Alpha[1]
Chance opened a Randall-Sundrum portal to Moscow for himself, Fermi and Serghey. They needed to arrive as close as possible to the Gagarin Center. This was located in the Star City area of Moscow, which despite Serghey's lax attitude, turned out to be a highly restricted military facility.
"Serghey, we need to find a map of this facility, locate the Orlan suits and get out before we raise any alarms.", whispered Chance as the three of them were hiding in a dark alley. It was little past sunset in Moscow and the April nights were awfully cold and windy. Before Chance could think of a plan, Serghey just wandered off to the nearest non-military person that he saw and started speaking something in Russian. Serghey opened his backpack and pulled out a vodka bottle. The Russian looked around and accepted the gift, which he then hid under his jacket.
"Block B, 3rd floor. Follow me!", said Serghey as he got back.
"Wait! Show me the direction of where we need to be going. Block B, which building is it?"
Serghey pointed to the building with a huge rocket mosaic artwork on it.
"We will work our way from the top", whispered Chance to the both of them as he opened another portal to the building's rooftop. They all passed through and Chance increased the weight of all of them as they were passing through. He wouldn't want any of them to accidentally fly off the roof of a 12-floor building. They broke the locks of the emergency roof access door and quickly went downstairs towards the 3rd floor. They were looking for surveillance, but there was none.
They reached the 3rd floor and they broke through the security panel. That is when they bumped into an armed security guard. He aimed for Fermi and started shooting out of his Kalashnikov. What followed was an immediate reaction from Chance, driven by the need to protect his student. He broke gravity and tried to pin down the guard by increasing his mass. However, in the heat of the moment, Chance miscalculated. This made both of the guard's legs to break and before letting out a painful scream, his whole body was pulled flat on the floor. They heard a strong thud and the bone cracking that followed. His body cracked open up like a blood-filled watermelon. All three of them jumped back and saw how the floor started cracking and what was left of the body broke through it. By the time Chance undid his mass-adding, the guard's bones, blood and guts were raining all over the downstairs lab equipment.
Serghey noticed that Fermi was bleeding. Chance healed him in a second, which pushed out the bullet from his abdomen area. Scared and shocked, they rushed through the corridor and found the spacesuit storage. Just in time. Chance opened a portal back to Tokyo, threw in the three suits and pushed his students and then jumped in himself. As soon as they were gone, an army of guards swarmed the second-floor laboratory and tried to make sense of the grotesque scenery that was left behind.
…
Mia was one of the students with whom Fermi shared his life's story and she became very protective of him. They knew of one another since the first day of university, when both of them had just arrived in Tokyo. Her family were fruit farmers in the Kyushu area and she spent most of her childhood in rural open areas around peach trees and red currant bushes. She learned so much from her parents about taking care of plants, loving and understanding them. Her father used to say that people leave in symbiosis with vegetation because we consume the byproduct of their photosynthesis and the plants consume the byproduct of our breathing. During childhood, Mia developed a passion for living things and decided to pursue this as a career, which made her parents terribly proud. She enrolled in a bio-chemistry focused college at Kyushu University but instead of choosing an agriculture career path, she decided to study the development of life in extreme environments. She was reading into the research of bacteria living in extremely hot geothermal waters of Yellowstone Park, anaerobic bacteria living in deep underground caves, life in the icy glacier waters of Greenland and she was most fond of Tardigrades, the small bears that could probably survive in outer space. By studying this part of biology, she was hoping to one day get a chance to study Mars regolith samples in search for organic life signs.
When she met Fermi, she had a laugh with him about how both of them will be kidnapped one day by an alien UFO. Fermi saw her as a little sister that he never had, but she had a little crush on him that she never confessed about. They were always sharing lunches and homework. They were even in the same study group for the winter exam session.
That day, after the Moscow heist, Fermi was supposed to meet her in the park, but he did not show up. She was really worried and she called him angrily: "Tell me where you are now! I will come pick you up." He sent her his geolocation.
"She will pick me up. I can't hide this from her anymore, professor. I will tell her about our intention to go to Kepler 186f. If I don't, she will despise me for the rest of her life. Do you mind if she uses one of the space suits and joins me instead of Serghey? I believe she would be better for this mission."
