The Event (Fiction)

 Rob got up to check the status of the suction port. Jeff was watching a last century 2D movie on his tablet, something about intergalactic wars with funny looking aliens. He was amused by the primitive, and completely off-the-mark, vision of how the twenty-firsters imagined beings from other star systems looked.

The cabin was almost silent, except for the muted whirrs, dings and vibrations from the command and control system of the mining ship - Theseus XIV.

Rob and Jeff worked for the MittAdan Corporation, mining delirium from asteroids. Delirium was an essential ingredient of the neural implants, everyone used to connect to Oasis Mk243. Oasis was the hyper real, virtual space for all kinds of human activities - trade, services, retail, research, education, leisure, love and hate.

Delirium was named after Philippe DeLeri who discovered the element, and not out of a sense of irony.

Rob came back to his seat and sighed. "1 down, bloody 11 more to go" he said, referring to his deployment contract with MittAdan.

"Daddyee can we go home now, Daddyee are we there yet, Daddyee I am bored", Jeff said with a smirk

"And why don’t you go and fuck yourself" Rob retorted.

Rob continued monitoring the screens, focusing on the ones showing the physical state of SG-25080306, the asteroid they were stuck on to. Theseus XIV had a mass almost equal to a quarter of the asteroid's mass. The ship had messed up the physical forces acting on the asteroid. Any unexpected movement from the asteroid or the ship would make the ship go belly-up, literally.

A red light started flashing urgently. Before Rob could react, an alarm started blaring. Jeff jumped up and ran to Rob's screen. Rob stared at the screen, his tense face glowing red every other second, reflecting the alarm.

"What’s happening?" Jeff shouted

"The rock is turning left"

'What do you mean?"

"the rock is turning left on its longitudinal axis, half a degree every five minutes"

"That can't be possible, there is nothing for a million miles around us which can make the rock move" Jeff said.

"Check the perimeter system" Rob instructed.

Jeff ran to a green hologram that showed a 3-dimension view of the ship, the asteroid and the space around it for a 1000 km. It was clear, almost.

The perimeter system employed a series of pixels projected in 3-dimensional space, creating a hologram of a sphere with a radius of 1000 kilometers, and everything inside the sphere. Dense mass inside the sphere was shown by lit up pixels, while diffused mass of empty space was shown as black of the dark pixels.

Now the perimeter system was showing a waving tentacle, no… three waving tentacles, connected to the asteroid. As Jeff and Rob looked, two more tentacles came into the sphere projected by the perimeter system and latched on to the asteroid. The tentacles were turning the rock. Moving the side to which the ship was attached. Closer to the tentacles.

The artificial gravity of the ship struggled to adjust to the continued movement. Things started falling from tabletops and shelves. The tablet playing Jeff's movie fell on the floor. The movie was now playing at max volume, the fall must have activated the touch pad.

Rob and Jeff ran to viewports closest to the tentacles. All they could see was the dark space, with the glowing pinpricks of stars. They could not see any tentacles…until a tentacle blocked a section of space, making the stars go dark in the tapering, elongated patch. Suddenly they could see all the tentacles, there were more than 10 now.

Jeff and Rob looked at each other. And ran to the emergency communication system.

Rob activated the emergency commlink and shouted "Mayday, mayday, mayday"

"What is the nature of your emergency", a bored voice came out of the commlink.

"I…I think…we are experiencing a Cthulhu event"

"Have you initiated the Cthulhu protocol"

"What the fuck is that"

"What is wrong with you men? Don’t you ever read the instruction manual?"

"Just tell me which bloody button I need to press"

"Okay, listen to me carefully. One of you go to the rocket controls and standby. The other one press the volume up and down buttons on the left of this screen at the same time. After 10 seconds, ignite the rocket boosters only on the left quadrant…I repeat, only on the left quadrant"

Rob ran to the rocket controls and waited. Jeff pressed the volume buttons and counted 10 seconds "1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi…."

Rob felt the moments go by. His hands were shaking uncontrollably. He had to fight against his whole physical being to wait for the "10" from Jess.

He pressed the button at "9 Missi..". There was an automated voice saying - "Cthulhu protocol failed to initiate, please try after 120 seconds".

Rob looked at Jeff. The tears started to flow, half a second before they started screaming.

A deep voice came out from Jeff's tablet "I find your lack of faith disturbing".