Post by bunkergate7 on Aug 11, 2007 21:36:37 GMT -5
Forever
Capa and Cassie fell ignominiously, grasping for purchase.
The known laws of gravity, relativity, and causality were, as surely as Capa had predicted, falling apart like so much shattering glass. Direction, mass, light, weight and form were beginning to unravel. The perfectly inset rows of warning lights above and beside them – framing the dark tiles of the vast outer fission chamber – flickered and began to blur into odd, quavering haloes. The stellar bomb – with Capa and Cassie trapped inside – drew ever closer into the folds of an inconsistent solar topography. Radioactive dust and hydrogen condensation shifted in mutable, transient arabesques on the surface around them.
Capa’s transparent blue eyes were fixed on Cassie as their tumbling descent suddenly came to a halt.
Up had become down; left had become right. There was no way of knowing how many minutes or seconds they had left as the payload followed its predetermined trajectory. Despite his education and his protean knowledge; despite every equation, theory and calculation that had set him on his irreversible course toward the dying sun -- Capa had no words, axioms, or concepts for the anomalies occurring around them. He could discern – barely – that Pinbacker had lacerated Cassie badly. The young pilot lay broken like a rag-doll next to him. She struggled to move under the weight of the increasing thrust; her bloodied hands curling into arthritic stumps under the sheer force of the oncoming dissolution. She raised her battered form on shaky palms. Her blood had commingled with Pinbacker’s moments before – covering her forearms in gore. Capa continued to gaze into her sullen eyes. Only then did he recall that he was bleeding to death beneath the taut confines of the pressure vest.
Cassie opened her mouth as if to speak; but she could not form words. Capa, also flattened prone against the slick tiles that encased the nuclear payload beneath them, drew himself closer to her. Cassie flinched a bit, still horribly shaken from their final confrontation with Pinbacker. She was undoubtedly aware that they were about to die. Cassie caught a glimmer of determination in Capa’s icy stare, obscured a bit by locks of his raven hair hanging about his face – matted with blood. Where there had once been a palpable chill in Capa’s sharp features and wistful eyes, Cassie now saw unparalleled warmth. She finally found the words that had eluded her in the millennium of seconds; the eternity that had unerringly passed as time and space became undone.
“Finish it.” She managed.
Capa shifted his head, painfully coughing under the unbearable pressure pushing them against the bulkheads. He reached out a shaky hand and pried Cassie’s fingers open. In a living collage of slow, deliberate movements, he weakly grasped her hand. The fission chamber groaned and began to shift into unkind angles, and turbulence brought their frail bodies together. Capa pressed his angular cheek against Cassie’s ear. His lips formed a response – its delivery seemed endless, formless, and unbearably painful.
“Not without you.”
Tears welled and singed her supple face as Capa somehow helped her to her feet. They slipped in their own blood before a proper foothold was gained. He turned them toward the decline – the path leading to the heart of the stellar bomb.
“I want you with me – when –“. Before he could finish, time froze for a nanosecond and then jarred them back to reality. Capa, cognizant of the temporal dilation that had just occurred, knew that they had to act immediately. Cassie, instinctually, knew this too. She deliberately unlocked her arm from the slender physicist -- as if to insist that he proceed without her. He tightened his grasp around her waist and pulled her along regardless.
______________________________________________________________________
Uncaring of the impossible trek Capa and Cassie were attempting within, the bomb fell into the roiling flames of the terminal sun. The shield protecting the stellar bomb became ablative and blew apart into infinitesimal particles. The massive structure was left a solitary cube, spinning like a dying sparrow into eventual, inexorable immolation.
Somewhere inside, the dying pair braced themselves along a concatenated platform – slowly proceeding toward the activation panel. Somewhere in the heart of the stellar bomb.
Capa’s fingers were leaden, and he could barely complete the sequence that he had practiced for months. Before this moment, the entire affair of arming the bomb had become second nature. Cassie clung to him. Straight railings around them were warping into convex patterns. They had seconds left to live.
There was one more switch to be toggled before the device commenced its rapid detonation. Capa paused as he felt Cassie’s small, shaking hand touch his cheek.
“Robert”. She managed. “I’m not scared anymore.”
Their eyes met for the last time. Robert Capa uttered his last words with unequivocal certainty, and he simultaneously activated the bomb’s final switch.
“I’ve always loved you.”
The panels of the deadly payload around them opened up – showering them in cascading arcs of blinding blue light. Grays of unquantifiable radiation wracked their disintegrating bodies. At once, an atomic maelstrom danced pointedly and beautifully around them. Milliseconds before they died, the eroding tiles of the stellar bomb became inscrutable, and the very fires of the sun itself cocooned them in a searing chrysalis. Their last moment of sentience was a billionth of a second. Capa and Cassie fell into each other, their eyes transfixed as their matter joined that of the murderous, yet strangely welcoming, star. As the radiant inferno -- fusing and pulsing around them – raged and roiled with unconscionable sublimity, Capa and Cassie only saw each other.
I think it will be beautiful.
