I’ve been working these past couple of days on a short story idea that’s kind of popped into my head. Not that I’ve given up on The Lost Colony–not at all! I just thought I’d break out and do something different. That, and write something that might be easier to finish and send out. And so far it’s been fun!
I haven’t figured out a title for it yet. It takes place in the not-so-distant-future-but-still-a-long-ways-away, on this space exploration mission. Humanity has figured out the graviton and how it works, and has theoretically proven that it’s possible to create a spinning micro-black hole that would open a wormhole to another point in space-time. However, there is no way to predict where the other end will open. They decide to test the theory and try to open a wormhole, but since black holes are kind of dangerous to have floating around in your solar system, they have to send out this mission FAR beyond the boundaries of our solar system, out in open space where the gravity well of this wormhole isn’t going to significantly affect the gravitational balance of the Solar system.
The way they do this is by colonizing a long-range comet as it passes close by to earth, using it as a sort of free ride. As the comet leaves the Solar system, the colony expands using materials from the surface of the comet, establishing itself as a self-sufficient base. Years pass, people live and die, a new generation is born, and by the time the comet gets out to the area of space where the experiment can finally be performed, the original scientists are all old men and women, and their children are the ones who will be doing the exploring.
All this is basically just the background–I don’t plan on explicitly mentioning any of this in the story itself (one thing I can’t stand is info dumps). The story is written in first person from the point of view of the son of two of the chief physicists on the station.
It starts when they successfully open the wormhole–and start picking up radio wave transmissions on the other side that clearly originated from an artificial source. They set up a station on the other end of the wormhole, and find out that the radio waves are coming from an exoplanet about twenty light years away. What’s more, they can’t chart the location of the other end of the wormhole, and so they have no idea if this is in our galaxy or another, or where it is.
The main character, who strongly desires to make his parents feel proud of him, decides to volunteer for the mission that will take them to the planet. He and this stoic workaholic girl are the two people chosen for the mission–but by traveling at relativistic speeds it takes them into the future, and when they finally arrive and find out what’s going on, they don’t know if they want to stay on the undiscovered side of the portal or go back.
At least, that’s the idea as I have it now. It may change. Basically, it’s a mix of some ideas I’ve been toying around with in my head, plus some reflections on the stuff we’re learning in Philosophy 202 on Heidegger and a handful of Existentialists. It wasn’t this idea that came into my head burning with excitement saying “ooh, ooh! I am cool! Do something–anything–with me!” Instead, it’s a mix of ideas that are all pretty cool, but that I’m still exploring. I think that it’s better that way, though–the former kind tend to flame out and lose steam a lot quicker than the former. And partially because it’s a mix of ideas, partly because I’m still thinking through these ideas, and partly because I want to work on something fresh, it’s coming out pretty nicely at this point. I don’t know how many words it will be–I’ll try to keep it under 8,000–but we’ll see.
Oh, and I need a title for it. So if you can help me think of a cool title, I’d really appreciate it!
