Twinks in Space: Destination Unknown - Part One - 20. Chapter 20 - Three Years Earlier

The trans-galactic surveying ship, the Ice Star Four, was hovering in a remote and desolate quadrant at the edge of charted space. The ship and its crew had been sent on a mapping mission by the Istilop Multi-Planetary Scientific Union. They were in that particular quadrant to investigate a peculiar absence of interstellar objects. When the Ice Star Four was in the vicinity, their sensors picked up an energetic phenomenon that they thought might be related.

Onboard, the commander was standing behind the chair of his robotics technician. “Send in the probe,” he ordered.

“Aye-aye, sir, probe deployed.”

“How’s the feed?”

“It’s clear, sir, bringing it up now.”

The commander took a seat in his chair.

On the bridge’s main monitor, the image appeared blank.

“Clarifying,” the robotics technician said. He looked up from his terminal at the larger screen. “That’s it, sir. The anomalous interstellar object is at the center of the screen. It’s very difficult to see. The lack of stars and nearby galaxies is making the image look like there’s nothing there, but it’s there, sir.”

“Move in for a closer look.”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

The probe approached until the anomaly filled the ship’s main monitor. Even up close to it, there was not much to the image, which simply looked distorted. It bore the appearance of heat waves rising off hot asphalt. The black of space behind it seemed to ripple.

No stars spun in its galactic neighborhood, but none spun beyond it either. The point of these mapping missions was to expand the known and charted universe. Teams traveled to stars and galaxies in distant quadrants, objects they could see. When this dark patch of space that stretched to infinity with no stars was discovered, the Ice Star Four had been deployed to investigate.

“Distance from the probe to the anomaly?” the commander asked.

“It’s holding at one kilometer, sir.”

“Send it the rest of the way.”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

The probe approached and appeared to come into contact with the distorted patch of space. Then all of its scanners and monitors went dead.

“What happened to…”

The images and data stream returned, and the anomalous discovery was still taking up the entire main display, but the robotics technician was being presented with information on his secondary screen that did not make sense to him.

“Sir, there’s something wrong with…”

“What’s that light?” one of the other officers interrupted. He pointed at the far left side of the screen.

“Pan the probe,” the commander ordered.

As the probe’s camera shifted away from the anomaly, everyone on the bridge was startled by what they saw. Two spiral galaxies were in the middle of their billion-year collision. However, that was not all, the sky was filled with stars and galaxies.

“Sir,” the robotics technician said, “I think we’re looking at a wormhole, sir. The quantum entanglement tech in the probe is relaying the information that it picks up instantaneously, but it’s sending it from the opposite side of the known universe! Look,” he added, pulling up a chart of space on the main display, “we’re here,” he stated, and a yellow light illuminated in one corner of the screen, “but the probe has somehow traveled all the way to here,” and another yellow light lit up the opposite corner.

“Incredible,” the commander said, “can you order the probe to come back through?”

The robotics technician punched a few buttons and the probe moved toward the strange shimmering patch of space. The feed went dead again, but when it came back a moment later, the probe was still on the far side of the universe.

“Let me try again, sir.”

The probe moved through the gateway a second time, but it still remained at the opposite end.

“Send in probe two, and put it on the main screen. Let’s see if it experiences the same results.”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

The second probe was launched and traveled across the void to the anomaly, and it also entered. Its feed went blank, but when it returned it was not with the other probe.

The commander looked over at his robotics technician. “Where is it?”

He was surprised. “Hold on, sir,” he said, pulling up the map of the universe again. The two yellow lights were still illuminating the location of the ship and the first probe, and a third yellow light appeared in an entirely different part of the screen. “It’s there, sir. I don’t know why it’s…” he punched a few buttons. “It doesn’t make any sense, sir. I don’t understand why it went somewhere else.”

“We don’t have a third probe on board,” the commander stated, “but I want to send something else out there. Call down to the maintenance crew and have them launch one of the hoister shuttles. We can remote pilot it and see if we get a third result.”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

A few minutes later, the cargo shuttle was on its way toward the anomaly. “Send it through,” the commander ordered.

It was gone for a moment, then its remote piloting returned.

The robotics technician put the map back on the screen. “The lander is there!” he said in dismay, illuminating a fourth yellow light in its own separate section of the universe.

The commander looked at his communications officer. “Call down to the team of lead science officers. I want their take on this phenomenon.” His monitor screen flashed to the team in their laboratory, and he asked, “Any idea what we’ve been witnessing?”

One of the chief science crew replied. “We’ve been discussing it. None of us has ever seen a wormhole that didn’t only go to a single location; however, this one doesn’t actually bear the appearance of the other wormholes that some of us have witnessed. One of our team just called it an omni-wormhole, because it’s seemingly spitting things out in random locations all across the universe rather than a specific destination. Commander, none of us has ever heard of anything like this before, and we have no idea what caused the three vehicles to jump to such different places.”

“Any recommendation of how we should proceed?”

“Sir, if it is what we think it is, and it’s able to be harnessed for instantaneous transportation to specific locations in the universe, it would mean immense power for those who control it.”