spacepaladin15
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Prisoners of Sol
🕑 Added 2025-01-04 12:00:06 +0000 UTCThe edge of the universe wasn’t that far from us. To be exact, it was 4.3 billion miles away from Earth.
A smidgeon past Pluto and mankind’s exploration ships—from our earliest probes onward—ran into some kind of invisible barrier. A forcefield at exactly that distance could be found in every direction we flew. That nonsensical realization sparked quite the uproar in the scientific community. Was everything that we’d witnessed with our deep-space telescopes was some kind of mirage? Perhaps our entire reality was confirmed to be a simulation, unable to render past this set point.
Never before had we had such a clear opportunity to define reality, as we understood it. Humanity galvanized behind the idea of understanding it—and learning how to escape from the box we found ourselves in. We were prisoners of Sol. It was stubbornness that had militaries and scientific agencies throwing ships at the wall, time and again. The endeavors proved useless, yet for centuries, we’d hurled ship after ship at the problem. It had propelled the space industry to new heights, as we leapfrogged bases to launch from on Pluto and harnessed sleek designs. We poured more energy into the fusion cores of our ships, in the hopes that one would pierce the veil. Brute force at its finest.
We were searching for anything that might work, guessing that there might be a needle in the massive haystack. The barrier proved entirely uncrossable, like a white hole that expelled matter faster than the speed of light at the event horizon. That theory, with our limited understanding, suggested that it might have a tunnel to another dimension somewhere; an opposite plain of relativity. Eight months ago, a ship had gone through the fabled outer limit, not to return. We hurled another drone through at those exact coordinates, to see if the results were replicable—and it too vanished.
“The world is watching,” I remarked, checking that the harness was secure over my North American Space Force uniform. “The first manned flight through The Gap. You and me, Sofia.”
My copilot cleared her throat to hide the nerves. “Took the ESU long enough to approve our mission, with all their tests. We have no clue where the hell we’re gonna end up, or if we’re ever coming back. No one in their right mind would volunteer for a mission like that, would they?”
“The possibilities of what we can find are endless! No human has ever seen what lies beyond. The fundamental question of our time is why we’re here. This perimeter, all that we see…a reflection of ‘reality’ that’s a little too perfect. Astrophysicists like Novikov herself think someone put us here, in a cage. Don’t you want to know why?”
Sofia leaned back in the seat, staring at the deceptively empty space outside the windshield. “What if we’re breaking out of the Garden of Eden, Preston? Maybe someone gave us a little slice of paradise here. Think how perfect Earth is, down to the exact damn proportions between the moon and the sun for eclipses!”
“That’s exactly why we need to make it out. A spoonfed paradise will never be real. Knowledge of the truth: it’s in our blood to pursue it. What if it’s all a test of some higher being to see what we’ll do? I’m ready to see the grand design.”
“That’s awfully religious coming from you, soldier boy. The prospect of our imminent deaths prompting you to make amends with the G-man?”
“We’re not going to die. We’re going to make it through. To be clear, I didn’t say anything about gods. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
“Shit, if you listened to us talk, nobody’d think I was the scientist. Godspeed, my friend. It’s been an honor.”
Sofia’s fatalist rhetoric wouldn’t instill confidence in anyone, yet I didn’t avert the course on the ship’s computer. Our solar sails stretched proudly behind us, before detaching as we reached the final thousand miles. We were traveling at a million miles an hour toward what could be a one-way death slide. My stomach twisted into knots, feeling my heartbeat pounding in the thick veins of my neck. It was difficult to breathe, which left beeping sounds on my wrist monitor—my blood oxygen was dropping, despite the perfectly maintained atmosphere. What if this vessel broke apart, and we were…sucked into the vacuum? I wasn’t sure if it’d have time to hurt if we were spaghettified in a black hole.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. My hands gripped around the armrest, and I noticed Sofia averting her eyes. I thought about the years of training in simulated scenarios, from turbulent flight simulators to pretending to be marooned on a foreign world. My dad wanted me to be a lawyer, but I had to be a “soldiernaut.” Living life on the edge.
