Glitch's Short Stories

Orion-III: Antimatter Spotted (Entry to @SciFi's October Contest)

Note: This short story is also published as its own in my profile. However, this isn't the final version of the entry. The final version will not be up in this compilation of short stories. It will be published as its own story, and will be entered to @SciFi's contest.

Enjoy, and please give critiques. It'll help me a lot.

* * * * *

"Captain's voice log, 2354, mission day 75.

We finally pushed into the zone where the 'Astragalus' recorded the anomaly. So far, we only found empty space. I was always skeptic about the Astragalus' reports and everything seems to support the theory this was all a big hoax and our mission a wild goose chase..."

"Cap? Need you on the bridge now. Eve registers an extensive asteroid field. And... oh my god!"

* * * * *

Captain Caccese's chair swiveled over to the controls as he heard his panicking crew over the intercom. As his chair's momentum went slower, the captain typed in a command. I wish voice commands for logging in were real.

A hologram, produced against the flight deck's window to a literal vacuum, rose out and displayed an HTML page of Orion-III's network system, with a green background and a long, white, empty horizontal bar that indicated him to type the password in order to login to Orion-III's communication and navigation networks.

He looked down on the control table, filled with sophisticated equipment and controls. On his sight revealed a keypad, revealing all the 26 letters of the modern alphabet. His fingers flew across the buttons, his memory yelling the password to him. Astragalus2103.

The hologram changed as soon as he entered the passcode. It revealed another HTML page he called the bridge, revealing the entire communication and navigation systems of Orion-III.

On yet another tab, he opened the Orion Archives -- a system that contains all files of the Orion Space Program, one of the programs under the Astragalus, the world's leading company in cosmological research and travel. He opened a document that contained one of Astragalus' most controversial discoveries.

"Published by: Astragalus - 14th Research Team, Sweden.

There are slightly more to the emptiness of the so-called the Cold Spot. Based on our observations, there are unusually-high concentrated amounts of radiation in the said region of emptiness. We propose that there might have been high concentrations of antimatter annihilating most of existing matter in the said region, releasing exponentially high amounts of energy in the form of a gamma ray burst."

Hopping back into Orion-III's communication systems, he logged into one of the channels. If the Kiruna theory was true, then may god help us all . . . even though I still doubt it. Our Universe is made of matter. Almost entirely of matter. Why would such amounts of antimatter exist?

As soon as the channel loaded, it showed his crew's faces, which tells him that things are about to head south.

"Cap, Eve registered an extensive asteroid field. We tried to register it in the ship's navigation system to activate our protocols in case of an asteroid strike, but the A.I. won't even register the field as an asteroid field!" Eriksson said in his Swedish accent.

His face, instead of his usual smiley, blond-haired face, his blue eyes were wide and he kept panting.

"Okay. Calm down," he told the Swedish man. "What do you mean, 'our navigation systems won't register the field'? Something wrong?"