The Twins

by David Gibbs / DavidGibbs6

"The fuck I am."

"Just so you know, I've started the recording."

"What?.....Right as I said that? .....Fuck it I don't care. I want it on the record. This is suicide and I'm against it."

"Well it's on the record now." A slender short haired woman stated before pushing back, floating away from the camera and starting a monologue.

"This is the ship Amadeus and I'm captain Serena Carrier. With me... is second, Brett Foels and navigator Benjamin Wills... Our mission was to survey and scout possible asteroids for requisition. This was supposed to be a three year assignment but we have had an.....issue. We believe we hit something. The ship sustained no damage however we are no longer inside the solar system." She exhaled heavily before continuing in a less formal tone and more tentatively. "We know we are impossibly far from earth. Beyond that we don't really know much. We have enough food for two years at most, we could possibly use the plant survival kits to extend that. We have little hope of ...well anything really. We are currently in a distant orbit of an uncharted binary black hole system.

The mood was clearly sombre, and although Brett was annoyed he kept respectfully quiet during her log. Back against a locker, arms folded and his beard resting on his large chest as he looked down towards his Mag boots.

"I ran the numbers again." Ben said calmly, clearly taking it better than Brett. "As best we can tell they are correct."

"I want to point out that company policy says to use hibernation, activate distress systems and attempt to get to an emergency point." Brett said, clearly still worked up.

"Agreed." Serena said while fitting her own boots to ensure they were all facing the right way up around a circular hub that housed the computer systems. "However.....the company policy wasn't written for this situation. This is well outside the scope of anything they planned for. Those hibernation units are rough... They are a last ditch effort to preserve crew life, not transport."

"Also." Ben jumped in quickly. "We are twelve thousand light years from our solar system."

"I'm not saying it's what I want to do." Brett said in protest. "Just that it's protocol."

"You know what that means. Even if we travelled at half the speed of light, that would be a twenty four odd thousand year trip." Serena pointed out. "We are never going home, home is probably already gone, moved on in time."

"Exactly." Brett countered. "In that time there is a good chance the technology would have advanced so much that, just maybe, we could be rescued. We should at least head that direction. At least we know something is there."

The crew looked seriously depressed for a moment, no one talking.

"That still involves the Twins you know." Serena challenged. "That was your main objection."

"Forgive me for not wanting to slingshot around a couple of black holes." Brett crossed his arms again defiantly.

"You're not wrong." Serena stated empathetically. "It's a risk, and you're right.....it's scary as fuck."

"Good thing it's not a choice." Ben chimed in. "We can sit here and try live off plant support, if we don't fuck it up and starve, or we can just go at a regular 'safe' speed and literally never make it out of this system. None of us would choose this, if we had a choice. No one signed up for this." His youth clearly didn't make Ben any less serious, or less of a valued crew member.

"So we agree?" Serena asked with authority. "We need to use the holes to pick up speed. We might be the first humans to ever get this close to the speed of light."

"We might have already gone faster." Ben added. "We still don't know how we got here, or how much time we lost or gained or however you want to visualise it."

"Do you think earth is much older than us now? I mean relative." Serena queried.

"We have no way of knowing." Ben replied, his magnetic boots tethering him to the side of the round table workstation, giving him the appearance of someone leaning in his chair despite the lack of gravity.

"Well that aside." Brett said jumping in. "Slingshotting around the black holes will get us going plenty fast, if we get it right. But I'm more interested in if it goes wrong. Once the speed picks up we are going to have to calculate on the fly. Will the computing systems even keep up? And if you accidentally hit a wrong button... if we make one mistake and hit the event horizon, we are fucking spaghetti. It's not a way I want to go." Despite his macho appearances, Brett's anxiety was clear in his tones. "Then there is the aberration. You can't find stuff if you can't see it. That will limit your opportunities to slow down too.

"I think we all agree on that. But as far as a gravity assist, we couldn't have planned a better source and as Ben said, not really a choice." Serena concluded. "Given that Earth is so far out and so alone out there, I vote we head closer to the galactic centre."

"You think we might find a way station out there? Somewhere that just happens to have a bunch of human food?" Brett said sarcastically. "It's bad enough we are even thinking about going anywhere near the speed of light, but you want to go the wrong direction."

"I think the planets will be a lot more abundant and honestly I think our chances of finding something alien are about as good as people still living on earth." Serena threw back with her own brand of cynicism.

I can't believe you might actually be talking me around." Brett sighed. "I stand by it being fucking suicide though."

"You don't have to be talked around if you don't want to." Smiled Ben. "I'm the tie breaker and I'm with the Captain. Let's go find something interesting."

"You know the odds right?" Brett gave in indignantly.

"Yes, I do." Ben replied with a smile. "I just hope we get an experience, anything is better than living the rest of our lives inside this tin can."

"Ok we agree." Serena said with authority. "We will launch this recording and the beacon at a local lagrange point before we start out. We plan to use the gravity assist to slingshot us closer to the centre in the hope there is something there. With any luck we don't end up in the event horizon. Either way by the time you hear this, we will be long gone."

This is the crew of the Amadeus signing off.

With that the recorded message ended.