The Monarch has reached a speed of 160,000 feet per second; but the spaceship is just getting started with its acceleration. Soon, it’s quadrupling its speed every other second. Everything becomes a blur to Ayak and he passes out soon afterwards when the vessel gets closer to the cosmic speed limit of 186,000 miles per second. By then, everything has dematerialised into light particles, even though retaining their outlines, or shapes. The spaceship is the same size and shape but it’s now made of light particles. Ayak, too, is the same height and shape but he, too, has been transfigured into photons. Only light can travel at the speed of light.
The space traveller awakes on a bed in a bubble-shaped transparent room made of some sort of thin glass or membrane. The hyper-acceleration has been replaced by perfect stillness.
Svenson sits up, hoping he hasn’t become an object inside a paperweight of the gods. Where is he? What is he? What is weird is that he’s experiencing the same weightlessness as in outer space, but with one difference: there’s no need for any straps to hold him down. He’s in equilibrium with the medium he’s in, whatever it is.
So, this is what lies beyond the TimeGate! It doesn’t feel threatening in any way. Then he looks up through the glass ceiling because some flying objects have caught his eye. Some angels, who are cloud-like, rather than in human form, are hovering over his bubble, waving at him.
Feeling stupid, yet uplifted, he waves back.
As in the spaceship, there’s an absence of hunger, thirst and other bodily pressures. He touches himself and he’s relieved to find that he’s still a substance, albeit very light. It’s like feeling the skin of a balloon when it pushes back against your hand and you know there’s just air inside.
Although he’s at peace, that doesn’t mean he knows what’s happening. Yet, this ignorance isn’t a burden, or a weakness.
Then a disembodied voice flies into his room, rippling through the ceiling like a school of fish flickering through water. The voice is melodious, making even Morgan Freeman sound croaky and strident by comparison.
“Traveller, what a joy to see you here. Ah, you are just as radiant as I’d expected.”
“Who are you, Lord?”
“I am Invincible. I’m the Power around here.”
“Power like the Sun?”
“As the Sun powers up Earth, so I power up all suns.”
Ayak kneels down, overcome with the softness of the endless strength that’s emanating from the Voice visiting him.
“You’re free here, free from sin and free from laws, gravity, motion and cause-and-effect.”
Ayak is speechless with wonder. The Voice’s love has rendered him totally defenceless.
“Invincible, where am I?”
“You’re in light.”
“What’s to become of me?”
“You still carry with you some residue of the anxieties of the world you’ve left behind. Here, there’s only the law of love. The lower world has natural laws. You’re in the 5th dimension now, beyond causes and consequences, outside of space-time.”
“Thank you for letting me through the TimeGate.”
“You’ve answered well. Now I’ll give you four choices for your future. You may return the way you’ve come, back to the United Nations to spread the peace and love you experience here. Or you may be a teacher on one of the new settlements on Mars or the Moon, with their communities of astronauts, cyborgs and robots. Or you may become an immortal intelligence in the computer controlling one of our galactic spaceships, including our new range of solar space cities, just like Athanasia.”
“Somehow, I knew she wasn’t just a computer!”
Invincible and Svenson share a laugh together.
“What’s a solar city spaceship?”
“I’m inspiring next gen cosmic engineering for the future. We’ll have small cities, with agricultural fields, floating permanently through space, powered entirely by sunlight,” Invincible answers. “It’s possible to have permanent space ecosystems but they need to be managed as systems and that’s where your role would be if you get assigned to a solar space city. It will be the job of solonauts to guide these floating cities throughout their mission.”
“What about boredom on board the vessel, Invincible?”
“Each solar space city will have a corner of the Milky Way to explore for each generation. They’ll be on a never-ending journey of discovery.”
“Sounds awesome. But that’s only three options, Invincible. What’s my fourth?”
“Why, that is the best one of all, but also the easiest. Your fourth one is to stay here and train as an angel. It’s the ultimate in aviation.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
THE SPACE TRAVELLER is lost in thought, contemplating his future, as he sits alone in his soft-textured bedroom bubble. Which of the four options for his future will be best for him?
He’s served the United Nations throughout a long and distinguished career. As a single man, this career has been the driving force and purpose of his life. Having since experienced space travel, as well as the spectacular passage through the TimeGate, Ayak isn’t over-anxious to re-enter Earth’s heavy gravity environment, at least not without some new, inspiring mission to fulfil. So, perhaps, that option isn’t the one for him.
Far more exciting, he thinks to himself, is the opportunity to be sent to Mars or the Moon to help build a new future for humans and their machines, including robots.
But why stop at the Moon or even Mars? Why hold back the imagination? Ayak can picture sailing across the imaginary line, beyond Jupiter, between the Inner Solar System and the Outer Solar System, in order to discover Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and, finally, Pluto.
The man wants to do something timeless. He doesn’t want to ever stop exploring. In the Milky Way alone, which is travelling at a rate of about six hundred kilometres per second, there are over 200 billion stars and at least 100 billion planets. But that was just one galaxy among about 100 billion galaxies. No wonder there must be an eternity, with so much universe to explore!
The fact is, Svenson has fallen in love with space. It has no up or down. It has no North or South, East or West. It’s an everywhere. And it mysteriously upholds all its innumerable celestial objects in an orbital dance, galaxies floating face-on, edgewise or at any angle in-between. You can look into its depths and there’s just no end to its majesty, streaked with the nebulae of dying stars giving up their elements to recycle into space.
The option to be an angel is tempting, too, but perhaps when he’s ten thousand years old?
It is decided: he’ll volunteer to be the brains and consciousness of the command centre of a solar space city. If he passes the test, that is. He’ll need training to be a solonaut, including how to navigate through the galaxy. Athanasia has taught him the galactic coordinate system. He’s found out that the galactic equator slices the galaxy in half, running through its centre. The north galactic pole (ngp) is the point where there’s a 90 degree angle from the galactic equator. At the opposite end of that imaginary line is the south galactic pole (sgp). He’ll need to learn how to use stars as beacons, or reference points, in the black of endless, empty space.
Perhaps he’ll even meet up with the “real” Athanasia during his training? It is good to know he already has a friend who’s a solonaut.