cross your eyes and sing hallelujah

...and the Lord said 'thou shalt not – ever - open the eleventh door' and He set into the heavens like the sparkling stones of an amulet first one, then another until a chain of unearthly objects came about...

“Come here, you,” he called, splashing out of the pool and giving chase. The blond disappeared into the house. Steven stopped at the railing and gathered up a towel, wiping his face and then his arms and legs of the chlorinated water that was dripping off his body. There was a glass of beer on the table and he took a quick gulp, warm but serviceable. He passed a forearm over his mouth and tossed the half empty glass sideways toward the pool, where it landed with a plop and submerged after filling with water. He ran a hand through his hair, tossing it up over an eyebrow then smiled and entered the house. 'Damn, it's good to be me,' he thought. Steven was an astronaut. 'Was', in fact, being the operative word. He had been many things in his life, but an astronaut was all he ever wanted to be, and the only previous occupation that he could still hang his hat on, among other things. Steven stumbled through the bedroom door, on one leg, as he pulled off his swim trunks. It was hardly a calculated move and he smacked a shoulder on the door jamb. The blond was laying across the bedsheets, her glistening body soaking into the damp mattress. She was propped up on one arm, her legs crossed and one string from her bikini top untied, a bronzed breast falling loose, catching his eye. Then a fist caught his jaw.

He woke to the murmuring of an atmosphe-t and groaned, putting a hand to his swollen face. Other than the gentle hum, which soon faded into repetition, there were no noises. Steven moved and the sheets rustled, he pushed up onto an elbow and his pillow fell off the side of the bed. “Oh, stars. Where am I?” This wasn't his room, the walls were stark white, he was living in a sterile cube.

Lines appeared on the wall he was facing along with a muffled knock. It was loudest at the final, third, tap when the door became fully formed. “Yea yea,” Steven said gruffly, “come in already.” The door opened with a faint whoosh of pressure change and a smallish man, slender and long limbed, greeted him.

“Good, Mr. Reparte. You're awake. If you'll just gather your things and follow me, I'll have a mochacreme brought to you?” Steven stood up easily, decades of training made uncertain transitions second nature, and looked around. He had no belongings, other than a housecoat thrown over a corner of the bed, and that wasn't his. He slipped it on over the clingy travel suit that someone had fitted him with.

“Hell, man. Just black coffee, with a pinch of mellow. Something to take the edge off.” He rubbed his jaw again and followed the small man out. “You're a moonman, right? Are we there, or in transit?” Steven didn't feel the motion of a spacecraft, but they could be on an orbital or a very large transport with impel dampers. The hallway they walked down was smooth and long, but he knew the doorways were sealed, thus nearly invisible. The moonman stopped beside a marking and palmed the fluid surface, and an opening appeared immediately.

“Steven,” a man stood up and offered his hand. Also in the room around a black table sat a woman wearing goggles and another man who sat very still with his hands linked before him resting on the surface. The woman looked up, then down again as she continued writing on her Flix with a fingertip translator. “This is Bess and here is Frank.” Frank unwound his fingers and gave a short wave and smile. “I am Melvin Terse, sit please,” he motioned to a chair, and the moonman put a hot cup down on the table then left the room.

Steven sipped and felt the pain warm then evaporate from his swollen face. “Explain,” he said, because he knew hysterics would only slow the process, and delay his dissipating headache.

“So sorry about the violence, but it was our only sure method of acquiring your services.” Melvin sat, and he fingered his mug of mochacreme on the table. “How much do you know about religion, Mr. Reparte?”

Steven looked up from his cup, and took another sip. “Just an inkling, what I learned in electives, and of course the bits that make it to flixon reports. Quite a lot lately.” The news was rampant with ancient Christian hokum these days, but anyone who cast an eye to the heavens had a right to forgo their adopted paganism of late. “The ten doors,” he said and thought of crossing himself, something he'd seen on old sport's reels.

“Indeed,” said Melvin, and he did make the abbreviated gesture. Frank snorted and raised a flask to his lips. “You're quite busy with the ten doors; there's a distinct lack of qualified astronauts on the earth these days.” Most pilots were glorified squidges, hardly any human was actually trained for the job, and computers did most of the calculations.

