Chapter 19: The Epsilon Gateway
The medical staff was just wrapping up a series of tests on Aurelius. He had had a catscan, x-ray and blood work done to make sure his rocket ride hadn’t knocked anything loose. The nurse examining him was in her early twenties and glowed with a smile and energy Aurelius couldn’t help but admire.
“Everything looks good.” she said, a smile creeping across her face as she tried to keep from making direct eye contact with him, “Your cholesterol is just a tad high though.”
“Weird… Didn’t think jetpacks could do that...” he teased playfully.
“Oh definitely.” the nurse laughed, patting Aurelius on the arm and giving him a smile that conveyed a few things, “Anyway, I see nothing that is going to keep you here…. If ya hurry you should be in time to watch the ship go through the gate.”
“Thanks.” he said hopping off the examining table. His feet had barely hit the floor when the door to the exam room suddenly slid open. Jerula, Paul and Nyreen came stomping in.
“Alright. Alright, no pictures please. I know I’m great, the hero of the hour and all that but really I’m just a guy.” Jerula announced, waving around his mobile access pad like a flag. He leaned over to smile at the nurse. “A guy that’s free this evening if your shift ends soon.”
“So is he a goner!?” Paul asked the woman at the end of Jerula’s focus.
“He’ll be fine. Your other friend though had better keep his hands to himself, if he doesn’t want to lose something.” the nurse threw back playfully.
“Depending on what it is. It might be worth it.” Jerula smiled.
“I love how you guys just barge in. If you guys were trying to catch me naked you’re fifteen minutes too late.” Aurelius said buttoning up his Corp issued crew jacket.
“Its nothing we haven’t seen before.” Nyreen said throwing her arms around Aurelius.
“I guess we’re stuck with him…” Paul said trying to sound sarcastic, “Thank’s a lot Jerula…”
“When you’re a hero you just do it. Even the new guy is worth saving.”
“Well I guess so. Bad enough replacing Jenkins. Don’t want to have to start over from scratch again.” Paul said, mock grudgingly.
“Sorry but only the good die young.” Aurelius bragged, “The devil’s got a restraining order out on me.”
“He really should give me the name of his lawyer.” Paul said. The five of them, including the nurse, broke out in laughter. All bullshitting aside aurelius could tell his friends were glad he was still alive and in piece.
“Hey, I heard we’re passing through the gate here momentarily. I wanna see it.” Aurelius said, shifting the moment back to the present.
“One step ahead of you.” Jerula said, “Got a nice space for us camped out in the forward hangar bay but we better get back to it soon before someone else takes it.”
…
The Freedom’s Reach was about to pass through the Epsilon Gate, and Aurelius wasn’t gonna miss it. Jerula had made a “kick back” out of a stack of boxes that overlooked a massive window embedded in the external hangar bay door. The ship was headed right for the turquoise star that was the Epsilon Gate, the wormhole that would bring them closer to Terra Luna, Earth. The transparisteel “glass” filtered out the blinding shine, rendering the star visible to human eyes without searing them.
A row of ships of all different shapes and sizes stretched out for hundreds of miles ahead of the Freedom’s Reach. They slowly began to disappeared, one by one, into the space inside a long swinging arm of a prominence as the star reachout out a burning grasp into the cold void of space.
This was the point in space, the mechanism, that humanity had found the Frontier. Singularities opened and closed along the star’s magnetic field. Some blinked in and out of existence for fleeting, nearly undetectable amounts of time, while others held their structure for minutes, hours, and even days. It allowed ships to pass from one side of the phenomena to the other. The wormhole in the fabric of space-time all lead to the star on the Frontier side.
The hangar was quickly filling up with crewmen and personnel both on and off duty. They all had their attention transfixed on the star outside the ship as it grew larger and larger.
“Now if only I had snuck some beer out of the lounge. Never seen something so beautiful in my whole life,” Aurelius said.
Jerula was more engaged in whatever was on the screen of his mobile access pad than at the “once in a lifetime” view.
“Are you kidding me?” Nyreen asked.
Jerula looked around. “What?”
“We’ve got front-row seats to God’s majesty, and you’re here with your Gizmo.” Paul exclaimed.
“I see it. It’s out there!” Jerula continued. “Just wanted to catch up on a few things.”
Aurelius took a seat next to his friend. “I think the CO would be fine if you didn’t clock in any overtime on the grounds that you were watching yourself pass through a theoretically possible but totally improbable space phenomenon.”
“Huh? What did ya say?”
Aurelius shook his head and handed each of his friends a protein bar from his pack. “Not a fine Merlot, but if ya wanna toast…”
Jerula picked through the handful of breakfast bars Aurelius set out on their makeshift table, “I hate those things. They taste like alcohol and feet.”
“Not quite the way I’d so keenly put it, but yeah, pretty much… Feet. Mmm, dem’s good eatin’.”
The four of them laughed.
The cargo bay slowly began to fill with other crewmen wanting to sneak a peek at the Epsilon Gate.
“You know… I’ve never been this far away from home before. Was stuck in the hangars for nine months after basic. Then all this just happened so fast. Can’t help but wonder if this is my one big shot at something. You know, that moment where you know you’ve ‘made it.’”
“I’ve always wanted to see the Epsilon Gate,” Jerula replied. “But you shouldn’t see this as your one and only shot at something. You never really ‘make it.’ There’s no such thing as just one shot. You can always ‘make it’ again.”
Aurelius nodded, “Good advice.”
“Besides… things happen when they are ready to happen. This was just your time.”
Aurelius’s friend was wise, far wiser than he let on.
The group watched intensly as the light from the turquoise star enveloped the ship and bleached the massive hangar in a shimmer like that of sunlight reflecting off a giant pool of water. Aurelius could easily imagine the early pilgrims being totally confused the first time they passed through the gate.
“Have you seen anything like this before?” Nyreen said extending her arm out and letting the light play against her dark caramel skin.
“Not in real life.” Paul replied with a child like smile.
“Once. Came through the gate once when I was a kid.” Jerula said, his mobile access pad now completely forgotten as he stared out at the liquid colors and shapes that cascaded across the viewport.
“What about you, Aurelius?” Nyreen asked, turning her body to look at him but never breaking eye contact with the grandeur ahead of the ship.
“Sorry, what?” Aurelius said, seeming to come back from a long way away.
“You ever seen anything like this?” she repeated.
“It sort of reminds me of a dream I sometimes have…” Aurelius said vaguely.
“You okay, man?” Jerula asked pulling his gaze away from the port.
“Yeah I’m fine. Just remembered something. No... Never seen anything like this.”
“What was that about a dream?” Paul asked.
“A dream?”
“Yeah you said something about a dream you sometimes have.” Paul said
“No idea. Sorry guess I was caught up in the beauty. I meant It’s like something out of a dream.” Aurelius’s attention never challenged the spectacle just outside the vessel. His brother and he had once sat and listened to an old spacer try and describe it to them, but even the imagination of a child wasn’t quite up to the task of characterizing exactly what the inside of the gate looked like. Still it was that old spacer that had sparked something inside his brother, something that would eventually lead Magnus to leave home, and for Aurelius to follow. He didn’t know what to expect from the space beyond the gate or from Earth herself. Little did he know his trip was going to get a lot more interesting.