Godspark: Preview

Prologue

Somewhere in an unborn world there was a group of men huddled around a campfire. Foreign stars burned above them. They sat in a wide plain, trying to keep warm in the cold night. Tall grass flowed around them, blown by the wind.
         They were armed. Some had shields and swords, others held spears. Cowhide tents surrounded their little fire. Their wares, herds of cow for the slaughter, silently ate or slept. Some men did also, and these others kept watch.
         One of the men was dozing, trying to stay awake. His hand curled around a spear, and his head drooped. One of the others nudged him with his elbow to wake him up.
         Instead of raising his eyes or his head, the man stood up with a jolt, his mouth hanging open in horror. Suddenly struck through with energy, the other five around the fire stood and looked, thinking they were under attack. When nothing was heard or seen, they turned back to the first man, who still stood, filled with terrible awe at something unseen.
         "What's wrong?" One of the men asked him. The words felt foreign and obtuse – as if they shouldn't be said. "Are you all right?"
         With momentous energy the man closed his mouth and looked at the one that had spoken. His heart pumped audibly, and his breathing was quick. He bored into the man that had asked him. He covered his eyes with his hands and whimpered.
         "When I close my eyes, still I see. I see so much. I see the black of the night heavens, rent by tears like you or I would rend cloth. I see the holes that our world has!" He cried out. "Light pours out of the tears, cleansing! The sky is filled with smoke, lightning scrapes it! We are wrong, we are false! Our life is a lie!" He roared. "We are nothing but puppets!"
         His body convulsed and he fell to the ground, nearly into the fire. Two of the other men jumped and stopped him from rolling into it. Their motions were stiff and their muscles almost refused to yield to their actions. To the two of them it felt like they were bending joints too far.
         "What are you talking about?" One man asked him.
         "He's gone crazy!" Another man said.
         "No! I am the only one here who sees clearly!" Every word ran with terror. "Soon you too will see the tears in the fabric! The ground will crumble beneath our feet! The end of our world is coming!"

1

         John Franken washed his face in the basin of his bathroom, and got dressed. His wife slept in the bedroom. Zipping up his blue suit, he stepped into the hallway and turned towards Engineering. He passed under dome lights that hummed, and greeted people that he knew. The floor under him vibrated with the motion of the engine that propelled it.
         The door hissed open to let him in to Engineering, and he was struck by a great number of sounds. Clanging tools, blowing jets, cursing men, pulsing beams. He walked to where a blond haired man stood.
         "I swear that vent in Calculations needs to get replaced every other day," John said to the blond man that was already there. He was tapping on a flat, hand-held pad in front of him that displayed information on a screen. Right now it was showing him what tasks he had that day.
         "I know. I think I do it whenever you don't have a shift. Maybe we should take a look at the pipes while we're there, just to make sure something isn't getting sucked in or something. What else are we up to?"
         John scanned the list. "Replace some bulbs, there's an elevator panel that's blown a fuse, and it looks like one of the cannons on the port side is having trouble." He slipped his pad back into a pocket of his suit. "Let's go."
         They chatted as their boots clicked down the hall.
         "You look tired," said the man, whose name was Nathan. "Still not pregnant?"
         "No. And it's worrying us," John answered with a weary tone. "Me especially."
         "Of course it is. You've been tested? You know...for potency? Your little guys aren't dropping the ball?"
         "We got tested before we came on board. We both check out, but it's possible they we got a false positive or something like that."
         "I'm sorry man," Nathan said. "Which job should we do first?"
         "Let's get the big thing out of the way," John said, and they turned a corner towards the port side. They talked more as they walked, about things more mundane.
         "What do you think about this center of the universe thing?" Nathan asked.
         "What about it?"
         "It's pretty momentous, humans haven't ever traveled far enough to get to the center of the universe. What do you think about being on the first ship to go near it?"
         "Well, how close are we going to get?" John asked.
         Nathan shrugged. "We'll be a few thousand kilometers away. There's nothing there, it's just space, just like everything else."
         "I feel like there should be something there, but it's no big deal to me, I'm just glad we haven't been smashed to bits going out this far from safe space," John answered.
         "That's true. Still, it's something to tell your grand..." Nathan's gaze drifted to John "...kids." John sighed. "It'll happen eventually. Don't give up."
         "I hope it will."
         They took another turn and found themselves face-to-chin with an immense human, both tall and round, adorned in the manner of ship security, and a sergeant by the looks of it. He was holding a rifle with a strap slung over his shoulder.
