Somewhere deep in the desert, far from any highway or settlement, a line of black vehicles rolled across the sand and came to a slow stop. Engines died one by one, leaving only the low whistle of wind moving over the empty land. The place looked abandoned, chosen precisely because no one ever came here.
The sky stretched wide and pale above them.
Alex Vion stepped out of the lead car and closed the door quietly. Heat shimmered off the ground. Fine dust drifted across his boots. He adjusted his glasses and looked upward, eyes scanning the open sky as if expecting something.
Alex was the mission architect for the Astro Space Discovery Agency. Every bolt, every system inside the craft about to arrive had passed through his designs. His watch vibrated once.
Moments later, the air changed.
A deep vibration rolled through the desert floor. The wind picked up, spiraling sand into the air. Then, through the haze, a dark shape descended - slow, controlled, heavy. Thrusters burned bright against the sky as the spacecraft lowered itself toward the ground.
It landed with a muted thud, kicking up a wide ring of dust that washed over the vehicles and the waiting crew.
For a few seconds, no one moved. Then the engines powered down. Metal ticked and cooled. The outer gates opened with a long hydraulic hiss.
One by one, the crew stepped out.
Sofia first. Then Harrison. Jay followed carefully, steadying himself on the railing. Last came Noah Morgan, the mission commander.
All of them moved stiffly.
Even simple steps looked unfamiliar, like their bodies were relearning gravity. Support staff rushed forward, offering shoulders and guiding hands as the astronauts adjusted to Earth’s pull again.
Morgan walked slowly toward Alex.
Alex met him halfway and held his shoulder to steady him.
“The gravity in this old model is still full of flaws,” Morgan said.
Alex nodded, glancing back at the massive rotating body of the spacecraft resting behind them.
“This rocket is huge. I chose to spin it at 0.88 RPM. The inertia is less, of course, but it won’t cause nausea. The radius is huge, so it kind of balances.”
Morgan exhaled tiredly. “Take it to 1.2 to 1.4 RPM. I don’t think spinning below 2 RPM will cause nausea. Also, this rocket is 80 meters wide.”
They headed toward the waiting helicopter, still discussing adjustments like mechanics arguing over a stubborn machine.
As the team lifted off and disappeared into the distance, another convoy arrived.
Reed Solix stepped out, already annoyed, scanning the aging spacecraft with visible frustration. He led the Planetary Protection team - the people responsible for making sure nothing dangerous traveled between worlds. He stared at the craft like it personally offended him.
“Fucking old model again for this deep space mission.”
A year later when the crew of four returned to their normal lives. Morgan sat alone at a small cafe near the agency complex.
The place was almost dull. Soft music played overhead. Outside, heavy traffic passed like any normal day.
A wall-mounted screen showed breaking news - report about a UFO sighting near Antarctica.
Blurry footage. Shaky camera. Speculation.
Morgan barely reacted.
He stirred his coffee slowly.
“It’s way too common to hear fake stuff like this everywhere.”
Sofia slid into the seat across from him, setting her bag down.
“Many years ago, in 2038, there was a sudden blast in a huge fresh-food facility. There was no sign of any missile. It’s nothing like today.”
“It also isn’t proven that they’re aliens,” Morgan replied dryly.
She frowned. “Ugh, you’re so difficult... Morgan.”
Before he could respond, every screen in the café flickered.
The image warped.
Static spread across the display.
Lights buzzed.
Then a sharp alert tone cut through the room.
Emergency broadcast.
Immediate lockdown.
A year ago, the day when the crew returned from their mission.
The returned rocket sat inside the inspection hangar, surrounded by floodlights and scaffolding.
Reed’s team moved carefully around it in full protective gear.
Every surface was scanned.
A man named Finn handled several of the late-night checks.
Quiet. Efficient. Unremarkable.
During one of those nights, he flagged something unusual inside a sealed module - traces of an unknown biological signature.
The report never circulated.
By morning, everything was marked safe.
Finn stopped showing up to work soon after.
