Twin Earth

“I know this, I had a vision, a hallucination, whatever you want to call it, just before we went through the ellipse. I remember seeing this huge wave coming towards me back in that social room in the North. You’re telling me that was real? That this is really happening?” I wailed as I followed everyone into a small circular room at the end of the corridor.

“Our people have anticipated this day would come. I just hoped we had more time,” Anoxia replied as she paced the room with her long dark slender hands on her hips.

I hadn’t noticed it before, but the southern Mochuvians looked different to their Northern counterparts. There was more variation in skin colour, body size and looks. It was weird how everyone in the North had looked the same, not just their hair or clothes, but their facial features and whole identities. It was like they were clones of each other, scientifically bred to be whatever they had been designed to be. To me it seemed personality and individuality was more common here, even encouraged and to me that was a good thing. If anyone of us survived that was. I had to focus.

“What can we do?” Rachel asked.

“From what I saw, this tsunami is going to wipe us out,” I continued, turning my attention to Apo.

“There must be another tsunami in the North, one on each continent. We have no choice, we will have to evacuate everyone to the space flights,” Apo declared, waving his hands around as he gestured the other scientists to act.

“But we haven’t used them in decades,” Anoxia declared in surprise. “There must be somewhere else we can go? The mountains, maybe we can reach the mountains. I know it’s…”

”Anoxia, the mountains are over two hours away by even our fastest jets and they only carry two people at a time. We just don’t have the capacity to transport everyone there safely in the time we have. The tsunami will arrive in less than twenty minutes at best. We have no idea what will happen to our base, our labs, and our homes. We have to get everyone in the space flights now, it’s the only way.”

“What are the space flights?” Rachel asked.

“They’re large space crafts. Those that travel to the North as spies use only small jets and that’s all we’ve used in recent years. Once the separation began between our people hundreds of years ago we just stayed either in the North or the South, depending on how our societies chose to live or what side of the war you ended up on. The space flights have not been used in years. Not since a major disaster over fifty years ago. After the most of the ellipses were destroyed in the war or decayed over time we hoped we could still leave our planet. We hoped it would mean a new generation of exploration for us.”

“So what happened?” I asked.

“We couldn’t leave. The sphere was too strong. We didn’t predict how it would react in the way it did. We lost over a thousand pilots when just one space flight tried to pass through the sphere. We thought we had calculated the variables exactly, but as the craft passed through, it caused a cascade effect all around the sphere as streams of photons exploded upon impact with the craft’s engines and shields.”

“How is that even possible? Light doesn’t explode?” Rachel asked confused.

“Unfortunately the data found in the debris of those flight ships was too corrupted so we could only assume that the sphere contained some kind of anti-photon, creating an annihilation effect that cascaded around the sphere. It could have been catastrophic. If it wasn’t for the vortex sucking out the light we could all have been destroyed, possible Earth too. We vowed never to use the space flights again. Instead we focused our energies on collecting as many spheres as we could that were left in the North and improving our knowledge of the creator’s technology.”

“If those photons became polarised as they leaked through the vortex, I’m wondering… is it not possible that it was the polarised particles that created the second black hole?” I exclaimed as the idea dawned on me. “Think about it. As the polarised photons left the sphere after the accident and travelled through the vortex, instead of dissipating in an explosion as they did here, they grew in number and slowly formed a small black hole that has grown over time as it is fed from this sphere.”

“Photons don’t cause black holes? Do they?” Rachel asked.

“They may not have mass, but they have energy, and if enough energy collected inside that vortex, which I’m assuming is an incredibly focused point, in theory it could produce a black hole. You stick enough energy into one region of space time and it is feasible,” I replied.

“We’ve never considered that before,” Anoxia whispered.

“It is possible that the cascade event was enough to make it happen, or at least accelerate it.”

“So it was us who ultimately created our own destruction?” Apo replied.

Everyone fell silent. The room around us was buzzing with people running around. I could hear the previous calm voices of the Southern Mochuvians now raised and anxious in the corridors around us.

“Sir, we have another problem,” a man shouted, running over to join our silent party. “The Americans have gained ground in the North. They have bought planes from Earth. Small, like our jets, but much faster. They are heading for the South Sir. They have weapons.”

“I would use the term Americans loosely,” Rachel retorted in reply. “This is the doing of one man and that’s Magnus Ferguson.”

”What about NASA?” I asked. “They’ve had a hand in this too, I’m convinced. It can’t just be the work of one rogue NASA scientist and a mad billionaire. If they have jets then the military is involved,” I replied.

As a worried look spread across Rachel’s face, Apo grabbed my shoulder. “You need to go Tom,” Apo declared, shoving the alien black box into my arms.”

“What?”

“You need to fly this into the vortex, it’s the only way. You can use one of our jets. That must be what the creators want us to do.”

“Why me?”

“It’s your DNA,” Apo replied.

“Oh because that makes sense,” I retorted sarcastically.

“He’s right Tom. If it had been I or Apo who had travelled with Rachel then it could easily have been us. This isn’t personal. Look here,” Anoxia added.

I stared in confusion at the box and watched as Anoxia pointed once again to the red and purple characters on the side and placed a scanner over it and then over me, causing me to lean back in surprise. This is your DNA sequence embedded into the box. It’s like a marker.”

“But why? What’s the point? And why me? Why not Rachel?” I rambled as Rachel raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t think this is sexism on the creator’s side Tom. It could just have easily been me. You were injured, perhaps it was easier to extract your DNA. It was you after-all that had the hallucination. Maybe that was just a distraction while they obtained it,” Rachel replied with a hint of impatience in her voice.

“I… I guess that makes sense, but why do they need my DNA? I don’t get it.”

“It could be for your protection. You’re linked to the box using some kind of technology to allow you to pass through the vortex, I’m not sure,” Anoxia mumbled.

“You’re not sure?” I exclaimed. “That doesn’t sound like a confident enough response for me to randomly throw myself into the netherworld.”

“What choice do we have?” Apo pleaded, staring at me with desperation etched all over his face.

As the fate of the world and the realisation of my future mission set in, both Rachel and I along with Apo were motioned to leave the small circular room full of monitors and data screens and were pushed into a lift. As the doors closed I watched as Anoxia ran to get her son and help other families pack up their things. I had no idea if they would survive. I had no idea what these disastrous space flight machines were. All I could feel at that moment was absolute chronic fear. Nothing like I had felt before.