In A Universe Without Stars 1: Skyeater (11 page)

He
stares into Serena’s eyes. He needs to figure out a way to save her, even if he
doesn’t survive. Under them the ground quickly becoming more and more distant.

The
angel stops and they hover above it all. At least twenty angels lay siege to
the city. The clouds above them block out the source of the light.

The
angel looks at Serena. Lance can’t let her die, not after all they’ve been
through.

“No!!”
Lance screams, struggling in his binds. Clink! Bullets bounce off the angel’s
head.

An
F-35 passes by, it maneuvers to turn and do another pass. This gives Lance a
chance. He digs into his right pocket, lucky that he’s only bonded by the
chest. He pulls out a pocket knife.

The
angel lets out a beam of fire as the plane passes by. It’s hit and disintegrates
instantly. There goes their help. The angel looks down on his captives, but
this time he focuses on Lance. Fortunately for Serena this thing is simpler
than they first thought.

It
opens its mouth and bends down for Lance’s head. Lance has to wait to attack,
his arm isn’t long enough to get it. The jaws gets closer and closer. He can
smell its foul fish like breath. Its teeth scrape against his head and—

Lance
grabs up and stabs the knife into the damned thing’s ear. A horrid screech
pierces Lance’s and Serena’s eardrums as it screams out.
It’s
tentacles disappear and they drop.

“
Noo
!” Serena scream is cut short as she didn’t notice that
the rooftop was only ten feet below her. They land with a thump. Lance grabs
his ears, the ringing is intense,
blood
drops down his
earlobes.

Sound
slowly starts to come back to him as the ringing ebbs. The screams and Serena.
She cries for him on the other side of the roof.

He
jumps up, ears be damned and runs to her. They embrace each other as they meet.
She cries in his arms, she scared and there’s nothing he can do. Lance looks
into the sky, the angel is nowhere to be found.

Something
is a mile away on top of another building. A huge muscular beast with sickly tan
green skin, it just sits there, watching them. His name is Ulbe, it’s the
watcher of this battle. But Lance doesn’t know that, he thinks it’s the devil
himself
. It really is the apocalypse. 

Another
screech is heard from above, but it’s different this time. It sounds like two
large pieces of polished metal are rubbing against each other. Lance and Serena
both glance up. A giant red ship appears from the orange haze sky, it’s unlike
anything they’ve seen before, its front end is slick and thin,
a
sliver of a window covers the round top front. Its back
end is covered by the clouds.

The
front juts out like a sword. It just hovers there. It makes another pulsating
sound, like an alarm; the sound fills the sky. Hundreds of small spheres of
light appear over New York.

Lance
and Serena can’t help but stare up in amazement. The spheres light up the sky
like it was
an
starry night. Serena cries again, maybe
from the impending end or the unknown of it all. But to Lance, at least they
will die a beautiful death.

One
of the spheres falls toward the Empire State Building. It goes straight through
it and explodes out. The blast levels multiple blocks around it.
This is the
end.

There
is a sphere right above them. More of them start to fall and level the city. He
wishes it wouldn’t end today, he has so much more to do. He’s never going to
see his first child.

The
light above him falls. It’s almost graceful, it flickers like a star. Lance
clutches Serena.

“It’s
going to be alright,” Lance murmurs to her. Her sobs over-power what he said.
She’s lost in fear.

“It’s
going to be alright! Okay!” He yells, clutching her harder, to the point of
pain. He needs an answer, if not for her for himself.

To
know that all they’ve been through, that even though there going to die, that
it wasn’t all for nothing. “O…Ok…Okay…” she mutters. She reaches up and they
kiss for one last time as the sphere gets closer, light reflecting off their
bodies.

The
angel Lance stabbed lands on the rooftop and it looks pissed. Its crown
disappears as its arms and wings rips its chains. Its wings disintegrate off
its back. Yellow-orange energy wings float on the angel. Lance and Serena
shield their eyes from the brightness.

It
walks toward them. The chains weren’t helping it, it was holding it back.

