Keeper and the PLANTERS part 4

Copyright (c) 2020 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

Keeper and the

 PLANTERS

Part 4

Inside the center of the black hole the acceleration was tremendous. The tiny ship appeared to be caught in a giant drain spinning round and round tearing itself in two. Jeff Bland stared at a duplicate of himself. “What the Hell?” he and his duplicate said together.

Across the floor of the command level exact doubles had also been created of Keeper and Teuth. First officer Bland stared as the light array that controlled most of the Centurion’s functions divided and then moved to one side of the room along with the crew’s doubles. “We’re being divided by quantum mechanics,” Teuth said. Bland heard a faint echo as the navigator on the other side of the room said the same thing at the same time.

“How is that possible?” both Blands asked.

“A 27-kilometer-long particle accelerator on Earth was used to verify that if forced to choose between two diverging paths a single subatomic particle will sometimes go down both. Quantum mechanics deals with probability, and in the case of the diverging paths the probability is equal.” Both Teuths echoed.

The echoing questions and answers were nerve wracking. Keeper and his double both moved to duplicate light arrays. “There,” Keeper said in a satisfied – and single - voice. Bland noticed that a swirling green sphere of energy had appeared and now hovered near Keeper’s head. A similar sphere swirled above his own head and Teuth’s.  Their counterparts on the other side of the room remained silent. Bland noticed their spheres were red. “Dark energy is immune to quantum mechanics,” green Keeper said, “and I …we … have created a dark matter randomizer that decides which one of us speaks.”

As if to illustrate, red Keeper on the other side of the control level spoke. “We must hurry,” he said. “The passage of time from when the Centurion was pushed from the event horizon into the black hole’s center and crushed by infinite mass is only .01⁹  or less than one billionth of a second.”

            “Then why are we still here?”  red-sphere Bland asked.

“Time has been slowed exponentially,” green Teuth answered.

“Why?” green Bland gasped.

“Because we needed it to,” red Keeper grinned and then explained. “There are forces in the universe that no one understands. Some things happen … because we need them to happen.”

            “You’re talking about God?” red Bland gasped.

            “If you prefer,” green Keeper replied.

“The Centurion is being pulled out of the black hole by some tremendous force,” red Teuth said, “probably the Planters. And since that’s impossible for the laws of physics … the Centurion and its entire crew has been duplicated and divided by quantum mechanics.”

            “That means,” green Bland gasped. “That one Centurion and its crew will be pulled out of the black hole and one Centurion and crew crushed.”

“Exactly,” green Teuth said.

            “Them poor bastards,” both Blands declared at once.

Keeper checked the settings on the dark matter randomizer.

            “Are you afraid?” red Bland asked.

            “A little,” green Bland admitted.

            “How will we know which of us lives and which of us dies?” red Bland looked around.

            “It doesn’t matter,” red Teuth said moving away from the light array as the entire ship split into two equal wholes. “Because … we’ll never know.”

-------2-------

Keeper and the other crew members watched on the overhead hologram as the Centurion emerged from the black hole at the center of the Enubus galaxy with a big bang . An impossibly fast vortex of entwined matter, anti-mater, dark and light energy and an exponentially enlarged light-spectrum suddenly dissolved.

“For a while there I thought I was going to go blind,” Jeff gasped.

The colored sphere that had hovered near the captain’s head was gone. There was no way to know if it had been red or green. First Officer Jeff Bland shook his head as if trying to awaken from a dream. “Did that really happen?”

            “If you believe it did.” Keeper smiled.

            “I’m glad we were the ones saved,” Teuth said.

            “Maybe we wasn’t.”  Jeff looked himself over carefully just to make sure he didn’t see anything different.

            “It’s just as I suspected.” Teuth pointed to the hologram. “Planters!”

-------3-------

The Centurion was surrounded by glowing spheres, some as large as moons. It was hard to tell if they were metallic or some form of solid-energy. A tractor beam was pulling them inside one of the smaller ones. “Put all power to the forward thrusters,” Keeper ordered. “Let’s see if this ant can escape from the angry herd of rampaging elephants!”

