The Coliseum – Science Fiction Short Story
Photo credit: carmemlucia from morguefile.com
In the year 2476 my good friend John, a scientist of some renown, sat me down with the intent to share a family secret. What he told me would forever change not only my life, but the life of every person on the planet. It seemed a relative of his, ten generations removed, had made an unbelievable discovery. This discovery was not accepted by the scientific community of his day and thus he had passed the information down the line to his son. This information continued to be passed down until it came to my friend. Now John, being a very wealthy man, had been able to put considerable financing behind the notion. Once again his findings were deemed fanciful by his peers and the whole idea seemed doomed. John however was not easily derailed.
Now this idea was hard to fathom for even me, but over time I began to come around. The idea was simple, yet uncomfortable for most. John’s family had been comparing telescopic images of the sky for over half a millennium. Between himself and his ancestors they had mapped the entire night sky from nearly every viewpoint possible. John’s grandfather had at great expense sent a probe into space. His grandfather did not live long enough to see the fruits of his labor as the probe had to travel far from Earth to test his theory. It took images of a single point in space as it sailed out into the solar system. These images are what changed my mind.
The images from the probe possessed a different perspective than the ones from earth, which all shared a common starting point. Once the probe left orbit it kept its camera’s trained on a single spot and the images it sent back of that point in space were from ever changing perspectives.
Imagine if I placed a large movie screen from wall to wall at the end of a hall way. The projector behind it illuminates the screen with a simple picture of a woman sitting in a chair. She wears a red dress and her legs are crossed. She is looking straight ahead and smiling. If you stand at the far end of the hall and watch her she seems to be actually sitting there. As you walk in the direction of the screen your eyes will tell your brain that it is just a projection because the image of the woman doesn’t grow in size as you get closer. But what if the projector had a motion sensor and could track you as you got closer and change the image to reflect your position. If the projector could alter the image to suit your proximity it would be difficult to tell if the woman was really there or not. Now add a second person. You both start at the end of the hall, but only you walk towards the screen. The woman becomes larger and to you it looks correct. The person standing back at the end of the hallway however would see the image grow larger, even though they never moved. The trick only works when one moving person is watching it.
What John hoped to show with his probe was just that simple. With a telescope view from a static point on Earth looking at a fixed point in space, he recorded one image. At the same time the probe recorded the same fixed point in space, but unlike the Earth bound view, it was at a totally different perspective. Just as the person at the end of the hall, the probe was able to see the image change. The view from Earth showed the normal movement of the night sky, but the probe could see the sky move. The projector on the back of the sky was changing the image for Earth, not the probe.
The next little bit of detective work for John was determining where the curtain started? The history of space exploration was filled with probes that flew throughout the solar system. Some had even landed or orbited around planets. As far as John could tell the eight inner planets were not part of any projection and Pluto, technically a dwarf planet, was likewise actually there. Outside of Pluto is the Kipper belt, a huge asteroid field stretching out like a halo around our solar system. There are six dwarf planets whose orbits do not exceed the Kipper belt. A seventh, Eris, whose orbit extends outside the Kipper belt on it’s outgoing ellipse and passes inside of Pluto’s on its closest pass, had to be a projection. If Eris was not a projection, then the curtain was too far away for him to prove.
John wanted to prove his theory as all scientists do. He was tormented by the voices of his ancestors, who all believed it. I was happy to agree to his theory and less excited to try and prove it. In science I believe it is not always if you can prove something, but rather should you prove it. John wanted to prove his notion, while I was more worried about what the result would be. If the sky is a movie screen then who or what set up the projector?
Undeterred he commissioned a private company to build a space ship to take him beyond the Kipper belt so he could see for himself if the sky dead ended into a projection screen. While his ship was state of the art it would still require twelve years to arrive outside of the Kipper belt. Also an issue was the reality that it was a one way trip. The ship could never carry enough fuel, food or oxygen to make a return trip. John didn’t care and Ahab set about building his white whale.
I refused him when he asked me to go with him. He was unhappy, but understood my plight. I was married and had a son who was only seven years old. I could not abandon them and head off to die at the ends of the solar system, possibly the world if John was right. It took him seven years to construct his masterpiece.
A year before it was completed my wife and son where killed in a house fire. I was away at a conference when it happened. John had called me to give me the bad news. You never forgive yourself when you’re not there for a loved one. I was even more angered at myself as I lost two on that particular day. I was distraught and John being possessed by his own demons convinced me to go with him. In my fragile state of mind I wanted to get as far away from Earth as I could.
