Riding the skipping stone.

Dr. Heinz and I sat in the staging room, he poured himself a glass of vodka and sipped it. He seemed even more nervous than me, and I was the one sealed into the space suit. The harsh white flood lights, made the doc seem even paler than usual.

"You really think that's a great idea doc? I don't need you getting hammered while you strap me into a quantum slingshot." I said.

I reached for the bottle to pour myself a shot. Dr. Heinz slapped his hand over the rim of the glass. He shook his head. "No, Jeff. None for you. I've done my job, I built the damn thing. And there's not much else I'm useful for once the machine starts."

"Alright doc, walk me through it one more time." I said. Watching his hand tremble as he pulled the bottle away from me. Damn, he was nervous.

"Trying to distract me eh?... Sure, one last time..." Dr. Heinz said with a sigh. He slammed back the rest of his drink with a grimace and continued. "Think of it like a rock, skipping across the surface of a pond. Your pod, it acts like the rock. But, instead of water we simply skip it across the surface of space time. You start in this facility, and we bounce you to the sister facility in Arizona."

"Heh. Simply... everything about this place just screams simple." I said with a grin as I looked at the labyrinth of cables, conduits and pipes that covered the walls of the room around us.

"Don't get smart with me cowboy. I could change a one to zero and skip your ass right into the center of the sun." He said with a scowl.

We both went deadpan for a few seconds and locked eyes. I broke first, cracking a smile, I stood up to do some stretches before the party got started. A crackly voice came over the comm system in my helmet. "Icarus, please make your way to the vehicle."

"Icarus... I still think that is an awful code name for this project. Didn't he die testing out a new set of..." I trailed off as I thought about the joke that Dr. Heinz had made. I turned to see him slam another shot of vodka as he stood to accompany me to my pod.

The seat of the pod was custom built for me. It felt like I had been turned into an action figure, wrapped in form fitting plastic. I was on display for all the sensors and cameras to track every biological response I had while being flung across the fifth dimension. My helmet popped into the cradle of the seat, and Dr. Heinz pulled the straps tight around my chest.

"Good luck son." He said as he leaned close to my ear. "Don't worry... everything is going to be just fine."

Dr Heinz, grasped hatch and swung it into place. Sealing the pod, he pressed his hand to the small viewport like he was saying goodbye. I've done a lot of test flights, but something about the way he was acting made me pretty nervous. I fought it out of my mind, it was time to go to work.

I checked all the lights, they were green across the board. I triggered my mic and told the control room I was go for launch.

The crackly voice once again came out of the speaker in my helmet. "All systems nominal. We are go for launch in T MINUS 30 seconds. Launch at 1300 June 8th 2022. Godspeed Icarus."

My brain counted down the seconds. I felt my throat tense up as the muscles of my body clenched with anticipation. All the tests had gone fine, the animals came back fine in their little animal shaped pods. I told myself I needed to unpucker my butthole, cause this test was going to go exactly to plan.

"Go for launch in Ten... Nine... "

The machinery around me started to hum. The feeling of static electricity buzzed across my skin, and through me. I started to see stars like I had taken a blow to the head. I swallowed hard as I watched the fireworks go off in my head.

"Three... Two... One... Lau..."

I think I passed out for a second from the force of the pod. I came to seeing strips of light flashing past the view port in the hatch. My stomach was flip flopping like a fish fighting for its life. I fell back on my training. Deep breaths, check the readouts, make sure the data is being captured.

I checked my mission timer, 10 seconds into the 25 second test. I don't think the higher ups will be happy once I tell them this wasn't going to be replacing airplanes any time soon. Flying in this hunk of junk felt like a bear was tearing at my insides.

WHAM! The pod shook violently. I thanked the doc under my breath for the form fitting seat. I surely would have snapped my neck if I wasn't strapped in tight.

WHAM! Another impact. My nerves got the best of me. I pressed myself back into the seat and closed my eyes. Screw the data, I was simply going to white knuckle my way through this test.

WHAM! At this point I was pretty sure that the doc could just check my underwear for some valuable feedback on how the test flight went. WHAM! Houston, we have a Code Brown.

22 seconds... WHAM! 23 seconds WHAM! WHAM! 24 seconds WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

The impacts were coming very quickly, I imagined this was what a NASCAR driver feels like tumbling through the infield at 200 miles per hour. WHAAAAAAAAM!

