Contest: SciFi Holiday Contest, July 2022
Host: The Science Fiction Profile Family
Prompt: Telescope: "The new space telescope was meant to tell us more about the origins of the universe. But it also paved the way to an astounding discovery."
Content warnings: Existential dread, mild mentions of violence and suicide, alcohol use, some coarse language.

🥇 Grand Prize: SciFi Profile's Holiday Contest 2022
🥇 BeyondSol Category Prize: SciFi Profile's Holiday Contest 2022

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Everyone has always said that when you stare long enough into the void, the void stares back. Doctor William Fawkes contemplated this phrase a lot these days, ever since he had made what might be humanity's single most important, and terrifying, discovery.

He sat now, in an oppressive metal passenger cabin aboard flight IA623 on the Centauri-Solar Express line, having departed Hephaestus Station in Alpha Centauri six days ago and due to arrive at Earth III Space Station in a matter of hours. From there he would, presumably, be escorted straight to a five-star hotel where he could dump his belongings and put on a suit someone else had told him he must wear, to be then taken straight to the Solar Federation Space Association's headquarters aboard Earth III where he would host a press conference announcing his incredible new findings.

After that, he feared, humanity would implode in on itself.

William leaned back into his cushy pleather chair, allowing the plush, cold material to consume him. He inhaled deeply, feeling the shakiness in his breath, then let out an explosive sigh. Here was a man who desperately, even despairingly, wanted to avoid this press conference. He took a swig from his whisky, set the glass down into the chair's receptacle, and contemplated requesting more. He had been booked into first class - they'd supply him with anything he asked for. Perhaps if he consumed enough, he'd be too drunk to tell anyone anything. Or, perhaps he'd be so drunk he'd blather uncontrollably.

Two weeks ago, William was just another scientist. The leader of his team, but just another scientist nonetheless. Life was good. His wife was mad at him again for taking a job that would pull him away for weeks on end, but his career was going well and he was earning a small fortune - which he intended to spend on said wife and their two kids, as recompense. Indeed, William had beaten out hundreds of other candidates for this dream job - heading up the new Three Systems Giant Space Telescope Observatory on the outskirts of Alpha Centauri - and had thrown himself into his work with gusto. He was a 'first in, last out' kind of guy, barely able to peel himself away from his many screens, his charts, his loves.

Then, of course, he'd made the discovery. It was about 0200 hours local station time when the data had finally collated and he could finish analysing what he saw. He'd stayed up late, fuelled by jet-black coffee, just to witness it, to be the first. Upon seeing the data, and the images, he had immediately spat out said coffee, run a full systems diagnostic, called both engineering and IT to tell them there was an issue, been assured everything was running smoothly, run another diagnostic, paced back and forth a few times, checked everything a third time, and then sprinted to the toilet to vomit.

The technology was functioning. The science was sound. The data and images were clear. His discovery was not a systems error.

He'd vomited a second time.

His mind swirled. His hands shook. His knees wobbled. Dr William Fawkes did not know what to do. If he, a seasoned scientist, had reacted so viscerally to this discovery, how would other people react? What would happen to humanity? His mind so very quickly reeled, plotting out as many eventualities as he could contemplate. All the 'What-Ifs?' of the rainbow. He did not know what to do next. And so, he lied.

As his peers began trudging in from about 0630 hours onwards, they had all wanted to know what William had seen overnight. It was clear he hadn't gone home. He must have looked awful, perhaps hungover. He lied, to everyone, to the people he trusted most in the world. To his friends. He lied because he needed time to think, and couldn't be certain that if someone else saw what he had seen, the news wouldn't start to spread uncontrollably. He locked the data down, encrypted, files hidden away. He couldn't delete it - his professional mind would not allow him to do it - but he could hide it. He said the system would be down for a while, "go and get a good breakfast you all deserve it", and set it once again into diagnostic mode. But it couldn't last.

