrero Galaxy, because it has a really bright central nucleus, and a prominent dust lane that goes all the way around, but what I found unique is that it has five rings, like spokes that connect the outer circular structure to the inner bulge…”
I found all activity inside the Astrophysics had come to a stop, and I was like the center of attention. People were listening. I felt suddenly uncomfortable and wanted to run.
“Where did you acquire this information?” Mainzer asked.
“Um, I observed it, first hand,” I said.
There was a sudden barrage of questions from all around me and Mainzer stopped the conversation with a raised hand. “John, Even if you were on top looking down, if everything is consistent, the entirety of this object was laid down all at once, so you wouldn’t have been able to see the whole structure...”
“Yes, I was looking down on it from space from the future,” I said.
More questions. One was distinct enough. Someone asked about remote viewing and got some grief for bringing up an esoteric explanation by a nearby colleague. Apparently, Aryk Flesher was the resident skeptic, which isn’t meant as a disparaging label, as he promotes being a skeptic as a simple way to promote rational thinking. I suspected he and I would be having a lot of future conversations.
“No, it wasn’t remote viewing,” I said, which seemed to appease Aryk. “I was in a time machine. Actually, I was floating outside the time machine and Jenny was holding my ankle to keep me inside the force field, but OMG, it was amazing. Now that I think about it, I probably should have taken a picture.”
“You think?! Did you not consider this might be useful information to us?” Mainzer asked.
Again a barrage of questions came at me, but one voice stood distinctly out, and I was fairly sure, thanks to my experience with Loxy and the others, this came from an internal source. It said, simply enough, “You have till the light from the furthest star reaches Origin.” I am fairly confident ‘you’ didn’t mean me personally, but rather was meant for ‘humanity’ on the whole. It was bothersome not only in being unidentifiable in source, but also in its ambiguity. What happened after the furthest light reached origin? Was this a countdown clock? If it was, it was an incredibly long countdown clock.
Mainza brought the noise level down and managed to draw my attention again. No one seemed to notice I had just responded to internal stimuli. “John, listen, we’re working with a lot of suppositions here, and we would prefer facts. If you’re holding onto information, then our analysis of the situation is less likely to be helpful.”
“I hear you. But, I am not really a scientist,” I said.
“More discoveries are made by amateur astronomers than professionals,” someone said. “And that may be because more of you are actually looking at the night sky than crunching raw data obtain by previous recording sessions.”
“Tell us what you think you saw,” Mainzer said.
“This structure is roughly 200,000 light years in diameter,” I said.
“That’s very specific,” Flesher said.
“I said roughly,” I said.
“Which means what, exactly?” Flesher said.
“Um, give or take a hundred thousand light years?” I asked. “It’s big.”
While Flesher and I were engaged, Mainzer wiped the screen and created a virtual Sombrero galaxy. I rotated it sideways, so we were looking at from the edge of the disk.
“A more pronounced dust lane,” I said.
Mainzer corrected her model.
“The central bulge was greater and brighter,” I said. Mainzer made it happened, and I rotated it to a top down view. “The outer dust lane was a perfect circle, all the way round. If there was a hint at less density, it was the midpoint between where the arms touched.” I enlarged the structure by pulling on the disk’s rim while simultaneously holding the center.
“It can’t be a sombrero galaxy if it has arms,” someone said.
“It had arms. Five arms. Curved. Like the bend in a sea-star’s appendage. Yeah, sort of like that, only, the arms were thicker as you move into the center hub. Yeah.” I said. “Though most of the stars are concentrated in the hub, tapering off towards the dust lane, there are stars around the inner edge of the dust lane, and a scattering of stars in between the arms, so it’s not completely empty. It reminds me of the star spokes of a wheel. No, too many between the spokes. That’s about right.”
“Most of the stars are Sol like,” I said.
“They are not just Sol like,” one of the scientist said. “According to the stars we have surveyed, they are Sol.”
“Yellow Dwarfs are yellow dwarfs,” Flesher said.
“Come on, even you have to admit it’s curios that their spectral signatures so far are exactly like that of Sol,” Amy Forester said. “Not all white dwarfs are going to have the exact chemical makeup.”