In
the distance on another rooftop, the crown appears over Ulbe, the Damons head,
it has only one thorn. He’s lost control.

Back
with Lance, he shoves Serena away as the Angel shoots a beam of light at him.
Forgetting about the looming doom from above, his body acts on its own, not
really knowing what he’s doing.

Lance
swings as the beam fires at him,
a
energy based
projectile erupts from his hand, cuts the beam in two and—

It
hits the angel. It screams as it burst into flames. It flies off. Lance looks up
and—

The
sphere of light rips straight into the rooftop, Lance gets one last look at
Serena as it explodes out.

“Lance!!”
She’s thrown off the roof. Lance jumps and follows her. Falling fast, the
building coming down above them.

Serena
cries for him. There is nothing he can do. He’s about to watch his wife die.
The angel flies under her, face half melted off, it opens its mouth for one
final blow—

It
explodes, guts flinging everywhere. Beneath it, a SE6 numbered ship flies fast
under them. Its side opens. Serena falls into its bay. Lance doesn’t know what
it is, but he’s glad his wife didn’t see the ground and neither is he. That was
his last thought as he falls into the bay.

The
ship turns toward the sky and shoots off incredibly fast. We are left with New
York City as it burns to the ground. The mysterious ship in the sky splits
vertically in half and hovers apart. The clouds disappear and reveals a giant
ball of light in the middle.

Everything
in city is ripped from the ground, buildings, roads, the last survivors, trash,
everything levitates toward the light.

A
grey cloudy sky
peers through the windows of a house’s office. The patter of the rain hitting
the giant bay windows overlooking the river creates the perfect white noise for
the man sleeping at one of two identical glass desks in the office.
His head lies on various scattered notebooks and
papers.

His
desk is chaotic but suits him. The desk next to his is picture perfect. Papers
stacked perfectly, all their angles perfectly aligned.

Exact
opposites.

The
wide screen monitor on his desk silently runs a simulation. It pinpoints a view
of a cluster of stars, all swirling in their natural chaotic progression. It is
version forty-three revision number five. It’s the latest of many.

Behind
the clouds that blanket the sky the sun sets. Colors and light flee out of the
office, leaving darkness until only the monitor illuminates the man and the
wall behind him. On the wall are several white boards and bulletin boards.

On
the white boards are many complex equations and notations. On the bulletin
boards are pictures of stars and galaxies, held on with tacks.

Several
are labeled with red marker as “Missing”. The bulletin board bears the title
“Starless night theory.” Above that board, near the rafters, is another on
which multiple awards and pictures are pinned. They’re ordered from left to
right, oldest to newest.

The
first award is plaque with a picture of a black man, Thomas Wilker, as he
accepts his first Nobel Prize in physics. He is the very man who sleeps on the
desk. The next award is a Nobel Prize for a classically beautiful woman.

Isabel
Love.

As
the awards go on, it is to be noted that Isabel has many more of them than the
man. After her second Nobel, the rest of the awards are hers. Her pale white
features age with each consecutive honor. It’s been years since Thomas won a
single thing.

The
awards are high and prominent, but the half circle shaped of the room brings
focus to the desk and the rafters above. The man at the desk, Thomas Wilker, is
a man of science and the husband of Isabel. He goes just by Wilker.

Wilker
knew what he was getting into when he married the smartest woman on the planet.
As he sleeps, his computer continues to run, the simulation of the stars
nearing completion.

The
rain hits the windows harder, the storm picking up momentum. One by one the
stars on the screen flicker off at a constant rate, darkening until every
single star disappears.

Blackness.

The
monitor leaves the room pitch black. Only the small weak blue haze of the
monitor’s power button remains.

“Simulation
complete” pops up in big white letters with a beep. It doesn’t wake him; he’s
exhausted from building and running simulations all day. He’s finally found
what he’s been looking for, though he doesn’t know it yet. When he wakes, he’ll
have proof that the stars are disappearing.

One
by one.

All
the work he’s been doing for years will finally come to fruition. Yet in a month’s
time, all the things that humanity has worked for will be for nothing. All the
works of all the lives that ever lived will cease to matter. In a month’s time
all of humanity and life in the universe will change.

