"Brave New World?" by Nick Crippin

All was quiet. The ship had stopped shuddering and shaking. It now floated freely in space once again. They had hit something, or at least it seemed that way. The overhead lights flickered back on under emergency lighting.

Captain Jason Decker called out, “Is everyone alright?”

There were mumbled responses from the crew indicating that no one was seriously hurt. Slowly, we all got up and made our way to the control room to see what had happened. As we gazed out the windows from the control room, we didn’t recognize anything. It was then that I realized that we were not in Kansas anymore. While we were still in awe of our new surroundings, there was a flurry of activity behind us. Tony, our technician, was frantically trying to see if he could get our mainline power back online.

“You know, you could help. I’m not the only one who knows how to fix things.”

Reluctantly, we turned our attention away from the windows and focused on fixing the ship. Structurally the ship was fine, but there were some major problems with our electronics, which would take some time to fix.

Once we got our power back, we proceeded to determine if our equipment was still functioning. Only a few consoles were damaged. The only device of concern that we lost was our U.P.D., or Universal Positioning Device. Without this we had no idea where in the universe we were. Tony, being the handy man that he is, was able to fix most of the other major problems.

We still had no idea what had happened. We were on a routine inspection of a series of planets in sector 158 to determine if they were capable of supporting life. There were only three planets in this sector so it didn’t take long to figure out that, once again, there was nothing there. We scanned the planets to determine their structure and atmosphere and landed only once to inspect a small possible site for colonization, but that was a complete failure. We’ve been out here for ten years, traveling between sectors mapped out by our government. It is our mission to find any inhabitable planet for immediate colonization by Earth.

There is a great crisis on Earth, you see. As science and medicine have exceeded the dreams of man, our technology has increased exponentially. Our scientists have found a way to extend man’s life expectancy to the ages to the legendary status of the Old Testament. This has caused immense stress on the Earth, too many people, and too little resources. Obviously, they didn’t think it through too well when they developed this new technology. Sure living is great, but no one is supposed to live forever. So it is our job, no our duty to find this Holy Grail of planets capable of sustaining life. We are only one of thousands of teams exploring countless sectors. Our team comprised of Captain Decker, Lieutenant Michael Ivey, the technician Tony Robinson, Dr. Amy Peterson, and me, Petty Officer Jeremy Scott. So far, no one has found a single planet capable of sustaining even the simplest forms of life. All we saw was a blinding flash of light and then a force which knocked us all onto our backsides. So here we are, in a new sector, reeling from whatever it was that happened to us.

After everyone had gathered in the control room, and were checked for injuries, the generators were finally fixed. We powered up the machines to try to determine our surroundings, since we lost our U.P.D. We scanned the immediate area for any planets or solar systems. Out of the nearby solar system, there was one planet of interest. Captain Decker shouted out orders to run the scanners to see if it was anything worth inspecting. To our surprise, the scanners indicated that the planet had an atmosphere very similar to Earth’s, exactly what we have been searching for all these years. The planet was quite pristine and beautiful from its orbit. A single moon orbited slowly around the blue planet. The land was all located at the center, with what appeared to be water all around. There were even polar ice caps. Everyone was getting anxious. It reminded everyone too much of home. After being gone for over a decade, this reminder was weighing heavily on everyone. Captain Decker gave the order to descend through the atmosphere and land on the planet.
“Let’s make this a quick run. We don’t have the fuel to be taking our time down there,” Decker shouted over the roar of the ship hitting the atmosphere.
As the ship settled, we checked the atmosphere. It was breathable. This was an exciting moment for all of us. Finally, we all were thinking, our mission is complete and we can live normal lives. We were eager to investigate, but also hesitant. Captain Decker ordered all of us to get ready for some exercise, we were going exploring.

It was beautiful. The air was humid with enormous amounts of vegetation. It was so pristine and pure, yet unrefined, like a primitive jungle. There were plants of the likes we have never seen before, almost prehistoric in nature. I reached out and touched the trunk of a very tall tree; it was nothing like Earth’s, or at least what I could remember. It reminded me of Brazil, deep in the heart of the Amazon.

