Ryan Taylor awakens from hibernation to a mystery that he, along with his crew, must solve in order to continue their mission. How they solve it and what they find is astounding.
We had just strapped into our G-chairs to return to Earth when Janet noted something on the main screen.
"Something's wrong, sir!" Janet said, pointing at the main screen. "That anomaly wasn't there until just now."
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I saw what looked like a hole in space that seemed to be expanding. It wasn't a black hole, but rather like a roughly rounded pond of water that was boiling at the edges and eating away at the blackness of space. "What the hell is that?"
"That might be a nucleating bubble, sir," Bridget said after staring at it.
"A what?"
"There's a theory about how space is not a true quantum vacuum and is therefore unstable, and if this metastability decays in a phase transition it could cause the universe as we know it to be destroyed."
"That looks as if it's expanding pretty fast," I said.
"It's probably doing it at the speed of light."
"We should be able to outpace it if we enter hyperspace," I said.
"That would only be a temporary fix, sir. Once it starts, this bubble nucleation effect will eventually consume the entire universe."
"Maybe we could avoid it by going through that nodal point near Earth. If we enter a different timeline, its universe might not be affected."
"That makes sense, sir," Bridget said.
"You'll have to set up the course and the time in hyperspace to get to that node."
"I have programmed that into the COMA system, sir."
How convenient, I thought. "COMA, take us into hyperspace on a course to that node."
"Burn will commence in ten minutes," COMA declared.
We entered hyperspace with only a few seconds to spare. My first thought was that this bubble effect would consume the planet that Megan was on. Was it the will of the universe to destroy her life and the lives of untold humans?
With the burn completed, we got out of the G-chairs and sat at the command station even though there was nothing to look at.
"Hopefully, we can get out of this timeline before space is destroyed," I said.
"I would think that as long as we're in hyperspace, we're safe," Bridget said.
"Then, we have to assume that if we do get into another timeline, we won't experience this phenomenon," I said.
"I find it hard to understand what separates these timelines," Sharon said. "Are these timelines in separate universes?"
"That would be one possibility," Bridget said. "Another theory suggests that it's time phasing. In other words, the times are separated because they exist in separate quantum phases or existences."
