His brain’s sinking into silence. He can hear the sound of blood running in his veins. He detests this damned sidereal silence. His awareness of time has withered like a sun-dried plum. Yesterday, today, tomorrow – all in a single grain of sand. He should have known there was a catch when he signed up for this mission.
”Screw space-time,” he whispers.
And he no longer knows where she is. What is she doing now? And how old is she? What about her face? She’s probably old, with dull eyes, her hands bulging with veins, her hair sparse and white.
Or she might... “No, no, no, no.” He grits his teeth. “Stop it, ya damn brain.”
Hell, he needs an ice-cold beer. But here – in deep space – an ice-cold beer would only be a morbid dead ritual. A remnant of the old days he left on his homeplanet. Nothing earthly, familiar, human makes sense up here, except the amazement. Damn it, he wants the normalcy of a flat tire; he wants to argue with his neighbor; he wants to miss the Super Bowl because he’s out with season tickets.
Problems at hand. Human problems.
Problems. Problems. Problems. Problems. Problems.
”Take a breathe, Mitchell,” he tells himself. “C’mon. Breathe.”
Thump thump. Thump thump. Thump thump. Thump thump. Thump thump. Thump thump. Thump thump. Thump thump. Thump thump. Thump thump.
He closes his eyes. He lowers his guard. And the memory of her smile bursts into his mind, seizing his brain like an evil octopus. This is how his migraines explode each time. They had been young together, he and she. They had been an illusion trapped in a crystal gaze, but together. Time has betrayed him: He’s still young but she can’t be young anymore. And he’s a million light-years away from her smile. Time has burned away.
But how it came? Oh, yeah, she passed him by at a random moment in his life and trapped him in dissatisfaction. His senses became entangled with hers. He felt in love and was terrified. Loving is like going insane. You can’t think anymore. The smoke produced by a burning heart intoxicates the brain. And he was intoxicated. He wanted her. He wanted this woman badly. He spent many nights burning his sexual energy alone, but his body needed contact.
So he searched for her and finally found her. She had a home, a family; her family, her children. He could not love another man’s woman. He could only possess her absence, and at first he was even okay with that; after all, one single absence can be more powerful than thousand of presences.
But dissatisfaction does not leave you alone ‘cause you give up. No way. It goes on hurting like a nail in the nerves. That’s why he signed up for this mission. If getting drunk doesn’t work, you have to find something else to stop the pain.
Day one - Sighting
His hands show no signs of aging. Looking out, he sees only an endless black streak among the stars. No day, no night, just the hum of the ship’s engines and the faint glow of the instruments around him. The crew is now down to five. Well, there were twenty-seven of ‘em, but some have gone mad. It was not easy to do what the Captain did, but he had no choice. Of course, no choice. And up here, in the middle of nowhere, there’s no sound when you shoot a deranged officer. And after this rough business, the Captain has continued to argue with the ship’s artificial intelligence, and the others have carried on quietly and without emotion. After months and months of stars and planets, there is nothing to see. None of those left on Earth really knows what lurks in the depths of the universe.
“Hey, Mitchell,” Calhoun says to him out of the blue. “See that thing over there?”
“What thing?” He asks.
Calhoun points in the right direction; and Mitchell sees it: a seething mass of stars, dust, and gravity on the ship’s screens. It’s so intense that even light is struggling to escape.
Mitchell says, “What the hell is that?”
Calhoun pauses. Then he spreads his arms. “I’m not sure.”
“It’s the nuclear bulge,” the Captain explains. He sounds confident but scared.
“How far?” Mitchell comes out again.
“It’s hard to say,” the Captain answers.
The three of ‘em stand with their eyes glued to the big screen.
“Then I guess we have a problem,” Mitchell says.
“Well,” the Captain replies, “the closer we get, the harder it will be to get through. The ship will suffer from gravity, but we should be able to escape.”
“What are the chances of really being the case, Cap?”
“We need more data.”
Mitchell isn’t thrilled with the answer, but he’ll take it for now.