         "Gentlemen," The man said. "Here to fix the cannon?"
         "Yessir. Why are you stationed here? There been trouble?" Nathan asked.
         "The captain suspects foul play related to the cannon. It's possible there was sabotage, and I was asked to keep the place under wraps. Sergeant Stanley Dittard, at your service." He offered his meaty hand, and both of the engineers shook it.
         "What? Why? By who?" John asked. The Sergeant shrugged.
         "Don't know. the only thing we've had to do is adjust our path a little to avoid some rocks until you get it fixed."
         "Hopefully we won't be long." Nathan said. John nodded in agreement.
         "I'll need to see identification to let you boys pass," Dittard said. They both provided it, and he was satisfied. He let them enter the cannon room and shut the door behind them.
         "Let's see...you check the gun itself, and I'll check the targeting," Nathan said.
         "Sure." They set to work. John typed a bit on a pad he was holding, and it started to scan the systems of the large double-barreled cannon that they were regarding. The systems were complicated, and the scanning took some time. The gun was pointed out to the fathoms of space, ready to assault any errant debris or rock that wandered close enough to be a danger to the ship. As a mining ship, that danger was something that had to be considered. The cannon was housed outside the ship, and the manual controls were inside. A large bay window supplied the view to the outside. It was this window that John stared out as the pads they carried ran their course.
         "Targeting looks fine," Nathan said. John nodded. He felt a small amount of vertigo standing so near the vast nothing. As if he could fall right through the window and go spiraling on forever. He gave a tiny shiver, and looked at his own pad as it traced through the gun's workings. The mechanics of the gun were accessible from the room so that it could be repaired with ease. His pad returned an answer.
         "Here we go," John said, tapping a button. "It looks like some of the mechanics are busted." He paused. "That's strange."
         "What?" Nathan asked as he took a look at John's pad, identical to his own.
         "The mechanics that are reporting problems are barrel recoil dampers. Those are reinforced and behind heavy panels. They are insured for seventy years."
         Nathan whistled. "Looks like the ship gets a chunk of change next time we dock for repair. That could cause a big problem if we tried to fire. The gun could blow half the ship apart."
         John experienced another shudder, unable not to think about the after-effects of such a blast. "We have to shut this gun down. You get started on that and I'll open up the panel and take a look at the..." John waved his hand in the general direction of the mechanics "...things."
         "The recoil dampers?" Nathan offered with a smile. John nodded and produced a screwdriver. After grunting for a minute or two as Nathan called Central Targeting and told them what they had discovered, the panel detached and fell to the ground with a crash.
         "Ah. Oops." John peered in, expecting to see a threaded groove of a gear or a bent spring, instead, he found:
         "Nothing."
         "What?" Nathan asked, hanging up.
         "There's...there's nothing here. There aren't any mechanics."
         "What do you mean there aren't any – Oh. You mean there aren't any," Nathan said. True to John's word, the space that should have housed the recoil dampers was empty, clean of even dust.
         "Uh...I...I don't know what to make of this," John said. "We should probably call Central Targeting again."
         "Better idea," Nathan said, opening the door to the hallway. "Sergeant, we have a problem."
         "What do you mean?" Sergeant Dittard asked, stepping in. He began to remove his rifle from his shoulder.
         "You won't be needing that, I hope. Look here," John said, indicating the space that he had opened. "There should be things in there that help the gun not to destroy everything behind it when it fires. That's the problem that was detected."
         "A distinct lack of parts?" Dittard asked.
         "Exactly. We have to shut down this gun. It can't be used or..."
         "It would blow half the ship up," Nathan finished. "It's also clear that this is not a natural occurrence."
         The Sergeant turned on him with a lifted eyebrow. "What do you mean by that?"
         "It's been picked clean, he means. Look here," John said. The guard did. "Do you see those holes?" John asked as Dittard peered into the large cavity were the recoil dampers should have been. "Rods should be coming out of those holes, getting assisted by some things in the middle here," he said, indicating the center of the space, "And heading out those holes on the other side." John pointed at the other side, where smaller holes sat yearning for their missing occupants. "These pieces have been removed by someone."
         "Why?" Dittard asked, looking around the space that remained empty no matter how hard he looked. "Why would somebody do this? Could it have been done before we left dock?"
         Nathan shook his head. "Not a chance. We do full diagnostics on all systems just before leaving and we don't let anybody touch them until we're away. This was done recently, as in while in flight."
         "But that would put the saboteur in danger too, if we didn't find it," the Sergeant said. "Why would he do that?"