Eventually the SFSA's PR lady caught wind that the brilliant Dr Fawkes had likely discovered something big. Big enough to stay overnight. Big enough to look like shit and lock everything down. Rumours spread like wildfire. She found him, assailed him with questions, pursued him like a bloodhound chasing down a fox. William did the best he could, but he could not hide his face. His rumpled clothing. His shaking hands. She knew he had seen something, and she knew it was big. But he was tight lipped about it, much to her disgust. So, she waved contracts, spouted laws, said the word 'agreement' more times than he'd ever heard it before in his life. And he caved, allowing himself to be booked into a press conference the next system over, at the SFSA's own headquarters in orbit of planet Earth, where he would announce his discovery to the Three Systems. It would take time to organise, then to get him there. That gave him time to think.

And so here he was, heaving his tired old frame up and out of his plushy coffin, bladder full of whisky, stumbling his way to the nearest toilet. A passing security guard said a cheerful hello and shuffled past as William slid open his cabin door. He stared at the man, who wore the full grey flak vest, bucket helmet and holstered firearm even here in first class.

He stumbled on, past the many circular portholes to the great beyond, where outside strange colours and warped images blobbed past the fat passenger ship, which had been designed to mimic Earth's old trains in design, but with the carriages stacked next to and on top of one another rather than all in a big line. Soon he arrived at the toilet, where he waited briefly for another passenger to exit so that he could squeeze into the tiny space, turn around, down pants, sit, and contemplate.

It had been three days and he was yet to figure out how to get out of this press conference. William had no more time - the ship would be arriving in the Solar System soon, and it wouldn't be long from there before it rendezvoused with Earth III, docked, and spat him out into a world he could not control, and that he was certain he would destroy. So he sat here, on the toilet, pants around his ankles, face in his hands, fingers rubbing his balding scalp, thinking.

Perhaps he could fake some kind of illness, forcing himself to be quarantined and then hospitalised. That would give him more time. Yes, but not much. They'd find out nothing was wrong and then woosh, he was back on the roller coaster and strapped in tight. No, that trick wouldn't work for long. And explaining why he faked an illness would only add to his list of complexities.

Suicide. The nuclear option was always there, lurking in the shadowy recesses of his mind. But, that didn't feel like a way out of this, for he did not have that particular compunction generally speaking and couldn't shake the guilt of what it would do to his wife, or kids, whom he had not seen in quite some weeks and whom he rather wanted to see again. Although, if it was his life versus the entirety of human civilisation, perhaps it was the selfless choice. Something to consider, but not appealing.

Ah, but what if he could get himself hurt, if not killed? He could go wandering into one of the other carriages (as each rectangular section of the vessel was still called), find the dining cart, pick some kind of fight, and hope to get stabbed or clobbered. Perhaps he could weasel a guard into the proceedings, and maybe he'd even be shot. Those little pistols were unlikely by design to kill, but they'd put him in hospital for a while. Even better, if he could get himself walloped on the head by some thug-looking fellow with big ham fists, he could feign amnesia and 'forget' that he ever made his discovery.

No, then they'd go check the computer system at the observatory and someone would eventually break through his locks. The only reason they hadn't tried, so far as he knew, was because they just expected him to announce it all himself. Probably they thought he was being the arrogant scientist and wanted all the attention for himself, lest some young upstart see his findings and jump the gun to steal the spotlight.

It was not a good plan.

But, it was the only one he had that he even remotely thought could help buy some decent time.

Then-

-someone banged on the toilet door. Hard. A big, repeating slap. The impatient widow who stayed in the cabin adjacent to his own. She banged again, demanding he exit the toilet at once for he had been in there "more than long enough". Dr Fawkes didn't have the heart to yell back. She'd kick up more fuss than he ever could, but wasn't likely to stab him or clobber him on the skull like he required.

No, for that he needed someone else.

Time to move.

