The White-Hole Situation

Into the Not So Wild

In the days and weeks that followed, Captain Geronimo kept the Kathandra on a course skirting the perimeter of 99-K, never venturing too far within its boundaries. He was not a superstitious sort, but he'd had enough mystery for one assignment. As long as he kept to the edges, the I.B.U. ("always on your side") reported conditions normal, no aberrations, nothing much going on. They did visit a few solar systems with communicative life forms available, but these critters didn't have much to say, being mostly of the type most prevalent throughout the universe, those with little on their minds aside from food, shelter and procreation. When you stop to think about it, it is rather unusual for living beings to have anything else on their mind, and the universal translator seemed to confirm that hypothesis.

September, for all her linguistic training, tended to agree. The few species they'd encountered with more esoteric concerns were largely tedious, talkative sorts who enjoyed bragging about their exploits and comparing their accomplishments. They'd found the competitive drive all too common during their missions, and it certainly seemed a little odd to September that flung about here and there around the galaxy were animals much more Earth-like than she expected. With all the possible chemicals and building blocks and elements, why such similar patterns, why was there even one other planet with life forms like our own? Some argued for the existence of a Creator and His own Image and the like, but that did not explain the vast majority of planets where there was nothing at all. Did He, if He existed, only sprinkle His seed at random, or was He going to get around to it all at some point.

She tried to articulate her thoughts to her friends on occasions, but she still had no coherent theory. Roddy, meanwhile, was developing one of his own. The Clamshell Distortion was deeply upsetting to him. All this time he'd gone about his business, pressing the buttons and dragging the sliders on the console with predictable effects. Engines came up, engines went down, fluids flowed, crystals took their shapes, cause led to the expected effect time after time after time. But not that instance. That time the actions did nothing, and either everything the entire crew saw and heard and felt and experienced was utterly incorrect and misperceived, or else some other completely new explanation was required. It didn't soothe him that causes resumed leading to their proper effects. That only bothered him more. As the Kathandra proceeded on its voyage, the ship purred like a kitten and the computer gave appropriate answers to every question. It also refused to answer for its previous behavior, pretending (or so it seemed to him) not to understand and sometimes even pretending not to have heard the question.

Why not admit when you made a mistake? Why not come clean? Was the system embarrassed? Did it really not know what had happened? Had it suffered a complete and total breakdown for a handful of minutes that day, and if so, why was there no record of the lapse? He'd examined the logs and found no trace or anomaly, no curious readings, not even recordings of the discussions he himself had listened to and participated in. Instead, an alternate history seemed to have been written over the official record. He didn't know how that was even possible.

Roddy took advantage of a shore leave to resign from his post, and caught the next freighter back home to Earth. He gave no notice, no advanced warning, did not even tell September, his closest friend, what he was intending to do. She only found out a day or so later by message from the vessel bearing him away.

"I don't know what to tell you," the message said. "I just have to go. I need to figure something out and until then I don't even know who I am. I feel like I've been keeping a secret from myself and I can only uncover it by taking drastic measures."

Drastic measures are precisely what he took. As soon as he returned to Earth, he went to his apartment in Old New York City, gathered all of his belongings, took them out to the middle of the countryside, and vaporized them with a dissolving gas, leaving only the clothes he was wearing and the shoes on his feet. Then he started to walk, first heading west, then south, then in whatever direction he felt at any given moment, into the not-so wild. He found himself entirely alone more often than not in the abandoned American countryside, but whenever he wanted something, whether it was food or water or a tent or a raft or a hat, he asked for it out loud, and the nodes, the omnipresent, scarcely visible nodes, came to his aid. After only a few days of this, Roddy settled on his new task in life, to find a place, any place at all, where the I.B.U. ("consistently there for you") would not be there at all.