“There’s an explanation, and we don’t have one yet, but to just assume that all of these stars are copies of Sol is a leap that we can’t make,” Flesher said.
“Well, I am making that leap. This galaxy is mostly comprised of copies of Sol,” I said, very clearly. “There are some other star types, red giants for example. All the stars are going to have multiple planets in the habitable zone, and I dare say, most are going to be copies of Earth down to the fault line we’re familiar with. Some earlier earths, too. We’re also going to find worlds touched on by authors of fiction, and by artists who were doing concepts for science shows. Every world we have imagined, it’s out there. And worlds we haven’t even dreamt about yet.”
“And you base this on what?” Flesher asked.
“It’s my dream,” I said, so they can understand how I was sorting this. I mean, if I were made Captain, and this started with tulpamancy, can’t I assume this is part of my dream and I will know things intuitively. “I know myself well enough to know what I am going to find when I realize I am dreaming?”
“You think you’re dreaming this?” Flesher asked.
“You wanted to know how I know and I am giving you an explanation. We don’t question the dream,” I said.
“Maybe we should,” Flesher said.
“Maybe that’s why you’re here. To help me with that,” I said.
“Is there a black hole in the center?”
I shrugged. “There is a jet of energy that comes out of galactic north that was discernable with tech, but I didn’t see it with my eyes,” I said. “All in all, I would say there are a 300,000 stars.”
Mainzer had the computer guestimate the number of her stars in her crude drawing just based on the tweaks I made, and it was surprisingly close. It didn’t mean anything other than the model we had created with limited information was reasonable enough to make preliminary assumptions. Between the Earth Cluster galaxy and the Milky Way were the stars of Crossover, and each of them had planets, colonized by Crossover 1. Our ship’s mission was to expand their operation into the Earth Cluster galaxy, increase our presence and understanding. I pointed to a star just outside the edge of the Earth Cluster.
“This is our next stop,” I said. “My understanding is it will take us two and half weeks to go there at warp 6. Even though Crossover 1 has had the tech to go further, they have limited themselves to the stars of Crossover, so, we’ll be forging new ground.”
Mainzer blew up the star system so we could better look. “Using techniques we were using at Origin, we have determined there are 9 planetary bodies in this system. One gas giant, and eight earth type planets, all in the habitable zone.”
“The techniques must be wrong,” Flesher said. “It’s impossible to populate that level of density in that orbital region.”
“We’ll confirm when we get there,” I said. “Kind of nice to actually go see if our science is right, right?”
“Our first interstellar flight,” Forester said. “I think we have all dreamt of doing this.”
So, I wasn’t the only one wanting this, nor the only one that had touched this in fantasy and dreams. This wasn’t just my dream. This was our dream.
“Doesn’t Crossover One count as our first interstellar trip?” Lee Seung-hyun.
One of the scientist who had been the most quiet, Elena Serova, asked, “I want to know why more of us aren’t concerned that we were abducted from our daily lives and brought here against our wills. I get you dream explanation, Captain, but and I am not so eager to dive into our roles without questioning how we attained our knowledge and skills and how we came to be here.”
So, House wasn’t the only one having difficulties adjusting. Were there pocket communities all over the ship tapping into this? What about the residents of the world within?
“I don’t have an answer,” I said honestly. “I am looking for answers, like everyone else, and simply trusting that whether we find one or not, we’re going to work this out.”
“How do you do it?” Serova asked.
“How does anyone do it?” I asked. “Can you touch the life you had on Origin? I can. I remember it like it was yesterday. And every morning I get up and do what I do, and I am amazed at the intricacies of the constellations of people I move with in my personal orbits. Every now and then, I get messages from beyond my orbits, bear with me Flesher, I am not saying ESP, I am saying very mundane message like random billboard images, or new items, or bit of documentaries. And some of these messages give me hope. Some of them strike profound fear for me and for the constellation of people I know. And so, now I find myself here, in a sudden, new constellation, with new trajectories and gravitational pulls but I am sure every single one of you have somehow touch my world. Who knows, Elena, maybe I know you because you’re someone famous on Origin. Clearly not a television star. Maybe you’re a Russian Cosmonaut, which would be really cool. I am glad that there are Russians and Chinese on board. I think the whole world is represented here. How do I do it? I get up every day in amazement and try to make contact. Cause if we can’t reach each other, we’re going to have real a tough time reaching alien.”