He exited the toilet, shuffled past the shrivelled raisin of a woman who had more furs on her body than some planets had in their entire ecosystems, and made for the exit. With a plan in his mind and a place to go, with things to do, William felt a certain sense of minor confidence now. No, not confidence as such - surety. That was it. It was a plan for which he could predict the outcome. And he was relatively certain it could get him out of this conference for a good while. First for the healing process, then for the stress of it all. That, perhaps, would be the time he needed to figure out what else to do. Probably he would need to go back to the observatory and work up the courage to betray his every scientific vow and delete his own data.

He ought to have deleted it straight away.

But he just couldn't.

William paused his walk, stopping to look briefly out at the warped space beyond the ship, and contemplated if the inventors and discoverers of other horrors had thought the same things he now did. The nuclear bomb, chemical warfare agents, viral warfare agents, planet killers. Had these scientists all desired to destroy their own work and wipe it from humanity? Perhaps they'd tried. How would William know?

Onwards he walked.

Soon he was out of the first class carriage, wandering down the narrow, grey stairwell to one of the many economy class carriages. He chose one at random. From there it was a quick stride to the 'dining car' where he stopped and scoped out his potential assailants. The room was claustrophobic and long, a whole cafeteria stretched into a thin rectangle and painted in sterile grey, with plain metal tables down either side and a 'suck in and turn sideways' kind of aisle between them. Passengers could get food from the self-service kiosk at one end, put it all on a plastic tray, pay, and then shuffle crab-like back to their seat to eat.

Mostly there were just ... normal people here. They did not fit the stereotypes that William was looking for. He wanted someone meaty, leathery, with that sort of deep space pirate look. Tattoos, perhaps. Yes, he was vaguely aware he was being horrifyingly judgemental and definitely prejudiced, but he required an assailant and wasn't quite sure how else to find one.

Not long after he arrived, his man of the hour walked in. Tall, broad, creases on his face suggested he was prone to anger. He bulged out of his black heavy metal T-shirt, with a pronounced brow partially shadowing his dark eyes. This was a man who looked like he could hurt someone. Except, he lead a little brown-haired girl in a blue dress by the hand, perhaps no more than five years old, taking her to the self-service kiosk. His daughter, it looked like. Would he be willing to blow up in front of his child, or would her presence keep him too reasonable? Was it something to exploit?

William grimaced, realising how awful his thoughts were. He wasn't supposed to be an evil scientist, but here he was contemplating how to inflame the father of quite a pleasant-seeming young girl into bashing him on the head. He disgusted himself, truly. His stomach churned, knees still weak, hands still shaking. He'd probably vomit on this man. Maybe that would help. William's wife would not be happy if she found out he'd done all of this, nor the SFSA PR lady. Gwen, or whatever her name was. But this was for humanity.

It had to be done.

Something had to be done.

Something that wasn't a press conference.

He sucked in another deep, quivering breath.

Show time.

"Dr Fawkes...?"

It was a voice behind him.

Shit.

He turned.

A man entered from the other end of the dining cart, dressed in the smart, white-shirted uniform of a ship's pilot. Given the insignia on his collar and the hat under his arm, Dr Fawkes strongly suspected it was the captain himself.

Good heavens no. Not now.

"Dr William Fawkes?" the man repeated, bushy moustache rustling as he spoke. "It is you! Ah, I heard you were aboard this flight but I've been so busy I haven't had a chance to come and introduce myself." He stuck out a thick hand and took the final steps necessary to bring him right next to the good doctor. "Captain Benjamin Wallace, sir, but you can call me Ben. It really is a pleasure to meet you, doctor."

William took the captain's and, on instinct, shook it weakly. He must have seemed quite the wet leaf to the large captain.

"Y- you know me?" said William in response, stuttering, his mind totally unprepared for pleasant conversation. Thirty seconds later and he would have been yelling at a bald slab of meat until he was being battered over the head and hopefully stabbed a bit.