Their bodies became one, then nothing, then everything.
Capa and Cassie fell ignominiously, grasping for purchase.
The known laws of gravity, relativity, and causality were, as surely as Capa had predicted, falling apart like so much shattering glass. Direction, mass, light, weight and form were beginning to unravel. The perfectly inset rows of warning lights above and beside them – framing the dark tiles of the vast outer fission chamber – flickered and began to blur into odd, quavering haloes. The stellar bomb – with Capa and Cassie trapped inside – drew ever closer into the folds of an inconsistent solar topography. Radioactive dust and hydrogen condensation shifted in mutable, transient arabesques on the surface around them.
Capa’s transparent blue eyes were fixed on Cassie as their tumbling descent suddenly came to a halt.
Up had become down; left had become right. There was no way of knowing how many minutes or seconds they had left as the payload followed its predetermined trajectory. Despite his education and his protean knowledge; despite every equation, theory and calculation that had set him on his irreversible course toward the dying sun -- Capa had no words, axioms, or concepts for the anomalies occurring around them. He could discern – barely – that Pinbacker had lacerated Cassie badly. The young pilot lay broken like a rag-doll next to him. She struggled to move under the weight of the increasing thrust; her bloodied hands curling into arthritic stumps under the sheer force of the oncoming dissolution. She raised her battered form on shaky palms. Her blood had commingled with Pinbacker’s moments before – covering her forearms in gore. Capa continued to gaze into her sullen eyes. Only then did he recall that he was bleeding to death beneath the taut confines of the pressure vest.
Cassie opened her mouth as if to speak; but she could not form words. Capa, also flattened prone against the slick tiles that encased the nuclear payload beneath them, drew himself closer to her. Cassie flinched a bit, still horribly shaken from their final confrontation with Pinbacker. She was undoubtedly aware that they were about to die. Cassie caught a glimmer of determination in Capa’s icy stare, obscured a bit by locks of his raven hair hanging about his face – matted with blood. Where there had once been a palpable chill in Capa’s sharp features and wistful eyes, Cassie now saw unparalleled warmth. She finally found the words that had eluded her in the millennium of seconds; the eternity that had unerringly passed as time and space became undone.
“Finish it.” She managed.
Capa shifted his head, painfully coughing under the unbearable pressure pushing them against the bulkheads. He reached out a shaky hand and pried Cassie’s fingers open. In a living collage of slow, deliberate movements, he weakly grasped her hand. The fission chamber groaned and began to shift into unkind angles, and turbulence brought their frail bodies together. Capa pressed his angular cheek against Cassie’s ear. His lips formed a response – its delivery seemed endless, formless, and unbearably painful.
“Not without you.”
Tears welled and singed her supple face as Capa somehow helped her to her feet. They slipped in their own blood before a proper foothold was gained. He turned them toward the decline – the path leading to the heart of the stellar bomb.
“I want you with me – when –“. Before he could finish, time froze for a nanosecond and then jarred them back to reality. Capa, cognizant of the temporal dilation that had just occurred, knew that they had to act immediately. Cassie, instinctually, knew this too. She deliberately unlocked her arm from the slender physicist -- as if to insist that he proceed without her. He tightened his grasp around her waist and pulled her along regardless.
______________________________________________________________________
Uncaring of the impossible trek Capa and Cassie were attempting within, the bomb fell into the roiling flames of the terminal sun. The shield protecting the stellar bomb became ablative and blew apart into infinitesimal particles. The massive structure was left a solitary cube, spinning like a dying sparrow into eventual, inexorable immolation.
Somewhere inside, the dying pair braced themselves along a concatenated platform – slowly proceeding toward the activation panel. Somewhere in the heart of the stellar bomb.
Capa’s fingers were leaden, and he could barely complete the sequence that he had practiced for months. Before this moment, the entire affair of arming the bomb had become second nature. Cassie clung to him. Straight railings around them were warping into convex patterns. They had seconds left to live.
There was one more switch to be toggled before the device commenced its rapid detonation. Capa paused as he felt Cassie’s small, shaking hand touch his cheek.
“Robert”. She managed. “I’m not scared anymore.”
Their eyes met for the last time. Robert Capa uttered his last words with unequivocal certainty, and he simultaneously activated the bomb’s final switch.
“I’ve always loved you.”
The panels of the deadly payload around them opened up – showering them in cascading arcs of blinding blue light. Grays of unquantifiable radiation wracked their disintegrating bodies. At once, an atomic maelstrom danced pointedly and beautifully around them. Milliseconds before they died, the eroding tiles of the stellar bomb became inscrutable, and the very fires of the sun itself cocooned them in a searing chrysalis. Their last moment of sentience was a billionth of a second. Capa and Cassie fell into each other, their eyes transfixed as their matter joined that of the murderous, yet strangely welcoming, star. As the radiant inferno -- fusing and pulsing around them – raged and roiled with unconscionable sublimity, Capa and Cassie only saw each other.
I think it will be beautiful.
Their bodies became one, then nothing, then everything.