Prisoners of Sol

The edge of the universe wasn’t that far from us. To be exact, it was 4.3 billion miles away from Earth. 

A smidgeon past Pluto and mankind’s exploration ships—from our earliest probes onward—ran into some kind of invisible barrier. A forcefield at exactly that distance could be found in every direction we flew. That nonsensical realization sparked quite the uproar in the scientific community. Was everything that we’d witnessed with our deep-space telescopes was some kind of mirage? Perhaps our entire reality was confirmed to be a simulation, unable to render past this set point.

Never before had we had such a clear opportunity to define reality, as we understood it. Humanity galvanized behind the idea of understanding it—and learning how to escape from the box we found ourselves in. We were prisoners of Sol. It was stubbornness that had militaries and scientific agencies throwing ships at the wall, time and again. The endeavors proved useless, yet for centuries, we’d hurled ship after ship at the problem. It had propelled the space industry to new heights, as we leapfrogged bases to launch from on Pluto and harnessed sleek designs. We poured more energy into the fusion cores of our ships, in the hopes that one would pierce the veil. Brute force at its finest. 

We were searching for anything that might work, guessing that there might be a needle in the massive haystack. The barrier proved entirely uncrossable, like a white hole that expelled matter faster than the speed of light at the event horizon. That theory, with our limited understanding, suggested that it might have a tunnel to another dimension somewhere; an opposite plain of relativity. Eight months ago, a ship had gone through the fabled outer limit, not to return. We hurled another drone through at those exact coordinates, to see if the results were replicable—and it too vanished.

“The world is watching,” I remarked, checking that the harness was secure over my North American Space Force uniform. “The first manned flight through The Gap. You and me, Sofia.”

My copilot cleared her throat to hide the nerves. “Took the ESU long enough to approve our mission, with all their tests. We have no clue where the hell we’re gonna end up, or if we’re ever coming back. No one in their right mind would volunteer for a mission like that, would they?”

“The possibilities of what we can find are endless! No human has ever seen what lies beyond. The fundamental question of our time is why we’re here. This perimeter, all that we see…a reflection of ‘reality’ that’s a little too perfect. Astrophysicists like Novikov herself think someone put us here, in a cage. Don’t you want to know why?”

Sofia leaned back in the seat, staring at the deceptively empty space outside the windshield. “What if we’re breaking out of the Garden of Eden, Preston? Maybe someone gave us a little slice of paradise here. Think how perfect Earth is, down to the exact damn proportions between the moon and the sun for eclipses!”

“That’s exactly why we need to make it out. A spoonfed paradise will never be real. Knowledge of the truth: it’s in our blood to pursue it. What if it’s all a test of some higher being to see what we’ll do? I’m ready to see the grand design.”

“That’s awfully religious coming from you, soldier boy. The prospect of our imminent deaths prompting you to make amends with the G-man?”

“We’re not going to die. We’re going to make it through. To be clear, I didn’t say anything about gods. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

“Shit, if you listened to us talk, nobody’d think I was the scientist. Godspeed, my friend. It’s been an honor.”

Sofia’s fatalist rhetoric wouldn’t instill confidence in anyone, yet I didn’t avert the course on the ship’s computer. Our solar sails stretched proudly behind us, before detaching as we reached the final thousand miles. We were traveling at a million miles an hour toward what could be a one-way death slide. My stomach twisted into knots, feeling my heartbeat pounding in the thick veins of my neck. It was difficult to breathe, which left beeping sounds on my wrist monitor—my blood oxygen was dropping, despite the perfectly maintained atmosphere. What if this vessel broke apart, and we were…sucked into the vacuum? I wasn’t sure if it’d have time to hurt if we were spaghettified in a black hole.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. My hands gripped around the armrest, and I noticed Sofia averting her eyes. I thought about the years of training in simulated scenarios, from turbulent flight simulators to pretending to be marooned on a foreign world. My dad wanted me to be a lawyer, but I had to be a “soldiernaut.” Living life on the edge.

The barrier was mapped out on every astral map, so I knew the exact moment our spacecraft’s nose cleared the threshold. The speed on the dashboard climbed exponentially in a second, and the seat suddenly hummed with a teeth-rattling energy signature. The location data blinked out within a second, unable to triangulate its position using the field of the stars. The windshield looked like we were inside the sun, like a roaring hot jet of plasma had swallowed us. 

The artificial gravity shifted in an instant, and I felt as light as a feather; the instruments said it hadn’t changed from its equilibrium. My organs felt like they were…hypercharged within my body. Warning lights flashed at us, and alarms blared in a cacophony. My fingers tightened around the armrest, which ripped off beneath my touch. I’d…I’d only gripped it. 

A breath brought in way too much air, and made my lungs feel like they were bursting. I knew primarily that I had to let it out, and screamed in sheer terror. I could hear an undignified howl from Sofia, as the torturous traversal remained unending. My blood was lighter fluid within my veins; humans didn’t belong here. The world tunneled down to a single point, a kaleidoscope that didn’t make sense—before the peaceful stars returned. 

I leaned forward, staring dumbfounded at the armrest in my hand, before tentatively sucking in a tiny gasp. “We…we made it. You alright? Where the fuck are we?”