The barrier was mapped out on every astral map, so I knew the exact moment our spacecraft’s nose cleared the threshold. The speed on the dashboard climbed exponentially in a second, and the seat suddenly hummed with a teeth-rattling energy signature. The location data blinked out within a second, unable to triangulate its position using the field of the stars. The windshield looked like we were inside the sun, like a roaring hot jet of plasma had swallowed us.
The artificial gravity shifted in an instant, and I felt as light as a feather; the instruments said it hadn’t changed from its equilibrium. My organs felt like they were…hypercharged within my body. Warning lights flashed at us, and alarms blared in a cacophony. My fingers tightened around the armrest, which ripped off beneath my touch. I’d…I’d only gripped it.
A breath brought in way too much air, and made my lungs feel like they were bursting. I knew primarily that I had to let it out, and screamed in sheer terror. I could hear an undignified howl from Sofia, as the torturous traversal remained unending. My blood was lighter fluid within my veins; humans didn’t belong here. The world tunneled down to a single point, a kaleidoscope that didn’t make sense—before the peaceful stars returned.
I leaned forward, staring dumbfounded at the armrest in my hand, before tentatively sucking in a tiny gasp. “We…we made it. You alright? Where the fuck are we?”
“Uhhh…Pluto Station, come in,” Sofia tried over the radio, to the crackling sound of silence. “We made it through The Gap, do you copy? Over.”
“I don’t think they’re going to answer. I told you we’d see the other side!” I squinted at the instrument panel, while the harness continued to dig tighter; my eyes widened as I saw the number on the speedometer seemed to be sprouting zeroes. “What the fuck? We’re not slowing down. A billion…wait, that’s a trillion…no, that’s faster than the speed of light. And it’s still trying to go higher? That’s bullshit. That makes no sense!”
“Light itself would be bending. Our ship should be breaking apart.”
I tried to turn the ship to see if the controls were responsive at all, but instead, made us spin in dizzying circles. “Oh my—”
The contents of my freeze-dried astronaut food found their way onto the floor, as my head screamed. It was difficult to think with the acrid taste of puke in my mouth. I flailed out with a desperate hand to slam on the back thrusters, though I didn’t know how our measly engines could counter whatever the hell was happening. The lurch was immediate and jarring. The pressure relaxed enough that I could tap the “brake,” where the computer was intended to cancel out the forces to zero. Something must’ve gone wrong with those functions, because our momentum swung just as sharply in reverse.
Our spaceship was careening and tumbling through space out of control. We were going to die; every mechanism had gone haywire! I found myself screaming my head off once more, the terror of a sensory nightmare engulfing me. The engines blew out from the swing of extreme forces and the stresses on the metal, leaving us only the emergency power. I struggled to open my eyes, and noticed we were hurtling through a field of asteroids…according to the struggling terrain scanner. Those might’ve been millions of miles apart, but with how fast we were going…
I poured the auxiliary power in the opposite direction we were traveling, by some miracle bringing it down to a few hundred miles an hour. That was when I saw the rock, whiskers in front of us. Steering was out, and there was a mere second before we slammed into it. That the vessel was designed for crashing into the Sol system barrier might’ve been our saving grace. The asteroid neutralized our forward momentum, as we skidded through the silvery soil.
“What the fuck just happened?” I screeched. “You’re the scientist here. You tell me.”
Sofia’s eyes were wide. “I don’t fucking know! This violates every law of physics humanity has ever known. That portal gave us magic horsepower, I guess, ‘cause that’s the best explanation I can give you!”
“That’s not how portals work.”
“Well clearly, this one does! We have to get out of here.”
I snorted. “Fat chance of that. Look around. We’re crashed on an asteroid. Our engines are burned out, and our boat isn’t flightworthy if we somehow got it working. Fix those two problems and we can’t tap our fuel jets without straight-up violating causality.”
“Then we call for help. Turn on the distress beacon…”
“Who exactly is going to answer? Pluto Station—Earth—doesn’t exist here. No other humans to ride in and save the day.”
“No other humans, Preston. You said this was the work of higher beings. Maybe they’ll…hear our prayers.”