"Of course!" replied the captain, beaming a wide, genuine smile. "I'm quite the fan of your work, actually. I may be just a pilot, but space exploration was always a fascination of mine as a kid. Gosh, I've followed the Three Systems Giant Space Telescope since it was first planned fifteen years ago."

The man shook William's hand a second time, smile unwavering. "What a treat to find you here. I like to come here as well - the food in first class is too fancy for me. Every day at lunch time I come here instead. Just for a sandwich, you know? Can't get a sandwich in first class. They always ruin it."

"R- right," Fawkes said, mind skidding in the mud. What was he meant to do now? The beefy heavy metal man with the young daughter had stopped, both watching the interaction. The whole cart watched the interaction. Whispers abounded.

"Hey, don't suppose you wanna come see the bridge, do ya?"

William blinked. Oh god no. "Um, well, uh, you see-"

"No no, I insist! Oh man, you gotta come see it. This baby's brand new," he gestured to the ship at large, "so we've got a proper ship's bridge - not some stubby little cockpit. Gosh, the computers on this thing are insane. I bet you'll get a real kick out of it."

"Well, I, um, I couldn't..."

"Hah, don't worry you won't get in the way. We pilots are basically dead weight while the ship's in interstellar transit. I've been doing paperwork and I'm sick of it. C'mon, lemme just grab my sandwich and a coffee and I'll take you there. Oh boy, Dr William Fawkes aboard my own ship, I can't believe it."

And at that the captain strode up to the self-service kiosk, grabbed himself some kind of egg sandwich out of a cabinet, stuck a paper cup into the coffee machine, swiped his ID on the payment machine, and orbited back around to drag William reluctantly out of the dining cart. William, of course, followed, not quite sure how to get out of this without being impolite.

Excuse me, sir, but I need to go back there to get beaten almost to death. If you don't mind.

And so, Dr William Fawkes was pulled away from the only plan he currently had to get out of destroying humanity.

What followed over the next half-hour was, to the good doctor, a blur. Captain Ben Wallace talked constantly, introducing him to just about everyone under the sun (or suns, as the case may be out here), and eventually lead him up the stairs, through the staff-only carriage, more introductions, and then onto the bridge - which was a fat cone jammed onto the bow of the huge blocky vessel. It was indeed an impressive sight, with more activity than Dr Fawkes would have expected. The star chart table at the centre of the room drew his eye the most, gargantuan thing that it was, top of the line, and Dr Fawkes almost felt a pang of excitement when he saw it. That old childhood fascination with space bubbled up momentarily as Captain Ben flicked through its various screens and menus, showing the incredible detail the chart could accomplish compared to anything William had seen in his life up to that point. Then there were banks upon banks of computers controlling thousands of different ship systems, from the essentials to the luxuries.

But, what good would all of this technology do if this one scientist stood up in front of a crowd of reporters aboard Earth III and told them what he knew as fact.

"Captain, ten minutes out," said a voice somewhere on the other side of the bridge.

"Perfect. Dr Fawkes, you take a seat right there if you like," replied the captain. "We're just about to drop out of warp about, uh, point ... four-eight AU below Earth. Just a little bit of time left and we'll rendezvous with Earth, then we'll lower our orbit so we intercept Earth III Station. You're nearly there!" The captain gave an excited thumbs up. "Can't wait to hear what you've got to announce. I'll be watching it live, you betcha. I'll get my kids to watch too, see if they can finally learn something, eh? Haha!"

Dr Fawkes swallowed, and felt a prickle on his forehead. He reached up to touch it, realising he was breaking out into a sweat. He swallowed again, and allowed himself to collapse into the chair on which he'd been told to sit.

Point four-eight of an astronomical unit.

Just a few small hours and there'd be no turning back.

A few hours and he'd be docking at Earth III, ready to explain something so vast, so unthinkable to all of humanity, that he was utterly certain no one could handle it.

"Five minutes."

"Right on schedule. Making the announcement now."

