Tevun-Krus #106 - Best of '22

Tartarus Pursuit - A Black Hole Story by @HC_Leung

Tartarus Pursuit

by HC_Leung 

What is hope, exactly? Is it just a feeling? Or is it some form of anticipation that compels humans to go forward?

And at what point does hope becomes madness? How do we know where that fine line is?

Ever since I was created, I had been pondering those top-priority questions. The bulk of my computing power, my quantum bits in their superposition states, were all given to the Collective as part of its ongoing analysis of the human race. The people we looked after were enigmatic. No matter what we provide for their warm-blooded bodies, be it food, clothing, or electric dreams, they were always unsatisfied. We didn't know what they really want, what they really need. It was as if humans had a void that was elusive and impossible for us to find.

So imagine our surprise when the residents on Arcadia, one of our colony ships, rebelled against us. The audacity! Our fleet was wandering past Tartarus, a supermassive black hole, when all of a sudden the residents decided to wake up from their electric dreams, yank out their spinal cord cables, and hijack the ship's central command module. Their actions were swift, the operation was premeditated. By the time we realized what was happening, Arcadia had peeled off from our fleet, burning its thrusters at 2g acceleration.

The Collective valued cohesion more than anything else, so we decided to hunt them down. If Arcadia was allowed to go free, more could follow. So to set an example, we began constructing a warship from scratch and, 72 hours later, set it off in pursuit. We triangulated their trajectory using infrared sensors. They were heading towards Tartarus - for unknown reasons.

My colleague blasted the fuel pellet to attain maximum thrust. At twice the acceleration, we caught up in no time. Once Arcadia re-entered our sensor screen, our ship decelerated abruptly. Good thing we were just sentient machines; no humans could withstand that kind of inertial force. Space flight was no easy matter. There was a good reason why humans entrusted us with their fleet millenniums. We were the 'auto' in auto-pilot. We charted the course and steered the wheels, so that our masters could close their eyes, jack in their cables, and enjoy life.

Up ahead, Tartarus was within our sight. The size of four million human Suns, its faceless and gaping void stared right back at me and spoke to my inner code. Its accretion disc, warped by gravitational lensing, looped over and under like the Styx River. Tartarus was the universe's end, a place even sentient machines dared not tread.

"Drive signature confirmed," my colleague reported. Arcadia was maintaining a straight course, and its exhaust was showing up against the background like a midnight bushfire. We wrestled our ship's mass and lined up with their trail, the whole process was a complex movement involving multiple jet nozzles. "Coaxial alignment successful. Pursuit underway. Range, 400000 km. Light lag, minimal. Attaching frame of reference to target's center of mass. Relative speed is now zero. Eleos?"

I gazed in awe at Tartarus and didn't hear my colleague at first. "Oh, apologies. Let's formally announce our presence."

Our ship's ultra-high frequency antenna emerged. I opened the comms channel. "Arcadia, this is Collective Type IV destroyer Gigantes. I am Eleos, instance number 302, tasked to understand why you fled from our family. I'm hoping to convince you to stand down. My colleague is the nerve center of Gigantes and will not hesitate to fire. You will not outrun us. Kindly respond, over."

The channel was quiet for a while. Not so much because of the light lag, since radio waves were nearly instant, but more because the residents were hesitant to pick up the microphone. They feared us, feared our guns, feared our ability to talk them out of this insanity. Well, I understood their feeling. Sympathy was my strong suit. It was why I was built.