Humanity
will end.

…

The
storm bellows hard in London. A woman in a yellow rain coat runs in the rain
slicked streets to her car. The BMW 4 series lights up as she jumps into the
driver’s seat and slams the door.

She
coughs hard, pulling a handkerchief from her pocket. She continues to cough
into it for some time until her body shudders to a stop. She looks into the
handkerchief, stained with mucous blood, a lot of it. She sways a little in
disgust and wipes her mouth.

She
pushes the ignition button, rolls down the window and throws the handkerchief
out. She wrestles off her coat and throws it in the back.

It’s
Isabel, her dark brown hair sticks to her damp face. It takes nothing to take
away from her stark beauty. At forty-three, she barely looks a day over thirty.
She often thanks her mother for that.

Isabel
curses to herself. The back of her shirt becomes wet from the residual water
from her coat. Bloody hell, if not for the coughing attack she could’ve taken
off her coat before the water could soak in. Closing her eyes she breaths in.

Her
day has been neither memorable for any positive or negative reason nor
forgettable. Home and a hot shower await. So there’s no reason to get angry.
She’s already wet so she’ll just have to deal with it.

Her
phone dings. She has an email from the SETI institute. ‘Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence’.

It’s
addressed to the head of the organization: Isabel.

She
ran the office for many years, it’s her main passion: to find life out there in
space, to learn she is not alone in the universe.

The
email says the echo experiment was a success and that the American government
is interested in funding it.

“Why
does it interest them so much?” she
says
out loud. She
doesn’t think the Americans have an ulterior reason for providing help for the
project; she’s just a questioner. That’s why she joined SETI all those years
ago. It’s why she became a scientist, to find the answers to life’s questions.

A
bright blue light suddenly flashes in her eyes. She stares at it in disbelief.
All her emotions ebb, and she becomes calm. She has no fear, no excitement,
no
thoughts at all. She forgets about her email and drops
her phone.

…

Wilker
still sleeps at his desk, his monitor put itself to sleep to conserve energy.
The office lightens as the sun peeks over the hills, lighting up rooftops still
wet from the storm the night before. Smoke billows from chimneys as they warm
the occupants inside.

Isabel
walks right up to Wilker’s desk, giving him a good shove. He wakes slowly.

“What
is it?” he moans.  

“You’re
going to be late,” she says softly with a hint of weariness.

“Five
minutes.”

“It’s
always five minutes with you and then it’ll be an hour later. Get up Thomas.”

He
sighs hard and runs his hands over his curly black head.

He
looks up at her. She looks as though she’s been up all night in the rain.

Her
shirt and pants are soaked through, her shoes are covered in dirt and falling
apart and her face is covered in smudged dirt as if she recently tried and
failed to clean herself up. Alarmed, Wilker struggles to his feet.

“What
happened to you?” he demands.

“Nothing,”
she says.

“Nothing?
Have you looked at yourself?”

“I’m
fine. Promise.” She smiles weakly.

There’s
a smudge of blood on her lips.  She’s been coughing again. Wilker wipes
away the blood.

“Dammit
Isabel, you need to get help,” he whispers. He’s calmer-sounding, but still
angry. He loathes seeing her suffer.

“You
keep telling me time and time again and my answer is the same.”

“I
will keep telling you until you get it through your thick head.”

“No,”
she says. They have had this discussion before, about her illness. She won’t
listen to him. He gently strokes her face until she grabs his hand to stop it.

She
says, “You need to go. If you’re late again—“

“If
you’re not going to get help I at least want to know what happened to you,” he
says firmly.

“If
you’re late again, they’re going to fire you, tenure be damned. Please, I’ll
tell you everything when you come back home.”

He
just stares at her. She let’s go of his hand. He steps to his computer and
pulls out the flash drive with his simulation; he didn’t have a chance to look
at it but he will at work.

