The Twins
Flash Fiction (477 words)
“Morning,” says a humanoid behind the counter, who pushes a few buttons that make coffee and a place setting appear. “Big day!”
“The day, Jess!” Tom says, “I still can’t believe I qualified.”
“I can,” Jess says. “You’re born to ride the waves! The usual?”
“Yep,” Tom nods.
Jess pushes more buttons. Breakfast materializes: eggs, sausage, and a bottle of mustard.
“Favorable conditions today?” asks Jess.
“Looks like it,” Tom agrees. “Waves look evenly dispersed over the first hundred parsecs. The Twins are in perfect gravitational stability.”
“Listen Tom,” Jess leans in, their solid black eyes searching for contact with his slit pupils. “You’ve been coming into this diner for over a year now. That pair of neutron stars… They’re unpredictable. I’ve given a last meal to more solar sailors than this planet has moons. Don’t be a hero, you hear me?”
Tom nods.
Jess stands upright, smiles with uncertainty, and walks away. Tom waves his wrist over the counter to pay for the breakfast tab, and leaves.
Moments later, Tom seals the spaceport hatch behind him, and the computer chimes on.
“All systems are nominal.”
“Copy that,” Tom says, checking gravity readings on the interferometer. He enters a series of commands at the helm, and the sailship slowly advances to the starting line. As it does, a race portal activates on the view screen.
“Good morning, sailors!” says the announcer. “Five minutes until launch.”
Tom and the computer make the vessel ready for sailing, just in time for a green orb in the distance to detonate.
“Go!” Tom shouts, grinning as he works the helm. The delicate, gold mesh solar sail unfurls from the mast, and the sailship thrusts forward.
“Velocity: 0.1c,” announces the computer. “0.2c. 0.3c.”
Tom notices the redshift of the slower ships as they streak behind him.
“Yes!” Tom exclaims. The ship gently vibrates, but Tom adjusts a few settings to settle the ship.
“0.4c.”
“Wow!” Tom shouts. He checks the beacons for the other competitors on the view screen to find that they’re far behind him.
The alarm on the interferometer sounds, breaking the excitement.
Tom checks the interferometer, and gasps.
“No,” he whispers, as panic sets in. “Computer, project the next four waves…”
The view screen display shows three steady waveforms, then a peak that is too large or the screen. A gravity swell.
Tom sits down, and takes his hands off the helm.
“Computer, time to impact?”
“Thirty seconds.”
Tom shakes his head in disbelief. He’s lost all control of the vessel. The neutron stars are unstable, throwing gravity swells across kiloparsecs. He’s not the fastest. He’s the only one to launch!
“Four seconds to impact. Three. Two. One.”
The sailship capsizes as space and time expand, then contract. Everything goes black.
“Morning,” says a humanoid behind the counter. “Big day!”
“The day, Jess!” Tom says.