            “Ever the optimist,” Jeff snickered. “We don’t really know if they’re going to be that friendly.”

The giant, rare-species acquisition vessel shuddered as Teuth put all eight tentacles into the light arrays that controlled 99% of the ship’s system functions. The smell of ozone penetrated all areas of the deck as a group of students entered the command level. “That won’t work!” The student with the enlarged orange cranium that everyone called Pumpkin head warned Teuth.

            “And you know this how?” Keeper asked the student.

            “We’re being pulled toward the Sadinimo detainment-vessel by a special form of dark energy that consumes conventional power,” Pumpkin Head declared.

“Then the harder we try to escape … the stronger the chain becomes … That makes sense!” Jeff snickered.

            “How do you know this is a detainment vessel?” Keeper asked.

A girl who resembled a walking plant spoke. “I’m Greina from Ardd 23,” she said. “And my species have evolved the ability to use emotions as a form of visual communication. We see things … sometimes things that are many light years away.”

            “I know of the Ardd and their special skills,” Keeper said. “Can you give us a visual?”

The plant girl moved with a dreamlike swaying-grace to the light array that Teuth hovered over. She placed one leafed appendage inside the beams of light. She shuddered slightly and a horrific scene replaced the exterior hologram.

            In an unimaginably vast and glistening chamber, thousands of life forms - most still alive and shrieking, were literally being taken apart by what appeared to be ghostly shadows. Their interior organs and exterior parts were carefully dissected, then examined and cast away. “So this is the party we’re crashing,” Jeff moaned.

            “Thank you for bringing us this information,” Keeper told Greina.

            “That’s not the only reason I’m here …” Plant girl looked at Jeff Bland and the hologram changed.

Leika appeared inside an encapsulated cell, the kind of living space designed to hold galactic criminals. She was dressed in flowing white scales and Tesonian pearls - a Gorwanian wedding gown. Her hands were folded in what looked like prayer and she gazed upward. Her eye color flashed between red and orange before drifting from an emerald green to a soft blue. “If you can hear me,” she whispered. “If somehow you can hear me … Gorwan is taking me to Geelo in the ice worlds. He thinks we’ll be safe there … but I’m already half frozen!”

“Geelo!” Jeff thundered. “It warms up to two hundred below zero in the daytime!”

“That’s only in the winter,” Keeper said.

“It looks like we might have a delay in rescuing your girlfriend.” Teuth grinned.

“She’s not my …”

First Officer Bland’s objections were cut short. The exterior hologram showed a port hole opening in the side of the Planter vessel and seconds later the Centurion was sucked inside.

-------4-------

            Time stood still literally. All life forms inside the spacecraft dissolved and became a series of seemingly infinite images. Every single event, every moment in time was replayed in exacting detail. Time did not exist for Keeper and his crew so it was as if they soporifically endured a billions-of-years-long dream. A swirling ball of gasses condensed and became a massive star and nine orbiting planets of various sizes.

Eons later an unknown projectile, composed of dark and light matter hurtling through space, exploded into the fifth planet and both objects became one large orbiting asteroid belt. All of the planets changed but the third planet was rich in hydrogen and oxygen … and water formed.

            Volcanoes and earthquakes shaped mountains, continents and oceans and then reshaped and reshaped them. Life forms, plant and animal, developed in the seas and after almost a billion years moved onto land. Evolution shaped the world with every rotation of the planet and with every trip around the star. Terrible animals roamed the world and then were exterminated. Some life forms advanced more than others. Cities were built, wars were fought and four and a half billion years after the planet was first formed a delicate species call man first left the atmosphere of the planet and ventured into the space between.

And this sequence of origination … up to the present time, was repeated for every life form on the vessel.

Keeper and his crew were suddenly themselves. It was as if a five-billion year instant replay had abruptly finished.

            The ship was gone and Teuth pointed in eight directions to an impossibly immense chamber of glowing brightness that the entire crew was floating toward. “Planters,” he gasped.

            “And they know everything about all of us,” Keeper said … as they entered the light.

TO BE CONTINUED …