A Picture Paints 1,000
459 Words
Jumpgate Evolution fans were given a chance
to win a beta key by writing a story based on the picture below. There were many
excellent entries -- which made for a serious judging challenge. The winning story
was authored by Aelgas and tells a melancholy take as the leader of a Solrain exploration
team reflects upon the massive destruction they find as a result of The Shift.
Enjoy . . .
Elation… because
appointment to the prestigious leadership of a task force investigating newly-discovered
systems such as this was what occupied the dreams of ambitious young scientists like
Deihirr. But now, as he gazed somberly on the twisted, tortured wreckage that stretched
across the void of space; that reached out like a skeletal finger to point at the dead
planet below, he felt almost… ghoulish.
There had been so much death and destruction in The Shift. Some people, Deihirr knew,
eminent scientists among them, attributed the phenomenon to the Amananth. Such people saw
The Shift as the deliberate act of a sentient, mysterious, powerful race. To Deihirr,
however, it seemed more like a cosmic tsunami, a natural disaster sweeping up whole star
systems on the whim of Chance and in the process depositing the Solrain, Octavian and
Quantar, along with so much other galactic flotsam and jetsam, into the backwater of Space
in which they now found themselves.
So, was this wreck one of the missing Solrain stations, as the Forerunner team that had
seeded the first jump here had hoped for in their report? Or was it the remnant of some
other race? Had some other unfortunate civilization also been sucked into the maelstrom of
The Shift and washed up light years from home? Were those tangled remains floating
motionless in the airless nothing simply another mute monument to the fragility of all
things in a Universe that was was, by Nature, violent?
One thing was certain, that planet and its station must have held life once, perhaps
billions of souls going about their daily lives. But beneath the searing radiation of the
young blue star that was the primary of the system into which The Shift had tossed them
up, no life could long survive. Their new, adopted Sun had killed them.
Deihirr frowned. If all of that had been the act of a sentient race, then 'The Shift' was
a superfluous label… that act already had a name, one already all too familiar in the
annals of human history. Genocide. Indeed, but had the Amananth carried out that atrocity
on a truly unfathomable scale?
Deihirr shuddered… there was a chill in the air by the transparisteel window which
the view outside did nothing to alleviate… and there were too many questions.
With a heavy sigh Deihirr turned away from the viewport. His shuttle and its powerful
scanning equipment awaited him, as did the answers that were his responsibility to find.
The dead would give up their secrets… one day.
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