The Case In The System Pur - short story

The Case in the System Pur (epub)
The Case in the System Pur (mobi)
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Prologue

A great gravity tidal wave pulled at the seas of __, caused the amassing of a new mountain, and spurred so much the eruptions of many places thought once dormant. A century would pass before the climate of __ appeared to resemble somewhat a place that had been known. The origins of the destructive wave weren't exactly well explained, seemed to surface as likely as it had come and gone. Some conjectured that it were some dark hidden matter that must have sojourned the recesses of deep space, only its presence were known in the vicinity of some galactic radial neighborhood. At least it were thought not originating in presence to the current galaxy itself because astronomers on the planet ___m noticed nothing of local orbital variations. At least not until a variation were spotted ten years prior in another star system. The effects to the star could be seen thereafter as though it star were turned inside out with dazzling if not worrisome releases of energy, but this were the least of problems it should seem. The worst yet were that the entire system hadn't been perturbed from its present relative orbital motion. Of course, this weren't so dramatic as in the star literally traveling quite clearly through the night sky as a planet should seem relative the other stars in a local system, but shifting in different directions that overtime conspicuously revealed itself.

Then a rush were on by astronomers, scientists, and engineers to verify by way of historically recorded astrometric data that might have revealed anything of a similar pattern that might have evaded notice up until now. Consistent survey sweeps of stars were recorded across broad arc swaths. In centuries passing, such data were kept. While anomalies could be spotted if only found by resolution of the math, machine and instrumentation available at such a time, but oddly enough nothing could be found clearly in previous data. Many stars had wobbles of one sort or another, and apparent resolution of the wobbles themselves were only magnified in time, so that the wobbles would appear more like many wobbles based upon its own local gravitational exertions. This seemed to be consistently spotted of data at least in recorded astrometrics, but not only a strange movement in the start of system __ should occur that hadn't previously known, but its appeared to be moving unusually enough in time lapse.

While alarm had been raised, then general consensus agreed little prediction could be made. Only this variation oddly enough found in a star system some ten light years away could tell little of the trajectory of some unseen dark matter if it had existed, and what matter remaining at levels too level for discernible detection because of weaker luminosities and internal radiance between such star and the present system of __m should only make difficult subsequent detections. Nothing having passed up until then at that time ten years prior when detection were first made, indicated that any dark matter neither moved at the speed of light, or indicated if a course were in some other direction altogether. Subsequent planning and contingencies by governments themselves were limited.

-2-

The mysteriousness of the detected gravitational signature however resurfaced only later, this time approximately ten years past. Nothing much could be done. The world should have unfolded on itself and most if not all life on such planet cease to be, but this weren't the case. From one moment all life suddenly reappeared in what should have appeared to be a different planet but were their own. Their star appeared slightly compressed, more so eccentric in shape and having appeared slightly larger larger in their sky then they had previously known. Few might have guessed where they might have lived before. Except that now as if having awoken from a sleep, they wandered about their once cities that appeared differently arranged to them. Cinder cones occupying farmer's fields in some cases, and houses perched about the many ledges of new mountains. Impossible if not impassable roads set about inclining the steepest valley walls in some cases of great metropolis that appeared blanketing portions of skyline. In other cases, seas completed invaded cities. The odd aspect of all this were not only had people not died as appeared to be the case for much of life, but that they too were somehow different. At least many had the feeling that they somehow knew something about their new world. Like how to get to the grocer when the grocer were several thousand feet overhead, and seemingly all but impasse should abound, or how to retrieve a car that were now resting near the bottom of a lake bed. Solutions of the simplest sort might have been simply riding the mile high escalator, finding one shopping basket where it were parked in the usual grocers entrance, only the store it seems were so vastly huge and stretched alongside the store shelves. Strangely enough nothing of the familiar constructions of uniformity no longer existed. Designers and architects sometimes wept, while others laughed. Guards stood idly by in shock as the prisoners of a local prison, once having roamed so often in their kept spaces, walked through the stretched and elongated chain links of a security fence, and a prime minister found it exceedingly difficult gaining entrance to quite small residence which appeared miniature relatively so, a passerby happenstance landed an errant foot in the wrong place, and the dwelling couldn't be saved.

The other strangest aspect of all this were that people walking through ordinary space could be relatively sensed in more obvious ways growing and shrinking without warning, or that they themselves when asked to run a straight line would suddenly find themselves oddly walking or running some curved manner. Story headlines broke that the space time curvatures were neither uniform, and something of unseen matter were present causing spatial distortions, but why were they alive at all if this should be the case, and even stranger spatial distortions weren't causing noticeable exertions on surrounding matter? At least this some expected that if matter itself were causing distortions in surrounding space causing noticeable dilations, it were expected that gravitation as a common physical manifestation should be expected, but this weren't the case.