The “trees” were filled with lizards and enormous insects. I was expecting to step into some primordial ooze with every stride. The animals we saw seemed to resemble those that were taught to us in school, bringing back the boring days of high school biology. They were all so frighteningly familiar, but not quite. They seemed to be almost, inferior models of the animals we had spent so much time studying. Soon we began to see signs of more complex life forms. There were footprints everywhere, with plenty of crap to go along with it, not to mention that the piles of dung were absolutely enormous. Apparently, we landed in the bathroom of Jurassic Park. We cautiously moved into the clearing nearby, watching our step quite closely, to continue our search. What we saw took our breath away.

Dinosaurs. They were everywhere. All different shapes, sizes, and colors. Everything we imagined them as children, and more. We couldn’t believe our eyes. We had expected to possibly run into alien life forms, but nothing like this. It was beyond our comprehension to understand this scene. It was too familiar. The jungle opened up into a very large plain. There was low vegetation that was probably popular for grazing. There was what appeared to be some triceratops feeding only a couple hundred yards away. Off in the distance there was a terrific roar. Soon we saw hundreds of animals fleeing as fast as they can as their predator rumbled into view. A Tyrannosaurus Rex followed closely at the heels of one of the smaller dinosaurs and quickly captured its prey. With a quick snap of the jaws, the creature was engulfed in a sea of teeth.

Decker exclaimed, “This…this can’t be real. There’s no way.”

Tony, being the smart-ass that he was, said, “Clearly, it is.”

“Oh, shut up!” Decker hissed. “One more comment like that and I’ll make you stay with the ship.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice for us all…” I thought.

“Now, let’s continue to gather samples for analysis, and then we can report back to Earth,” said Captain Decker.

We didn’t move for at least another ten minutes. It was too stunning, but once some of the smaller dinosaurs took notice of us, we became rather uneasy and proceeded with the mission. It didn’t take very long to gather what we needed, thankfully. It was really unnerving being in a place which so easily could have come from our past.

The soil, air, and mineral samples were perfect matches to the requirements given, even incredibly close to Earth’s actual environment. This was great news for us all, the only problem now was figuring out where we were. It was apparent now that we had hit a wormhole of some sort, which had transported us to who knows where within the universe. It rarely happens, but there were a few documented cases of this occurring. Some of them only were a few light years long, others thousands. This unsettling fact was in the backs of all our minds. During our training they had warned us that there was chance, an extremely low chance that it might happen to one of us. Great, we were that one miniscule statistic. Isn’t that comforting. Personally I thought they were only legends, but obviously I was proven wrong. I suppose we should all be thankful that we survived, and even found an inhabitable planet.

We immediately tried to contact command to relay this important discovery. Unfortunately, our transmission was being blocked by a local nebula. We decided to take off and try to find a location suitable for our transmission, which would make us heroes back home on Earth. After a few hours of flight time, we dropped out of hyperspace to try again to send a message home.

As we came to a stop, Dr. Amy Peterson exclaimed, “You know…that planet looks just like Earth from way out here.”

“You’re right, it really does,” I agreed. “What if it IS Earth?”

“Good one, Jeremy,” laughed the lieutenant.

“There’s no way. How would that even be possible?” asked Decker.

“Well, we did just travel through a worm-hole. They are known to not only distort space, but also time.” Tony explained, “You see, with Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, there are these gravitational time dilations that occur. The farther away one gets from a source of gravity, time actually can slow. Under great enough circumstances, it could result in millions of years of time lost. The wormhole we entered was probably near a black hole or something like that, which would distort time the most. The time outside the wormhole must have been so distorted that it was equivalent to, say the late Cretaceous period.”

“How the heck do you know all that? You’re just a technician,” said the lieutenant.

“Just because I’m a low-level technician doesn’t mean I’m stupid… I just don’t like to exert myself. Anyway, they taught us about time travel, even though they still believe it’s purely theoretical. The Academy tries to cover all its bases, since they have no idea what we’ll run into out exploring the universe.”

