A pure fractal made in Apophysis 2.09, colorized and made 3D in Paint 3d
When I looked at my uncle's second great visual of the accident in space and time that had brought the exploratory fleet I was a captain in and he was chief science officer for together, I wept.
“But, Uncle, it is so beautiful,” I said. “How are you going to convince anyone of what you believe needs to be done when it is just this lovely?”
He smiled gently, and turned on a recording of my first officer in his manifestation as bass soloist at large for the fleet choir, singing a song by Brahms in which roses, and a beloved woman, weep...
The music that inspired the final appearance of this fractal – Hans Hotter standing in for Cmdr. Allemande, of course
“The highest ranking science officer in the fleet is a woman,” my uncle said, “and since I will have to convince her of a very hard thing that she in turn will have to convince the whole high command of, I know how I have to move.”
Admiral Benjamin Banneker, my uncle, had returned to the fleet after 20 years of retirement to work out the repair of space-time after an insane colleague had set off what we had discovered was the first trans-warp accident originating inside the Milky Way. However, the number of footprints it had left along its path was stunning – in a second, the remains of a starship going almost 1,000 times the speed of light counter to a star system's orbital pattern had left particles in more than a billion locations in fifty different centuries.
My uncle's first imaging had shown just the numbers and speeds and locations of the different loops, and it too had been a startlingly beautiful image.
The second image had been prepared more as a scatter plot, showing the effects of the locations in the past that the remains of that starship had reached. Green indicated no known bad effects to those periods; red indicated known bad effects, and white indicated we simply did not know, because most civilizations that could have seen the accident in that second as the remains winked in and out of their time did not observe it – it was too quick, and also, the red supergiant's luminosity was immense and so made naked-eye observations hard because of the closeness of the starship to it.
That red supergiant gave the appearance, in the center of the image, of a wild white rose with some blushes of pink, shedding its petals in a strong wind – still lovely, but certainly dying. And, of course, that was the point. That was yet another image of a whole ship and crew's death on an insane errand.
Benjamin Banneker was determined to convince fleet commander and full fleet admiral Vlarian Triefield that such an errand must never be allowed again, under any circumstances.
“As an accident, that's an accident, but it was an accident that occurred because of a captain and crew's decision, so although the outcome was accidental, it was also intentional in the beginning,” he said to me as he was putting together his presentation to Adm. Triefield. “If it happens again, that represents the end of everything for which we have served and are serving, and the end of the experiment of humanity advancing in space, because the rest of the sentient beings of the galaxy more powerful than ourselves will simply not permit it.
“The Ring Admirals, and before them the Organians and Melkotians, have already made it clear that they can and will limit us as it is – but this is why the Ring Admirals are willing to beat us all the way back to the Solar System and turn the clock back on us, since we are messing with other civilizations' timelines across fifty centuries. One in a billion chances of such an accident occurring again is still one too many when you consider the stakes to the galaxy – that correct survey of the number of stars available for such a thing to occur was enough to get us out of the hot seat with the Ring Admirals a year ago, but I guarantee you it's not going to be enough going forward!”
My uncle had his meeting with Adm. Triefield that week, and then came back looking shaken.
“Madame Admiral is setting up a meeting for me to present to the entire admiralty and the high command on Monday!” he said to me.
“And for this cause, Uncle, at the right time, you returned to the fleet and were made an admiral,” I said. “Not just to be the clean-up man, but the man to set down protections going forward.”
Uncle Benjamin was the founder of Sable Captains and Commanders, and although the sensitivity of the matter was such that the details could not be shared, those of us who still practiced the faiths of our foreparents all went to prayer that weekend all across the human-inhabited portions of the galaxy while my husband and I prayed with our uncle nightly until that Monday morning. I went with my uncle to Adm. Triefield's flagship, the Boadicea, to the door of the conference room, and gave him a big hug.
“That's from me and from Rufus, Uncle, and you know we will keep praying. You've prepared your whole life for this, so you know you're ready.”
“I'm not worried about my life right now, Khadijah. I'm 82 now. I'm doing this for your life as a human being free to travel the galaxy and be welcomed, and for your eventual children with Rufus to have the same privilege. I pray that the people I'm about to present to have the same long view of humanity's prospects that I do.”
I returned to the Amanirenas and went about my business as captain … it was a strange day of routine work, with me knowing the future of the fleet and of humanity in space was being decided while Cmdr. Allemande presented his usual four reports, Lt. Cmdr Doohan presented his weekly engineering report, and we all discussed routine matters that went with the scientific work the crew was doing.