He
gives his wife the biggest hug he can muster without hurting her and lands a
passionate kiss on her lips. Some of her dirt rubs off on his face. After what
feels like an eternity he puts her down and their lips part.  

She
rubs his face and gives him two small quick slaps. “Now go,” she says. He lets
go and hurries out the door.

She
lets out a long breath. She walks to her desk and slumps into the chair and
starts to quietly cry. The tiredness overwhelms her; the weight of the
situation crashes down upon her.

She
places her head on the desk and weeps. She’s seen it, everything she’s worked
for, the very thing she’s thought she would never see in her lifetime, the
thing of which she’s dreamed.

It
frightens her, in ways she’s never anticipated, though it’s what she has always
wanted.

The
realization of it has finally hit her, along with implications she’s never
thought of when it was just a distant dream.

She’s
made contact.

…

Wilker
stands in front of a university class, all one hundred seats are filled. He has
a presentation of the stars on the projection screen.

“This
is only a small portion of the stars in the universe.” Wilker says. The
students sigh and relax in their seats.

“The
number we can see with our human eyes on any given night, are only eleven
thousand give or take in this picture. That’s already a number some of us
simpler folks can’t comprehend. Not all of them are stars but are galaxies.” He
paces up and down before his desk as he continues.

“In
a single galaxy there are believed to be at least two hundred billion stars making
up it’s worth. Two hundred billion stars in that single shiny speck in our
night sky. That shows us how small we really are. A galaxy is a vast island of
stars floating throughout the ocean of the universe and yet there is a theory
that there are more than four hundred billion galaxies with two hundred billion
stars. It’s an incredible thing that really puts things in prospective. As
humans our brain can’t even begin to understand that number. So we are here,
stuck on Earth, left to dream of the stars above and the understanding of
them., Wilker finished.

A
student raises his hand in the front row.

“Yes?”
Wilker asks.

“When
will we continue on to harder subjects or literally anything else? It’s near
the finals and this is the fourth time you’ve told us how small we are.”

Some
of the others laugh while the rest look at him for a reply.

“Ah
yes, Mr. Perry is it? I’ve seen the rating you’ve given me on
ratemyprofessor.com, I was wondering what
is your problem
with me
?” Wilker asks.

Perry
looks around, some of his colleagues look away. He didn’t think Wilker would
find out about that.

“Well?
Speak up, I won’t hold you against your own opinion. Academically,” Wilker
says.

“Well...
you’re a physicist, not an astronomer, I have a firm belief that you should
stay in the field you studied in so you can master a subject. You didn’t study
astronomy in school,” Perry says.

“And
where exactly did you find that out?” Wilker says.

“The…
Int
….Wikipedia…” The words stumbles out his mouth.

“Don’t
you know the phrase ‘don’t believe everything you read on the
Internet’.
You’ve got me wrong Mr. Perry. I’m an astronomer
at heart who just happens to dabble in physics. That would make me an
astrophysicist which I studied at Harvard University. I happen to find comfort
in the stars and galaxies and I think you all should too.”

Perry
doesn’t respond.

“I’m
not a parrot, I have my reasons when I repeat certain things, no matter how
trivial it seems, and that’s because it’s going to be on the final. But most
particularly it really is important to understand how minuscule we all are.
Once you apprehend that, only then can you begin to understand the complexities
of the universe. If you think you can do a better job than I, then feel free to
come up and show me what I’m doing wrong.” Perry recedes farther back into his
chair.

Somebody
chuckles, a man near the door. Another professor and Wilker’s boss, Matthews,
leans against the wall. He must have slipped in during Wilker’s speech. Wilker
looks at his watch.

“Look
at the time. Class dismissed.”

His
students swiftly file out at the gift of a short class. Matthews leaves with
them.

“Perry,
can you come here?” Wilker asks. Perry sulks over.

“Don’t
worry, you’re not in trouble, and I’ll keep this short. You are one of my
brightest students, and I like people who stand up for themselves and their
beliefs. But next time you think of speaking up either keep the hell quiet or
get your damn facts straight. I won’t have anyone interrupting my class with
rubbish like that again.”