Trifariam, The Lost Codex (2012) (70 page)

A slight push from the unit was enough for them to leave the craft and take position at the established coordinates, three hundred feet away.

While Carpenter looked over the whole system, making sure that they were in the exact position and carrying out one last simulation to check the paths of the asteroids, Helen explained how he should detach the
Trifariam
when he got there.

At that moment, the two astronauts looked at each other and although they couldn’t see the other’s face thanks to the visors they wore to protect them from radiation, they knew that they were both terrified. They said goodbye to James and activated the propulsion system on their MMUs to return to the spacecraft as soon as possible, leaving James in the loneliness of space but not before assuring him that they would return for him when the black hole closed up and the danger had disappeared.

The young professor watched with an expression of resignation as the two astronauts walked through the hatch which led inside the craft, closing the doors behind them. Thirty seconds later, the engines roared into life and the TF-08 disappeared from sight at blinding speed. He took a moment to lift his hand to his chest, the place where he kept his only two traveling companions - an old Bible that he had found lying around in the spacecraft, and a photograph of his daughter.

Feeling a renewed sense of strength after hearing his friend’s words of encouragement and the apparent improvement in his little girl’s condition, James stood up straight in his spacesuit while he stared in determination at the capsule that the scientist had prepared in order to transport the
Trifariam
. He didn’t have much time.

It was easy to maneuver the mechanism which disconnected the object from the container. With gentle yet precise movements, he directed the
Trifariam
towards the red planet and it activated as if by magic.

The first few moments went on forever - it seemed as if the object wasn’t working, which made him extremely nervous indeed because he had no means of communicating with the Space Center in Houston. However, after a few seconds the device emitted a blinding light which was the firing shot of the whole process.

The corner of the
Trifariam
emitted a heavenly light which engulfed him in seconds. How James himself felt varied enormously from minute to minute. He had initially felt a great desperation and anguish when he noticed that he was unable to move; it was as if a huge force field was being created around him and which prevented him from moving a muscle in his body. However, in spite of all that, the machine seemed to have drugged him with an excess of adrenaline which caused him to feel euphoric, happier than he had ever felt before, granting him sudden peace inside and the feeling that everything was going well.

The beam of light moved at extraordinary speed, creating a perfect sphere in record time, a thousand times faster than on the Earth’s surface. Although James did not consider himself to be good at guessing, he thought that the ball of light may have already reached six miles in radius, something amazing considering that only two short minutes had passed.

He tried to move his right arm but it was impossible. His body was as rigid as a rock.

After five minutes, the spherical beam of light had a radius of over thirty miles and it had become slightly darker in color. He felt as if all the muscles in his body had tensed like never before, he had the feeling that they would snap at any minute, but he was still completely free of pain.

Finally, after seven minutes, the beam of light stopped sixty miles from where James was. The sphere started to emit electromagnetic pulses and twinkles of light at a similar rhythm to the heartbeat of a newborn baby. All of a sudden, it disappeared into the darkness of space.

H
alf an hour went by before the first signs of coronal mass reached the point where James was floating. He saw how the black hole, completely invisible to the naked eye, had opened up, and was drastically altering the direction taken by the radiation waves and solar winds, with them being rapidly pulled towards it. The center began to light up as if hundreds of fireworks in different colors were all exploding at the same time. His body trembled with every impact of radiation and although it seemed surreal, the hole was getting larger by the second.

So it is true that black holes increase in size when they’ve swallowed something,
he observed.

He wondered where the spacecraft could be at that time, but looking at the direction it had taken he felt sure that they had fled to some safe place where the black hole would serve as a shield, but… had they realized that the asteroids were just about to arrive from that same direction?

For the last twelve minutes, James heard nothing through his earpieces except for the typical hissing when a good line of communication cannot be established. He wasn’t afraid, but he did feel anxious to know what was happening on Earth.

When he thought that the worst was over, it happened. Astonished, he watched as hundreds of asteroids the size of a football pitch were slightly changing their orbit so as to form a kind of curve which made them move faster, until they ended up colliding with the huge sphere that was attracting with immeasurable force. With each impact, the circular areola that marked the edge of the black hole lit up as if by magic.

James let his imagination wander and thought about what would happen if those hundreds if asteroids had been space shuttles, unknowingly approaching their fatal demise. He thought about the faces of the pilots when they realized that all the ships in front of them were disappearing into the ether, as if they were being absorbed by an unusual force that swallowed them up in the blink of an eye.

The first impact was immense. The diameter of the asteroid was over 1600 feet, which meant that the collision with the black hole was brutal. The feeling this time was similar to that of hundreds of needles sticking into the body and being dragged through the flesh, so he was petrified to discover that there were another twenty coming towards him. He stoically tolerated the situation. As they were pulled closer to the black hole, many of them disintegrated when they collided with each other but this only happened with the smallest ones; the larger sized asteroids were intact when they came into contact with it.

Now, James’ body was beginning to give up with every collision. He didn’t understand why such suffering was necessary, but he accepted it whenever it meant things turning out well.

When the asteroids were crashing into one another in the hole, an explosion of light reverberated around the space inside the sphere. James didn’t know what had happened to them; perhaps they had disintegrated, started to form part of the bulk of the sphere which would explain how it increased in size with every impact, or maybe it was simply making them disappear. Whatever was going on, there was no sign of them reappearing once they were inside.

Stammering, he tried to communicate with his colleagues. He wanted to know what the situation was like back on Earth, but his calls for help went unanswered, even the shrill beeping of the interference had died down.