“So you’re telling me that we’re staring at Earth one hundred million years ago?”

“It’s possible, but there’s no way we can prove it.”

“Well…assuming that it is Earth, shouldn’t we be worried about messing with our impact on its history?” I said. “If we change too much on Earth, we might alter the history of mankind, and I believe that would be a bad thing.”

“We haven’t done too much. We only landed and took a few samples.”

“I suppose it’s a minor impact at best, but what if something larger changed?”

“Minor impact? Did you stop and think about all the little changes we’ve caused. Even the microscopic bacteria on our shoes from the ship aren’t supposed to be around for tens of millions of years from now.”

“I think you’re overreacting. If we had changed something, wouldn’t it have affected us already? If we drastically altered the course of history by landing, we wouldn’t be here today.”

“I understand what you’re getting at, but what if we were supposed to come here, yet realized in time to limit our contact with the Earth.”

“I can’t believe we’re actually having this conversation!” exclaimed the lieutenant, “We didn’t time travel back to our own solar system one hundred million years ago.”

“Then how would you explain our inability to contact home? Hmm? What if we can’t send any messages, because there isn’t anyone there to receive them?”

“Uh, Captain…you might want to take a look at this…” stammered Lieutenant Michael Ivey. “There’s a large asteroid out here.”

“So what? We are in space, lieutenant. There are asteroids out here,” said Decker.

“No, I mean the trajectory of the asteroid. It’s heading right towards the planet …umm Earth.”

“We can’t risk losing this planet, whether or not it is actually Earth. We need to stop it NOW,” Decker ordered.

“WAIT! You can’t do that. What if it is Earth? You would be severely altering our course of history. It is believed that a large asteroid struck the Earth. It caused such a large disturbance that it wiped out all of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. If you destroy this asteroid, you will alter Earth’s history. If it doesn’t hit the Earth, you will forever change history as we know it. If this doesn’t happen, we may not exist.”

“I never thought of it that way. The only problem is, what if it isn’t Earth? We can’t just sit back and watch the destruction of the only planet known that can sustain human life. The universe is huge, why can’t this just be another solar system similar to ours? That would explain why the planets would be similar. Really, I think all of you are taking this too far in believing that we traveled back in time. Maybe it was created during the same time that earth was, but the continually expanding universe moved it way out here. Why wouldn’t that be another possible explanation? Clearly, there’s no limit to the imagination when it comes to explaining this.”

“We can’t take that chance. All of that is purely hypothetical. We have to act now; otherwise this opportunity will be wasted. Who knows what will happen to that planet if that asteroid hits. It could be completely destroyed for all we know. I’m sorry I just can’t take that big of a risk.”

"Sir, how are you planning on stopping an asteroid of that size?” the doctor asked.

“How much fuel do we have left?” Decked snapped.

“Umm…we’re just about empty. I’d say only enough for a few hours of flight,” the lieutenant replied.

“How long would we have if we put it at full burn?” he asked.

“Only a few minutes Captain, maybe ten at best.”

“I really hope you’re not considering what I think you have in mind…It would never work, and even if it did, we would be stranded here with no fuel and no way to signal Earth of this discovery,” said Dr. Peterson.

“The only way that we’re going to move that asteroid is moving it with our ship. We would have to land on the asteroid and use the remainder of our fuel to push it off its current path, away from Earth.”

“But then we would be stranded with no way home. Why in the world would we let you do that?” I exclaimed

“This planet is our only hope of survival. If we let the asteroid hit, we still don’t have enough fuel to come anywhere close to home. I’m open to any other plans if there are any suggestions. I don’t like this any more than all of you do, but as your commanding officer, I believe this will be our best course of action.”

“Now wait a minute. Out here, ranks don’t matter that much, and especially in situations like this. This should come down to a vote. We are still a democracy, right?” I interjected.

“I agree,” nodded Dr. Peterson. “This isn’t just your own life that you’re messing with. It could be the lives of the entire human race. This decision should NOT be left up to one person and one person alone.”