"I… I wanted to tell you actually, that I can't join the mission", said Serghey. "My mother and sister are coming to Tokyo and I will have to host them. They left Kharkiv when the Russian soldiers attacked and now, they are coming here. It is safer. I can't just leave them behind like that. Not again.", said Serghey with an obvious note of care and regret. In the last months of his absence, a lot has changed in Ukraine and he felt unable to help or do anything.
Mia arrived and Fermi left with her. Upon leaving, Fermi promised that they would be ready for departure their departure to Kepler 186f in two days.
…
After arriving in Tokyo at the beginning of the study year, Fermi was going to electronic music parties and he was in a never-ending cycle of using drugs, feeling overwhelmed with depression and using drugs again to break out of the depression. He was barely keeping up with classwork. For the longest time, his mindset was that he had nothing to lose. Meaning that his terminal disease was a sure ticket to death and why not enjoy the last moments alive in substance-induced bliss. Cancer patients often get morphine in their last days, so what's the difference, he thought. Fermi had a moment of clarity in November and he realized that he needed a break from this lifestyle. He was also falling behind on his classes and if he'd get expelled, he'd no longer get his student loan. That was when he started to hang out more with Mia. He noticed her before, but his head was in too much of a buzz to even consider social interactions. He asked her if there is a study group that he could join and she was eager to help out.
Months later, the two of them became close friends and Fermi's break turned into a full-time thing. He spent more time with university friends, studied and kept himself busy with thesis research. His depression was almost gone and, in some way, he was thankful to Mia for being there for him. They kept going for lunch together during university days and they enjoyed sharing food. Fermi loved cooking different Italian dishes. Mia used to always prepare the very same bento box for herself. She'd pack edamame beans, cherry tomatoes, tuna salad with eggs garnished with a single lemon wedge, two salmon onigiri and fried tofu.
Sumida Park was very crowded in this time of year because of the Sakura blossoming. They managed to find a spot and set out camp. They sat on the blue checkered cover that Mia took out of her backpack and they opened their lunchboxes. She reached out to see what he cooked for today and it was a zucchini and eggplant lasagna with green olives on the side. Mia offered him an onigiri and he gave her a wooden fork for her to try his vegetable lasagna.
"I never liked to find bitter lemon seeds in my salad.", stated Fermi.
"I prefer to do it this way", said Mia defensively. After a short pause and realizing that it might have sounded rude, she provided and additional explanation. "I often have nausea, caused by low blood pressure. Lemon juice is what helps me get over this feeling so I need to always some either in my bento box or in my water bottle. For emergencies."
Fermi smiled with compassion. When he was first diagnosed with leukemia, he always carried a water bottle with a dash of lemon juice in it, in order to get rid of nausea.
…
Serghey, Mia, Chance and Fermi were set to launch. Serghey was still reading through online instructions that he downloaded from a Russian dark web forum. Mia got dressed first and Fermi helped her with clipping on the external part of the suit. Except for the helmet, she was good to go. She could not sit down, nor go to the bathroom.
"Maximum Absorbency Garment... never thought astronauts had so much in common with toddlers and old people…", said Mia. "What happens if we get sick, or sneeze or vomit?"
"Try not to", said Fermi smilingly "In your suit water tank, I made sure to squeeze some lemon juice in case of emergencies."
"So nice of you to remember!", said Mia in a muffled tunnel voice after putting on her helmet.
They were ready to go. Chance put on a backpack with all the lab measuring equipment he could fit in. He did not know what to expect upon going to this new planet.
"Kepler 186f, here we come!"
Chance opened a portal and watched as the rotating sphere had melting images of a gray rocky surface.
"Wait 60 seconds and then jump in. If something happens to me, the portal will automatically close. If I sense danger on the other side, I will close the portal. If all is fine, you should take it as a green light to enter."
He went in.
Mia and Fermi were counting together. Serghey wished them good luck. Both of them were really excited and Fermi was even a bit anxious. He knew that so many things could go wrong, but he tried to push away these thoughts.