“I don’t see any sign of civilization around here, so we can cross out alien deities. From everything they’ve shown, if they exist, they want us to be really self-sufficient. Nobody’s bailing us out.”
Sofia laughed with incredulity. “So what? You’re just going to do nothing?”
“I…” I stood up, trying to walk off the trials of my journey. “…am going to leave some notes about what happened to us, for when someone figures this shit out and comes looking for our skeletons. Then I’m going to explore this asteroid, since we died to come out and see it. Might as well take a spacewalk before we croak.”
“Shouldn’t you save your energy, with our limited supply of food?”
“Why? We’re going to starve anyway. No sense prolonging the end. I’m getting my suit, and taking a walk.”
“Fine. You have fun with that. I will be making a distress message to send on loop in all directions, and keep watch for any movement.”
“Be my guest. It’s our final resting spot regardless. We…knew the risks of being the first, didn’t we?”
“You sound more hopeless than me during the portal ride, and I was wrong, right? Anything is possible here. What’s with the sudden change of heart?”
“Seeing that there’s nothing out here cured me of my delusions. No pearly gates, no one waiting on the other side to wave the checkered flag. I’m sorry for being so pessimistic. I’m…glad I’m not alone out here.”
“Me too.”
With a heavy heart, I went over to don my spacesuit while Sofia fiddled with the radio. We always knew this had a high chance of ending with our deaths and abandonment, but it felt different now that it was an actuality. There was going to be a lot of time to kill; perhaps I should read through the first contact binder one more time, on the slim chance my partner was right. The Earth Space Union hadn’t sent us through the portal unprepared for that eventuality, though this was certainly an unconventional way to try to contact extraterrestrial intelligence.
A/N - Welcome to the new universe! Humanity’s space programs encountered a crippling blow in the form of an inexplicable wall around the Solar system, leaving us trying to find a large chunk of history to break out and understand its existence. However, the discovery of a gap—an opening where ships disappear rather than running into something—leads to a daring manned mission. Our astronauts get a bit more than they bargained for, with the very laws of physics blowing up in their faces and causing their speedster ship to crash in the middle of nowhere.
What are your early theories on who might’ve placed a wall around the Sol system and why? What could humanity be capable of in this dimension? Will anyone find our astronauts, or will their misadventure be the prelude to the next human crew discovering what went awry?
As always, thank you for reading and supporting! I hope you enjoy this new story, and I promise more mysteries opening up in Chapter 2!
Comments
Bjørn Larsen
I bought you patron to read your stuff, but it is simply so hard to navigate. No "next" chapter botton and have to spend 10 minutes scrolling to find the next chapter. I like your stuff, but it is simply too hard to navigate on patron.
Overwatch_the_protogen
I am getting stellaris hyperspace lane vibes...
Jesus Christus
Depends some slavic countries have special female/male last names and some dont like mine
Dcluigimario
"What are humans capable of in this new universe?" That's exactly what I am excited to find out. I snow in HFY story kind of like "humans don't make good familiars" where there's a reason why we were trapped inside that bubble. And I believe it's because when we are exposed to the rest of the universe we become extremely powerful.
minefain _yt
Está suena fascinante y aterradora
minefain _yt
Y que el campo de aquí sea natural y que los del otro lado hubiesen concluido que en ese pedazo de universo no había nada.
minefain _yt
De hecho si, hay una historia que va de que el sistema solar está encerrado en un campo de fuerza y consiguen romperlo eventualmente, para descubrir que era un santuario que los protegía de una especie de monstruo intergaláctico, solo espero que está no tenga el monstruo galáctico y que los humanos sean supergeniales.
PhycoKrusk
Branching off of that, the eldritch horror is often down as some non-euclidian nightmare, but maybe that's actually normal, and the alien mind simply cannot comprehend something with firm, consistently defined form. Or something, anything is possible at this point
Byron Ritchie
someone else said it is similar to a hfy story called alcbierre
straw salmon
It reminds me of a reddit story I heard on tiktok but i don't remember what it was called 😭
fastinn
to what though?
straw salmon
I know this is kind of a random comment but does this story give anyone else deja vu?