Only oddly enough at times given the right locality, it seems the star overhead appeared to be dancing around in the sky, but in other places, the star were where it should normally have been expected.

Some recalled with religious fervor miracles while others weren't exactly sure. Only when it appeared that events, however, so strange and exotic that might have evoked the sentiment of so many emotions and passions alike, now everything should seem ordinary about such events even if rightly so much the world hadn't adapted.

-3-

The Story

Jom were awakened by screaming the morning when the 'wave' had passed. The windows in his small two room apartment were closed which alarmed him so much more. He hadn't heard the warnings given otherwise which had sent people scurrying into the streets, but even then he hadn't seen this exactly as his window shades were drawn only because he often would wake in the earlier morning hours unable to sleep until dawn came. He slowly rolled himself out of bed. He thought he might check the morning news on his console as he normally would and chew on lipid bearing toast, and while no one in years had sent him any personal emails generally that couldn't be categorized as solicitations of one sort or another, he likely found some personal interests checking even this, or as he would have well reasoned, just in case, years in passing someone special to him should suddenly surface that were critical in changing his life directions. Jom had stumbled forth to the bathroom first, his mouth were dry, and he almost fell through to the great chasm that instead appeared to him. He held on to the door between his bedroom and bathroom that were so much the difference between life and death. Somewhere Jom heard his cat calling, and soon his cat, Rummer appeared to him walking the length of what appeared to be a long stretching and twisted corridor. The cat appeared like an ant winding itself along the stalk of a tree branch circling round and round.

Jom had placed his foot back onto the ledge representing at present his bedroom. More carefully studying his room, the windows appeared mostly the same except for one which were slightly bent. His shoes, however, by his bedside only appeared enormous, and then swept around this area it were as if a magnifying lens had been focused about his bedside where each granular hair of shag carpeting pile could be seen. Jom rushed to a nearby window. Drawing the blinds, now he could see more clearly the chaos of the city that once were. Buildings appeared oddly angled, alongside windows, and warped mountains with people streaming alongside every ridge. He could see some having fallen while others appeared impossibly walking the vertical walls. Jom almost had forgotten that the great mountain before him were once the central business district of the town __.

In the nearby apartments people were shouting and screaming, while another woman had fashioned a rope made of cloth sheets segments tied end for end. Only it were so hard to tell where the ground begun, and relatively speaking the cloth rope seemed to be dangling for what should seem the reflected images found between mirrors, seemingly perspectively almost vanishing from site, but a pocket of ground could more clearly be seen in one other location which were situated several apartments over.

It appeared that the ledge above this location were vacant.

Jom had stepped outside the window to the nearest of a the apartment building exterior facade, a small ledge provided foothold for his toes while he held in his right hand the window frame. He remembered that he were four floors up, which meant they must have been forty feet up. If only he could reach the woman he could clearly be of better help trying to figure something out. When he had provided himself as much distance as possible stretched between his open window with outstretched hand, he jumped sideways, catching his hands on the rails of a neighboring balcony. He could see his neighbor more clearly now except for the appearance of a stationary mirror of the room in the space between her and the window, and the shape of the room passing through this mirror were disfigured and warped. Jom hadn't given any regard to this only attempting to reach here now, but as he passed into the mirror, he could see her image suddenly becoming more distant, as though she were now miles away suddenly. He stretched his arms which now extended so far that he could barely see his hands. Jom then stepped out of the spherical aberration. He couldn't see her anymore. 'Where had she gone?'

He recognized the room and what should seem her kitchen disfigured beyond recognition. He yelled her name. A faint response seemed to come from all around. As if she literally migrated inside his head at the moment, yet he couldn't see her, but he could sense her or feel her somehow so near to him. He had the thought of the made rope. He yelled out loud that he were going to attempt to make an attempt for the next door balcony, and that she should follow him.

Jom edged his way carefully to the ledge of the next door apartment. Only this were much better. He called out his neighbor's name. She weren't there. He could feel the rope now bearing mass. Then the rope had gone slack. He lowered the rope over the ledge. He could see that it were near to the bottom, at least close enough so that the drop should seem reasonable from his vantage, but hesitantly Jom thought alternately that some a door in this apartment room might provide easier escape. Jom threw a nearby balcony chair into the balcony's entrance which caused the window to shake violently for a brief moment but not break. Then he noticed smoke billowing from a nearby open window.

Jom covered his shirt with his face. His eyes were burning he could scarcely see in front him inside the foreign room. He hadn't known this neighbor so well, who he were, another anonymous person that he might have generally passed once or twice in the hallway. No one replied to his cries now, however. He could scarcely make out the lines of a bed. In it he could sense a stationary figure. Jom rushed to the person laying there. A billow of roiling hot smoke filled his lungs and burned his eyes so much that he could scarcely stand while nothing further could be done to revive the man whom appeared motionless through all commotion. Stumbling back to the window that he entered, Jom climbed back on the ledge.