"58…59…60… Go!"
Both of them jumped in.
…
Chance was waving to them from far away. The terrain was extremely rocky and not at all walkable. Chance pointed the finger to a sharp edge trying to say that the EVA suits may get cut. According to the Geiger counter, the radiation levels were way lower than expected. Chance estimated that this would be the approximate level of an overseas commercial flight. What could immediately be felt by Fermi was the higher than Earth gravity. It was difficult to walk and the 90 kg suits were not helping. He decreased the mass of each suit. Now Fermi and Mia could climb over and reach him. They seemed to have arrived either at night time or during twilight hours.
Chance gave them a sign to wait and he flew up into the air to get a better look of the area. He noticed a strange light far into the distance and he went to inspect it. Upon reaching it he realized that it looked like a gigantic maze of glass greenhouses. The structure reminded him of a cardiovascular system and it was spreading far into the horizon. Chance thought that this is probably how the natives of this planet move from one place to another. The greenhouses were lit up and filled with what looked like plants. The three of them got together and used a portal to get inside. Their helmet glass became foggy because of the vapor and they could not see anything at first.
Chance did a quick sum up of what tools he has to use:
- Newtonian gravity,
- Second law of thermodynamics (entropy),
- Archimedes' law,
- The Randall-Sundrum model for 5-dimensional travel portals creation.
He came ill-equipped for new planet exploration and the only thing he could do is use the Geiger counter again, which indicated tolerable radiation levels not much different than the ones outside. Chance had a look around the glasshouse and saw the resemblance with Amazonian rainforest plants. Some of the plants had thick long leaves, but all of them were of different species and some did not even look like anything he had ever seen. One plant was made entirely of purple metallic needles and another one had its body covered in green-pink foam. One particular plant stood out because it looked like a small green sphere floating in mid-air above a pot with the rest of its body. Chance's first thought was that perhaps it has some kind of magnetic qualities. All the plants were obviously well cared for, but there were no caretakers anywhere in sight.
Chance broke entropy and made his body immune to any kind of decay resulting from the exposure to an unknown chemical environment. He took off his helmet and closed his eyes for a few seconds hoping it would work as he intended it to. Mia tried to stop him from doing this, thinking that it is safer to go back to Earth and come back when they are better prepared to test air and vapor samples.
He took a deep breath and nothing happened and then he applied the same immunity to Mia and Fermi. He made a sign that it's safe to remove the helmets. There was definitely some oxygen in the air, because Chance could breathe in and out without any discomfort, but the full chemical composition was still unknown.
Then Chance decided to go one step further and remove his immunity altogether in order to test out the breathability of the air. At first, he gagged because of the heavy sulfur smell and he could make out that the levels of oxygen were much higher than on Earth. He could not make out any other effects and after a good 3 minutes of continuous breathing, his lungs adapted to the new air.
"I think this was enough for our first visit. We are not equipped to continue.", said Mia. "Let's go back to Earth and come back in a few hours"
Chance agreed after realizing how dangerous this could get. He opened a portal for the three of them and went through it. As soon as he did, the portal closed down and the immunity from Fermi and Mia was instantaneously removed. The two of them fell down and gagged heavily. After half an hour of painful breathing, they managed to hold a steady breathing rhythm. They waited for Chance to come back for them any minute now. What they did not know was that upon arriving back on Earth, because of the difference in air oxygen levels, Chance blacked out. Serghey slapped him gently in an attempt to wake him up, but Chance was not responding. Consequently, all his breakings were undone and this left Mia and Fermi stranded on this strange new world.
...
[1] Universe Alpha is the Universe in which Chance is forgiven and understood for his past mistakes. In redemption, he connects with his students and they all work together on his space exploration project. Probability of universe destruction estimated at 99%
Universe Beta is the Universe in which Chance is left alone to atone for his sins. He is neither understood nor accepted by Yuri and her peers. This distance makes it more difficult for him to process through his grief and it ends up spiraling down. Instead of growing outwards, he is pulled inwards to crash into his own singularity. The schoolgirl scientists are working to prevent an absolute disaster. Probability of universe destruction estimated at 100%.