Gumcel
👍
fastinn
like where this is going so far
Alekss Žukovskis
i thought its 100. where did you read it off of?
Aured
excellent opening - you pack a lot of history/exposition in a brief into and get right to the action. Given this is the only way out of the bubble, I would expect the area to be monitored. Not sure by who or why. If it's something like higher dimensional Krev, maybe Sol is their version of a terrarium and they've been watching us for billions of years.
Mark willeboordse
Guess i’ll have to stay subbed for another couple of years🫡
Space Paladin
Gonna try to be less rigid 😅Leaning toward Saturday-Tuesday main updates for now, maybe move to a single NOP update on Thursday until I’m able to post POS bonuses. I want the AU content to last through to when I’m free to post miniseries!
Space Paladin
Not familiar with that story! My goal is just to put a different spin on an interdimensional story 😅
PhycoKrusk
Ahh, but if all you know is that you can't leave, would it not feel like a prison to you, regardless of the builder's intent? (Then again, any other guess is as good as mine)
Bbobsillypants
Looks like someones got a different laws of physics to contend with. Cant wait for next chapter!
Flinty Flakes
Alcubierre, right? I remember that series. I think the deal there was that conservation of energy didn't exist outside of the sol system, and our laws of physics helped get rid of the hostile robots which nobody else was able to do. Been a while since I read it, though.
Some Lvm
I believe those are called "forts" or sometimes "shelters" not prisons. And one would think that if one of those had a hole in it, the "something" or "someone" it meant to kept out would have found humanity long before humans found the hole and got out. But then again, I could be completely wrong...
Andrew Kellenberger
There is a similar story in hyfy somewhere where the sol system had a non-solid wall of differing physics. Once we got to light speed and past the barrier, we were suddenly going like 300x the speed of light and increasing. And the way physics worked, the faster something moved, the stronger it was relative to everything else. I think the story never had an ending, but the people were trying to stop the runaway ship before it hit a planet and wiped out the entire galaxy besides the ship itself.
Gumcel
Well that’s certainly a good opening hook. Question, are we back to the Monday-Wednesday-Thursday-Saturday schedule? Or something else?
EliasArt2Life
Uh oh! I was reading through this and realized how much some parts of it sounded like more traditional HFY. I think that I’ve figured it out; the Sol System is an experiment, or something like it, where there are artificial limits placed on everything. There ARE NO limits on speed, or strength, or stuff like that; those limits only exist within the Sol System. We’ve not just been playing on hard mode, we’ve been playing a game that was never meant for us to win, and we just won it. We’ve been playing with a handicap, only for the handicap to come off. They were right; we DON’T belong here, but not for the reasons you might think. WE are the eldritch horrors.
Space Paladin
They aren’t using FTL, light speed is merely different in the other universes! A unique way of allowing space travel
Ron1990
Nice start, the optics of the star lane flight remembers me of Freelancer. Does FTL Travel uses hyperlanes in this universe? Shouldn't Sofia try to triangulate their position? Seem the stars to have the same position from looking inside the cage and outside from it?
PhycoKrusk
That's the funny thing about prisons. Usually, they're for keeping something from getting out. But not always. What if this is one of those other prisons? What if it's not supposed to keep humans from getting out, but to keep something else from getting in?
REDemon14
New stories are always fun! Poor Preston and Sofia being the brave pioneers have to go through the process of *physics hopping* without anything to go off of. From what is described, it kinda sounds like going from "moving in water" to "moving on land". Down to hit affecting their organs! I can't imagine what that must've felt like. Even though this already comes off as classical HFY (and there's nothing wrong with that. I like done classic HFY), at least any potential dominance the humans may display will be because of physics diffences and not "just because". Looking forward to more of PoS and to see where these characters and the story will go!
TrendyLaws
Huh… something gives me the idea that humanity is a little too physically capable “outside the bounds” and that’ll cause some issues. An entire existence inside a dimension where physics is different, harsher, leading to some unforeseen consequences.
