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    Let There Be Light: A Short Story
    Let There Be Light: A Short Story
    Let There Be Light: A Short Story
    Ebook35 pages47 minutes

    Let There Be Light: A Short Story

    By C. Gockel

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    About this ebook

    Beneath the harsh gaze of Proxima Centauri, a lone researcher is battling against time. To survive and find her way home, she'll need more than science.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherC. Gockel
    Release dateNov 25, 2018
    ISBN9781386729907
    Let There Be Light: A Short Story

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      Book preview

      Let There Be Light - C. Gockel

      Let There Be Light

      Let There Be Light

      A Short Story

      C. Gockel

      C. Gockel

      Copyright © 2018 C. Gockel

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author, subject Attention: Permissions, at the email address below:

      [email protected]

      Created with Vellum Created with Vellum

      Contents

      About Let There Be Light

      Let There Be Light

      Also by C. Gockel

      About Let There Be Light

      Beneath the harsh gaze of Proxima Centauri, a lone researcher is battling against time. To find her way home, she’ll need more than science.

      Let There Be Light

      Beneath the gaze of Proxima Centauri, I am locked in a life or death struggle. The research station’s main power cable will not budge. Panting in the station’s oxygen-poor air, weighed down by the higher gravity of planet Proxima Centauri-B, I wrestle until I finally succeed in detaching it from the remaining barely operational oxygen converter. Instantly, my ears are pierced by a wail of protest from the fission capsule. For a moment I am unsure; my instincts scream that this is madness. But then I take a breath. It might work, and even if it doesn’t, at least my last moments will have meant something.

      I make my choice. Fumbling, I manage to reroute the line to what I’m calling my Lightsphere. The wailing warning cuts off. Without the hum of the oxygen converter, the research station is eerily silent.

      I look up through the thick glass of the skylight to Proxima Centauri. The star is a red dwarf, and without an atmosphere to warp its hue, it looks more like what it really is. In the velvety darkness of the vacuum, Proxima Centauri is a brilliant orange flame.

      I shouldn’t have looked through the window in the crematorium. The flames around the coffin were burned in my mind, and I couldn’t unsee them as I stood in front of the whiteboard.

      My dry erase marker slipped to the floor. I was a ghost, immaterial, unable to hold onto it… unable to hold onto my emotions. The equations on the board blurred.

      Bowing my head, I

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