Gunslingers of the Solarsphere

Audio Clip #7 “Last week our golden gods left us. No more ceremonies, no more dancing, no more singing. Morale has wavered but not broken. For most of us at least. Actually, it feels like a haze has been lifted… as if the weeks of chanting with and praising those fluorescent beings were a dream. Gamma Draconis looms larger and larger on our horizon, metaphorically speaking. We are all focused on the advent of starting a new life there. Of honouring our past lives as well. Of honouring Dave. How could I have forgotten him so easily before…” * Captain Sheffield does not speak for a few seconds and audibly wrings her hands. “A haze… a dream.” *here there is a knock on the cabin door, and Captain Sheffield speaks briefly with a crewmate. Audio is muffled and inaudible. Captain Sheffield returns to the recording after 1 minute and 15 seconds. “That was Jorge. He’s worried about Liz. She has not been doing so well since our golden gods left us. Where the others have begun focusing...

Audio Clip #4: “Well I have not made one of these in awhile. Just over 2 months since my last audio message home… making it nearly 3 months since our journey. It feels like a lifetime ago, a different Ariana Sheffield grew up in Bristol, a different Ariana Sheffield studied aerospace engineering at University College London and met …” *audio is a confused muttering, Captain Sheffield sounding confused and trying with difficulty to remember something. “… right. Dave. At the pub. How could I have forgotten that? He will be long dead when this message reaches Earth , so at least he will never know his wife almost forgot him.” *audible chuckling . “A different Ariana Sheffield...”   Audio Clip #5: “We are much closer to Gamma Draconis now, and our guardian angels have been with us the whole way. More of them joining every day! Our new home is looking more and more beautiful. New scope and sensor data support our initial claim that it would be life-supporting. Maybe by t...

Transcripts from captain’s log on the Soothsayer [civilian science vessel, 3 rd generation]. Speaker is presumed to be captain Ariana Sheffield , British astronaut and solar radiation specialist from the 24 th century. Voice and video data were received by satellite outposts on Charon over a 2-month period during September, 2512. The Soothsayer disappeared while in close solar orbit on May 31 st , 2358. Transcripts herein document the events that followed, and the presumed fate of the Soothsayer ’s 6 crewmembers.   Audio Clip #1: “Sss..something happened. We were collecting data on a fairly standard solar flare… and then it was just gone. It was all gone, the sun, Earth , Mars , the Milky Way . Gone. At least that was what we thought at first. Then Jorge called all of us to the observatory deck. The stars and landmarks weren’t gone, they were wrong. It was us who disappeared.” *no talking for 37 seconds. Audible crying and sighs of grief from Captain Sheffield . “We ...

In those early, primitive days when humanity hopped out of their gravity well and started poking at things they did not understand, the Solarsphere was first discovered. Surprisingly, the heat- and solar radiation-resistant upgrades to space ship hulls ended up as the most important invention in the history of mankind. Through close orbit of the sun humanity discovered Solarsphere-mediated space-time travel, initially by the disappearance of unfortunate science teams, and then by brave explorers probing how to control travel. Even after the return of the Voice of the Void when the true understanding of the Solarsphere began to form, it took centuries before there was a strong enough grasp on how all the variables, including orbital pattern, velocity, position, distance from the solar body, etc…, determined where and when you traveled to. Nowadays, Solarsphere travel through space is a daily occurrence, and time travel is tightly regulated. Thousands of lost ships, filled with countl...