The speed of dark

The ring spun easily, the hatch opened smoothly, both silent in the absence of air.

Of the thirteen members of the array he’d visited so far, this was the only hatch that hadn’t required disassembly, and the Telescope servicing space held beyond it didn’t have the same random spray of decayed rubber from ancient seals long since worn down. Sparse and functional, plastic buttons looked as fresh as they must have those centuries ago, tough perspex bearing the years with an unusual dignity.

Cupola windows at either end of the pill-shaped interior showed views partially obscured by the full length of the internally mirrored monolith, and just like the others, its inclination was towards at Andromeda, humanity’s nearest and sporadically threatening neighbour. And there were the voices, odd fragments of artificial minds fired in random and broken beams across the gulf. These piecemeal intelligences were at least millions of years old, and spoke only in broken threats and warnings, running in some uncanny and enigmatic formulation that made decomposition impossible.

Whether they constituted an advance guard, an attempt at weakening defences before the onslaught, would only be known by those who survived the next million years of feasible travel time. The question that the 'Scopes had been assembled to answer, and which occupied the minds of every drafted Serviceman, was what had intercepted and broken the voices on the way to their own Milky Way.

As yet, they had failed to provide anything more than a maintenance task and a death sentence.

He had spoken to one of them once, through a screen in a training camp. The alien replies sounded like they came from a mind broken by torture.

He shook these existentialisms from his head, because next in this ritual train of thought was the ones who had long since died during his service, lost to the speed of light, and there was nothing constructive to the remembrance of those whose gravestones would have decayed to rubble some centuries past. This was Telescope 13 of twenty five, year two of his three year service, two of five millenia for those down the gravity wells.

Half way across the array. That meant –

He twisted in the vacuum, helmet scraping an instrument, to face the rear cupola and the dense matting of stars down the Arm towards the Galactic Centre. If Andromeda was behind, and this was the array center, then Sol must be there. He could not see it with the naked eye, but the monochrome screen of the 'Scope’s servicing setup pointed out the star to him, and then he could not look away from it. He passed minutes there, just looking, gauntleted fingertips grazing the hardened glass. The yearning was beyond what he could have imagined, proportional to the distance which had turned his home into less than a pinprick. In the light from that star they were all still alive, filming the messages he’d seen when he first woke after the first big sleep.

In that light there was a reason to go home.

But the console beeped, and perspective returned. They were gone, and he was here on behalf of a humanity he would never meet, generations unknown to him between his outward and inward voyage. He looked back to the screen and found it changed from when he’d searched for Sol. A text log, an open file. One word.

Dark

The word blinked away, the monochrome diagrams of inclinations and declinations taking its place. He tapped at the control buttons, but could find nothing of it in the logs. Then, just as he turned away,

Dark

But again it was gone before he could be certain it was there. He shook his head again, helmet un-moving to any non-existent watchers, and began to follow the service procedure.

The 'Scope was in exactly the shape it should be in. The panels outside were free of detritus or efficiency drop, the RCS system had fired infrequently and sparingly, and

Run

This time he was sure he’d seen it, because it took a moment longer to stay on the screen, before a jolting, swirling static swept diagnostics back into view. And there too, something was wrong, but he could not see what, only knew that he could not be right, so would not let himself see it.

He closed his eyes and fought the rising isolation that the pills were supposed to push away. Jostled softly through the suit as he was bumped between the walls of the cramped tube, he drifted in nothing, oxygen pumps whirring with his breaths. When he opened them again he found himself facing the forwards cupola, following the line of the 'Scope towards Andromeda, the space barren compared to his view towards Sol. Emptiness in front, ancient deaths behind, loved ones alive only in the light, the nihilism of it cleared his mind for a moment.

The moment stretched just long enough for him to see that it truly was a void, the way he faced. Rare and distant galaxies were sparingly distributed around this hemisphere of the sky, distances far larger than the Solward view behind, but in the centre of this view, right above him, was nothing.

Nothing.

Where was Andromeda?

Muscle memory operated the controls at first, eyes fixed on where a galaxy should have been, then he tore his view away to check the monitor, and yes, Andromeda was gone. He checked orientations. Then he checked their calibrations, then the stars they used for their basis, the anchor points in a shifting sky, only to find that down to machine precision this telescope was seeing exactly what it should be, watching the same sky as him, and that Andromeda had fallen from view.

Feeling sweat begin to float from his forehead into the tiny atmosphere of his helmet, he snatched a glance at the view again, and watched another point of light snatched from the sky. Again, despite checking twice and then a third time, Telescope 13 saw exactly what he did.

