The Rising (Part 6 - The Enemy Within)

(continued from the original series).

The long journey was almost at its end.

The subtly lit indicators on the recessed control panel were witness to the fact that they were well within digital proximity of their destination. Looking up at the giant monitor panel before him, he could see that their journey would end in within a few days.

And that was a good thing. He was quite tired of being cooped up in their "tin can in space", and his family, though never complaining, was showing signs of irritation as well. In the old days, they used to call it "cabin madness", and after all these centuries, it still manifested itself whenever people were thrown together for long periods of time in a confined space.

He smiled. It wasn't like they would suddenly turn on each other. Maybe they'd end up being a bit curt with each other, but even that was unlikely this close to the end of their long journey. The anticipation of reaching their new home world, and starting their new life there, would take care of all that.

A faint beep drew his attention. A blinking red indicator on the control panel looked decidedly out of place. He reached across and touched it, causing his monitor to clear and display a new image.

He was puzzled. What he was seeing was a complex schematic of the inter-galactic network that bound all digital devices across the galaxy together. Under normal circumstances, this display would be a bewildering mesh of white and green lines, showing active main and backup links. To make any sense of these links, you had to zoom in on parts you were interested in, which would reveal even more complex structures of lines of varying colours. It was normal to have to zoom in several times before you got even close to the subnet of interest.

What he was seeing now was not normal.

He was at the lowest zoom level, meaning that was he was seeing was in essence a representation of the entire inter galactic network.

And instead of a mass of white and green lines, he was seeing a sparse spider web of interconnects.

For a galactic communication network, this was the rough equivalent of an entire ocean being replaced with a single tumbler half-filled with water.

And it seemed to be shrinking as well.

Worse - it wasn't just that network was just going inactive.

It was as if it wasn't there at all.

And never had been.

Someone was playing with the timeline of the galaxy.

...To be continued