NationStates Jolt Archive

The time is 4:37 PM, July 12, 1926. The place is Sunset Harbour, on the western edge of a world far removed from the universe of Earth.

The most famous ship of the 20th century is about to be launched. Named the ∞, or the Infinity for short, it is the product of twenty centuries of shipbuilding evolution. A massive krystal-steel engine from Khr fills its hold. Scientific instruments and controls for every purpose imaginable, designed with deft Jzna engineering, fill the cockpit. The hull is of story-wood, hewn from the gnarled, ancient Tree of Ages which stands alone on the Great Plains. The maps, charts and rigging are the products of centuries of human exploration and experimentation. At night, the ship glows faintly, hinting at the heavy, tectonic energies imbued within it by draconic priests.

It has a single mission: to explore beyond the western edge of the world. Of the nineteen ships that have gone before it, bearing the best and brightest minds of nineteen centuries, none have returned.

Perhaps the twentieth ship will return with answers. It's more likely that it, too, will disappear over the indistinct boundary of the world, and never again return.

But the attempt has to be made, because the nature of sentience is to be curious.

And so, at 5:00 PM, July 12, 1926, the golden, varnished hull of the ∞ touches water for the first time. Its crew will board within the hour, as the rigging glows in the light of the setting sun. At moonrise, they will set sail. By noon the next day, they will have reached the edge of their maps, where a bank of eternal fog sits, inscrutably thick and opaque, stretching to the horizon in either direction.

At noon, July 13, 1926, the ∞ and its crew will leave their old world behind, and embark on a voyage of discovery that no being of their world has ever been known to return from.

They will sail across the worlds.

The chronospatiometer reads 12:00 noon, July 13, 1926, Edge of the World, Aela.

"So this is it then."

The ship's captain stares back across the ocean. In the distance, the island of Khr is faintly visible on the horizon.

"Y'know, when I was a kid... I always had this funny feeling. Like there was something wrong with the world. And when I went on expeditions after I grew up, I started to feel it more. And this morning I finally realized what the problem was."

He turns to face the fog.

"It's like a prison. Up north, everything gets colder and colder and darker and darker. I took men up there with eight hundred pounds of heating equipment and a dozen arc lamps, and after you get up there far enough the air starts to freeze. We had to melt it just so we could breathe. Eventually we reached a spot where it was so cold that frost began to form on the heating elements, and we had to turn back.

"Down south, it gets hotter and brighter. I led a team down there with the world's biggest sunshade and two thousand pounds of cooling equipment, and at the furthest point we reached, I took a telescope, went up on top of the biggest vehicle we had and looked ahead. Out in the distance, I could have sworn I saw a place where the sand began to melt.

"And off in the east, the mountains just rise higher and higher. I sent an expedition up there with oxygen and breathing equipment, and they said that they climbed mountain after mountain and eventually they just came to a slope that went up forever. It wasn't particularly steep - only twenty degrees or so - but it was just this sheer, flat face of rock that went up and up and up until it disappeared through the clouds. One man even swore to me that he saw the top of it through a hole in the clouds, and that it was, as far as he could tell, a hundred miles high.

"So we're left with this. The wall of fog, that nobody ever returns through. Now, I'm not a religious man, but I think prayer would be appropriate at this point. We don't know what's on the other side. It's like death. The best thing you can do is pray that there's something on the other side."

Silence and prayer for a time.

"Well."

The captain turns to the wheel, and puts his hand on the engine controls.

"Send the transmission, Escapement."

... .... .. .--. .. -. ..-. .. -. .. - -.-- .. ... .- - .-- --- .-. .-.. -.. . -.. --. . ... - --- .--. .- .-.. .-.. .. ... .-- . .-.. .-.. ... - --- .--. .-.. . .- ...- .. -. --. -. --- .-- ... - --- .--. --. --- --- -.. -... -.-- . . ...- . .-. -.-- --- -. . . -. -..

"And here we go."

The fog rushes to meet them. Within a few moments, everything beyond a few feet is obscured by white.

The chronospatiometer reads --:--, - -, ----, Nothing, Nowhere.

[OOC:Saying Goodbye (http://www.vcars.org/cgi/morse.exe?txt=SHIP+INFINITY+IS+AT+WORLD+EDGE+STOP+ALL+IS+WELL+STOP+LEAVING+NOW+STOP+GOOD+BYE+EVERYON E+END&spd=15)]

Gray. Above, below, to the side: everywhere. The fog has cleared from the deck, but a little less than an inch from the rail it hangs, as opaque and impenetrable as a wall, arching over like the roof of a prison. If you stick your face into it and look down, not even the side of the boat, three feet from your nose, is visible. The fog, though, is unnaturally dry for its exceptional opacity: a hand placed in it will never accumulate any dew, no matter how long its owner holds it there.