Three days later - The strange sounds
The Captain was right, they need more data. They desperately need more data. Strange sounds have invaded the various sectors of the ship, indecipherable echoes and gasps that sound like the screeching of bending metal. But they do not come from any part of the ship. Mitchell has tried to trace them with Nora, the communications officer, but she has confirmed that the sounds have no apparent source. It is as if the ship is picking up signals from a place that should not exist. The bulge is always there, a swirl of energy and colors from space that have nothing in common with the spectrum they are used to. Something about the damn thing seems to obey laws unknown to them all.
Five days later - The night before
The ship can’t move anymore. It’s as if they were floating in a vacuum. Mitchell asks Nora about this, but she just shakes her head. She has not slept for days, and her eyes are red, frightened, distant, as if she sees something that Mitchell does not see. This is what women do: They see beyond.
He brings her some food, “You should try to rest,” he says, sitting by her.
She whispers, “We’re not alone out here.”
She refuses to eat. He does not push. He touches her hand. She accepts the contact and squeezes his fingers.
“I’m scared,” Nora tells him.
Mitchell is scared too, but he won’t say. His eyes are on her. Now he feels it too, he senses the growing presence of something that is watching them, that is waiting for them. Out there.
“It won’t end like this, Nora.”
A terrified rage fills her eyes. Her grip on his arm is tight. She is touching the outside of his suit, but for Mitchell it feels as if she is touching the very fabric of his soul.
“What if we’re all crazy?” she says.
“We are not crazy. Take heart, honey.”
“But the Captain will kill anyone who goes crazy. You know… You know he will!”
“None of us will die, Nora.” He pulls her against him and hold her tight. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
“You’re already an asshole, Mitchell. Don’t turn into a liar, too.”
He looks at her. “Listen… we all believe things that aren’t necessarily true. Sometimes we get so used to lies that we actually start to prefer them to the truth. So trust me, Nora. I can keep you safe.”
“This isn’t the time or place to fool me.”
“Forget time and space.”
He touches her lips. Nora smiles.
The day after - The dark planet.
No one expected this. The nuclear bulge should have been too unstable for any planets to have survived. It should have been destroyed by the immense gravity of the supermassive black hole. There should be no planet at the center of the galactic bulge. And yet there it is, a shimmering black orb hovering on the edge of the abyss, and the Captain orders them into a very close orbit. None of them speak, but they all feel the same: An unbearable pull to go down there, to tread on something that has no right to exist. The closer they get, the stronger the pull. Mitchell can see his own silent terror in the faces of the others. Nora looks at him, and he looks back, giving her a weak smile, but that's enough for her.
“Prepare the landing shuttle,” the Captain says. “We’re going down to that dark planet.”
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A few scientific details
Think of a galactic bulge (or just bulge) as a densely packed group of stars within a larger star formation. To find the bulge of the Milky Way, we would have to go to its center, because the bulge refers to the central group of stars found in most spiral galaxies.
The halo - a roughly spherical distribution which contains the oldest stars in the Galaxy
The nuclear bulge in the Galactic Center
The disk, which contains the majority of the stars, including the sun, and virtually all of the gas and dust
JASMINE Project
JASMINE is a satellite for measuring the distances and apparent motions of stars around the central bulge of the Milky Way with yet unprecedented precision. It’s the world’s first galactic center astrometry mission and should reveal the detailed structure of the galactic center region, the so-called galactic nuclear bulge, whose structure and formation history are still mysterious and veiled by heavy dust extinction.
“JASMINE”: Japan Astrometry Satellite Mission for Infrared Exploration
To be continued… Thanks for reading! :-)
This was great, Michael!
The story does so much. And it’s such a cool and accessible way to also explore these scientific ideas. :)
Michael, I read "Nuclear Bulge," and enjoyed it immensely. My imagination kept adding details to your narrative the way speculative fiction should do.
I'm going to tune in to see what they land on and what they discover. I don't like that Captain with his gun. I think he needed to take a psych, course.