“Fine. We will vote on it. Let’s write down our votes onto a piece of paper and we’ll tally them up quickly.”

A few suspenseful minutes passed, as everyone was thinking their decision through. Slowly one by one, they came up to the captain and gave him their vote. He rifled through the pieces of paper, tallying each vote. His hand shakily wrote down the results. He exhaled slowly exhaled as he opened the last piece of paper. He turned towards the rest of the crew and announced the results.

“The results are 4 to 1…in favor of destroying the asteroid.”

“What?! Am I the only one who thinks that we’re messing with our future here? You guys really don’t believe that this is earth, do you?” I inquired.

“Apparently not. You asked for a vote and you got one. Don’t be sad with the results. The votes are in and you lost,” said Tony.

“It has been decided. Everyone get ready to land this ship on that asteroid. We’re going to save this planet!” yelled the Captain.

I begrudgingly moved to my position for the landing, while the rest of the crew found their places throughout the control room. Captain Decker gracefully piloted the ship towards the asteroid. He scanned the surface of the asteroid and the computer calculated the force needed to accomplish our task. With the calculations in place, we descended onto the surface of the asteroid. After we anchored the ship to the asteroid, we awaited our orders.

“Full burn on my cue…NOW!”

Lieutenant Ivey fired the engines at full power. We braced ourselves against whatever we could. Quickly, we began to feel the full weight of the asteroid alter its course. Once our momentum was shifted in that direction, simple physics took its course. The crisis had been averted, at least in their eyes. To me it had just begun.

“Sir, we’re almost out of fuel.”

“Put ‘er down on the planet. We’ll have to find some way to get a message back to Earth and report our discovery,” ordered Captain Decker.

We quickly entered into the planet’s atmosphere. The ship was about a mile from the surface, when the engines went silent. The sound of the wind howling outside filled our ears.

“Get those engines started NOW!” yelled Decker at the lieutenant.

“I’m trying sir. We’re completely out of fuel. We burned almost all of it moving the asteroid. I can keep trying to start the engines, or I can try to glide in for a landing.”

“Glide us in. I’ll keep working on the engines. Just make sure you get us down safely. Everyone, it’s going to be a rough landing, I suggest you buckle in.”
Lieutenant Ivey skillfully guided the ship towards a large plain below and prepared for a manual landing. The ground was looming as we were coming towards it, still going quite fast. The ship jerked violently as the lieutenant engaged the wing flaps. The air currents tossed us to and fro as the ship desperately tried to slow down. The rest of the crew, including the captain, had given up hope on the engines and quickly buckled in for the wild ride.

“Hold on! We’re coming in for the landing,” yelled the lieutenant.

The ship hit the ground hard, but Ivey had done a magnificent job steering the ship. Once we were on the ground, we quickly slid to a stop in one of the many plains that dotted the horizon and rocked to a halt. We looked at each other and all let out a sigh of relief.

“Let’s get outside and see how badly the ship was damaged in that landing.”
The crew hurriedly disembarked, just glad to be off of that ship and onto solid ground once again and started examining the ship.

“It looks like the hull is intact captain, so if we do manage to find some way off this planet, we can make it home,” assessed Tony.

Dr. Peterson shouted, “Is anyone injured? I have my med-kit with me if anyone needs some medical assistance.”

“We’re fine, doctor. No one was injured. Alright, it looks like we might be here for the long haul. Let’s try to set up some sort of camp around the ship. We’ll have some light security, in case some of those dinosaurs become a bit too curious.”

*beep* *beep*

“What’s that for?” asked Decker

“Oh, it’s a timer I set for when the asteroid was supposed to impact this planet. I guess I had forgotten that I’d set it,” I replied.

Everyone laughed as the timer that signaled the asteroid's projected impact sounded, we all cheered and felt like we had once again proved man's mastery over the universe and perhaps even God.

“See, your whole theory was nothing but a bunch of rubbis-” and he disappeared, along with the rest of his team and the ship, no longer a part of this world, or the future of this planet.