Fiction: Terra in a Bottle

Article by R. K. Wigal

The Red Alert sounded and the entire bridge crew jumped. When the captain commanded, "On screen," the image displayed before them...the two images...filled them with awe. "All stop," commanded USS Ranger Captain Theo Goss. "This bears looking into!"

Displayed immediately before them was an enormous panorama of landscape that had no place in space. It was as if an immense piece of paradise had been carved from the surface of a planet and placed inside a gigantic glass egg. And beyond the land mass lay a seemingly familiar looking vortex opening to...to points unknown.

"Looks like the entire Los Angeles Basin from Earth orbit," mused Helmsman LuAnn Arden. "It's beautiful!"

"Does resemble L.A. a little, and it is a sight to behold," said Commander James Butcher.

"Jimmy, you scan the land form. Velas, the vortex."

The solid First Officer and the petite Vulcan Science Officer, Velas, both went to work.

"Sir, this is unprecedented. The vortex is not a tempoporal rift or a wormhole. It opens, not to another time or another region of space, but to someplace else entirely! So it must be dimensional, opening to another universe. There may be more, but scans are yielding little."

"Keep on it," The lanky captain advised. "Got anything yet, Jimmy?"

"Ya know how, when you're in the desert, the mountains are so much farther away than they look?"

"Yeah...what about it?"

"Well, here's a twist. That land form's a lot closer than it looks." Butcher was clearly puzzled. "And ya know what that means!"

"Yeah, it's also a lot smaller than it appears to be."

"Right! About a twentieth the size we'd expect!" And get this! Except for external dimensions, my sensors can't get any clear readings! It's like they're out of sync with the object! Cap, I'd like to go out and take a look."

"Sir," Lieutenant Velas interjected, "that might explain what I'm seeing through the vortex. I can't get any definitive readings from beyond the portal, but it wouldn't surprise me to find that there is a universe there more compact than our own. Sir, I'd like to accompany Commander Butcher."

"Very well. When you go for E.V.A. tether yourselves to each other and to the shuttle. Anything goes wrong, I'll tractor the shuttle."

"Aye, sir," two voices responded in unison.

Velas arrived at the object first, the commander a few seconds later. She touched the "shell" with her thickly gloved hand. She wished she could actually feel it; to know and be able to fathom it's texture. With a sigh, she activated her tricorder.

"You scan and I'll take a look-see." Butcher took out his optical scanner, maximized its magnification and began peering at the Earth-like surface below. Minutes passed before he again spoke. This time there was emotion in his voice. "Captain, this is incredible! That's not just a land mass down there, it's an island surrounded by water! Why, it's a whole encapsulated world! And get this! There are buildings! There are surface vehicles, air vehicles; I can even make out bipedal human-like beings on the surface! And everything moves at a much accelerated pace! Captain, it's a world unto itself!"

"Well done, Jimmy!" Theo Goss was ecstatic. "Velas, what are your scans telling you?"

"Scans are mostly confusing, sir, but I can say unequivocally that every object below, bipedal humanoid included, is almost exactly one-twentieth the size of everything we are accustomed to. And, Captain, I have two theories. First, the miniaturized nature of what we are examining here carries all the way down to the subatomic level. The atoms and molecules in the realm below are one-twentieth the size of the atoms and molecules in our realm. Second, this "island in space" came from the other side of the vortex."

"Understood. Keep me..." Goss began.

"Wait a minute," Butcher cut in. "I think we're being approached. A shuttle craft is coming our way."

Velas instinctively touched the shell once again, with the fingertips of her right hand. Almost in a whisper, "They want desperately to communicate with us. I can hear one's thoughts." Then, mere seconds later, she yelled, "There's no time! Velas to engineering! You've got to set the tractor beam on repulse and send that thing back where it came from! Now!"

Captain Goss barked into the Comm, "Do it!"

Velas and Butcher hurried back to the shuttle and moved quickly out of the way.

The Ranger, impulse engines and repulse beam engaged, began gently pushing the object back toward the vortex, gaining speed and momentum as she went. With but a hundred meters to spare, she veered off. All eyes watched as the "island in space" returned to it's place in the grand scheme of things, in just barely enough time before the vortex closed in on itself.

Back aboard the Ranger, Velas enlightened captain and crew. "What we encountered is a resort city housed in a virtually indestructible transparent composite shell. Called The Aerie, it orbited the centrally located planet Daron. People from many worlds vacation on The Aerie, entering and leaving via transporters not unlike our own.

"A few hours ago, a stellar core fragment ventured close enough to Daron to dislodge The Aerie from orbit. The difference in charge between Daron and the fragment created a powerful static discharge that opened the vortex between our two universes and sent The Aerie through. Thrusters now disabled, The Aerie was dead in space. The people there knew that the vortex was about to close. Their matter, being incompatible with ours, would eventually have decayed. They had to go back."

"Well done, everyone," the captain proclaimed, "Well done indeed! Bar's open 'til 2200!"