         "Open an investigation, Sergeant. Isn't that your job?" Nathan said. "We need to get this fully shut down so it doesn't keep sucking power. Nobody's going to be able to fire it for a while. I doubt that we'll have all the parts here, these pieces aren't supposed to be switched out with any regularity, and they're expensive."
         "Let me phone it in," Dittard said, pulling out his personal pad. "You boys get on that. If you need me to help with anything, just let me know."
         By the time they had gotten the cannon shut down, investigators were arriving. They questioned the three of them intensely. When they were done the head investigator, a man with brown skin and a small smile that seemed tired, allowed them to go.
         They walked back towards Central Engineering and John's mind ached from the questions and worry that the situation evoked. Nathan patted him on the back.
         "I can tell you're worried about it. You worry too much. It'll be fine, trust me," Nathan said. "We have a whole shift left to go, and we won't get very much work done if we worry about the work we've already finished."
         "But why would somebody take that equipment?" John wondered. "What reason could somebody have for taking it?"
         "Who knows. They'll find the guy, that's for sure. It's not like he'll be able to hide forever. It's a big ship, sure, but there are only so many places a jerk can hide."
         "True."
         "We should get back to Engineering and log this as soon as possible," Nathan said. "I feel like this is something to tell Chuck." John snorted as Nathan scratched his short, dirty blonde hair, trying to pick something off his scalp.
         When they arrived at Engineering they found the managing engineer, Charles Miller. He refused to be called anything other than Mr. Miller, and it was partly that fact that prompted them to call him Chuck. At least when he wasn't around.
         "Mr. Miller! New information on the port-side cannon," Nathan said when they found him. He didn't look up from his work, a diagram of outer hull garbage valves.
         "What took you so long?" He said. His thick fist was planted on the sheet and his red, sweaty face hung over it. His perpetual scowl ranged the paper.
         "Somebody broke into the recoil dampers and...stole them," John said, taking a deep breath.
         "WHAT!?" Mr. Miller's head snapped up. The sheer energy required for such a task at such a speed made Nathan gasp. "What do you mean 'stole them'?" He had focused his quick rage on John, the valve schematic forgotten.
         "He means somebody took them," Nathan said, attempting to calm him. "We had to shut down the cannon and file the a report with security. That's what took us so long."
         Chuck's view twitched between the two of them, unsure of which deserved his fury more. John could almost see steam coming out of his ears. "All of them?" Mr. Miller asked with remarkable reserve. When Nathan nodded, he shot out a long grunt. "Do you have any idea how much those components cost?"
         "Quite aware," Nathan said, meeting Chuck's gaze with his own. "Do I need to re-iterate that they were stolen before we got there, and did not, in fact, steal them ourselves?" Before the red-faced engineer could respond, Nathan continued. "Do we have any extras? Because if so, we can install them right now and get out of your hair."
         "No we don't have extras!" Miller squalled, egged on by Nathan's defiance. "Those are some of the most expensive physics on a cannon! God damn!" He slapped his hand to his face and swiped it upwards, pushing his short black hair up and momentarily stretching his face to inhuman proportions. John shivered. "You shut it down?" He said, his voice returning to somewhat normal levels.
         "Of course we did," Nathan said.
         "All the way?"
         Nathan crossed his arms. "Yes all the way. To not would be dangerous or fatal, of course we wouldn't forget that."
         "Then get back to work. Thanks to you two, I have to call into our next port and try and get some new dampers!" He closed his eyes, put his hands on his hips and sighed a sigh that nearly got caught in his thick neck. "What model is it again?"
         "Uh...KlaStar Defense Cannon Version VI," John said, consulting his pad. Miller growled, his upper lip wrinkling. "Uh...with rapid-fire force counters."
         "Goddam! Get out of my sight!" Miller roared, stomping away to his office. The bay rang with his words and slowly the other workers turned their attentions back to their work.
         "Dick," Nathan said softly, tapping on his pad. "What do you want to do next?"
         "I want to go back to my room and have sex with my wife," John said.
         "I hear ya." John peered at Nathan. Nathan wore an impish grin.
         "Only I get to have sex with my wife," said John, a smile curling the corners of his mouth.
         "I know, I know." They turned towards the exit to the bay. "You're a lucky man."
         "Stow it, Judas."

After his work was finished, John found his way into his room. He had worked a longer shift than normal on account of the missing parts, and expected to find Ruby back from the Records department. He was not disappointed.