The last asteroids to escape from the belt were pulled into the black hole’s gravitational field and changed course. There must have been about fifty of them, all traveling together, but the force of the hole saw them fuse into one big cluster which looked like one singular asteroid of mammoth proportions. The collision was the most painful of all. He felt pressure and a violent blow to his spinal column, which led to him spitting up blood. It was as if a heavyweight champion had dealt him his best blow to the kidneys.

From that moment on, he was overcome with loneliness. He felt frustrated, desperate and an extreme sense of guilt which would only be washed away if somebody told him that the mission had been a complete success. The pain was so intense that he preferred to close his eyes and succumb to his cruel fate. If he had to die, he thought, then the quicker the better, but suddenly everything changed. The crackling fireworks died down and the celestial aurora which seemed to be invading the sphere started to change color. It developed into an intense red, making him feel calmer than ever before. The pain had stopped and his heart felt at peace.
Am I dead?
he wondered. The sphere started to beat like a heart, expanding and contracting until it suddenly burst, causing a wave of blinding light that spread sixty-two thousand miles in under five seconds. Then it vanished.

“Carpenter!” yelled Alan, the pilot. “We’ve detected an immense explosion. The screens show that the hypocenter of the explosion is the exact place we left Mr. Oldrich.”

“You’re fucking kidding me! We gotta go back!”

“Shit, there’s more!” yelled Scott. “The device we fitted to him so we would know his location has stopped working. It is as if it has disintegrated.”

Alan chewed his lower lip. “Do you think he’s dead?”

Nobody dared answer.

“Scott, have you managed to make contact with Houston?”

“Not yet. The solar storm has destroyed all the satellites.”

“Fuck! What do we do?!”

Meanwhile back on Earth, a deafening roar of conflicting opinions broke out in the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. Many had decided to abandon the operation and take shelter in the deepest areas of the complex, in search of a safety which was lacking above ground. The strong solar winds and radiation were destroying everything in their path. Millions of people had lost their homes when they were lifted up into the air, like a mere sheet of newspaper being whipped about in the summer breeze. Cities had been plunged into deep chaos with the destruction of electrical devices and transformers. Lighting, traffic signals, elevators, heaters, factories, transport, storage systems for essential resources like food and water… everything had stopped working. It was chaos.

Hundreds of tremors ran across the Earth’s surface, razing everything in the path to the ground. From China to America with Europe and Africa in between, the seismic waves left a devastating image in their wake. Skyscrapers in the most powerful cities in the world collapsed with astonishing ease, as if they were a line of dominoes. The cracks forming in the Earth’s crust were sucking down everything that fell into them, like the jaws of hell. But the worst was yet to come. The tremors affected several nuclear power plants that couldn’t stand up to the test and many of them suffered damage to their main reactor as a result, causing radioactive material to escape and pose an unimaginable risk to human health. In some cases the workers had managed to put a stop to the disaster by losing their own lives in the process, but ten nuclear power plants and their surrounding cities still had to be evacuated. The parallels with Chernobyl were alarming.

Tsunamis of staggering force swept over the whole planet, washing away anything and anybody that was still standing or buried under that mass of dirt and debris, even if they were still alive.

There were so many deaths, largely due to the natural disasters produced by the incredibly strong winds, and the horrifying impact of solar radiation on the human body. Phenomena which would go on for a further twenty-four hours. It was terrible - a massacre and a return to the Paleolithic era.

Nobody in the world could have imagined such devastation, and even less so when the first contact we had with solar storms were the stunning Aurora Borealis. The phenomena happen due to solar induction and they normally occur in regions near the North Pole, but in this case they were observed as far south as Spain, Italy, Cuba, Hawaii and Greece.

“Mr. President.” It was one of the few scientists who had remained loyal to his orders and stayed at the control center. “We still haven’t managed to make contact with the satellite, but we can keep trying.”

“Do you know anything about the spacecraft?” he stammered.

“No, but according to our calculations the operation should be over by now. If not… there’s no hope for us. The storm burned all our systems, we wouldn’t be able to protect ourselves from an attack like that.”

“God help us!” cried the President, bursting into tears for the first time that day.

S
eventeen hours later, it happened. It was a weak signal which almost passed unnoticed to the tiny group of loyal engineers who were still present in the communication room of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. They were working with equipment which had been recently installed but was obsolete, having been stored in the basements of NASA. The signal arrived to much noise due to the solar storm which, although it had died down considerably in the last few hours, was still proving to be a headache.

“Satellite in orbit,” read the message.

After a few minutes, a new message popped up on the monitors which had so far survived the storm. It read: “This is lunar space center. Satellite in orbit. Can anybody hear me?”

One of the scientists rushed to reply before communication was severed. “This is the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston. The situation is horrific, millions are dead. How are you?”

The reply was immediate, almost without delay.

“We’re sorry, Houston. The solar storm has affected us slightly. We will position the satellite in orbit as soon as we repair the damage.”

“Do you have any news on the spacecraft?”

There was a long, almost torturous silence.

“Haven’t you heard? The operation has been a complete success, all the asteroids have disappeared. We’re saved.”

When the technician read the response aloud, a deafening noise broke out around the room. The twenty or so scientists, the Administrator of NASA, the President of the United States and Richard and Lily, who had been taken to the center for their own safety, began to jump around with joy and hug each other tightly.

Richard couldn’t help but think how much he wanted to embrace his friend and congratulate him on his bravery and determination. He wanted to see him as soon as possible.

“Could they put us in contact with the spacecraft?” asked the President, full of euphoria.