At this Steven did a double take. It was news to him. “Bullshit. Haven't had a job in six months. Of course I've had lots of offers out on the belt or shuttling, but there's really nothing to do there. The belt is exciting, but damn.” It was hazardous work, jockeying for position and lazers galore. “But the ten doors? No. You're quite mistaken.”

Frank, the stiff one with his metallic flask, leaned back and swiveled in his chair to face Steven. “You just aren't aware of it yet, but I'm sure you've gotten some correspondence from one of the territories. Where are you stationed, the Four Corners?” Of course, he knew exactly where Steven came from. “The next five years you'll be working up to the first meaningful space mission in modern times. Beyond our solar system there is for lack of trying...nothing. Our impulse drives can only get us so far – essentially humankind is trapped in a bubble. Of God's making? Perhaps. The ten doors have complicated logic, thrown us back hundreds of years.”

“Churches are holding services. I've seen it. I tasted the body of Christ, drank his blood.” It was the first time Bess spoke, she had a look of disgust on her face. It faded to enlightenment, then into a blank stare.

Steven raised an eyebrow. “Who are you people?” Melvin was slightly elongated, he may have been a first generation moonman, but Frank and the woman, Bess, certainly were earth born.

The three looked up at each other, then Melvin stood. “We represent Moon State Tech. Right now we are en route to Majordome, where the primary research vessels lay dormant. You will work alongside our best and soon be on your way, with a substantial crew of course, to the Eleventh Door.”

–

“You said I'm working on Earth on the ten doors? For the next five years, but here I am going to the moon. This is crazy.” Steven had traded in his spiked coffee for a straight up mellow. He had already circled the table then left the room and paced the hallway for ten minutes. The gravity here was superb, Steven barely felt the mechanics.

Melvin had left, leaving Frank and Bess. “It's complicated,” she said, “but Frank can perhaps explain in terms you might understand. You are after all a highly trained astronaut.”

He looked at Frank. “Go on.”

Frank screwed the cap onto his flask and wiped a black sleeve across his lips. “Once something happens, it can't be undone, even if one should go back in time and start something anew. At least not in the short range. Mathematics won't allow for further observations. Therefore, in reality you have already been to the ten doors, in succession, and that leaves the Eleventh Door, which at this point in time nobody knows about.”

Steven repeated himself. “Bullshit.”

The ten doors began popping into existence late in the past century. One at a time. They appeared as nothing but random specks of light, easily mistaken as stars, constellations, or random space debris. At first no one noticed. The universe is huge and a twinkling light here or there can be overlooked. Usually the random amateur astronomer is credited for new discoveries, unless the pros actually know what they're looking for. The specks of light, once found, were anything but. They were outside of the solar system, but only just, and barely within range of earthly space exploration vehicles. And they were not stars or planetoids or even runaway flotsam. They were immense, satellite eclipsing, rectangles. Portals to who knows what, or where. Scientists, engineers, even philosophers observed the phenomena for ten years. Each year a new door appeared, then nothing. They were stationary, or appeared to be, as the doors did not rotate around the sun. Of course they must have moving along with the galaxy, which made them static in a sense. Had the doors always been present, but only now became visible to mankind? The scientific community was rife with theories, but the truth was impossible to know. Now Steven was being told there was an eleventh door? He couldn't wrap his head around it, and his brain still throbbed.

“Are you saying you have some sort of time machine? This is absurd.” It was crazy, but fascinating too. Steven groped at the fringes of his education. He had taken theoretical mathematics and had some knowledge of quantum physics.

“Correct,” answered Frank. “There is of course no such machine. It's all done with probability and equations. Relativity and such. We have the analytical power to 'look' so far into the future, but there is a threshold. At this point, believe it or not, the technology is at a standstill. Until greater minds develop.”

“So,” reasoned Steven, “You haven't actually gone into the future, but you have...seen the future? That's fantastic!”

“Right, and we've seen you in succession go to each of the ten doors and pass through.”

“Shut up. What's out there?”

“Don't know yet. You haven't yet returned from any of the missions.”

“And yet,” said Bess, “you have been the astronaut of note on every ship out to the ten doors. Don't ask me, I can't explain it.”

“Son of a bitch, shit.”