         He found her inside some sort of fort built out of folded laundry in the middle of the living room. She was dressed for leisure in a sleeveless white shirt and tan shorts. When she saw him she got up and hugged him with thin arms. "How was your shift? You've been gone for a while."
         "Somebody stole parts from one of the cannons on the port side. Pieces that would protect the ship if the cannons fired. We had to shut down the entire thing. If it fired half the ship would be destroyed," John said, reliving the conversation with Miller. "We had to talk to security for a while after that, and then once that was done we had to report back, and then finish our scheduled work."
         "Our cabin is on the starboard side. I don't see what the problem is," Ruby said, standing on her toes to push clean sheets to the back of a high shelf. John took for himself a generous eyeful of her shapely legs. She caught him doing so. "You lech."
         "It's no crime to take what's already mine," he said, and paused, unsure of how to ask his next question. He had been unsure every time he tried asking it, as if he could never find the proper way. And he knew what would happen if the answer was the wrong one. "Did you...check? After you woke up?"
         Ruby's movements, which until that point had been happy, and awake, and energetic, became almost timid. "Yes," she said, with her back to him.
         He went to her and wrapped his arms around her from behind. She sighed and accepted his embrace. "I'm sorry," she said with the a small voice.
         "It's okay," he said into her thick brown hair as she pushed her head onto his shoulder. "It'll happen. I'm sure it will."
         "What if it doesn't?" She asked. Her eyes were wet. "What if I never get pregnant? What if we never have children? What if we keep trying and trying? Until we're too old and I can't have children any more? What if I can't have children now?" She went into the adjacent bedroom and sat on the bed. John sat next to her.
         "I don't know. I'm sorry Ruby...I don't know." I should just stop asking her, he thought.
         He put his arm around her shoulders and she put her head on one of his. They sat for a few minutes until Ruby pushed herself out of his arms. "I'm hungry. Are you hungry?" She asked, smiling up at him with wet eyes.
         "Yeah." John was, as always, surprised at how quickly his wife could swallow her emotions.
         "Let me get cleaned up, then we can go," She said, and stepped into the bathroom.
         John stood and stretched. What had transpired between them was slowly becoming more and more common. Ruby desired a child to hold just as John did, but her desire was so much stronger it was almost biological. Have a child, her body was telling her, you need to have one right now. This is what you are for. This is your charge. And you don't seem to be holding up your end of the bargain, so I'm going to flood your body with desires and endorphins until you burst.
         And she seemed near to bursting. They were trying as often as they could for a baby, and every day after Ruby would test herself for the telltale chemicals of child, but every test was the same result. They had been trying for several months of the long journey they were on, having finally been given release by the Director of Passenger Services to increase those on board by one, or two if need be. They had payed a hefty fee for that privilege and it was not a sum they wanted returned to them.
         When Ruby emerged from the bathroom she had washed her face and pulled back her hair into a tail that fell until it reached the middle of her back. She was again happy and energetic, though John knew it was a partial lie. He dwelled on her beauty until she pushed him off the bed to change.

They stepped into the teeming cafeteria fifteen minutes later, but only because Ruby had stopped to talk to one of her friends from Records. They entered holding hands and went into one of the numerous identical lines together. The dining hall had multiple levels of seating to accommodate the miners and workers and their families, many of whom also had jobs aboard. The got steak and chicken and Ruby lead them to an empty table on the second level near on the windows that spread across the wall. John gazed out of it as they ate.
         "Because of the defunct cannon, we may have to pass much closer to the center of the universe than was expected. We might even pass right through it."
         "So?" She asked, shoveling rice into her mouth.
         "It's cool. Isn't it? The center of the universe, right at the point of the Big Bang. Where everything began, all at once. Everything we know started right at that point."
         "Yeah, but it isn't there anymore. Are you going to eat that muffin?"
         John handed it to her without a thought. "I think it's cool anyway. I know there shouldn't be anything there, but I expect to see something. Some light or something. Something that marks it as a different point of space than the ones right next to it."
         "Why do you think that?" He shrugged.
         "Maybe it's because I think if something is special it should look special." He smiled and turned to her.
         "Oh no."
         "Just like you are!" He said, pulling a goofy grin over his face and jutting out his chin. He closed his eyes and stuck out kissy-lips, but got only a forkful of peas stuck between them. He coughed and sputtered, spitting them out.
         "That's what you get for being lovey-dovey," She said, laughing. "Oh, Nathan!"
         John wiped his eyes and looked up. Nathan was indeed standing at their table. "Hey you two. John, I ran into Dittard – the Sergeant from this morning – a few minutes ago, and he said they were looking for us. They want us to answer some more questions tomorrow."
