Chapter I

 

05:23 Foothill Freeway, Pasadena, California, 05.09.2018

Howard Steven was melancholic as he drove along the foothill freeway, every morning for nearly four decades he woke up ecstatic and couldn’t wait to get to work. Howard was living the dream he was a Nasa mission controller, he had spent his entire career working on a project that had inspired millions or people and which had explored the outer reaches of the solar system. Every morning he would wake up at five am have a shower, make his breakfast, feed his fish then head into work to read the next lot of data sent from the space probes.

 

Today Howard hadn’t wanted to get out of bed, after pressing the snooze button twice he hauled himself out of bed he had felt so depressed he didn’t shower nor did he have any breakfast but out of muscle memory he fed the fish before grabbing his car keys. Howard felt depressed as today was the day that the instruments on the Voyager probes would be switched off and the programme would be disbanded permanently. Howard had never believed he would actually get to be the mission controller for the Voyager programme but the posting was a bitter sweet one as he would also never have believed he would have to be the one to close it down, he believed that he would have retired passing the baton over to someone else who would have monitored the probes until they were planned to be switched off in 2025.

 

Howard was never a drinker but last night he bought a six pack of beers from the local store to wash down the McDonald’s Big Mac meal he purchased right next to mission control. That rankled at his pride as you may think that mission control of the Voyager programme, the control room for the space probes that sent actual pictures of the planets of our solar system would be in some important government building. The building did sound important The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the Californian Institute of Technology but it was a dreary office in a small Pasadena business park next to a MCDONALD’s!

 

If the project could continue being next to McDonalds’ wouldn’t rankle as much but knowing that their mission only had hours left to run cut him to his core. Howard and his closest colleague Emilio had fought tooth and nail to keep the project going, for over a year Howard butted heads with department heads, directors and ultimately had a raging argument with the Administrator of Nasa himself which nearly ended in a fist fight- which put the final nail in Voyager’s coffin and cast a pall over Howards career when the instruments were switched off.

 

It would be easy to blame the fortunes of the Voyager programme on the Trump administration but the fame of the project had dwindled after the cameras were turned off in 1990. The truth is Voyager wasn’t sexy anymore the programme fell out of the limelight after the Pale Blue Dot image but for a swansong Howard couldn’t have asked for a better one. As much as Howard was proud of his achievements and the work he had done he often believed he was born too early he wished to have been born in a thousand years’ time to where he was sure he could have actually seen Neptune with his own eyes instead of just looking at images of the gas giant.

 

There again he doubted that any craft which would take him to Neptune would be government owned. If the transition of space exploration of today going from public to private sector was anything to go by then if he wanted to voyage to the outer solar system it would be on some gordy gargantuan interplanetary cruiseliner with dancing girls and cocktails. Howard believed that space exploration should be conducted by governments for the betterment of all mankind, instead of being controlled by the private setter whose ultimate bottom line was profit. That was in part why the Voyager programme was coming to a premature end, there just wasn’t enough money to go around in the eternal game of musical chairs for public funding and they had finally lost but it had been a good run.

 

In the end it was the lack of results which decided Voyagers fate, they had studied the interstellar medium with interesting results but it was fair to say that the data wouldn’t change much until Voyager 1 reaches AC + 793 in 40,000 years and Voyager 2 will reach Sirius in 289,000 years but by then the probes would be deaf and blind as the sensors would be inoperable and the human race may well be extinct. Howard drove his sedan off the freeway and began to meander through the urban sprawl of Pasadena heading to his place of work for the last time, he knew that the project closing down wouldn’t change the fact that the probes were still out there but it would never be the same. 

 

The computer that controlled the Voyagers would be turned off at 12:56 the exact time that Voyager 1 was launched from Cape Canaveral in 1979. Howard wasn’t even meant to be on shift today, of course he wasn’t going to miss the termination of a project he had worked on since its launch but he had planned to go in around 10:00 but he wanted to spend as much time in the office as he was able. Besides he hadn’t been able to sleep due to a mixture of nostalgia and second rate fast food, his colleague and close friend of many years Emilio Lopez was on shift and he knew his friend wouldn’t begrudge the company, perhaps he would stop off at a 24/7 convenience store and pick up a bottle of bubbly for them to share.

 

Howard was startled as his smart phone vibrated chaotically sending it dancing across his dashboard, without thinking he lunged to his right to try and catch it. In doing so he turned the steering wheel violently sending his sedan into the oncoming lane, he recovered quickly and was thankful that there was no other traffic on the road but he had missed the call. Howard did the right thing this time he indicated then pulled over outside an apartment block, he looked to his smartphone and was surprised to see that Emilio had tried to call him. Howard was about to call him back but decided against it he was nearly at the office whatever Emilio had to say he was sure it would keep until then. Howard was about to put his phone back on his dash it began to ring again in his hand.

 

Howard could see that it was Emilio calling again and his blood ran cold when he saw the time above the caller ID name, it was 05:32 it was two minutes after Voyager 1 was due to send the latest data from the interstellar medium. Calls in the early hours were not uncommon if there was a problem with propulsion or steering control but with the programme ending today Emilio wouldn’t be calling for that. Howard accepted the call he had better find out what his colleague wanted.

 

‘Hello Howard? Hello.’ Came the voice of Emilio, there was a pit in Howard’s stomach now as he heard his friend sounded frantic. ‘Howard are you there?’

 

‘I am here Emilio.’ Replied Howard.

 

‘Good I am sorry for waking you.’

 

‘You haven’t.’ reassured Howard. ‘In fact I am around ten minutes out, I couldn’t sleep I wanted to spend more time in the office.’

 

‘You’re coming here?’ asked Emilio, he sounded relieved. ‘Great good I need your help.’

 

‘What why?’ asked Howard, he could feel his heart pumping in his chest. ‘Have they come early to shut us down?’

 

‘No nothing like that.’ Replied Emilio. ‘It’s the data we have just received the latest data from Voyager 1… its I don’t know how to describe it.’

 

‘Don’t know how to describe what?’ asked Howard, he felt that he was beginning to sweat.

 

‘Voyager 1 has found something…’ Emilio’s breathing was laboured as he tried to get his words out. ‘Voyager 1 has found something a whole lot of something, you better get here quick.’

 

‘A whole lot of what?’ asked Howard, incredulously.

 

‘Its best if you see it first-hand.’ Replied Emilio. ‘I don’t know what I am looking at, well I do but I can’t explain it rationally I hope to god I am wrong.’

 

‘Explain what?’ asked Howard, becoming increasingly worried.

 

‘Howard don’t make me say it over the phone.’ Pleaded Emilio. ‘Just get here but I think it’s safe to say that that Voyager won’t be switched off anytime soon, if this is what I think it is it will change everything, nothing will be the same again.’