A collection of stories to thrill, entertain, and enlighten . Thought provoking tales of fantasy, mystery, murder, love, sci-fi, and war. Within the mind and around the globe and universe, journey with the heroes and fools, the victims and the villa...
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Why the ship decided after eons adrift to come fully to life once more was possibly due to the collision, but it was not to be one of the questions high on the list of things to work out. By the time the Es-Iblis turned herself back on, it simply didn't matter why – there was not much that seemed to matter to its crew at all anymore.
They had left the confines of the solar system in the year 2554 with a crew of two dozen, all in a state of stasis. The ship, using a combination of thrust and gravitational sling-shotting, continued gathering speed in the relatively frictionless void of space and shot out of the solar system with no great fanfare or celebration.
The goal of the mission had been to explore a life-compatible planet, designated LC-66, located some 56 light years away. Somewhere in the initial century of flight, something happened . The Es-Iblis simply failed to initiate the internal protocols required to slow its progress and awaken its crew. LC-66 was reached and quickly passed as the ship continued its journey into the truly unknown.
Countless years of consistent acceleration resulted in the ship approaching the speed of light itself. A marvel of engineering, the Es-Ilbis, had managed to continue its voyage without any mechanical failure, this due in part to the sterile nature of space itself. Power had miraculously been maintained at a minimal level thanks to the harvesting of star power through the massive solar sails surrounding the ship. The primary source of power, nuclear fission reactors, had since shut down, their high efficiency fuel cells long decayed to harmless non-reactive elements.
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The collision itself was not witnessed by any living being and the astounding fact that a light speed crash failed to obliterate the ship would surely have been regarded as a miracle.
The truth was that the crash was not a crash at all. The Es-Iblis had run into a membrane, a sheath that acted in much the same way as a net beneath a falling tightrope walker, stretching as it slows the speeding object to a full stop. The membrane slowly reverted to its original shape, pushing the ship backward three hundred thousand miles over the period of several years. It was when this process was complete that the Es-Iblis came to life.
