The Veiled Universe by Rob Garnet

Author:Rob Garnet [Garnet, Rob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Knight Books
Published: 2019-11-16T07:00:00+00:00

Boötes

The closed curtains, the dimmed lights, the soft murmur of the life-support machines—the room smelled of impending death. I felt pity for the old thaisa lying on the bed, wasting away. He had asked to meet me one last time. Alone. I did not know what to make of the request. My grandfather and I had been close once, sharing a love for physics, but then I had moved on to other worlds to carry on my research, while the old man had moved in with my parents, too weak to work, too old to stay alone. That will be me one day.

I entered the room and went to the bed. I stood by the bedside, looking upon the thin body lying beneath the sheets. A single tube snaked its way into the bulbous nose, supplying life-giving air. I sat on the edge of the bed and ran my hand over the few wiry hairs left on the skull of the person I lovingly called ‘gramps’. He showed no reaction. I gently shook his shoulder.

He opened his eyes and turned his head, taking time to focus on my face. He smiled weakly when he saw me.

“You came?” His fingers shook as he reached for my hand.

“Yes, gramps. How are you doing?”

“Come closer, Serex,” he said in a whisper, barely audible over the sound of the medical instruments. A weak pull on my hand reinforced his request.

I leaned in closer.

“I have decided that you are the only one in this family who can know the truth,” he began. “Maybe you can find a way to stop it.”

I was intrigued, to say the least. Gramps had been a scientist of some reputation back in his days and had completed many a trip across the galaxy researching stellar phenomena, but I had never taken him for a cloak-and-dagger person. I was suddenly eager to hear his story.

“Sixty-five years ago, I led an unsanctioned mission to the Boötes constellation. My fellow scientists and I were going to examine the supervoid in that region of space. You know what supervoids are, of course.”

I nodded. Sure, I knew about supervoids. They were regions of space completely devoid of any galaxies or celestial bodies, with temperatures nearing the absolute zero. The closest one was at least three hundred million light years across. It was in Boötes, 700 million light years away. So, the old man had travelled that far.

“What you don’t know is how the supervoid was formed, and more importantly…” he paused to take a ragged breath, “how it will affect us within a few years.”

I waited for him to continue.

“No, I should start from the beginning,” he said. “It all started when I was sent to Diuq to interview an alien as part of a top-secret government project. She was one of the last of her species. As I debriefed her, her revelations shocked me. She was from an empire in Boötes, which spanned millions of light years across many galaxies. They were at war with another galactic empire, both matched in size and strength.

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