No explanation.
Days turn to years, as people slowly and selfishly adapt to their situation.
The world didn’t feel normal anymore.
Morgan stayed inside his apartment most days, watching reports stack on reports.
Cities shutting down. Borders closing. Hospitals overflowing.
The lockdown had lasted months.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
His desk was covered in files, open tabs, and half-finished notes. He pieced together fragments from different agencies, searching for something everyone else had missed.
The pattern slowly formed that wasn’t random.
It was intentional.
His phone rang.
Sofia.
“Hey, Morgan, there’s an emergency mission we’ve got to deal with.”
“Are you talking about that decades-old plan of ‘Proxima’ that was dropped will be forced onto us? Now?”
“No... no...no... The administrator dropped it because it was too expensive and risky. The mission was more like an intuition of success. Now the world is falling apart. There’s no fixing it...”
“The economy has fallen greatly since then.”
“You need to come quick... that was just an intuition once, but it’s a necessity now...”
“I know some things that I should let you know..." Sofia said with a sigh.
Almost eleven years ago, the agency issued a mission. The world was collapsing. Global warming, wars, biodiversity loss, droughts, contamination — all had reached critical levels.
The agency collected data about a planet they named “Proxima,” approximately 4.2 light-years away. Within a few years, with rapidly advancing technology and accelerated space missions, they finally obtained an image of Proxima.
During Morgan’s last mission, the agency launched the *Hyperfield Aperture*. It wasn’t properly tested. No rocket could actually pass through it and survive. The mission they planned was extremely expensive and had already taken a decade just to make even a small amount of progress.
Morgan grabbed his keys and pulled on a gas mask before stepping outside. The air felt thick. Dust and haze swallowed the streets. Buildings faded after just a few meters, like the city was dissolving into fog.
By the time he reached the agency headquarters, the massive facility looked half-abandoned. Unfinished projects sat scattered around the grounds like forgotten machines.
Inside, the hangars echoed. Jay, Harrison, and Sofia worked near the old model rocket, tools spread around them.
Morgan approached quickly.
“I need to let you know this... I found out about Finn. He worked in the Planetary Protection Organization. But he was a spy i believe. There were reports of his work schedule for a couple of nights... and it was the last before things were approved.”
Sofia gently removed his gas mask.
“You don’t need it here.”
“It feels like I live on Mars,” he muttered.
She guided him toward a sealed payload module labeled Thermal Insulation. The block looked ordinary, light and harmless.
“Inside is an aerogel matrix,” she said. "This pathogen was lyophilized and infused with that material.”
Morgan stared at it.
“So precise... freeze-dried and implanted within harmless blocks...”
Harrison joined them.
“This pathogen... is from Earth. They planted it to blame our agency and shut it down... but why is the whole world now in a state of panic and breakdown?”
Morgan’s jaw tightened.
“They made a mistake... It ruined everything. At least I want to go with the intuition and save whatever else might be left...”
Tear was the informal term everyone used for the monstrous device officially named the _Hyperfield Aperture_ . The engineers hated the nickname, but it stuck anyway. Based on speculative brane cosmology, it forced spacetime itself to split for a fraction of a second. The energy demand was obscene, enough to drain entire grids, and even then the aperture could remain stable for barely half a second. It had never been properly tested during the abandoned Proxima mission, then shelved when the risks outweighed the ambition. Now, with the world collapsing under a pandemic and resources thinning out, the same forbidden machine was being dragged back into discussion like an old weapon no one wanted to touch.
Morgan stood near the observation window of the facility, arms crossed, watching technicians move below like ants around unfinished hardware. “What about that old rocket?” he asked.
“It isn’t compatible to pass through the Hyperfield Aperture. That takes too much energy and will open for 0.5 seconds max,” Sofia replied, her voice calm but tight with fatigue.
Morgan ran the math silently in his head, staring at nothing. “If the administrator wants, as you said... we can have enough budget for this and we can also have more people for this... it can take minimum 4 years.” he muttered.
