On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

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Here's story 229, of 240 so far.

Long Jump

It was always a tedious ride up. The hardened glass walls were thick, but almost perfectly transparent, so the view was certainly spectacular. It was the transit time that was the annoyance.

Ten whole minutes, Kreutzwald thought. A brief lifetime.

The machine was a stunning feat of science, without doubt, but like all feats of science it was ultimately bound to obey the laws of physics, such as they were currently understood. Physics was a harsh parent, much more given to prohibition than to generosity, and at the extremes of endeavour it became a tricky business indeed to find the obscure path of feasibility within a forest of impossibilities.

The space elevator had certainly seemed to be impossible for the longest time, yet here it was. Kreutzwald sat on the narrow bench which curved around about three-quarters of the cylindrical pod’s circumference, beginning to feel the gradual reduction in gravity as he and the other four passengers ascended.

The base was tethered, albeit electromagnetically, to the ground. The pinnacle interfaced with a geostationary receiving terminal in high orbit. The ascent was vertical, from the perspective of the passengers, but the thing about being on a huge round rock in space was that the pinnacle had a far greater relative orbital velocity than the base, creating a number of profound engineering challenges in materials manufacture, and an even greater set of opportunities for interesting varieties of biblical disaster.

The challenges had eventually been overcome, of course, and the compromises were littered throughout the implementation as usual, including the unhurried pace at which the pod rose from the surface of the Earth to its place in the blackness above the curvature of the planet.

More consequential, though, was the next stage of his journey. The orbiting terminal was part of a painstakingly-constructed network that stretched throughout the explored portions of the galaxy, using co-opted tunnels through folded space to travel vast distances in moments. The scientific community was still undecided on whether the tunnels had been created by a non-human intelligence, or were simply part of the fabric of the natural universe, but it had taken generations to slowly create terminals at various points along the network, using robotic probes with self-assembling payloads, branching out ever more widely. Thousands of light years were within reach, albeit in a very sparse and imbalanced way. Huge areas of the galaxy were still beyond humanity’s knowledge.

Kreutzwald looked down at the cloud layer, seeing it falling further and further below. This was the part of the ride that tended to silence the chattering excitement of those who weren’t used to it — and even those who were. Up until you were just above the clouds, it felt like you were going up into the sky. But when you got a little beyond that point, you saw the truth, and it chilled your blood: you were leaving a world behind. Not soaring exploration, but departure from a tiny island of safety, towards an onyx infinity of silence, radiation, and danger.

Technology had made it all commonplace, though. People regularly made short hops to other planets and moons in Earth’s system, and even to some of the nearer star systems. The ratio was favourable for such journeys, and holiday allowances could readily be traded for the proper number of days away. Saturn, for example, had an excellent ratio, allowing a full week there for only 12 days of holiday. Some of the outer dwarf planets had terminals too, requiring just two days of allowance for every one day spent away.

But the ratio gets serious pretty quickly, Kreutzwald thought as the elevator’s pinnacle came into view above.

He could just see the tunnel-gate section of the station. It was the shape that gave it away, as much as all the hardware on the outside. Spherical chambers had litte practical use in space stations, but each tunnel’s entry point was a perfect sphere, pitch black, like a bubble of absence, or an optical illusion.

Kreutzwald glanced at the family of four who were now readying themselves to get off the elevator when it would momentarily reach its destination. They were dressed casually and brightly, clearly going on holiday. Probably Io’s capital, Dijkstra, or maybe Neptune South Station. Quick trips, with a ratio of less than two.

The ratio was something everyone knew about, because it was at the core of humanity’s nascent interstellar society. Even children were aware of it, though they didn’t start to really understand the details until their education had progressed sufficiently. But the basic explanation was readily grasped, even if it had to be experienced to be actually believed. Kreutzwald could remember the vivid, happy-looking drawings on the gallery screens in his own classroom when he was six years old or so.

THE FARTHER YOU GO, THE LONGER IT TAKES!

The ratio was the practical example used when teaching kids about fractions, now that he recalled it. Making an abstract subject into something they could relate to, because everybody had off-world holidays from time to time. But phrases like time dilation and relativistic velocities didn’t make an appearance until they were in their teenaged years, even nowadays.

Travelling through the tunnels was virtually instantaneous, though still sickening. The null black spheres pulled you in with their own gravity, so you’d slowly fall towards the centre of the large, ball-shaped rooms they were housed in. You’d fall up, or across, or down, or whatever was appropriate, so the stations were usually built so that you’d at least fall in a direction that seemed like downwards. It made fewer people vomit. When you reached the void, and it filled your peripheral vision, it would seem to flicker, then you’d find that you were somewhere else; the place you were going. Like you’d passed out for a moment. Magnetic clamps pulled you out the other side, until you were beyond the tunnel’s local gravity-well. Other than the brief nausea and the sense of falling, it was unremarkable. Except for the ratio.

The problem with travelling so far in just moments was that time was squeezed. It didn’t matter so much for the place you were visiting, but the return trip was when you really paid your dues: you arrived back at a comparatively later point than the elapsed time, from your perspective. That was the ratio. When you went to Saturn for a week and then came back to Earth, your outward and return journeys were each just a moment — but twelve days had passed on Earth since you left. So you had to spend 12 days of holiday time to enjoy a week on the beautiful ringed planet.

Each trip was programmed in terms of how many hops through the network you’d take. One hop was the same as five or ten from the traveller’s point of view; just a flash of nausea and a flicker of your surroundings. But unimaginable distances had been crossed. And if you went back… well, things would have changed.

Kreutzwald exited the elevator into the pinnacle terminal, and followed the signs towards the gate. He was first up, just a few minutes from now, booked for only his hand luggage and no accompanying party. He was unmarried and unattached, after all. Exactly why he’d signed up for the job, and the trip. It was a record-setting journey.

When he came back, he wouldn’t recognise a lot of things. The ratio was burned into his mind.

1800R.

The pay was astronomical, and the job itself wasn’t difficult. But it was five years of Earth time per day out there, and the estimate was that he’d need a week to finish the work. He was hoping to get it done in five days, if at all possible. Then he’d only miss a quarter of a century.

A soft tone sounded overheard, and he crossed the threshold of the gate chamber. The negative sphere of emptiness hung there ahead of him, and there was a faint smell of burning. That was normal too.

Kreutzwald took a breath, and then pushed off from the platform, already feeling the gravity. Come what may, he was committed now.

Just a few more seconds, a fleeting sickness, a flicker, and a long jump into the dark.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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