A rag is tied to a rope and a weight and lowered over the side, into the water; a hundred feet of rope is let out, without the least obstruction or impediment to its passage. Quickly, then, it is pulled back.

The rag is dry as a bone. The water is gone. A crewman lowered over the side reports nothing - nothing but infinite gray fog, in all directions, dense enough to reduce visibility to a little less than a foot.

"Hello?"

All the instruments are blank. All manner of signals, magical and
technological, etherial and physical, are dispatched: crystal-telegraph, radio-telegraph, telepathy, beams of light in all colors, bottles containing messages, fog-horns, whistles, semaphore flags, prayer and yelling. No response.

"Is there anybody out there?"

An hour passes, then another. Or so the crew guesses: the clock has stopped.

"Is there anybody out there? Please, God, let there be somebody out there..."

Lost.

"Is there anybody out there? God, are you out there? Please don't tell me we're alone..."

And then there was a great light.

Some cried out in fear; others thanked God for their salvation - a few simply hid below deck.

The world became whiter and whiter, until only the light remained. A few moments more, and even that was gone.

No light, no darkness, no fog. Simply... blankness. A field of nothing. A man would go mad in an instant - if it wasn't for the feel of the blood-warm storywood deck under his feet, the comforting chatter of the instruments, finally registering something, the subsonic rumble of the engine, finally finding purchase on something...

Then the light was back. Red. The color of blood. A glimpse of a barren sky, a barren sea, coated with a toxic skin. The Geiger counter screams, and then the blankness is back.

Broken, cast free, haplessly rattling from world to world. Mars, Titan, Earth - all flash in an instant before the stunned crewmen. A world of color, a world of sound, a world enslaved, a world anarchic - everything moves, everything spins, faster and faster and faster again.

It would be too much to bear without the comfort of the ship under my/his/your feet, around you, below you, within you, without you.

∞ preserves us. ∞ protects us.

Searching for a home, the sailors sail the worlds, searching for an anchor, a bearing, a place to rest however briefly, before the ship becomes forever lost and the sailors with it. Sailing bright infinity, the Flying Dutchman of the fractal metaverse; it's a curse, not a gift. The engine spirals out of control and breaks free from its moorings, frantically reaching out for somewhere, anywhere, anything, anyone that can stop this mad, brakeless plunge.

But the captain stands, at the very bow, the tip of the ship, gazing into the blurred amalgation of a million worlds. This is the last great adventure. This is the last expedition. He has escaped and he is free.

∞ preserves. ∞ protects.

The end will be found, the anchor will hold - lest the engine stop and the deck turn cold.

∞ preserves. ∞ protects.

Pray, lest ye be swept away to join the vestiges of your sanity in the never-never-never-land that you are fast joining.

∞ preserves. ∞ protects.

At least, we hope it does.

∞ preserves. ∞ protects.

Goodbye, home. Hello, worlds.

∞ preserves. ∞ protects.

This is the last great expedition.

∞... ∞...

Mommy... please stop the ride. I want to get off.

∞.

The crew wrench their eyes from the terrifying scene, one-by-one-staring-at-the-deck-and-hiding-themselves.

They all know what happens if you look at the void.

But the captain still stands. Immobile. Statuelike. Iron will keeping his eyes on the flickerblur that the scenery has become.

Slowly, his eyes begin to glow. His skin begins to darken, hardened by the confused and shattered image of ten billion worlds.

This is where the gods live, in the space between the worlds, in the holes between the threads, in the metavacuum that begins where the void has ended.

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

∞ preserves. ∞ protects.

But even ∞ cannot keep the crew safe forever from the final edge, the infinity beyond the edge of the world. The End.

One by one they go mad, or else throw themselves overboard, scattering themselves across the face of a hundred trillion worlds. Or stand, frozen with wonder, dying in rapture.

The fall accelerates. There is only one sane man aboard this ship, and soon even that number will be zero.

∞ preserves. ∞ protects.

But the metavacuum is stronger than magic, stronger than technology, stronger than anything. Its hold and crushing pressure is absolute and unrelenting.

∞...

But like all tyrants, it can be tricked.

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

A flash of white light.

[OOC: Aaaand this particular thread is over. Feel free to comment. This will crosslink into something else shortly.]