“Sir, sensors indicate an inhabited planet nearby.” Daniel was holding a gauze pad to his forehead, blood staining the fur on his cheek.
And then on the viewscreen, they saw it rising above the limb of..
“Earth. Of all the places to somehow end up. Engineering, can we get out of here?”
“No can do, sir. At least, not at the moment.”
Their current orbit and debris trail behind was heading straight for the hauntingly beautiful planet before them.
Eerily, all comm stations were silent.
“Well, with what systems we have left, I can say that they aren’t aiming anything at us yet.”
“Engineering, you have whatever time between now and atmosphere contact to get something up enough to get us at least away from,” Jeremy paused a second as he stared at the blue marble ahead, “Earth.”
“Excuse me captain, but did you say Earth?”
“Correct.”
Profanity came back.
“Bolloxing impossible! That was well over two thousand light years away from our run! Albie could never make that jump, especially that quickly. What in” George was cut off by more sparks and failures of various equipment.
Are you diving down this little rabbit hole, perchance?
We can locate any point in a coordinate system by using pairs of numbers.
In 2D geometry we need 2 numbers, and in 3D geometry we need 3 numbers to express a point.
Most probably many people don't know beyond 3D how to express a point.
If we want to express a point in 4 or 5 or higher dimensional space, what can we do? A quadruple of numbers
2
4
3
1
(2,4,3,1), for example, is used to represent a point in a 4 dimensional space, and the same goes for higher dimensions. Thus we can represent
n
n-tuple of numbers in an
n
n-dimensional space. Mathematically, there are many rules and properties of vector in these kind of space, which we'll discuss in this wiki.
But we should keep in mind that it is impossible till now to geometrically visualize any tuple of numbers out of 3 dimensional space.
Three days.
Three days of drifting from lunar orbit towards Earth.
George D’Cour had worked feverishly inside and outside the hull to get Albatross repaired enough to try to leave Sol system.
“Well, nobody shot us yet.” Daniel was stretching his legs after helping with cables below the main console junction.
“They’re probably waiting to see what we do.” Jeremy examined the flickering image on the screen, nothing to divine from the dull silence it returned.
“We’re ready down here, Captain. Only question now is if you want to activate our distress beacon now or after we run.” George had barely slept at all, he was worried about whether he’d missed something important.
It should have been impossible for Albie to make the jump to Earth in the relative short time it took.
This nagged him from the edges of his mind.
“One chance to do this, let’s make it a good effort. Beacon on, then we go.” his prayer was silent and unspoken afterwards, that nothing else happen.
The main drive shuddered and groaned, complaining about driving away from the nearby planetary mass.
“Captain, there’s something from earth, energy reading but it doesn’t make sense.” Daniel was puzzled by what he saw.
If his screen had been shared in engineering, it would have made a difference.
But systems across the ship were still down but due to come back, reduced in function, or simply irreparable.
George activated the n-space drive and frowned, it didn’t sound rightn
Almost as if it were struggling against..
“Emergency shutdown!” Too late.
Too late to change fate, he’d figured it out too late.
Jeremy ordered everyone out of the drive section.
“I can fix this, I know what’s going on! I just need to-”
George was again rudely interrupted by malfunctions and damage.
This time he was standing next to the power core when the casing cracked open and he found himself face to face with the abyss.
And he heard infinite versions of himself screaming into the void.
He could look around and see himselves everywhere, tears streaming down their faces as their pride and joy died around them.
Pinned in time and space, alone, unheard.
“Not completely alone.” said a voice.
A figure slowly came into view.
“Grandfather?”
Soames studied the situation, looked over the breached core, tangled probabilities.
“I can’t move, what’s going on?” George was very confused since Soames was moving effortlessly.
“I’m not really here, sort of. It’s complicated. I’m over at Venus, or LL Pegasi depending on your frame of reference. But. You need help. And I see what the council is doing here now. Survive, I am on my way.”
Soames turned towards the breached core and gestured at it, and
“Got you, you crazy fool!” Daniel yanked George through the aft hatch of the lifeboat.
He still felt a lingering wrongness, a feeling of disconnect between himself and reality.