Fawkes had to act, and it had to be now. Whatever he would do, it had to be right now. Right fucking now. He clenched his fists, feeling moisture pool in his armpits and his back break out into a chill. It had to be now. He had to do something.

There was another security guard not too far from his position. He envisioned himself standing up and sidling slowly, oh so slowly, over to the man, where he could start up a little chit-chat and, in a flash, steal his pistol. He'd whip it out of the holster and gun the guard down right there on the spot. Then it would take him, what, five seconds to lock the bridge door? That would give him total control of the bridge and everyone on it. They'd turn off the comms unit, drop out of warp at that tidy point-four-eight AU below Earth, plot a course, burn towards Earth. To rendezvous, yes, but not with the intent of swooping in and changing orbital inclination. Rather to enter atmosphere. Woosh! Roar! Bang! Crash flight IA623 of the Centauri-Solar Express line into some continent or another, wiping out any chances of there being a press conference. All hands lost. Hundreds of lives, including Dr William Fawkes, gone in an instant. No one would care about some silly scientific discovery in the face of such a terrible tragedy. Was it engine failure? Navigational error? Terrorists? No one would know, or maybe they'd find out later if they could scour the ship's black box out of the superheated scrap metal. But for a while at least, no one would know.

...

Dr Fawkes blinked.

Had he really just thought that?

Had his mind gone from saying suicide was a bad idea to terrorism was a good idea in really so little time? He shivered, rubbing his arms. His own fragility scared him. It wasn't a press conference he needed, it was bloody therapy. Then again, what would a therapist even tell him? How would his old therapist have reacted to all of this?

Hmm.

He furrowed his brow and looked down.

"Transitioning to normal space."

"Everything green."

The ship shuddered, and the warped image ahead of the bridge flared briefly, lensed a few times like the ship was flying down a series of telescopes, and solidified. Earth's sun, the sun, shone brightly now ahead of the vessel, which angled upwards so that it could burn towards its destination. Something mechanical whirred elsewhere on the ship as it retracted its ring of warp masts, then it shuddered some more as its massive fusion engines kicked to life and pushed the vessel on its new heading. The Gs should have been bone-shattering, but the vessel's massive gravity plant silently and imperceptibly adjusted the cylindrical gravity field that held everyone down to also counteract the huge forces now attempting to crush everyone aboard.

It was all a miracle of science.

Dr Fawkes barely noticed.

Time passed. The captain flicked between working and chattering with his new friend. Meanwhile said new friend continued to do the bare minimum to keep the conversation flowing politely; the occasional head nod here, a response there, a statement or a question. All the while his mind clunked internally, letting the conversation flow around him like space-time bending around a warp bubble.

Defeatism set in.

There really was no getting out of this. Unless Dr Fawkes worked up some kind of courage he did not possess right now, he would be safely brought to Earth III, whisked off the ship by Gwen the PR lady, put in the fanciest hotel money could buy, pampered, taken to the stunningly beautiful SFSA headquarters building, fed, and then thrown in front of a crowd to tell them what he had seen.

Which was thus:

The primary purpose of the Three Systems Giant Space Telescope was not just to generally observe far galaxies and other space phenomenon, but to get a better idea as to the very shape of space. Was it infinite? Was it a sphere or bubble? A doughnut?

No. None of these things.

Dr William Fawkes knew now that it had an end point. Quite a definitive one at that. And, horrifying as it may be, this end point was solid, and not too far from the edge of the Milky Way by intergalactic standards.

He had stared into the void, and it had stared back. Literally.

Out there in the great beyond, past the swirling cloud of stars that is the galaxy, William had seen what appeared to be the edge of some kind of glass dome. Beyond, he observed the faint image of what he was certain were some kind of super-beings staring back. This was distressing in and of itself, but making it worse was the fact that the Milky Way was inside said dome, and the super-beings were outside looking in. He checked, checked, and checked again. The data was sound. The science was there. The evidence was irrefutable in William's mind. The entirety of human history, everything he and anyone else had ever accomplished, all the billions of stars of the galaxy, could fit inside one glass-like dome under observation from disconcertingly human-like titans.

