The Journal of Ingeborg P. Hoffman

Calliope Island, Gulf of Guinea

April 29th, 2106

I barged in on Akuna earlier today. I was so angry I actually blacked out. (I don’t remember getting to his lab, deep in the subterranean labyrinth that makes up most of Calliope station.) I got the alert, skimmed the scan, and then I was there. Now I’m sleepless with shame. But writing this helps.

Stream thinks they have a major scoop. This afternoon the grandparents of The Majestic’s fusion reactor engineer, Kerrigen O’Mally, have “come clean.” I wouldn’t have given it a second thought - the “truthers” always emerge around the anniversary - if not for my vision yesterday. And that the grandparents O’Mally are the first of those who know about the Big Lie to speak out against us.

Corbin and Leanne O’Mally are on record saying that, precisely four years ago yesterday, the day before The Majestic was scheduled to arrive at Proxima Centauri b, Wiles and I traveled to County Armagh and paid them off to keep quiet about the mission. And that the men and women aboard The Majestic, the famous Outernauts, were recruited under false pretenses; they had been told they had signed up for what was little more than a pleasure-cruise, when instead they are bound for an intergalactic mission of grave importance. Well, they’re not wrong! Plus it turns out Corbin has a real flare for the camera.

I couldn’t help but think: where is Akuna in all of this? So I fumed down to his lab and got right in his face and asked point blank if he’d done it. (That is, if he had convinced the O’Malley’s to come forward.) He was hunched over a desk where Dr. Han Zhou was sitting when I arrived. Han, his deputy now that he is Chief Physicist, was in the control room the day when Akuna realized The Majestic was flying on a different trajectory. I notice those two are very close these days. I snapped. I said something like, “why is she always around?!” Ugh.

Anyway, Han looked shell-shocked; like she’d never heard another woman act so oddly. Then Akuna said that I was acting inappropriately, and that he didn’t want to see me, and that he has nothing to say to me. But as I was leaving, he called out to me, and said, “nothing is finished,” a phrase well calibrated to stick in my brain. It certainly has. Well that, and the smirk I saw on Han’s face behind Akuna’s back as I turned to leave.

I didn’t mention my barge-in to the rest of the senior staff when we discussed whether or not we should respond to the O’Mally’s story. Milosz, as ever, wanted to come forward. But it was Wiles who had the last word. So we all agreed that doing so would only give it life. It is best to let the story die naturally. We have a plan and we should stick to it. (I’ll tell the truth in this journal. That doesn’t mean I must abandon my discipline.) 

I met him at a dinner party in September, 2098, just over a year before the launch. Wiles Gregory. Xeno Phillipyde. The Boss. Before that I’d only ever imagined him. Really, none of us who worked at Calliope on the fusion project under Dr. Kwame Earnest Appiah (Akuna’s father, who ushered in the fusion age), Lukas, Cheung, and Arsillion, the project that forever altered the balance of international politics and started, fueled, and won the Third World War, were ever sure he was real. The man was a rumor on the island, no more than an idea. 

Around headquarters we used to wonder, rather snidely, “how could the Milosz we know have so much insight?” We knew precisely which aspects of the vision came from Kwame Appiah (he created the first practical method of harnessing fusion power), which came from Cheung (she ensured the world’s poorest nations received the ability to generate free fusion power before wealthier nations), and which came from my first mentor at Calliope Group, Arsillion (she vastly improved the efficiency of fusion harvesting and created the first viable pathway towards human immortality). As for Milosz, well, we all thought he was just about the money.

Milosz led (and still leads) in a less targeted way than the others. He seems to guide by feel. But since he had been so successful, and shown such profound foresight about the various ways the world turned, and how to exploit these trends to such beneficial ends, we laughed that there had to have been someone else guiding his decision-making, someone perhaps “with a soul.” And sure enough, there was. 

Of course, I knew who Wiles Gregory was. Everyone alive knew the enigmatic entertainment and outersky industrialist trillionaire. Despite his private nature, he was a regular fixture in the gossip scans (but this could be said of all of the senior staff. In the past few years, I’ve even found myself on some of these sites). But meeting him in person on that September night at dinner at Trena Arsillion’s villa, I wasn’t disappointed, as they say you are when you meet your idols. Not that Wiles Gregory was an idol of mine. He wasn’t. At least, he wasn’t then.