Silence. I heard nothing but my own breath in my helmet. I fumbled at the straps, I needed to get the helmet off unless I wanted to puke in the suit. I hit the emergency release and my hands slapped at the helmet until it tumbled into the floor of the pod. I retched, and blew the little bit of food I had in my stomach all over the hatch. Chunks of half digested fast food trickled down the view port.

Something was wrong. There was a warning light flashing in the room outside. I grasped at the hatch. My hands didn't want to work as I grasped the lever. Where were the technicians who were supposed to get me out of this damn thing?

I wedged my hand under the lever, and broke the seal of the hatch. Air hissed as I pushed the door open and tumbled onto the floor. My lunch trickled down the side of the pod as I lay on the floor desperately trying to catch my breath. I noticed the sign with a bright yellow smiley face that said "Welcome to Arizona!"

An eternity later, I struggled to my feet. Where was everyone? Where can I get a change of pants? Thankfully the layout of this building matched the building in upstate New York. I found the locker room, took a shower and raided some lockers until I found a fresh pair of shorts.

I worked my way back to the control room, there had to be someone in the facility. Thankfully some horrible employee had left their ID card in their locker, so I was able to scan into the control room. Someone sat at the console, head resting on the screen, an empty bottle of vodka lay shattered on the floor.

Dr. Heinz, how the hell did he get here? He was in New York 10 minutes ago. I nudged his shoulder. He groaned and peeled his face off the console. Indentations of buttons marking the left side of his face.

"Jeff?" He said shaking his head and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. "You finally made it back. I didn't think you were going to make it back in time."

"Doc, what is going on? How did you get here so fast? Did something go wrong?"

"Something wrong?" He said with a smirk, gesturing at the dark empty faculty around us. "Nah... What ever gave you that idea?"

The doc put his head in his hands and laughed as he leaned against the console.

"Doc, snap out of it. What happened?" I said as I tried to shake some sense into him. I scanned the screen of the computer console. My heart skipped a beat and I stepped back. The date and time in the bottom right of the screen read 0100 June 27th 2022. I had been riding that bullet for two weeks!

"Doc! What the hell happened? Where is everyone?" I said. I could feel the blood draining out of my face. I knew something had to have gone horribly wrong.

"Ripples..." Dr. Heinz said as he sat up, spun his chair to face me. "We were so focused on the payload. So focused on skipping the damn rock... we didn't think about the ripples in the water."

"Ripples?" I said as I thought back to our conversation earlier. "You mean the pod caused ripples in space time?"

Dr. Heinz sighed. "Yes. Much bigger ripples than our previous tests. When you wobble the fabric of spacetime it is like rolling marbles around on a sheet. If you hit the sheet hard enough the marbles can go flying in all sorts of directions."

"So, every time the pod skipped it shook the fabric of spacetime?" I said as I thought back to all the impacts, and how quickly they came near the end of the test.

"When the technicians here in Arizona said you didn't appear as expected, we ran the numbers. When we scaled up the pod we didn't realize it scaled up the distance between skips over time. And the power of the skips. Two days after the test, there was a large-scale gravitational event. The moon shifted its orbit." He said.

"You mean that little pod bounced off the moon like a pool ball? That doesn't make any sense." I said. "How could something the size of a port-a-potty knock the moon out of orbit?"

"No, nothing like that. There were no impacts, only ripples. And the moon was just the beginning. Over time there were bigger and bigger events. I did the math, and realized that you must have still been skipping across spacetime. What I didn't expect was that your time would be dilated to such an extreme. I overlooked the ripples the system was causing, until we scaled up we didn't notice the damage they could cause to the orbit of the planet." He said, as he heaved himself out of his chair and walked across the room.

"Once we saw the extent of the damage, most reasonable people went home to be with their families. My family has always been my work. And you, Mr Cowboy, I figured you might need to see friendly face when you got back." He called over his shoulder as he reached into a cabinet in the office across the hall.

I stood there stunned as he returned with two glasses clinking in his hand, and a fresh bottle of vodka. He gestured to a chair as he poured us each a drink. We sat, and sipped at our vodka. Dr. Heinz let out a laugh under his breath.

"What's so funny?" I asked as the vodka burned it's way down my throat.

Dr. Heinz stared me right in the eye, that familiar deadpan look on his face. "It turns out, Icarus was an unnervingly appropriate code name for this project."