The Infinite Veil

"The Infinite Veil" is included as prelude No. 7 in *The Juno Contingency (novel)* and is set in the Juno universe.

## Teaser

The crew of a research mission sent to explore the Juno singularity encounters inexplicable phenomena.

## Continuity

This is a standalone story in the Juno universe set after The Juno Continuum.

## Plot

*"Lift not the painted veil that those who live call life."*

### 1. Better Angels

Rafe is a veteran "conjunctioneer," one of the astronaut workforce who built and maintained the Sol sunshade for Earth to survive Juno's ignition. A year ago he lost his wife and child in a car accident and has since sunk into unemployment and depression. He now subscribes to an AI-generated digital resurrection of his wife—from a company called Angels—for him to talk to, though these are not socially accepted.

Rafe is contacted by a recruiter from ErgoVentures. He responds and is put directly in touch with billionaire Cramer Burke, who wants to recruit Rafe for a space mission in order to claim the $100B Juno Prize, which was established to reward the first team that is successfully able to extract energy from the Juno singularity. Burke is close to launching a mission to Juno that will demonstrate the Penrose process, whereby objects entering a rotating black hole's ergosphere can extract kinetic energy from it.

During the interview Rafe is detached and noncommittal. Then his wife's Angel interrupts from his phone, and Burke recognizes the dead woman from Rafe's file. Rafe confesses to Burke that he knows he's a psychological mess. That's why he hasn't been able to find work and why Burke shouldn't even be talking to him.

Burke counters that he's in a similar situation: his company is already dead and he's leveraged everything he has left into this "Junoshot." Winning the Juno Prize is the only way he can save his company and come out ahead; yet no one wants to go on a mission to Juno since the last two missions (the Peace and Contact missions) resulted in the deaths of nearly all their crews. He says, "At this point I'll take anyone I can get. ... And I'm down to you, Rafe." Rafe signs on to the mission with the condition that he can stay in contact with his Angel.

### 2. Distant Voices

Burke's mission to Juno launches on a large spaceship called Nyx, with counter-rotating sections that produce simulated gravity. As they recede from Earth and accumulate seconds of light-delay, it becomes harder for Rafe to interact with his wife's Angel. Once the delay exceeds a light–minute, Rafe has to subsist on exchanging recorded messages only once a day, and then only once a week.

Feeling increasingly isolated, Rafe begins socializing with the rest of the crew. Chief scientist Settia Isles relates to him how singularities are the universe's ultimate mystery. There is no way for anyone to know for certain the nature of a singularity without going into one, but once you cross the event horizon it becomes impossible to communicate anything back to the outside world, and you will inevitably merge with the singularity. With her research Settia wants to resolve the black hole information paradox, to determine whether information is destroyed or preserved once it enters a singularity.

A few months into the mission, Burke announces they have to cut back on their budget for the Deep Space Network and that there will be no further audiovisual content delivery. Rafe objects that the text interface to his Angel isn't enough, but Burke rebuffs him. Rafe acts out by taking up sport boxing in the ship's gymnasium, but badly beats a fellow crew member and is thrown in the brig.

While in the brig, Rafe continues to receive messages from his wife's Angel that somehow increase in frequency. He is surprised that her replies seem to be coming faster and faster, even as the light-delay from Earth increases to an hour. His wife's account even opens a chat with him outside of the Angel software, which shouldn't be possible. He asks her personal and intimate questions to verify her identity, which she passes. She expresses excitement and she can't wait for him to arrive.

### 3. Dark Singularity

The Nyx arrives in the Juno system and enters orbit of the singularity. Unlike most galactic singularities, Juno is a "dark" singularity as it has almost no accretion disc, so they have to navigate the system without the aid of light. The crew becomes unnerved in the completely dark planetary system, and Rafe now starts to see visions of his wife around the Nyx.

The ship experiences gravitational spikes as it orbits Juno, ostensibly triggered by the arrival and departure of Junoan ships using their foldspace engines. Settia says Earth satellites have cataloged the transit schedules of Juno's ships well, but they never detected these spikes before. She asks to use a few weeks to observe and catalog the spikes so that the ship can avoid them. Burke overrules her as the spikes have caused no damage and he finds them insufficient to delay their mission.

The ship launches its first robotic probes to orbit closer to Juno. They also launch a probe directly into the ergosphere to explore the region where spacetime is being dragged faster than the speed of light. By jettisoning a propellant mass in this regimen of "negative energy," the probe is designed to tap the Penrose process and exit the ergosphere with increased kinetic energy. The probe botches its separation, though, and crashes into the singularity.

Next Rafe pilots their first manned probe on a closest approach to Juno where he reaches speeds of 0.3 c. Along the way he hears his wife's voice urging him to speed up and come closer, though he resists the voice and hides his hallucinations. Back at the ship the crew throws a celebration for Rafe setting a new record for "fastest human in the universe." During the festivities a Junoan capital ship transits and causes a severe gravitational spike, which decompresses a sector of the ship and kills several crew. A mass funeral is held and morale sinks.

Later in the mess hall, two crewmen become hysterical when they claim to see all the dead crewmembers sitting at a table motionlessly. No one else is able to see them, so the two crew are sedated. But then hallucinations of other deceased people—and not just of the crew—are reported throughout the ship. One night Rafe returns to his quarters and is stunned to see his wife standing before him, a dead expression on her face. For a second he is even able to touch her and feel her, but between eye blinks she disappears.

### 4. Sinners and Demons

Burke convenes a meeting with Rafe and Settia, saying that the three of them are the only ones who haven't reported any hallucinations. He is concerned not only at the volume of these hallucinations but also at how they seem to be shared between more than one person at a time. He asks what is happening on the ship.

Settia proposes that humans have simply never been so close to a singularity before. Without Juno forming in their own planetary system, they would have had to travel for hundreds or thousands of years to reach one. Their scientific models are only barely starting to understand consciousness and its possible quantum mechanical workings, so there is simply no way to know what effects highly warped spacetime could have on their brains.

Burke considers aborting their mission, but Rafe says that they are so close to demonstrating success, and without that they can't claim the Juno Prize. He argues that they can quarantine the worst-affected crew and launch the remaining experiments within a few days. Settia is hesitant to agree, but she realizes that, if their ship returns without discoveries and after suffering these strange deaths, there will probably never be another mission to Juno in her lifetime. She finally agrees with Rafe and convinces Burke to continue the mission.

Rafe is launched in another manned pod to make a new closest approach to Juno while Burke and Settia monitor him. As he approaches 0.5 c he hallucinates his wife behind him in the cockpit. She touches his arm and begins pushing it forward on the throttle. She urges him to bring the ship closer, saying she's so excited that he's almost on "her side." Rafe starts talking to her over the radio, and Burke and Settia realize he's hallucinating. They remote-override the ship and have it return to Nyx, causing Rafe's wife to disappear, and he curses at them through the time dilation.

*Read the conclusion "5. What's Left Behind" on Amazon.*