“We assume from formulas that there is nothing beyond the doors but sustainable solar systems. New habitats for humankind.” Frank yawned.

“What do mean 'nothing but'? Are you insane? That is huge.” Steven was almost yelling. “We've been trying to find a way to get out of here for hundreds of years. Man has dreamed of the stars for a million years! Only new worlds? The stars are mad!” He slammed down his fists, shaking the table and spattering droplets of mellow onto the glossy surface.

He thought a moment, collecting himself. “Where is the Eleventh Door? When does it appear?”

“It already has. It's been there all along, possibly as long as the first door has been. It is eleventh only in that it was the last to be discovered. The Eleventh door is hiding behind another door. Nobody yet knows about it. Just us, Moon State Tech; and now you,” said Frank.

Steven rubbed his eyes and sighed. “Somehow it's special then? It's the last to be discovered, and hence the final door to be approached. What...is it taboo or something? The forbidden fruit – is that why you were asking about religion? Damnit!”

“Ah, Mr. Reparte,” breathed Bess. “You are quite astute.”

Frank stood up and drank from his flask. Some of the vile fluid inside dribbled out onto his cheek and he wiped it away. “An old habit, I'm afraid, come back to haunt me in this mysterious moment.” Bess reached out to touch his leg, then let her hand drop. “You see, the ten doors, they lead to a simple continuation, nothing but a reboot of what you see here...in fact civilization may well have to begin over once man traverses a door and settles. We don't know exactly what lies beyond, but it has to be life sustaining, or why else reveal the door? I can't see another option. But, the Eleventh Door. We are essentially motionless, unchanging here in our sphere of existence. Mankind longs to take the next step, to reach out and taste the apple.”

“Eve tempted Adam with the apple,” quoted Bess.

“Are you trying to say that the final door is the next step in our evolution?” asked Steven.

“There is some history to this. Documents were found, and concealed, by the church of bygone years. They mean little now, except as relics, but factions remain and they remain true, and secretive. Paradigm shifts throughout history destroy many religious claims, but who can debunk the supernatural? There is so much we still don't understand. Documents, uncovered and made public in the next few years, will raise serious questions about the Eleventh Door. Many will obstruct and harry the ability of governments to go there.”

“If we go through that door, we become godlike. Who can say we won't be destroyed by our own insolence?” asked Steven. He still didn't believe it, not totally.

Frank sat and smiled abjectly at Steven. “Who indeed. Anyway, my calculations don't reach that far. Everything is pure conjecture at this remote point.”

The little moonman returned with fresh drinks and he placed a bowl of wrapped snacks on the table. Steven reached out and took a green piece to try. It was delicious and filled his mouth with the watery taste of melon which lingered there for several minutes. He felt totally satiated. “When will a machine be ready for further calculations, perhaps to go deeper into the future? Can't a mechanical mind recreate itself, only more advanced?”

“I don't know what you mean,” said Frank.

“Of course you do; it's quite simple. We aren't smart enough to fabricate a smarter machine, but a machine that is far more advanced, mentally, should be able to design one of itself, more sophisticated.”

Frank took a long draught and seemed a bit agitated at the question. He shook it off. “Your point is convoluted. What were we talking about?”

Steven leaned in. “Surely, a man of your advanced knowledge can grasp this simple concept. Why cannot a construct of superior knowledge go the next step and...”

Bess pounded the table and glowered at Steven. “Stop it, man!”

“Ah,” Steven said. “I didn't know your kind existed anymore.” He was looking at Frank. “You're obviously him, aren't you? Franklin Dearest, the T%Excelsior.” Most thought the existence of this advanced robot as an urban legend. Creatures of his ilk were strictly illegal, as per the morality code. But Steven in his circles knew the stories. If everything else he learned today was a fairy tale, this at least was worth the trip.

Bess sighed. “He can't duplicate, or complicate himself anymore than you or I can. His programming forbids it, and the laws of robotics are unmitigated. Written in stone, as they once said.”

Frank sat motionless in his seat, until he took another drink. He stood up and left the room.

“Well,” said Bess. “We can't go yet, not until after the tenth mission is launched. But we will be ready and in the sky before the shit hits the fan. Are you with us, Mr. Reparte?”

“I wouldn't miss this for the universe.”