-4-

Jom landed somewhere near a curb's edge on a street now flooded ankle high with water while people on foot wandered past. A group of business men passed near Jom chatting amongst themselves. Having stopped only several feet from a shop front which were situated at the group's feet, the group remained poised in some casual social conservation that could have been expected during some luncheon hour. Their voices vanished suddenly although Jom could see them clearly laughing. One of them reached for the door at their feet leading to a smoke shop, and as quickly as the departed. Passerby s clutching casually bags as to be expected on any other day prior were as likely amongst other's whom wore disoriented and dazed expressions. The buildings seemed swirling in Jom's mind. Compulsively he sought nearby steps of a narrow corridor between nearby buildings.

A child tugged at Jom's the sleeve of his shirt. Jom must have been asleep, hadn't remembered that he were perched at the foot of the steps like sometimes other city wanderer's that hadn't a place to sleep for the night. The child appeared to be mumbling words at him. At least then Jom hadn't comprehended much of anything. The buildings themselves appeared less obviously moving in mind or from what he could tell at times literally, and his stomach weren't churning as before.

'Mira wants you to meet __ __ Column. __ __waiting __,' the child spoke this time more audibly.

Who were Mira anyways? Jom thought, and this aside he hadn't been there in years. At least not since he moved from the old neighborhood where it more likely a place of convenience where often times he might have likely found himself in a dark corner with drink in hand considering so much how life could only be more perfect if time were stretched then from now until the next day's eternity, and he were disfavored anyways as a local patron sometime ago when he were in one his more paranoid and hostile bouts. Most had forgiven him for that, he figured, but some of the regulars just hadn't let it go.

The road to the Column had always been a winding destination before and added to this Jom were walking like others precariously on glass and the trim molding of buildings which shifted and swayed by the weight of so many people on foot would provide. It weren't as if the buildings collapsed. At least there were still the building whole that existed beneath. Jom could see the bodies of people that had fallen through glass at times only beneath in piles at the back of the buildings amongst so much that might have existed on shelves or racks piled and scattered around. Someone already thought to lay planks of wood between the openings of doorways in these cases.

Convoys of military haulers appeared dispersed at the Hish intersection although at times largely empty. More often Jom could hear screaming coming from nearby buildings, alongside automatic gunfire. When the soldiers appeared, they were pushing people bound with their wrists behind their backs and blindfolded through streams of people on either side of the row of the military trucks parked. The soldier's faces were as dark as the night, as were the the captive peoples in their possession that were placed at times in the back of trucks while the soldiers at times glanced around having taken little notice of any other groups of people around.

A crew of peoples had cordoned off streets in what appeared to be scenes for a movie on a nearby street. Artificial leaves were strewn about what appeared to be a stone laid arched wall covered in vines that shouldn't have existed were it stood, only Jom imagined that the camera angles would noticeably disguise what should exist beyond the frame itself, and then Jom could see the crew closer as they exhaled. The frost of their breaths could be seen, not like him or others around present, but as if they existed in some other space and time.

Amidst the commotion only few seemed to notice the others. Where at any moment pools of blood, tears and a stench ridden atmosphere of chaos. Suddenly celebrations were amassed in the streets. The military s convoy gone, blossom's on trees, the smell of fresh warm rain laden in the air. Jom lost track of the advance and retreat of shadows, darkness, and passing of light. The Column were still there as usual half buried into the earth and as he imagined likely a cool as the subterranean stones would emit, its shape and form appearing to Jom as he remembered it. Summer sweltering and ushering him onward.

Medics were tending bodies inside the Column's bar. Mira, the woman Jom had never met, must have noticed him, and waived to him calling his name so loudly that her voice should seem as if next to his ear. Her makeup were slightly melting so much when he met her, he thought instinctively replying, 'Is this too much here?'

'Oh, no,' she replied brushing streaming tears of mascara aside. Jom felt then a hypodermic needle thrust into his arm, while someone were yelling and screaming to another medic. Jom calmly insisted he weren't fine. Mira insisted otherwise.

-5-

Several times Jom felt his head as though it were like a stone being struck against another solid object. Several times more, the memory of Mira gone, and a previous history in life to go with this. Dark matter coalesced all around, more acutely the city had become more steeply walled in upon itself, and so many fragments and memories in time resurfacing in a chaos of time that should scarcely exist. Ghosts were reappearing all around. He couldn't sense who or what he were anymore let alone the place that he lived in.

Then the world reappeared in a more familiar form, albeit much wrecked, but there.