“Uhhh…Pluto Station, come in,” Sofia tried over the radio, to the crackling sound of silence. “We made it through The Gap, do you copy? Over.”

“I don’t think they’re going to answer. I told you we’d see the other side!” I squinted at the instrument panel, while the harness continued to dig tighter; my eyes widened as I saw the number on the speedometer seemed to be sprouting zeroes. “What the fuck? We’re not slowing down. A billion…wait, that’s a trillion…no, that’s faster than the speed of light. And it’s still trying to go higher? That’s bullshit. That makes no sense!”

“Light itself would be bending. Our ship should be breaking apart.”

I tried to turn the ship to see if the controls were responsive at all, but instead, made us spin in dizzying circles. “Oh my—”

The contents of my freeze-dried astronaut food found their way onto the floor, as my head screamed. It was difficult to think with the acrid taste of puke in my mouth. I flailed out with a desperate hand to slam on the back thrusters, though I didn’t know how our measly engines could counter whatever the hell was happening. The lurch was immediate and jarring. The pressure relaxed enough that I could tap the “brake,” where the computer was intended to cancel out the forces to zero. Something must’ve gone wrong with those functions, because our momentum swung just as sharply in reverse.

Our spaceship was careening and tumbling through space out of control. We were going to die; every mechanism had gone haywire! I found myself screaming my head off once more, the terror of a sensory nightmare engulfing me. The engines blew out from the swing of extreme forces and the stresses on the metal, leaving us only the emergency power. I struggled to open my eyes, and noticed we were hurtling through a field of asteroids…according to the struggling terrain scanner. Those might’ve been millions of miles apart, but with how fast we were going…

I poured the auxiliary power in the opposite direction we were traveling, by some miracle bringing it down to a few hundred miles an hour. That was when I saw the rock, whiskers in front of us. Steering was out, and there was a mere second before we slammed into it. That the vessel was designed for crashing into the Sol system barrier might’ve been our saving grace. The asteroid neutralized our forward momentum, as we skidded through the silvery soil.

“What the fuck just happened?” I screeched. “You’re the scientist here. You tell me.”

Sofia’s eyes were wide. “I don’t fucking know! This violates every law of physics humanity has ever known. That portal gave us magic horsepower, I guess, ‘cause that’s the best explanation I can give you!”

“That’s not how portals work.”

“Well clearly, this one does! We have to get out of here.”

I snorted. “Fat chance of that. Look around. We’re crashed on an asteroid. Our engines are burned out, and our boat isn’t flightworthy if we somehow got it working. Fix those two problems and we can’t tap our fuel jets without straight-up violating causality.”

“Then we call for help. Turn on the distress beacon…”

“Who exactly is going to answer? Pluto Station—Earth—doesn’t exist here. No other humans to ride in and save the day.”

“No other humans, Preston. You said this was the work of higher beings. Maybe they’ll…hear our prayers.”

“I don’t see any sign of civilization around here, so we can cross out alien deities. From everything they’ve shown, if they exist, they want us to be really self-sufficient. Nobody’s bailing us out.”

Sofia laughed with incredulity. “So what? You’re just going to do nothing?”

“I…” I stood up, trying to walk off the trials of my journey. “…am going to leave some notes about what happened to us, for when someone figures this shit out and comes looking for our skeletons. Then I’m going to explore this asteroid, since we died to come out and see it. Might as well take a spacewalk before we croak.”

“Shouldn’t you save your energy, with our limited supply of food?”

“Why? We’re going to starve anyway. No sense prolonging the end. I’m getting my suit, and taking a walk.”

“Fine. You have fun with that. I will be making a distress message to send on loop in all directions, and keep watch for any movement.”

“Be my guest. It’s our final resting spot regardless. We…knew the risks of being the first, didn’t we?”

“You sound more hopeless than me during the portal ride, and I was wrong, right? Anything is possible here. What’s with the sudden change of heart?”

“Seeing that there’s nothing out here cured me of my delusions. No pearly gates, no one waiting on the other side to wave the checkered flag. I’m sorry for being so pessimistic. I’m…glad I’m not alone out here.”

“Me too.”

With a heavy heart, I went over to don my spacesuit while Sofia fiddled with the radio. We always knew this had a high chance of ending with our deaths and abandonment, but it felt different now that it was an actuality. There was going to be a lot of time to kill; perhaps I should read through the first contact binder one more time, on the slim chance my partner was right. The Earth Space Union hadn’t sent us through the portal unprepared for that eventuality, though this was certainly an unconventional way to try to contact extraterrestrial intelligence.

A/N - Welcome to the new universe! Humanity’s space programs encountered a crippling blow in the form of an inexplicable wall around the Solar system, leaving us trying to find a large chunk of history to break out and understand its existence. However, the discovery of a gap—an opening where ships disappear rather than running into something—leads to a daring manned mission. Our astronauts get a bit more than they bargained for, with the very laws of physics blowing up in their faces and causing their speedster ship to crash in the middle of nowhere.

What are your early theories on who might’ve placed a wall around the Sol system and why? What could humanity be capable of in this dimension? Will anyone find our astronauts, or will their misadventure be the prelude to the next human crew discovering what went awry?

As always, thank you for reading and supporting! I hope you enjoy this new story, and I promise more mysteries opening up in Chapter 2!