We left earth orbit on September tenth in the year 2485. The ship was cramped and cold. We passed the time reading and playing chess. By the second Christmas I was ready to take my own life from boredom, but John kept at me to press on. I asked him many times during this period as to why he did not choose to take a female companion along on this trip instead of me. He insisted it was for purely scientific reasons, but I suspect he could not get any females to agree. In my grief over the loss of my wife I had not thought about this possibility until it was far too late. By 2495 we were less than twenty three months away from our goal and we noticed the first hint as to what we had stumbled on.
The view of the star field started to look strange. We were often surrounded by the debris of the Kipper belt in these days, but it was clear something was changing. On the days in which our view was unobstructed we concentrated our efforts on a single spot on the horizon. What we saw were pixels. If you get close enough to a television screen or computer monitor you eventually see the pixels. If you print a picture on paper and put a magnifying glass over it you can see the small dots that make up the image. The view in front of us was becoming pixilated. John became very excited at this turn of events. For myself, I found it very disturbing. It did however give us something to watch over the next twenty three months. It was something for two lonely men to do with their time.
As we drew closer the pixels became clearer. They were small hexagons touching on all sides. I told John that given our distance I was beginning to think the beings that built the screen would have to be much larger than we were. This forced a conversation over the possibility that the screen builders might not notice us even if we flew right into their screen. John documented the entire flight with images and video recordings. He took great pride in his scientific endeavors. The ship was equipped with an escape probe. All the data and images of our trip were being stored on a hard drive in the probe. At the push of a button the probe could be launched. It would be impossible for the probe to return to Earth, but it was designed to transmit the data via a radio signal as it passed through the solar system. There was a high probability Earth would be able to pick up the signal and decode the message. I had my doubts that the powers that be back on old Mother Earth would believe anything John sent them, but agreed it was the right thing to do.
Once we cleared the Kipper belt we got a rude awakening. We traveled for a year and did not seem to get much closer to the pixels. They got bigger, but not by much. It was like driving across a plain and trying to get to the mountains on the far side. It the road straight and the ground is flat you can drive for hours and the mountains don’t seem to get any closer. Space it seemed is so vast we may have under estimated the gap between the belt and the screen. On the twelve year anniversary of our launch John and I enjoyed a frozen cupcake he brought to celebrate and stared into the void between us and the screen. John estimated we could last another eighteen months, maybe twenty depending on our oxygen consumption. He dialed down the mix to buy us more time, but in reflection this was cruel and unusual punishment. We humans have such a strong survival instinct we do the most unthinkable things to stay alive. I spent another year floating in a box struggling to breathe. I have no idea how I was able to survive, except to say it beat the hell out of dying.
A month after our thirteen year anniversary John decided to make his last stand. He promised me he would turn the oxygen back up and die with a smile on his face after doing one last thing. Since he had designed the ship I was un-aware of all of its many accoutrements. John had a small tube under the ship that was armed with a ten foot spear, more of a dart really. The dart had a bright strobe on the shaft and a radio transponder. Shooting it from our moving ship would give it added velocity. The odds we would still be breathing when it hit the screen were still a long shot, but he wanted to throw a rock at the Gods so I played along.
As I predicted he did not dial up the oxygen after he fired it. He sat in front of the window and watched the strobe through a telescope for days at a time. By this time I was sleeping more often than not and paid little attention. I do not know how long this went on. There was a rolling counter with little red numbers that had been counting since the day we left. It hit zero during out twelve year celebration and since that moment had been running in the negative. It simply started back from zero with a small slash in front of the numbers. I woke up one day and the counter had gone black. I knew tell John had pulled the plug, but I never said anything. He knew he could keep me with him longer if I did not realize how far into the negative we ran. I do know it got much harder to breath and assumed John had dialed the oxygen down again. I didn’t mind by now. I slept and dreamed of my wife and son. When I left I had thought I would be seeing them in the afterlife, but with the pixels growing bigger I feared I would never see them again.
When he started yelling it woke me up in the middle of a REM cycle and it took me more than a few minutes to wake up completely. Once I did I had to blink my eyes and look twice. The dart had struck the screen. A small four pixel grouping was flickering. It’s was subtle and not likely visible from Earth, but from where we sat it was clear as a bell. John recorded it all day and I just lay with one arm under my head and watched the flicker. I will be dead soon, but at least we proved the universe was a cruel trick. Oddly it wasn’t that compelling to me at the time.
I do not know how long we watched the flicker, but at some point John fired the probe to send his data back to Earth. Once he did this he seemed to go down hill quickly. I had thought all along that I would be the first to succumb to deep space, but John faded away before my eyes. He had kept himself going in an attempt to prove his ancestors theory for so long, that once he fired the probe he simply ceased to be. I had hoped I would go before John due to one very simple fact. There was no way to get a dead body out of this ship. It was designed to go as far and as fast as it could. No room for airlocks or space suits. Not that I had enough oxygen left to fill one. John was simply lying in bed and it would not be long before my quality of life would decline in the presence of his rotting corpse. The only precaution John had taken was putting one air tight body bag on the ship. I presume this was in case I died early and he had along time to go without me. The bag worked quite well, although the exertion of getting him inside it caused me to pass out.
