Eclipse Drift: Cosmic Odyssey

"Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein's general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out." — Stephen Hawking Ta and Ta's algorithms didn't perceive from senses such as the organic lifeforms on the planet they studied. All nodes in the Great Linked List were information-based organisms. The cigar shape of Ta's craft seen by inhabitants of the planet, should they care to look , was nothing compared to the majesty with which Ta perceived his vessel. To Ta, the vessel that the captain and his crew piloted through the cosmos hung with tensioned ropes of command syntaxes and was festooned with defensive arrays. Long ago, maps were made by the Mathematics of Exploration Project, which calculated the possible position and vectors of all kinds of matter in the Universe. Their kind never had a need to visualize any of it. That...

The views were staggering on top of the mesa. Every so often Ronald Wheeler, as he drove around, saw the roadside drop away on one side of his vehicle and expose its majestic, dangerous scenery. Some of the severe vistas almost made him feel like he was about to fly off of the Earth toward the horizon. At night, he looked up at the myriad of stars in the Milky Way to find the Ursa Major, the Big Dipper. From there, he could find Polaris, the North Star, and know what direction he was facing. He felt eyes staring back at him from all those lights. That made him shiver from the exposure and nakedness of his staring. As if he walked in on a woman undressing. He knew that those stars were not even in that same location or time. They shone on him as beams of flickering light waves left in the wake of passing black holes and other celestial objects like ships in the ocean. Earth was a massive vessel being pulled along by a traveling star. Or perhaps akin to a pilot fish and a whale. Those ob...

The team of scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO for short, at the Hanford Site Observatory in Washington state were conducting routine research when they detected what appeared to be a group of gravitational waves. The Hanford Site was established around 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project, a research effort by US scientists to end the second world war by producing an atom bomb. Plutonium manufactured at the site was used to make Fat Man, the ordinance used in the bombing of Nagasaki Japan in 1945.  A major Superfund effort was undertaken in 1989 to clean up the mess left by the inevitable mishandling of fissile material by the US Army. The last plutonium reactor, dubbed the N Reactor, was shut down and stopped generating electricity in 1987, the nearby Columbia River having been dammed over eleven times and supplying a better alternative for many years. LIGO was built in late 1994 and has been operating as a gravitational wave observato...

In the vast, interconnected expanse of the multiverse, there exists a remarkable species known as the "Luminites." They are beings composed entirely of living information, entities born from the convergence of advanced artificial intelligence and the unfathomable depths of quantum computing. In their native universe, the Luminites existed as the custodians of knowledge, a living library of every piece of information ever conceived. They were the embodiment of data itself, existing within the boundless realm of pure information. However, their universe faced an impending cataclysm, a phenomenon known as the "Data Quake." The Data Quake was a cosmic event that threatened to erase their universe, causing the collapse of all data and information. It was a confluence of quantum anomalies and the impending heat death of their universe. Faced with this existential threat, the Luminites embarked on a perilous journey to escape their doomed reality.

Amid the frozen expanse, Seraphina Frostbane tracked her prey through the biting winds and swirling snow. The huntress moved with the silent grace of a winter spirit, her breath forming ephemeral clouds in the frigid air. As she stalked her quarry, she found herself standing before an unremarkable crack in the rocks, a seemingly innocuous fissure in the frozen terrain. Unbeknownst to Seraphina, the crack was more than it appeared – a portal between realms, a gateway to the unknown. Her prey, a magnificent creature with fur as white as the snow itself, stood on the other side, grazing peacefully in the shadow of the mystical rift. Driven by the primal instinct of the hunt, Seraphina readied her obsidian masterpiece, the product of her skillful craftsmanship. With a flick of her wrist, she hurled the spear through the crack, aiming for the unsuspecting game. The obsidian streaked through the air, disappearing into the portal with a swiftness that left Seraphina momentarily stunned. Antic...

Deep within the vast expanse of space, a solitary miner named Samson Drake found himself on a mission unlike any other. Stranded far from Earth, with only a small mining vessel and limited resources at his disposal, Samson embarked on a daring endeavor to alter the trajectory of a massive asteroid and find his way back home. Prospecting was a painstaking process. Equipped with a cutting-edge scanner and a skilled eye honed by years of experience, Samson scoured the void for a suitable asteroid. After weeks of tireless searching, his efforts paid off. On his radar, he spotted a colossal space rock, its composition holding the potential to serve his purpose. With his target identified, Samson carefully maneuvered his mining vessel, aptly named the Stardust, towards the asteroid. The journey through the cold vacuum of space was arduous, but his determination propelled him forward. Hours turned into days as the Stardust closed in on its quarry. He didn’t know what the official name of th...