         "Aw. Tomorrow's my day off!" John protested, taking a bite of chicken to wash out the flavor of the peas. "About the cannon, I suspect?" Nathan nodded. He sat down, though his plate was empty.
         "And did you hear? Calculations got back to the bridge earlier." He leaned in. "Apparently, because of the cannon on the port side, we have to change course more than expected because of radiation or something. This ship is going straight through the center of the universe."

Charles Miller angrily knocked on the door to the Calculations worker. There was no answer. He pounded on the metal. It was late and he had been working all day, no thanks to the bastard that had decided to steal rare, expensive pieces of the ship that day. And now he had to replace a filter in Calculations because John and Nathan forgot about it, and he was the only one left.
         Red-faced, he lifted his hand to pound one last time when the door opened.
         Inside was a small fat man with glasses and balding hair. "What," The man said. "What do you want?"
         "Engineering," Miller answered, equaling the man's obvious disdain for him. "You have a vent that needs replacing."
         "I asked if there was a way to stop it from happening. You fools have been clomping around my workspace every day now," the man answered. Hatred filled his voice, utilized in a manner that made it sound how people should always sound.
         "That's because it keeps breaking. I'll send some of my worthless workers over soon to figure out why," Miller said. He pushed the door open and stepped inside, carrying the flat, clean filter with him. "For now I'm just going to replace the damn thing and get out of your hair, Majesty." Chuck's words dripped with sarcasm. He pushed past the balding man and pulled an empty chair to the vent space in the ceiling. The room was small, a scholar's room. It was filled with books and charts and measuring instruments. One corner held a small kitchen, and a single door led to a bathroom.
         The man watched Miller climb up and picked up a notebook on the desk next to him that was cluttered with maps and equipment. "What's your name, and how long will you be?" The balding man asked as he paged through the notebook.
         "Charlie Miller, and only a few minutes." Miller supposed the fat little puke was going to complain, but he didn't care. He was the highest paid engineering supervisor on the ship, and a few complaints against him wasn't going to change that. He was trusted with every corner of the ship and this poindexter needed to get his head out of his ass anyway.
         "And how old are you, Mr. Miller?" The man's voice had taken on a different quality, one that could be called normal. If Miller had been paying attention, he would have noticed the man writing Miller's name in the notebook, at the bottom of a long list of other names, some male, some female. As it was, Miller had his head jammed up the vent, trying to dislodge the old filter.
         "38. What's it to you?" Miller answered. The filter was lodged in there damn good. Strange goop caked it.
         "A little obsession of mine," answered the man. Next to Miller's name he wrote a description. Five foot nine, approx. 240 lbs, age 38. Short black hair, slightly spiky. Red-faced, large hands. Angry and likes to yell. And more was written down. "I like to know how old people are. I'm afraid it's hard for me to not ask. I've gotten good at guessing, though I incorrectly guessed you at 40." His tone was almost pleasant. Like conversation.
         Miller couldn't help but think that was weird, but he didn't say so. He was still puzzling over the gunk that was stuck on the room-side of the filter. "You been smelling anything strange in here? There's some stuff stuck to the filter. Might be mold."
         "I've been smelling strange things for some time, ever since the filter started breaking over and over again. But I haven't identified anything that smells very much like mold," The man said. He stood up, pen in hand. Are you going to be much longer? I have much work to do. The recent course corrections have been very tiring."
         "Yeah, that's right. You guys are in charge of that, aren't you?" Miller said, finally dislodging the filter. "So it's your doing that we're going right through the center of the universe, eh?"
         "Yes, yes it is," the man said as Miller climbed down from the vent and retrieved the clean filter. "I was the one who made the decision to drive us into the point." The man froze, shocked at what he had just said.
         "'The point'? That's a weird way to say it." Miller started to climb up. "And what do you mean by drive into-"
         He was halfway up, one foot on the chair. He was staring at the fat man's brightly-lit desk. There were notebooks, maps and charts, and mechanical parts. Familiar mechanical parts. "Hey...those are recoil-"
         The fat, bald man uncapped the pen and drove it through the next words, stabbing Miller in the throat. Blood poured out, covering the floor and the fat man. Miller fell to his knees, choking, bubbles of red blowing out his mouth. The fat man had turned to his desk, and now stood over Miller with another pen.
         "We'll see each other again, Mr. Miller," the fat man said without a trace of stress in his voice. Blood dripped off his chin. "Ego dominabitur."
         He brought the pen down with cold accuracy.