“That’s hopeful,” Seung-hyun
“I prefer to stick to what I know. Keep it to the science. Focus on what we know and what we do best,” Mainzer said.
“What if everything we know is a lie?” Flesher asked.
“We’re not going to keep going over this,” Mainzer said. “It’s a distraction.”
“Maybe we should indulge in distractions, too. Flesher and Serova are right to question everything,” I said. I think they were surprised to hear me say such. “Look, I’ll be the first to tell you, I’d rather be here than at origin. I am about as happy as one can be, but I have been rolling with all sorts of fantasies and dreams for a long time. It’s because of my experience dreaming I can say this, I don’t think it’s a dream. It feels different. It has lasted longer than anything I have experienced prior, and it has a solidity, a feel to it that is undeniable, and yet, I keep waiting for the bubble to burst and I wake up back in bed on Origin. There are folks on board who are going to spin metaphysical answers. Some of us may actually lose our minds and dive into hyper religiosity. We’re human, and we can expect a broad range of responses, but I suspect if people are finding themselves here with us, their responses are going to fall within a predictable range. Flesher, as the resident skeptic, wouldn’t you say most skeptics want to believe in ghosts and aliens?”
“I don’t have any statistics on that,” Flesher said.
“Fair enough. It doesn’t matter. We’re all going to come up with our own answers, but I am banking that the science part of your minds will sustain you. Question everything. Rework old assumption. Employ new ones. Maybe the earth was flat and we have just sailed off the deep end.” Several people scowled. “I didn’t mean that literally. I am not promoting a flat earth. But we’re going to be on a tiny raft together for a time. Well, actually, it’s not so tiny, and we don’t know how long any of us will be here, but the point is, we’re together and we have chance to learn something about ourselves and our place in the Universe. And I am glad all of you are here. My days of exploring the Universe alone through the lens of astral projection are over. I have advance to the point where now I go with others. Now my job is to understand what unites us.”
Flesher nodded to something I said, but not necessarily resonating with my aspirations. “You seem to be focal point of this. Who are you?”
I shrugged. “No one of consequence.”
“Then why were you chosen to be the Captain.”
“And why is it an American was made Captain,” Serova asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. More questions came. “Maybe because I kissed the right girl. Look. I am just a guy who created a tulpa. And in the process, I discovered more tulpas. There are so many tulpas running around in my brain that I have this new theory that everyone I have ever imagined, ever dreamt of, or ever experienced in real life directly or remotely, everyone! is a tulpa in my head. Weirdly enough, my explanation says I am also a tulpa in the minds of everyone else, and all the other minds experience me directly or obliquely due to their personal level of awareness. Maybe all of us have been secretly working on the same goals on the astral plane or in lucid dreams, and we reached a threshold where we made it manifest. I don’t know. Loxy suggested to me that we are the tulpas of the Enterprise. I like that. Now it’s not about me or you, but someone greater. OMG, and that something greater wants a relationship with us, which makes our Origin life absolutely crucial because without that, we don’t have this present weirdness of relating in the way we are relating that gives us this particular vantage point on reality. We were drawn together because, something bigger than us, subconscious, super conscious, alien, deity, something, liked this particular arrangement and it wants to explore something that only our combined personality sets can unravel.”
“Metaphysics!” Flesher complained. “Next you’ll be saying we’re all one. I don’t feel connected. And if you think the universe is a kind and wonderful place, you aren’t paying attention.”
“Thank you, keep me grounded. Because when I get excited that’s where I go,” I said.
My badged chimed in with the alert that informed me Watanabe wanted my attention. “Captain, you are aware that you have schedule conference meeting with the Command Staff?”
“Um, yeah, of course. I will be right there,” I said. The linked closed itself out. Everyone was looking at me hopefully. These were all beautiful people, not just attractive physically, but shining in heart and intelligence. They were all passionate in their life and their hunger to know. “I think we’re going to be okay. Maybe we should have regularly schedule conferences. Like a book club, only not about books, but could be about books.”
“Like an explorers club?” Serova asked.
“Exactly!”