Infinity Chase

Marco jolted awake. A bowl of cheese puffs fell off his belly from the sudden motion.  The puffs scattered all over the floor. 

He’d been dreaming. Dreaming of them. Amazing how he’d been out here all this time and still couldn’t escape their memory. 

He sat up and stared at the floor. The new addition of the cheese puffs fit nicely with the pile of soda cans and overflowing garbage pail.

He got up and left the room. He made his way down the corridors of the ship. He’d usually stop by the mess for another snack, or the experience deck for an immersive game, or the observation deck to watch the universe pass by.

But he didn’t do any of that now. Instead he found himself at the bridge. He collapsed down in the captain’s chair. The view was just as good as the one in the observation deck anyway. And here he had all the instruments. 

White stars streaked across the black backdrop outside. Marco yawned.  

When he left the Sol solar system all those years ago he actually saw the planets as he passed. He saw Mars up close. He passed by Jupiter pretty fast. Everything started to look distorted by the time he got to Saturn. The rings warped and curved due to the anomalies with speed-of-light travel. 

That’s what he told Vega. That was back when the chase was still early. When Vega was trying to be nice to get him to slow down. 

Listen to Marco ramble, then maybe he’ll turn around and go back home. That didn’t work out the way Vega wanted.

And Vega already knew about the effects of Lightspeed travel. It’s one thing to know it, though. And a whole other to see it.

Vega got a lot meaner after they left the solar system. Lots of threats. Empty threats. They both knew he couldn’t touch Marco. Marco had nothing left back on earth. Nothing that the Asterion Corporation could threaten or take away. Marco wasn’t going to stop. Ever.

The time Vega finally realized that is about the time he stopped talking to Marco. But he still followed. Always followed. Each other their ships perpetually accelerating into eternity.

“Let’s see where this goes,” Marco used to think.

Marco looked at the sensor display. Sure enough, there was Bullet-01, Vega’s ship. The prototype to Marco’s updated Redline. The only ships of their kind. At least when they left. The ships that would take humanity to the stars. 

Marco wished Vega would talk to him. 

When he left earth, Marco thought he’d love the solitude. Free time. Truly free time. No one else around. 

But he was bored. 

He still had billions of movies in the database to watch.
None of them interested him.
He still had terabytes of immersive experiences to go through.
He didn’t feel like it.

He still remembered the pain. The pain never went away. And the endless stream of stars nor the cheap entertainment helped it go away. In fact, they seemed to make it worse.

That wasn’t true. The entertainment wasn’t cheap. It was state-of-the art.

He felt alone on earth. But now he was alone. And the one human who could talk to him wouldn’t talk to him.

Unless…

A radical thought entered Marco’s mind. What was he running from anymore anyway? His hand moved before the thought fully formed. When nothing else worked, it was time to try something different.

Marco reached for the accelerator, and pulled it back. Just a little bit.

Marco slowed Redline down.

It took a long time. There was a lot of momentum built up.

For a moment, Marco thought Bullet-01 slowed down too. But to his mix of relief and panic at the thought of seeing Vega in-person again, Bullet-01 started to catch up. 

Marco cleaned. 

He cleaned the entire ship. He didn’t do it on purpose. It’s just what you did when someone came to visit. Like some deep-seeded evolutionary instinct in his human body.

He picked up the cheese-puffs and the soda cans and paper plates and crumbs. Everything. He scrubbed and washed and wiped all the surfaces. 

Redline looked as clean as the day he stole it. 

Then he heard the chime. 

Bullet-01 had docked. Vega was here.

Marco went and stood before the air-lock. He straightened his shirt and only just now realized there was a cheese-stain on it. Too late now. 

Maybe Vega wouldn’t notice. 

The outer door slid noiselessly open. Marco could see some movement through the small windows of the inner-doors. Vega stepping through. The outer door closed. It seemed like an eternity before the inner door hissed and then slid open itself. 

Marco jumped at the sound. 

There stood Vega, staring at him. A blank expression on his face. He was tall, tan, and had a perfectly trimmed beard. How was he still tan?

Marco smiled and threw his arms open and said, too loudly, “Welcome to Redline!”

Vega didn’t smile. He didn’t throw his arms open. Instead he stepped forward, and slugged Marco in the face.

Marco stumbled as he followed Vega through the Redline’s corridors. 

After hitting him, the test-pilot had made his way to the bridge. Then he started pressing buttons on various consoles.

“What are you doing?” asked Marco, wincing at a headache.

“Turning us around,” Vega said flatly.

Marco shook his head. “What? Why?”

Vega didn’t look up from his work. “You stole this ship. I’m returning it.”

Marco sighed and slid down the wall to rest on the floor. He held his hand to his head as he watched Vega begin punching in coordinates. 

“Return it to who, Vega?” He finally said. “Everyone we ever knew on earth is gone. Long since gone.” 

Vega ignored him.

“You know about time dilation right? I warned you about time dilation, remember? When we were leaving the solar system. I saw you following me and I told you. Did you think I was lying? There’s no one back on earth who even remembers us. Humanity moved on without us.”

Marco could see Vega’s face reddening. He punched buttons harder and harder as Marco spoke. 

“I haven’t moved on,” said Vega, in a whisper.

Marco growled and groaned to his feet. “You’re being ridiculous. Stop!”

“No!” Vega shouted, freezing Marco in place. “You stop. This running away, escapism, self absorption nonsense has gone on far, FAR too long. You hurt people by taking this ship. Ruined lives. My life.”

Marco’s voice grew small. “They could’ve built other ones. Other ships.”

Vega snorted and shook his head. “You have no idea.” Then he slammed his fist on the final button. 

Redline slowed way down. Marco felt his stomach leap. All that speed. All that momentum. The streaking stars reoriented and condensed to the normal pinpricks of light. He hadn’t seen them that way for years. And only just now he realized. They weren’t stars.

They were galaxies. Thousands… millions of galaxies. 

“You’re selfish,” said Vega. “And I’ve had enough. I had enough a long time ago.”

Tears flowed down Marco’s face.

“We’re going back, and we’ll salvage what we can of humanity when we get there.”

A chime sounded. 

Vega turned back to the controls. “What was that?”

Marco leapt up and joined Vega at the controls. He’d heard that sound before. Long ago when Vega first started following him. He gazed down at the instruments. “Proximity sensor. But…”

“There’s nothing else out here,” said Vega. “Is there?”

They both looked up and out Redline’s main bridge viewport, realizing now that something big had blotted out the light from a chunk of the backdrop of galaxies in front of them. 

Then light, blinding light, snapped on and shown through the windows. Marco and Vega shielded their eyes.

“What is that?” said Vega.

Marco looked down at the controls again. Another chime. “They’re… hailing us.” 

He pressed the button to accept the communication.

Halting, heavily accented speech came through the intercom.

“Jello... anshent travellers! … We jave… watched… and docomonted… yoo gournee THROO… the kozmos…”

There was a long pause. Marco thought he could hear some sort of frustrated chatter whispering on the other end. 

Then the voice continued. “Tell us… plez. Da masses… of da… UNIVERSE, your… followers must know… For wat grat… popose… jave yoo stopped… yoo gournee?”

Marco and Vega stared at the controls. Then they looked at each other.