Sofia wrapped her arms around his shoulders, “Yeah, yeah... the economy is in its best state right now? I really don’t wanna think what will happen after a couple of years. This pathogen was a mystery... those people kept it hidden. They underestimated it... they caused the outbreak and lost control.”
He nodded but barely heard her. The noise of the hangar faded into a dull hum. Something else slipped in, faint and distant, like a broken radio signal bleeding through static. A voice...
I’m Ja…
James…
I now kno… know…
the truth of my world.
It’s not e…
The words fractured apart before finishing. A sharp spike of pain drove through his skull. Morgan staggered, then dropped to his knees as if gravity had suddenly doubled.
Sofia caught him instantly. “HEY!!! Are you infected?”
He tried to speak but air felt heavy in his lungs. Tears blurred his eyes, half pain, half confusion. “I don’t know... what is happening... and the pathogen doesn’t affect the brain.”
The question hung between them longer than either liked. Morgan got himself tested. Being completely safe, which didn't surprise him.
"Morgan got himself tested which is mandatory for any mission. The results came back clean, just as he expected, though that didn't explain what had happened to him.
Alex walks toward him as Morgan steps out of the clinic after his medical exam.
“Morgan… I already knew you weren’t infected,” Alex says, heading toward him, his voice casual but quick.
“How’s the plan?” Morgan asks as they walk toward the lab.
“I assume we may not see the sun for a few years,” Alex says.
“We have to do it. If Proxima is actually habitable, we can take the equipment and the blueprints. We can build our Hyperfield Aperture that connects to that planet… then…”
Morgan's eyes dart around the lab. Without a word, he walks to a nearby table, picks up a sheet of paper, and begins sketching furiously. Lines, angles, equations, the entire structure of the Hyperfield Aperture pours out of him in minutes, complete with technical specifications.
Alex takes the paper, studying it in silence. Then he grabs a pen and writes *MORGAN* across the top in bold letters.
"This is incredible. Most of this matches classified specs, but some of these modifications..." Alex trails off. "I'll paste it on your workbench. We might actually use this." Alex walks off with the paper.
Two weeks passed in a blur of preparation. The agency shifted from uncertainty to urgency, corridors filling with equipment crates and half-assembled components. Old projects were cannibalized for parts. Whatever this mission would become, it had already started consuming everyone involved.
In one of the larger labs, Jay and Harrison worked beside the skeletal frame of the new model, tools scattered across the floor, holographic schematics hovering above the chassis. The structure looked less like a rocket and more like a machine still deciding what it wanted to be.
“This will be the longest deep space mission. We need a bigger habitat module,” Harrison said, studying the layout.
“The structure I saw here... will be rotatory for gravity. So indeed, we can expand the sections. Our old chemical rockets will not help... Yes!!! we need ion drives,” Jay concluded, zooming into the propulsion section.
Ion propulsion was slow but relentless, using ionized xenon accelerated by electric fields to produce continuous thrust. Tiny force, enormous efficiency. In empty space, even a whisper of acceleration eventually became serious speed. It would be the first time a crewed spacecraft relied on that system as its primary drive.
“Ok... but our spaceship... uh... we need a nuclear reactor?” Harrison asked, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Indeed. We just need a small fission reactor. It’s gonna be alright, so let's trust the process.” Jay replied without looking up.
“Uhhhh... radiation leaks?”
“Alex must be planning something. Also, we should let Morgan know.”
By the next day, Alex had joined them, sleeves rolled up, studying the plans like a chessboard. He moved pieces around mentally, calculating mass, shielding, power draw.
“So... small nuclear reactor, ion drives, and the rest... I get it...” he said.
“And...”
“Yeahhh... didn’t forget about the rotating habitat,” Alex answered, already sketching adjustments.
Around them, the quiet rhythm of construction continued, metal against metal, tools clicking, the future taking shape one deliberate change at a time, as if the entire agency had silently agreed on one thing: if Earth was falling apart due to this Pathogen, then this ship had to work. No second chances and no rescue.