Cmdr. Allemande was sensitive to my moods, and was somewhat aware of what was happening that day because he was a major contributor to my uncle's findings. He was well able to reach my uncle's conclusions without being specifically aware of what was said at that meeting, and so, at a quiet moment, he met my gaze, folded his hands in prayer, and looked upward, indicating his prayer support of my uncle as well.
Four hours later, Uncle Benjamin returned to the Amanirenas, exhausted.
“If our consortium were staffed by Vulcans,” he said, “this thing would have been resolved today, but, being as it is, I have done all that I can.”
A week passed, after which time I was told by a concerned crew member that my uncle was doing rather unusual exercise in the gym.
“How far can a bionic leg kick a soccer ball into soft ballistic gelatin – let's just find out!”
Uncle Benjamin was ticked off, enough to hurt someone, because the ballistic gelatin was showing why each of his military-grade bionic legs was considered a deadly weapon. It was best on those rare days to let him do what he had to do and then go talk to him afterwards, so I finished my shift and then went to dinner.
“It's actually good news but it's just how they decided it – they just had to throw in an insult to both you and me!” he said. “They won't even try it unless the Amanirenas is the test ship for the simulation – they figure they will get away with this because I don't consider you, my niece, expendable and won't order it!”
“What did Adm. Triefield say?” I said.
“She stood right up and said that she would trust her flagship the Boadicea and the entire fleet's flagship to me if it came down to it, because it was insulting to ask me to come back and clean things up and then suggest that I don't have the right plan to keep the mess from happening again!”
“You don't have to order it; I'll volunteer, ship and crew,” I said.
“Well, of course I know that!” he said. “They just don't get it – like they want to leave ways for mere human captains to be messing up things for other civilizations for fifty centuries, and want to make you and me the reason they still have that option!”
“People are such people,” I said.
“And this is what I'm saying, Khadijah – I'm tired, and I'm glad I've already lived most of my life. As a man of African American descent among humans I know how little humans can be concerned about the needs of humans they feel are different from them, so of course messing up the timeline of a whole different species means very little to the glory of being able to do what no human has done before – and maybe surviving it next time. I wanted to kick in the teeth of everyone there talking about, 'You didn't figure how we can get a starship to do this and survive, though, Admiral?*”
“The folks from the exploratory track, no doubt, without the deeper scientific knowledge of why that will never be possible,” I said.
“Of course!” Uncle Benjamin said. “But, leaving all that – thank you for volunteering as I knew you would, Khadijah, and taking your part in safeguarding the future of humanity in space.”
Now, 19 years later, since it is standard practice for all fleet ships, I can say what was decided, and hard-wired into the Amanirenas first of all: proximity detectors on warp drives, and the necessity inside the solar system of the whole command staff to confirm the order to go to warp within a certain distance of the Sun. This measure was left in as a defensive measure against other species using time travel and interfering with Earth's timeline – as a last resort, fleet vessels outside the Solar System would still have the capability to go back in time and make repairs.
What was not said then, but is known by new captains now, is that outside the heliopause making the bound of the Solar System, the same order given around any other star, even if agreed to by all the command staff, will result in the same outcome as a self-destruct sequence. This went unspoken at first because it was known that most standing captains would never agree to the adjustment being made to their ships.
I am one of only two fleet captains who ever volunteered, with ship and crew. My command staff went through the simulation showing the outcome in each event, and then the Amanirenas was the first to be hard-wired for the change.
The fleet flagship was the second, at that time under the command of Admiral Triefield's half-Vulcan cousin who had participated in two of the fleet's known time travel emergencies in Earth's timeline, and was well aware of the dangers. He volunteered also, there being no need for his cousin to order him, and further tuned my uncle's recommendations for security. I remember him saying to my uncle, “Do you consider the probability low enough now, our combined work on this matter having brought it to approximately ten to the 303rd power to one, Admiral?”
“That's still one too many chances, Captain Spock,” he said, “but, we will consider the probability low enough, given that there are not enough stars in the universe and not enough time before its heat death for anyone to try that out!”
And thus it is that Benjamin Banneker's “flower of doom” will never bloom again, and humanity is safe to move about the galaxy! The "father" of humanity's safety in the galaxy in the 24th century succeeded!
(But it is about time that Admiral Banneker meet some aliens who know how to do this space travel thing right ... just in time for the Cosmic Creations Contest of the month, TOMORROW!)