The Beacon: Hard Science Fiction by Brandon Morris (red white and royal blue hardcover TXT) 📕

I absolutely can’t believe this. It’s a good thing William called me.”

“William?”

“William Maximilian Deuer. You know him. He advised us on the refinancing back when we did that. But don’t deflect!”

Deuer, that’s right. That’s the guy from the bank. Peter remembered the long name tag. Didn’t he violate bank secrecy by doing that? Probably not. After all, it was a joint account. With account movements of this size, any good bank advisor would take notice.

“It’s not about our house, Franziska. I’m selling my mother’s house!”

“Oh, all of a sudden, right now? You know who’s always advised you to do that?”

“Yes. You. I know. But now I need the money.”

“You’re going to spend it? Surely the house will fetch half a million. What kind of crazy idea do you have now?”

I am having a radio beacon built and launched into space to save the solar system from destruction. Your husband will be a hero. Unfortunately, no one believes him because there is no physical process that can knock out a star in a few days without leaving a trace.

But he couldn’t tell her any of that. Franziska would try to have him declared insane. She was much too reasonable. Ha, he never thought he’d think that about his wife. Maybe this should be a warning to him. Maybe he really was going crazy?

“No, I’ve had enough of constant complaints from tenants, and since it just so happens that another agency has inquired—”

“Very reasonable, Peter. But then why did you take the 50,000 from our account?”

Franziska seemed to have calmed down a bit. Peter had a guilty conscience. They had always placed a lot of value on not lying to each other in their relationship.

“Sorry, Franziska, that wasn’t the truth. I shouldn’t have said that.”

He decided to try the truth. Maybe his wife would believe him after all.

“I’ve made a terrible discovery. If our solar system doesn’t broadcast on a certain radio frequency soon, it will be destroyed by an unknown power.”

Oh, man. He sounded just like those QAnon weirdos. No one in their right mind could believe that.

“Oh, Peter.”

Now his wife sounded as if she was on the verge of tears. His heart stuttered.

“Even now, you can’t stop making jokes? I’m really afraid for us. We haven’t done so badly so far. Why do you want to destroy that? What are you hiding from me? I can’t be with someone I can’t trust. So don’t come to me with such made-up stories! Life is not a novel!”

Unfortunately, Franziska was probably right. If what he was experiencing were in a novel, he’d be the hero and not the villain, and a happy ending would be assured. But as it was, he must expect to have divorce papers on his desk soon. And even if he saved the world, no one would believe him. Shouldn’t he leave it alone then? But what would become of his children? If he was right, they’d all die. If he was wrong, he would lose his wife and his mother’s house. He would have to pay a high price, but the result might be worth it.

“Franziska, there’s no point in us continuing this conversation,” he said.

“But Peter, what’s wrong with you? Let’s talk to each other sensibly!”

“I’m sorry, Franziska, but I can’t explain this to you right now. Let’s end the conversation.”

“Whatever,” said his wife, ending the call.

Peter took off his pajamas and went into the bathroom to take a shower. The hot water felt good, and he managed to push any thoughts of Franziska to the back of his mind. Four more hours of math and physics today, and then the weekend would arrive.

March 14, 2026 – Passau

Finally, the sky was clear once again. Peter was grateful to the weather god, although this also meant it would be very cold after the sun went down. He had a task to accomplish that he had been preparing for all day. He needed to find more stars that lay on the spherical shell of destruction. The more data he had, the more credible his evidence would become.

Peter again proceeded systematically, according to his list, which he’d expanded to also included less-luminous stars. Thus he did not progress quite as quickly because it was more laborious to convince himself of the existence of these more-faint points of light. The naked eye was usually inadequate in such cases, so he made use of the stacking technique. Fortunately, it was the weekend and he was alone. He would stack the individual images tomorrow during the day.

The disadvantage of this approach was that he missed the satisfaction of checking off having sighted each item on the list. He only knew that each object in question had its ‘entered’ box checked. But whether it existed or not was only apparent in those cases where he had already seen it with his own eyes in the eyepiece. As a result, Peter’s thoughts regularly wandered, both a blessing and a curse. It helped him to persevere, but it also meant that he sometimes got confused in his list.

At least there was one piece of good news. Peter imagined telling it to his wife—he missed having conversations with her. He was so used to the exchanges that had always been a part of their daily lives that he now considered their absence the biggest drawback to being alone. Yet he had never considered himself particularly talkative. He had always thought of himself as a person who got along quite well without others.

The broker who was to sell the house in Berlin had gotten back to him this morning. Peter gave him only a rough description of his particular situation, but the man seemed to be familiar with such problems and said he was prepared to pay Peter a considerable part of the targeted purchase sum of 600,000 euros in advance. In return, all proceeds above this amount would end up in the broker’s pockets.

It was probably profiteering, but Peter was