Quantum Flux
He was relieved to note that the darkness contained stars. Billions of stars. Enough to form a host of galaxies. Stars young and old, as well as those in the process of forming, which meant there were nebulae too, many as exotic as the ones they had just left behind. That they had left that other universe behind was beyond question. This was new terrain, though Ryan quickly realised that was the wrong word. Terrain implied something solid, something terrestrial. There were worlds aplenty here, just as he’d suspected. But, for all their beauty, they were not what held his attention. Less than motes of dust in this trans-dimensional sky, they could not compete with the wonders that filled the Axis.
They flew in a horizontal position, arms outstretched, their fingertips just touching. The merest contact, yet enough to bind them together in an indivisible bond. This was not an extension of the journey they’d already made but an entirely new departure. Their wings carried them forward, their reach far exceeding anything their designers may have dreamt of.
For Tanya, the flux of passage was not what she’d expected. For a moment, when the Axis first claimed her, she thought she’d lost Ryan forever. In that first instant, she traversed a distance greater than the abyss they’d crossed to reach Saturn and its moons, creating a void vast enough to encompass a dozen galaxies. An unbridgeable gulf for anyone left behind.
But Ryan was following at her heels almost literally, her departure having drawn him into the Axis at the same time. The boundary they’d crossed was indeed an event horizon in many ways, although it differed from such phenomena in one important respect. Ryan believed there was a way back from this particular point of no return.
Ryan moved quickly to join Tanya, taking up a position at her shoulder, so that they flew in formation, each abreast of the other. He could feel the flux of their journey passing through him, the Axis travelling through him as he travelled through it. It was a curious sensation, similar to the one he’d experienced just before the appearance of the Axis, only more intense. And he could feel himself changing in response to these sensations. Changing and (there was no other word for it) evolving.
Perhaps more than anything else it was a process of evolution. A progression more rapid than all the minor developments that had preceded it over the course of millennia; from the moment the first simian fingers had closed on a bone or a rock with the intention of using it as a tool, to the gloved hands that had first inserted a flag into the regolith of another world.
This was an ambiguous realm. There was a potential here he’d never encountered before. The potential for transformation. It made Ryan’s hands itch and his groin ache. They were part of an irreversible process now. Tanya doubted whether that process could have been halted, even if she’d known how, let alone reversed. The current was too strong. To oppose this flux would have required abilities she didn’t possess. Not yet anyway.
She was certain they were heading towards something, towards a destination, for their flight – their very progress – seemed to have a purpose of its own. They may have been surrounded by infinities (by horizons that lay far beyond the reach of human eyes), but somehow these very perspectives extended her own now dramatically enhanced vision - just as the flux had extended the reach of her wings - allowing her to see across immeasurable gulfs of space and Time, into other galaxies and star systems, configurations so remote that no mortal eyes would ever see their light. She viewed this new universe as a deity might, with an all-encompassing vision.
With such powers at her disposal it was inevitable that the gods would mistake her as one of their own.