The sight of John in the bag stopped bothering me after a bit. On the up side, he wasn’t breathing any oxygen and I dialed it back up a little and prepared to die with a smile. Then the lights went out. There was no real reason for the ship to go dark. It was true the ship was running on fumes, but I had not expected this. I fumbled around and found a glow stick and cracked it. The chemicals in the stick combined and a green glow came across the cabin. I found myself in shock when I looked out the window and saw the stars had also gone dark, not only the stars, but the Sun as well. It seemed the Gods had pulled the power cord. I lay in my bunk and watched the green light fade. I did not bother cracking a second stick. What would be the point now? John had succeeded in proving his point and now the entire known world was going to pay the price. I was subconsciously glad John died not knowing this fact.
When I awoke next I was in a bright white room. I lay on a bed with white sheets. My grubby coverall had been replaced with a cotton shirt and draw string pants. The air was so fresh and my lungs burned. I had not breathed full on oxygen in years. It must be diluted or I would simply have passed out and possibly died. When I slid my bare feet over the side of the bed the floor was firm, but warm. I ran my fingers through my hair and over my face and found my hair cut short and my face clean shaven. I sat on the edge of the bed for some time convinced I had died. Soon after I awoke the door opened and he came inside.
He was a robot no doubt. He was square and the size of a big trash can. The wheels were not visible, but he moved as if he was rolling on something. Four well articulated arms reached out, one on each side. He was carrying a tray with a coffee pot and a clear glass coffee mug steaming with coffee. The smell almost caused me to pass out. You would think a robot would hold my attention more easily, but I had not smelled coffee in along time. It was amazing I didn’t stay focused on the robot as it bore Johns head. Not his actual head of course, but a rubber facsimile of it. The hair was neatly combed and the lips rosy and pink. John had not looked like this in quite awhile is all that came to mind.
I sat at the table and drank more than one cup of coffee, which made me a little twitchy. The robot spoke with a delay as it had to process what I said and then translate it as best it could. Its lips and eyes moved, which I found disturbing. After a bit the robot brought me some food. I had spaghetti and meatballs along with a wonderful strawberry sundae. I have no idea where the Gods came up with the food, but I assume if you can grow a entire solar system in a Petri dish, a few strawberries are a breeze.
When he had removed the dishes the robot came back and put a dirty looking envelope on the table. On the front was my name, scribbled in John’s handwriting. It was sealed and I gave the robot a confused look and then tore it open. On the inside was a note from John. It seems he had it in his coverall’s all the time we were in the ship. I would have found it when he died had I not been so eager to shove him in a body bag. The contents of the note turned out to be heart breaking for me. John was apologizing for killing my wife and son. It seems he had paid someone to set the fire, ensuring they would be killed. He did not want to take anyone else along on this journey so he took away my reason for staying home. John was lucky he was dead at this point. I thought about tearing the head off the robot, but I could not see any up side to it. This is when I found out how emotionally flat I had become. I could not even muster a tear. I just wadded up the note and set it on the table. I was too bored with life to even toss it on the floor.
After a week I decided the robot butler needed to start giving me some information on my circumstance. If I was sitting atopmountOlympusI thought I might like to have a chat with Zeus, assuming he was in the building. It turns out that Zeus and the other Gods are of such a different design their mere presence would cause me great discomfort. This was their fancy way of saying I would be killed. The robot assured me they were by no means Gods in the strictest definition. They were simply beings of another form, seeking similar answers to many of the same questions as I was. They told me when I was speaking to their robot, I was actually speaking to them. I should just ask away whatever I liked.
I did ask away as a matter of fact I spent several days asking. The answers the screen builders gave me were less than encouraging. It seems the entire solar system was nothing more than a lab experiment. They had created many different solar systems and had them in various boxes in their lab. They referred to them as boxes, while in my head I kept hearing Petri dishes. When I pressed them they had the robot wheel in a screen to let me see several of these ongoing experiments. They looked simple enough, although I was seeing them from the perspective of the screen builders themselves and thus they looked small. In truth they were millions of miles across, a fact I would not have been able to comprehend. Small stars like our Sun graced their centers and they boasted different numbers of planets and moons in orbit around them. They sat inside a round ball that projected a star field on the inside. Just as John thought the projectors altered the image seen from the planet with life on it. The distances then made it look real from their perspective. This makes me smile to think that John and I had figured it out. Well mostly John.