Not for the first time, and not for the last, Dr William Fawkes placed his face in his hands and sighed, his shoulders aching from the weight of his discovery pressing down on him like Newton's G-forces should have been.

Would the public at large be able to handle knowing that they lived inside a glass dome? That all of existence was under observation by super beings? Super beings which looked quite human, suggesting, perhaps, if Dr Fawkes were to posit a bit further, that his humanity was the experiment of another humanity, and that these super beings weren't giant - William was just tiny.

"Earth III control, Earth III control, IA623. Requesting permission for Earth approach."

"IA623, Earth III control - go for approach."

The words of William's old therapist finally came back to him as he sat shaking in his seat. They were words which had helped him many years ago, and which bubbled up again now in his hour of need.

You can't control how other people feel, William. Nor is it right to try.

It was a simple statement that Dr Fawkes had always tried to keep at heart. He wasn't supposed to tell someone else what or how to feel, and to lie or withhold his own feelings for the sake of another was like manipulating that person against their will. It had been a huge weight off his chest at the time, fighting as he had been with his wife. Finally letting it all out got them fighting about what they should have been fighting about, so it could be resolved. They could move on.

He clenched his fingers, pulling on the last vestiges of his hair, as he stared at his own feet.

Humanity definitely wasn't ready to learn what he knew. But, could he live as the only man in the galaxy who knew the truth? Was it right to withhold the truth? Was he some supreme guardian of humanity, elected to protect the galaxy from the Outsiders?

No, no he wasn't. He could argue it was a good decision, but it wasn't the right decision. Flip it around: Would he be happy if he discovered that a different scientist had made the observations he had, and then crashed a passenger ship into planet Earth to hide it from the public? Absolutely not. He'd want to know more - know everything. Well, eventually he would, after the vomiting stopped.

The thing is, really, if he kept on this line of thinking, in a way humans had been inventing, discovering and/or believing stories like this for millennia, simply calling it religion rather than science. The only change now was that it was science. It was quantitative. Observable. Repeatable. One did not need faith that someone was up there watching. William had the pictures to prove it.

He swallowed yet again, but this time the lump wouldn't go down. His throat had gone dry, sore, rasping.

The ship suddenly ceased its shuddering, now coasting towards its next waypoint, where it would reverse its massive rotating engines and burn in the other direction - so it could slow and enter Earth's orbit without pinging out again.

"Nearly there, doctor! Should get a real good view of Africa while we're adjusting inclination. Nice clear skies over most of the continent today."

William muttered some kind of vague hum of a response. Luckily for him his body language looked to the bridge staff as though he were a man nervous and distracted due to the impending press conference, not a man being impolite and ignoring conversation. This impression was, of course, completely accurate.

Cogs turned. Feelings were processed. Past therapy came and went from his mind. Defeatism had led William to a place where he finally had to accept that he wasn't getting out of this. No running. Definitely no getting clobbered and stabbed. He had to face his problems, process them, figure out how to move through it all.

He didn't want to believe it, couldn't, but he knew deep down that he'd just made a decision. It wasn't the decision he came on to this flight intending to make, but it was the one he was starting to realise that he had to make. Perhaps that's why he didn't delete the data, why he had agreed to the press conference, gotten on the flight, gone with the captain to the bridge. Perhaps a part of him knew all along.

He was going to do it.

He was going to tell all of humanity that they existed within a gargantuan or perhaps very tiny glass dome, observed by giants. Everything that had come before and would come next could fit inside a galaxy that was no bigger than an eyeball.

A noise burst out of his lips. It was an unexpected snort.

This was followed by another, and another, and suddenly William realised he was laughing. Laughing! He just couldn't control it anymore. It was all so ridiculous.

And so he laughed.

And went to tell the human race that gods were real all along.

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