Dark

A harsh constellation of lights behind buttons wrapped around the word, colours dividing rows in grids and lines. He blinked and it was gone again. More galaxies blinked out of the sky. Some inter-stellar matter, then, surely, the travelling darkness of a long-cold supernova blocking his view. But there was no magnetic change, and the stars beyond the ever-growing circle were bright.

The rising isolation required a few breaths, deeper and slower each time, until some faculty returned to him. The darkness had continued to spread, and he used the glowing buttons and dials to sketch out what was not where it should be. A circle of void was drawing out from his lost Andromeda, too perfect to be natural,

Run. Dark.

Two words, together. Perhaps a second, this time, then gone. Sweat condensed against his visor. He spun in the silent vacuum to look back at the hatch and the jointed tube beyond, and reassured that his world had not shrunk to this metal and glass coffin, turned back to the view from the cupola. He had just enough time to see the last of the galaxies blink away, and now the glass showed only the black. The monitor screen showed the same, slightly grey, and

Dark. Coming.

Longer again, but then gone like the others. Something, his logic finally told him, was in the computers and chips of the 'Scope. Three button presses, and then the lifted cover and the fourth, and the operator’s terminal was on the screen. He watched it remain empty. A few seconds passed and he wrote out, slowly with thickly gloved fingers on keys that were too small, the best he could think of.

User (sudo) > Run from what?

He snatched a glance down towards Sol, and gasped to see that the darkness had begun to encroach past the equator, stars going dark now in place of galaxies. It didn’t make sense, the distances in one way were magnitudes more than those towards his home, but the dark did not care, and extinguished them anyway.

Too fast.

What is the speed of dark?

Earth, Sol, at the centre of a ring of those stars, still alive. Dim, changing lights in the reflection of his visor brought him back to the screen. His hovering tears, in the air of his helmet, piled to one side as he snatched himself around.

> Dark, coming. Run.

It had to be an AI, there in the ‘Scope with him, fragmented and limited by the minimal processing power it had found, a million and more years from its home. But it was warning him, no threats, and out here it was younger, more recently departed from Andromeda.

Again he fumbled with the keys, looked back to see the circle of light was growing smaller.

User (sudo) > Friendly?

Words already on the screen, visor spotted with tears and sweat.

> Too late.

Dark from both windows now, not a pinprick in either sky.

Sol, Earth, the light with his life still alive in it somewhere, gone to black.

He scrambled for the hatch, was halfway inside before he stopped himself, the flexible tube stretching away before him. At the other end should have been the lights of the ship, of the airlock, of the next big sleep and the pills that were supposed to numb him. Instead, darkness, growing closer as he looked, rigid rings disappearing one-by-one as illuminating strips died away.

Without thinking, he was back in the service module, the hatch yanked shut behind him, the sealing wheel turning easily, the tube lost from view. With an effort he did not think possible he dragged himself in a spin, away from the hatch and back to the screen. No new words, just the same ones repeated.

> Too late.

Then like before they were gone, but nothing came to replace them, the screen flashing to static before going dark. It spread from the screen to the controls, radiating out in a perfect circle, LEDs in buttons switching off one-by-one before the module was lit only by the lights on his helmet.

He screamed, but no one was there to hear it, and his lights on the darkened cupolas brought him only his own flailing reflection.

Then his helmet went dark too, and all the little whirring noises of a functioning space suit went the same way, one-by-one, until the air began to taste stale and he fought and failed to conserve his breaths.

All there was, now, was dark.

It would not, he knew now, stop with the suit. On the cupola, out in the vacuum, he heard a knocking, three taps, impossible without air to carry the sound, but there anyway. From the black that once held Andromeda. The words were lost in the loneliness of his helmet, pointless, but he said them anyway.

``Who’s there?’’

It bore no echo, no reverberation of any kind in the insulation-lined interior of his helmet, dying in the vaccum of the now so tiny service module. There was another knocking, three taps, and though no sound should be possible, this time he knew it was on his side of the glass.

He whimpered, pathetically, feebly, as what had to come next began, his feet and hands going cold, numb, a gentle amputation. It came in jumps, nerves falling quiet, without pain.

The speed of the dark was slower with his body than with the stars.

``Please!’

But his breathing had robbed the air of its content, that or some part of his core was already gone, and it sounded quiet even to him, a whisper before a private audience. The tears continued to float away from his face, unbound and unbidden, leaving him one by one.

There was another knocking, on the glass of his helmet, then finally the dark of the ‘Scope’s interior was overtaken by a dark of another kind.