The Beacon: Hard Science Fiction

way through his list. Well, that was pretty much a waste of time. You have to realize when you’ve lost.
He pressed the app’s reset button and the universe returned to its starting position. Peter smiled. It must be typical for us humans that the Earth was at the center of this. Would an astral projector developed by extraterrestrials do the same with their home planet?
He looked at the time. Franziska had to be coming soon, but maybe there was still time for one last look. He stood in front of the column, in the center of everything. The universe spread out in all directions to infinity, and the further he went into the distance, the faster the spread. The seven stars on his list were arrayed all around him. He put in a spherical shell, but even with Earth in the center, it didn’t match the distribution of the stars. Before he gave up he tried other shapes but nothing fit. His idea was simply no good. He needed a new one.
The thought hit him like a punch in the stomach. The center was the problem. Why should one of the stars, or even the sun, be at the center of the action? The center was more the trigger around which everything revolved. That was his mistake.
He tried it differently. He did not even need to change the representation. He tried it again with a spherical shell. But this time he didn’t start with a predetermined center. He let the software calculate a spherical shell based on the coordinates of the seven objects, on which all seven stars must be located. The program took a moment. As soon as it had reported success, he tapped on ‘Show.’
A gigantic shell appeared in the universe. Of course, it seemed gigantic only from his perspective. It measured a few hundred light-years, so it was a flyspeck compared to the entire universe. The shell glittered silver. If he wanted, he could choose a different color in the app. In reality, the shell didn’t exist. It only established a relationship between the seven stars, a relationship that presumably no one even knew about yet. Holinger and her team certainly didn’t, since they were just trying to find explanations for the disappearance of the stars.
But for all seven of them to lie randomly on the shell of an imaginary sphere, what was the probability of that? Quite low. It was much more likely to indicate that there was a common cause for their disappearances, and this cause could be found in the center of the sphere. But that was not compelling. What was happening there may simply be spreading out along a particular path, for whatever reason. Peter nevertheless had the app calculate the coordinates for the center of the sphere. No celestial body was located there.
What should he do now with his knowledge? He had to write Holinger. Maybe more candidates lay on this spherical shell, but the team had overlooked them to this point. Peter stepped in front of the shell and touched it. He felt a slight tingling on his skin, even though there was nothing there—pure imagination.
He went to the column. Franziska would be arriving any minute. He was about to make the hand gesture to turn it off when it came to him—the spherical shell was also touching the column. Peter couldn’t see it, but he knew. That was precisely where Earth was. The solar system, to be exact. The sun was a yellow dwarf, just like the vanished stars.
Peter shut down the system and fell out of the cosmos and into the living room. Of course, the sun was a yellow dwarf, but it still existed, because just then, it sent a ray through a crack in the blind. The fact that the sun lay on the spherical shell was either a small problem or a big one: a small one, if it invalidated his theory about the progression of the process by which the stars disappeared; and a big one, if the sun itself should be a part of this process.
It was a small problem, he decided.
A short time later, he heard the clacking of Franziska’s boots in the garden. She crossed the terrace directly and proceeded into the living room, where she took off her boots before kissing him on the lips in greeting.
“Aha, have you been playing?” she asked.
The column was warm and still extended in the middle of the room. There was no use denying it. “I’ve been doing some research,” he said. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Then you’re not done with your preparation?” she asked.
“Not quite.”
“Good. Then I’m sure you won’t mind if I make a date with Greta tonight?”
“I... No.”
Yes, it bothered him a bit. She usually only visited her friend about once a month, and now three times in a week? On the other hand, it gave him more time to decide what to do about the lost stars.
“Great. We’re going to the movies.”
“Then you’ll be back by ten.”
“No, we’re going to Munich, and we want to do something after the movie. I’ll stay overnight with Greta again.”
“I see. You’ll meet the director there, too?”
“Yes, honey. I’m so glad to be able to use my Spanish again. It was getting quite rusty. You know how much I love the language.”
“Yes, I know that.”
“Thank you for your understanding. Have you eaten anything yet? I’m so hungry! The session was terribly boring again.”
It was quiet in the house. Typically, the evening news would be on at this time, but he’d already skimmed the day’s events online. Franziska had already been gone for an hour. She’d looked very nice and had been sporting her favorite perfume. Maybe he should have insisted on accompanying her after all. While he couldn’t imagine her cheating on him, his imagination wasn’t very perceptive. It always started out just like this in the dramas they sometimes watched together—the husband neglects his wife, and she goes elsewhere for companionship.
Franziska