Swan
Fair fair :)
Space Paladin
I’m looking forward to you guys seeing where this is heading… and who might lie around the corner in this funky physics dimension!
Space Paladin
Thank you! So many mysteries to unravel about humanity’s situation. Preston and Sofia are two of my favorite human characters as well, so full of life and paired well together! 😅
Space Paladin
Voyager had a different fate here! If you’d prefer it to be our exact timeline, you could headcanon that the barrier is further out, but I decided that whatever arbitrary number I picked could run into issues 😅 and thought the story functioned best, since they don’t have FTL, if they could be close to Earth!
Nachtmund
"The prospect of our imminent deaths prompting you to make amends with the G-man?” The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world, Mr. Preston.
Space Paladin
Thank you!!!
Space Paladin
Nothing will be the same when you can’t count on the most basic laws of physics. Glad you’re interested to see more!
Space Paladin
Thank you, I’m glad the intro has you intrigued! It could be bad news when whoever locked us away discovers we’ve gotten loose 😅
Space Paladin
Thank you!
Space Paladin
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed the hook! 😅
Pay Me For NOTHING
Oh, I'm looking forward to this!!
John Benjamin Cate
Now this is an interesting start. A all around our solar system? A portal to somewhere else? A crash on an asteroid with acceleration going bonkers? Oh man, so much fun!
Hayden Hodge
They put all the difficulty sliders to the right to kill us off. Too bad they didn’t tell us it was impossible to survive in our slice of space.
Hayden Hodge
Shit. Fine SP I’ll stay subbed for another 3 years 😂 Great start!
Byron Ritchie
Pretty neat, I can’t wait for more!
Yonael Blackwood
In this universe Voyager 1 crashed into the barrier after it passed Pluto. The second paragraph of the story straight up says all our earliest probes did.
magentaaacat
What a great start, really looking forward to seeing where this goes. I suspect whoever Humans in their cage might have been afraid of something and did not intend us to be able to leave. When they find out we did, I don't suspect they'll be happy about that.. Thanks for the new chapter SP!
Swan
I suppose it's an "alternate" universe then :) Although it'd only take a simple fix of changing 4.3 billion miles to 20 ish billion to "fix" it (Voyager 1 is currently 15-16 ish billion miles away from earth)
Alekss Žukovskis
this is an interesting start. our astronauts will have to re-calibrate every law of physics
RaphaelFrog
Here comes a new story! I'm really looking forward to see more of it! Keep doing an absolutely wonderful job, Paladin :D
Sci-fi reader
Voyager 1 did leave the Sol system some years ago. 😀 Looking forward to exploring this new universe.
Yonael Blackwood
She's probably from a non slavic country. This is also 500 years in the future and languages evolve.
Clarthen
Shouldn't an astrophysicist's last name be "Novikova"? "Novikov" is the masculine form of the name.
NoblePhoenix216
Love the start of this brand new story and universe! The mystery of who put this wall up, and where our protagonists find themselves now leaves me wanting more! Can't wait to see more of Preston and Sofia. Honestly I feel like they may he my favorite human characters you've ever written lol. Can't wait to see where this new adventure leads us!
DreamEnvoy
A great start to a new story “I don’t fucking know! This violates every law of physics humanity has ever known. That portal gave us magic horsepower, I guess, ‘cause that’s the best explanation I can give you!” Well, the laws of physics were written for the known universe. Anything goes outside that jurisdiction.
Swan
This seems intressting; looks way more "classic" hfy then NOP did, but then again NOP did start out quite hfy back in the day Guessing that the laws of physics are somehow different in this new dimension, universe, place, whatever they've found them selves in; it's pretty lucky that they didn't just straight up die from that. Looking forward to next chapter, and to where this is going
XavHD
Dude chill 😂❤️ Did they put us into a pocket of the universe on difficulty level nightmare? Shouldn't have let us out then :D
Yonael Blackwood
Yeah boii. Here we go!
Bbobsillypants
Omg new story what 😱
Janne Riihinen
This is amazing! (I haven't read it yet)
Jhon Bustamante
Second
pogman
what the flip 🤯