For one, the stories of his appearance are true. He’s massively tall, well over 200 cm. But he’s not gangly or awkward. He fills out his height and moves with more grace and strength than anyone I’d met before or since. When I speak to the press, I tell them that he’s from a small village in the North West China Autonomous Zone. His black hair is iridescent, and seems to shimmer. And he has purple eyes, such that I’d never seen before. 

Publicly, Wiles insists that his youthful appearance is due to Calliope Group’s immortality treatments. People accept this story. These are the same immortality treatments that have kept Milosz Lukas whizzing about at the ripe age of 165, still as fat and jolly as ever. If anything, Milosz looks younger than he did when I first met him. His sixth (and hopefully final) wife, Ronny Cheung, looks as beautiful at 106 as she was when she was 40.

I had been told I was invited to Trena’s that evening to discuss PR strategy of a far less earth-shattering kind; regarding how to present the merger of Milosz Lukas’ Calliope Group with Wiles Gregory’s Outersky Industries to the public. They were joining forces to create the most technologically advanced space-craft known to mankind: The Majestic. Calliope Group would furnish their proprietary fusion reactor engine to an Outersky-designed ship. The purpose of this vessel was to take humans out of our solar system for the first time. This meant traveling faster than the speed of light.

When the Trena opened the door to let me in (an unusual occurrence in itself, then I noticed the villa was uncommonly empty), and I saw the warmth with which those who I was to spend the evening greeted me with, I was shocked. I had never had a conversation with either Wiles, Milosz, or Ronny before. I was surprised these historic figures, these quasi-Heads of State, even knew who I was. As the meal progressed, us discussing everything it seems except the merger, I recall a creeping feeling of how odd it was that I was invited there alone without Akuna (of course, we were together at that time). To an extent, I was aware that I was being wined and dined.

After dinner, Wiles asked me to walk privately in Trena’s rock garden. As we strolled, he flattered me. Then he said he wanted me to help explain. “Old Ingeborg,” he said, with an edge to his smile, “you’ll do it, won’t you?”

“Explain what?” I asked.

He hesitated for a moment. He turned to face me head on. He went down on one knee, as if he were proposing, so that we were the same height. I saw the pupils within his brilliant purple eyes dilate, and then contract. He grunted, and stood up again. And then he told me. In a five minute conversation, he changed the world. 

We returned inside. The rest of the party, Cheung, Lukas, and Trena, were sitting on couches. Antonin, Cheung’s massive German Shepherd, almost as large as she is, was draped on her lap. When they heard us come in, they looked over in our direction expectantly. I immediately understood that they all knew the truth as well. Wiles had proof, you see. (This came in many forms. But, to give one example, I later learned that when Wiles looked at me eye to eye in the rock garden, he was using an ancient Sambat method of condensed concentration to determine whether or not someone is trustworthy. This method had proved useful countless times in the Sambat’s essential role as the prime mediators in the universe.) 

Milosz pressed a brandy into my hand. Trena motioned for me to sit next to her, and she put her arm around me. Wiles literally had a presentation prepared. 

He told us that, a few weeks before the dinner, he was contacted by a fellow Sambat, a Scout who had found him by chance while looking for a place to hide the great fleet of the Sambat, the Sambyatycon. This was a watershed moment for Wiles, the first time in 1,000 years he had communicated one of his own people. 

All was not well. His Sambat interlocutor informed him that, in an alien world called Klax, home to three of the most powerful nations in the “Sambat” Universe, a great injustice was currently underway; two of these nations were on the verge of destroying the third, or to put it another way, these two nations were committing genocide. With the rest of the Sambat still consumed by guilt, and refusing to do anything about it, Wiles believed it was his duty to set it right. His religion demanded it.

I must have been sitting with my mouth hanging open, because I remember Milosz saying to me, “Relax Ingeborg. We haven’t even told you the most interesting part.”

Wiles went on. He needed information. Thus, The Majestic, a manned ship capable of reaching that distant universe in rapid time, was to be built. And he needed a crew both to sell the story on Earth and act as good emissaries to The Crossing. “That is where you come in,” he said. Then he was interrupted by Ronny Cheung, who was calmly stroking Antonin’s head. 

“Xeno, please. Shut up.” (Serene in public, I was surprised to learn that Ronny is both vicious and hilarious in private. No other member of the senior staff has such a pronounced shift between their public and private personas.) “Ms. Hoffman, you have to agree to join us. You are free to leave right now. No matter what you decide, I promise I won’t sic Antonin on you. You have our trust.” Antonin shook his head innocently at the sound of his name. I honestly didn’t know what to say.