Crushing Fear on Gamma 4

The room was filled with gasps and consternation. I could hear the whispers through the muffled sound of the glass walls. People were spooked. The atmosphere in the room had changed from natural curiosity to that of discomfort and anxiety. Something was wrong.

I stepped back from the window, and my eyes scanned the floor for some clue.

“Professor?” I looked up at Zack, who stood behind me, his eyes wide with concern. “Is everything okay?”

I looked down again, searching for a sign of what had upset them so much. “Umm… I don’t think it is, no.” My voice was shaky, my heart racing.

“Do you want me to fetch John?” Zack asked in a whisper, gesturing towards one of the lab assistants at the back of the classroom.

I nodded slowly and turned away from the window to face my students, their faces now pale and drawn. “What happened?” I asked them quietly as Zack left the classroom to find John.

Several of the students exchanged nervous glances with those next to them, but none of them responded to me. They seemed almost afraid to talk; their mass silence filling me with more worry than anything else had done. But whatever it was, it was big enough that they couldn’t ignore it any longer; they too were facing it head on just like Zack had taken a step towards me when I faced away from him to look at my students. None of them wanted to be here right now, but there wasn’t anywhere else they could be right now – we were all trapped together until we made progress or got rescued.

I let out a slow breath, trying to keep myself calm as I took a few steps into the classroom and behind my desk to allow John space in front of the glass wall to look out at Gamma 4 while he examined our experiment in progress without disturbing anyone else's view of it by blocking their view with his body or mine.

My eyes fell closed as I listened to John speak in hushed tones to Zack about what he was seeing behind us through the glass wall that separated us from Gamma 4.

I opened my eyes again as John returned from his quick examination with a puzzled expression upon his face and Zack moved around him to stand in front of me again before handing him his tablet computer where he had recorded notes on our experiment earlier today before we sent our subjects aboard Gamma 4 for the night so we could observe them during their sleep cycle this evening before waking them early tomorrow morning after an overnight stay aboard an orbiting space station 300 miles above Earth's surface which was effectively a sealed bubble where our subjects would live and work until they either made contact with some intelligent life-form somewhere in our galaxy or died trying within 65 years of their arrival here via Jupiter's gravity well where we had built a research vessel that carried our colonists into deep space while we watched their progress over 100,000 years through time dilation caused by travel at relativistic speeds beyond light speed which had allowed us all to age normally while subjecting them to 40 years travel through cosmic time during which they would explore and discover all there was for them to discover within our galaxy before returning home once more having lived millennia each whilst we remained unchanged in time for them before sending another ship out towards infinity with another 100,000 year voyage ahead of it as we waited for news from those voyages that might reach us 1 million years hence when we too might have travelled far enough ourselves that a message can finally be sent back home by those who set out long ago before us who departed just yesterday or this morning when they started on their journeys towards distant suns across interstellar space...