Among Stars

To the Future

Day and a night later, Mizuni was sitting on her bed, stretching. It was early in the morning. She yawned and scratched the side of her head. On the side of her bed, a small clock was very energetically announcing, that it was time for Mizuni to wake up. Mizuni looked at it with a flat expression and slapped it silent.

She got up, dropped her pajamas on the chair next to her desk. She looked at herself in the mirror and grimaced. "My hair looks like a gheirc's nest," she mused and chuckled. "Time for a shower, Valera," she announced very energetically.

An hour later, Mizuni was sitting in the cafeteria with a steaming cup in front of her and a smile on her face. Her hair looked proper, and she was wearing a fancier version of her standard uniform. This one had a metal nameplate in cool cobalt blue, and in shiny steel lettering it said "Dr. Valera Mizuni" and "Sub-space Specialist" under the name.

Oberz walked next to her, carrying a similar cup of steaming liquid, and nodded at her.

"Morning, Valera," he said. "Aren't we looking dapper today?" he chuckled.

"Oh, morning Jacob," Mizuni said. "Yeah, I'm expected at the bridge in an hour or so, and they said to wear this since there'll be photographing."

Jacob nodded, "Figures. That reminds me," he said and grabbed his datapad, showing it to Mizuni. "They wrote an article about this."

Mizuni looked at the datapad. It was an article about their journey to Sunstar and their plans for the station.

"Dr. Valera Mizuni will lead the expedition herself," she read from the pad. "Being the youngest scientist in this group at the age of only 42, Dr. Mizuni has been studying the sub-space phenomenon for more than a decade..." Mizuni let the sentence hang in the air. She scrolled down and scrunched her eyebrows together.

"What's with the picture?" she asked.

"Don't know," Oberz said. "It's like three years old, and less than half of us are present. It's not like they didn't have more recent pictures," he continued and made an angry face. "It's not fair to the others. It's not like you, me, Marco, T'hea-ik, and Susette were the only ones. The rest of them did as much as we," he said.

Mizuni nodded. The image only had the five of them, and even the text didn't mention anybody else.

"That's just wrong," Mizuni said and sipped from her cup.

Oberz nodded. "Yeah," he said and took a long sip from his cup. "This stuff tastes like dog pee," he said disapprovingly. "But I can't really function without it."

Mizuni laughed. "True. It's like we all run on this stuff," she said. "You might want to mention this article to Angela. She might be able to do something about it. At the very least, get them to mention everyone."

Oberz took a long gulp and looked into his cup disapprovingly. "Yeah, I might," he said. "Anyway, good luck on the bridge, Valera. I need to go see if I can someone to tell me, if the Sunstar is already connected to Infinity, or do I need to do something first," he said, waved at Mizuni, and walked away.

Mizuni waved at him. She closed her eyes and sighed. After she had finished her drink, she walked into the elevators, and headed to the bridge.

Captain Perez once again directed her to the captain's chair and Mizuni sat down. There were three other people present that weren't there before, and those people had a variety of imaging equipment with them.

"You can watch, but you can't talk," Perez commanded the three. "On your mark, Capitana," he said to Mizuni with a smile.

Mizuni nodded. "Start the coils," she said, and the now-familiar hum filled the bridge again. "On screen. And increase secondary to seventy-five, power gain to eight point five." The hum transformed, and Mizuni smiled.

"Secondary to eighty, flutter to one point seven and open the collectors," she said and watched the data transform exactly as she thought it would. The hums joined together again into the weird atonal harmonic.

"Bring primary coils online, increase secondary to ninety-five, flutter to point eight," she said, and the hum once again almost disappeared into the background.

"Primary to eighty-five. Keep secondary static. Flutter to point zero five," she said, and then took a deep breath. "Hold on to your horses, everyone," she said and let the breath flow out slowly.

"Route secondary to primary Polarizer," she said. A second later the whole ship shook and everyone on the Helios-5 space station saw a bright flash in the black. Mizuni breathed deeply. "Route primary to secondary Polarizer." Another quake, another bright flash. The ship felt alive, like it was buzzing and excited to do whatever it was about to do.

"Polarizers to fifteen percent, sync with the sub-space bubble data," she breathed, almost able to taste the anxiety in her voice. A weird whining sound was beginning to sound over the existing hums. Perez glanced at Mizuni with his eyebrow raised.

Mizuni nodded at him. "Working as intended. The Polarizers are doing something nature didn't intend, " she said. "Polarizers to fifty percent, keep the primary and secondary output stable. Engage the sensors."

The whine rose in pitch and volume until it filled the space in the bridge like an unknown visitor that you didn't know if it was an enemy or a friend.

"Polarizers to eighty percent, link sensors with the sub-space bubble, and feed it to the synced data," she said, and the whine joined with the hum and made the entire ship feel like it was shivering with anticipation. Mizuni ran her fingers on the armrest and it felt like she was handling something electric.

Perez brushed his mustache with his finger, trying to smooth it down as it kept wanting to stand up. The three people started to look uncomfortable and glance around nervously. Mizuni just grinned at them.

Mizuni closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. Then she opened them and looked forward with determination in her eyes.

"Rails online, on my mark, connect the Polarizer output to the rail controller," she said. The whole of Helios-5 station would have shaken, if sound could exist in space. The resulting flash was seen at Helios-13, as Infinity yet again cut open the fabric of space. The two beams shot forward, but this time, they hovered in place, like waiting for something.

Mizuni glanced at Perez, who nodded.

"Let's go see the future," Mizuni said. "Do it."

The forward-looking Polarizer ports shot forward two beams of such an intense light, that the Helios-5 station's view ports closed because it tripped their emergency systems. The beams seemed to concentrate on one point in space. The point seemed to grow larger and larger, until it looked like a gateway to another dimension, with wavering light patterns and visual illusions.

Then, a bright flash, and then nothing. Where Infinity and the Sunstar just were a microsecond ago, nothing. No bright flashes, nothing. Just a lingering optical illusion, like a mirage in space.