The Impossible Future: Complete set by Frank Kennedy (mini ebook reader .txt) 📕

Michael avoided his bunk, knowing escapes were limited in this three-tiered facility. He didn’t want to step outside and encounter George and Carver on disposal duty. Three right-angle turns and a fifty-meter corridor at two abreast led him to an intersection. To his right: the lift to Level 3 residences. To his left: the steep, narrow stairwell to the viewing platform. Not hard to choose.

The temperature dropped precipitously as he started down the stairwell, carved out of a snaking hollow more than a century ago. Stone steps and yellow lights bored into the ceiling guided his way. The echoes were as distinct as the reduction in gravity. By the time he finished his descent, Michael felt fifty pounds lighter and held the guide bar as he stepped out to view a scientific impossibility.

The platform, fashioned from a horizontal crevasse four meters high, stretched to the edge of reality. A solid barricade two meters high protected humans from falling into the Void.

Michael came here more than anyone he knew over the past several weeks, always to remind himself these promised miracles might not be fantasy after all. He reached the barricade and grabbed hold just as the dizziness overwhelmed him. Planetary gravity fell thirty percent this close to the Void. No one explained why.

The Void shimmered, its density and color patterns varying based upon one’s perspective. Looking up, Michael saw the aurora visible above the mountain range, flickering and shapeshifting like all those videos of the Northern Lights he saw on first Earth. At eye level, the Void was an unimpressive green haze, the intensity varying in subtle patterns. Beneath Michael, the Void never ended. It drove into the planet in dramatic sunrise hues.

He heard all the legends about this illogical beast. About how people had leaped to their deaths but disappeared when they jumped through the Void’s energy epidermis. Those who came up short lost whatever limbs might have crossed the barrier, while the rest of them tumbled into oblivion, falling in slow motion as gravity diminished. As Michael stood here and contemplated the end of every dream of saving Sam, he reached out his empty hand and felt a tug. He stood ten feet from the edge of the Void.

He side-armed the jubriska bottle into the green haze. It vanished. Michael wondered whether it simply disintegrated or reappeared somewhere else in the universe. The Chancellor experts insisted the latter to be the case. The bottle would reappear instantaneously wherever the Void’s quantum signatures delivered it. Almost certainly, open space. And this, they said, held the key to humanity’s interstellar future.

“Fucking insane,” he muttered.

He detected motion to his right and wasn’t shocked to see Maya at the guardrail, too.

“You followed me?”

“Oh,” she said with a wry smile. “So, you did see me waving to you in the canteen? Tell me, Michael. What is ‘fucking insane?’ The Void? The Anchors? Or what you are doing to yourself?”

“What am I doing, Maya? Tell me.”

“For one? Losing hope.”

“Got good reason.”

“No, Michael. You have reason to doubt, but not to give up.”

He coughed. “If I’d given up …” He bent his arms to indicate a dive into the abyss. “Man overboard.”

“How much have you had to drink?”

“Not enough. My body holds liquor better than it used to.”

She started toward him, keeping one hand on the rail.

“I would think so. You have a spectacular physique now. Enormous muscles, all those Guard synthetics. What was that competition you said you would win back on first Earth?”

“Mr. Universe. Ironic, huh?”

“Yes. As I recall, you said the men who entered those competitions did it all for ego. They built their bodies simply to show off and win medals. But your motivation was different. You told me, Michael. Do you remember?”

Goddammit. He knew where Maya was leading him.

“I did this so I would have the skills to rescue Sam and kill the motherfucker who took her.”

“Yes. You changed yourself inside and outside to meet your circumstance. That takes enormous courage. Do you not think Samantha is built of similar courage?”

He did not expect this curveball.

“I don’t … yes, she is. But there’s a difference. I made a choice. You don’t really believe James is letting her choose?”

“Probably not. But what if her courage takes a different form? What if she came to understand a fundamental truth? Sometimes, an enemy is best defeated from within. Do you think she might be strong enough to calculate a strategy of compliance and patience?” She grabbed him by the hand. “What if her greatest strength is the faith that, in time, you will come for her?”

He wiped away the tears.

“I want to believe, Maya. I do. But …”

“But what?”

“She met the Chancellors with an unarmed escort. That’s what Forsythe said. She could have flipped sides, and who would have stopped her? Why didn’t she leave when she had the chance?”

“You’ll ask her one day. She’ll have a smart answer.”

Michael looked away. “I been holding out hope for so long, but I should’ve known. We’ll never see each other again.”

She rapped Michael in the arm, although he barely felt it beneath the body armor.

“Oh, please. You two damn well better! You’re not the only one with stakes in this mission. I followed you here, Michael, because I believed in you. I saw how much you grew as a man back on Earth. I don’t agree with every choice you’ve made since then, but you’ve come too far to back down. You closed the door on your past and chose to be something you used to despise. You …”

“What does that mean?”

She curled her lips as if she didn’t really need to say it. But Michael wanted to hear the words.

“Michael, you told me stories about the child you were on first Earth. Wild, undisciplined, happy-go-lucky. You