Stamping Butterflies

EPILOGUE [The Future]

The Federal Nations support ship Eugene Newman was a Malika-class explorer, designed in Shanghai and built in high orbit by Atlas Interplanetary, a consortium put together fifty years before by His Excellency Caid Marzaq al-Turq.

It was an old-fashioned double hull reaching the end of its useful life and only the fact it was named after the man who bluffed Beijing into not using slave labour to build the launch sites had allowed sentimentalists at the Agency to siphon off enough funds to extend its life far beyond the usual ten-year service period.

No one was sure who came up with the idea to retrofit the Eugene Newman with a ZeroPoint/Casimir coil drive and make it the first ship in the Federated Nations fleet able to cross the galaxy in a single lifetime.

Several old men claimed the credit but these were people who also claimed to have been friends with Jake Razor, the maniac, musician and mathematician notorious for having no friends, and so everyone discounted them.

There was no doubt, however, about who suggested the destination. Lao Kaizhen, known in his childhood as Chuang Tzu because of his ability to lose himself in dreams, had grown up to exhibit that most Chinese of abilities, successfully mastering two entirely separate disciplines.

A poet of international repute, he commanded the Eugene Newman because his fame as an astronomer and deep-space theorist precluded everyone else from being offered the post.

Besides, he was the man who first stated that object x3c9311 was artificial in construction. The argument over Lao Kaizhen's claim lasted for fifteen years, which was the gap between the world's first ZPE/RazorDrive drone being launched and the probe getting close enough to take definitive readings.

After that, the argument became one of provenance and purpose...

"Two thousand and twenty-three," said a mapping officer. Next to her an assistant looked up from a different monitor and nodded. Their totals agreed.

"Any satellites?" Lao Kaizhen asked.

Both officers checked again. "No, sir," they said, more or less in unison.

Even as the Eugene Newman had been approaching the Dyson shell, Captain Lao hadn't been sure what to expect, and now he'd passed through and was inside, looking up at larger than gas giant-sized fragments of jigsaw enclosing a type II sun, he only knew it wasn't this.

Mirror-smooth surfaces reflected light back towards the centre and the recorded temperature of that reflection helped explain the oddity of the object's infrared image, which had been more or less what he first saw all those years ago, while looking across the disc of the galaxy.

"Signs of life?"

The definition of this had been set intentionally wide.

"Nothing."

"A pity." Captain Lao shrugged away the last of his dreams and sighed. It had been childish to hope for anything else. And all the while, the darkness watched and waited, considering carefully.

It would like to get things right this time.