When I asked why I was allowed here and if any other experimental life forms were here they took quite a while to answer. It seems I was the first rat who found his way out of the maze. They wanted to study me and learn why I had succeeded when so many others had never even tried. While I was happy to be out of the flying coffin and eating sundaes, I did have concerns about my future. I left this question un-asked and continued to enjoy their hospitality for awhile. The robot came by daily to ask me questions and I answered them to the best of my ability. They seemed extremely interested in why as a species we decided to fly out to the screen. I was honest and told them that as a species we didn’t even suspect the screen was there. One man, meaning John, had been responsible for us coming out to them. This seemed to puzzle them.
I don’t know how long I was there, but after a long time I grew weary of answering questions and sitting in a new box. I asked them if I could go home. They informed me that after so long in space I would die in minutes if I returned. My heart and muscles had been so atrophied that the mere gravity and atmospheric pressure would crush me. I had a feeling this was the case, but felt I just had to ask.
One day on a whim I asked them if I could watch my own solar system. This drew no response. Puzzled I asked repeatedly for the next week or so. It was hard to mark the passage of time in this place and I did so by how many times I slept. I suspect this was erroneous as I seemed to sleep more often and for shorter periods of time. I asked about Earth many times and they never replied. I decided to go on a hunger strike to get an answer and after a few days they finally gave in. They told me that the experiment with my solar system had been very successful to a point. They had very much enjoyed the single celled organisms that formed in the beginning. Later the dinosaurs had been a huge hit with them. They claimed the dinosaurs had been viewed by many of their kind and were still an all time favorite. Eventually they did grow weary of them and since setting up an entire solar system was hard work they decided to try something new. They caused an extinction event for the poor dinosaurs. This amounted to basically throwing a rock at Earth. For years humans debated the demise of the dinosaurs. It turns out the meteor theory was right after all. We just did not know that it was a big kid with a sling shot who hurled it.
After this cleansing they reported to me that a plague fell over the planet and caused them to discontinue the experiment. The life forms in question had taken to destroying other life forms and even killing each other. It took me a bit to grasp that they were talking about humans. I argued that humans had been on the Earth for a long time and had managed to find the screen. This seemed to amuse them and they told me that humans had only been around for a split second compared to the entirety of their experiment. They said many forms of life that filled their various Petri dishes had carried on for millions of years. I again argued that we had solved the puzzle of the screen and must be the most intelligent of their creations, but this also amused them. For them true intelligence was measured by the ability of the species to remain in balance with its environment. Also sited was the fact that mankind was the only species that randomly killed its own. They noted the day to day violence of man, but it seemed events like the Nazi’s and bio weapon attacks of 2145 had made an impression.
I felt as if I was arguing for the future of my species when it occurred to me that they had indicated the experiment had been terminated. A cold chill ran down my spine at the thought. I asked what had become of planet Earth and the billions of humans living there. There was another long pause before I got my answer. First they explained that time here ran much slower than in the Petri dishes. While I had been living here only a short time, in fact almost a million years had passed in my solar system. This made my jaw drop as I realized everyone I knew was now long dead. They went on to explain the fate of mankind. A few thousand years after John put the dart in the screen it seems the planet Earth began to die. Humans had made the entire planet unsuitable for life. Global warming, nuclear bombs, over population and even fishing the sea’s barren were some of the reasons they gave me. I knew we were hard on Mother Nature, but it seems I had no idea.
I finally asked what had become of my solar system and they calmly replied it had been put on ice. When pressed for details they explained that the box was drained into a pail, the contents were sealed in a frozen block to prevent genetic contamination. This revelation made me upset and I retired to my room and lay in bed. This went on for weeks or maybe months. I could not help but think it was millions of years in some ones dish. My robot butler seemed to become worried about me when I stopped eating once again and admitted I was ready to just have this over.
As I lay in my bed one day the robot brought in the rolling screen and asked me if I wanted to watch one of their experimental worlds. I told him I was not interested, but he turned it on anyway. On the screen I saw what looked like human beings fighting with giant star fish in a pitched battle near the edge of an ocean or lake. I sat up and watched transfixed for some time. When I pulled my attention back to the robot I asked him what I was watching. He told me that on one of their worlds a race of ruthless amphibians had taken to killing off everything on their planet. They decided to thaw out a few million humans and drop them on this world to see which species would prevail. This gave me laugh. It seemed man had found his niche in the land of the Gods. Even if he was not fit to rule his own planet, he was entertaining enough for them to put us in their version of the Roman Coliseum and watch us battle to the death.
I decided to put off my hunger strike and pull up a seat. I asked the robot for a strawberry sundae and curled up in front of the screen. It took some time, but I can tell you with pride. The humans thrashed the starfish in the first ever Petri dish Championship causing me to yell out “Who’s next”.
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