Telescopic Trajectory

by Anton Kukal

In the fading daylight, Evelyn Gale gazed up at the abandoned Calder Observatory. Built in the mid-1800s by the industrialist William Calder, the imposing structure dominated a high hill outside the New England town of Aldrich. Lichen covered its weathered granite walls, and the copper dome had long since turned to a black-green that blended with the darkening sky.

Closed since the 1930s after a series of strange disappearances caused a scandal, the building had remained unused and practically unknown for the past hundred years. The Internet failed to provide any information on the place. Only in the local archives did Evelyn find brittle newspaper clippings from the time, which provided mostly vague accounts of missing astronomers, unexplained lights above the hill, and a final pronouncement from the Calder Family. To avoid further scandal, William Calder’s son had ordered the doors sealed forever, and the place quietly faded from memory.

Evelyn rubbed her bare arms debating her course of action. A series of wrong turns had thwarted her plan to arrive at noon. As the daylight diminished, she stood beneath the towering monument from a gilded age shuddering as the statues of gargoyles and demons stared down at her with their cold, stone eyes.

The parking lot was a field of brown grass breaking through the asphalt in tall clumps. She felt isolated, standing by her car as the moon rose, surrounded by a forest of dying birch and stunted scrub pines. The wind whispered through the trees, rattling branches and making shadows dance like specters. White mist curled in the gullies, glinting silver under the starry sky, and the air smelled of damp earth and decay.

Steeling herself, she followed the cracked concrete path to the front of the building. The ornate brass doors were locked, but the tech company that hired her firm to appraise the facility for purchase had provided the key. The lock turned easily, and the door swung inward with an ominous squeal.

Using the light of her phone, she crossed into the lobby to where the members of her team had piled the equipment. A note explained their absence. “Sorry. Waited till five, then had to bounce. See you tomorrow – Eddie.”

Of course, they had left. She should have turned around herself but worried they might have waited. With no cell reception this far from the town, a phone call was impossible, and, as the boss, she felt obligated to check.

Now she was here, alone, with the terrifying prospect of trying to navigate the undulating roads back to civilization. For some reason, GPS didn’t work in these hills. The company had given them all careful directions and a map, but she’d always used her car’s navigation. Using a map didn’t seem too difficult, but a one-hour trip had turned into a ten-hour odyssey over unpaved roads.

Did she even have enough gas to get back to town? Their gear included cots, food, water, and lanterns. Knowing they would need to spend the night to evaluate the telescope, she had prepared for this.

Evelyn shined her light around the lobby. They were supposed to confirm structural stability before the team spent the night. The building had stood for over one hundred years, so it wasn’t going to collapse tonight. Staying put would be safer than trying to drive those twisting roads in the dark. There was nothing to fear in this old building.

She picked up a lantern, turned it on, and shut off the light on her phone to conserve its battery. The lantern’s glow illuminated the whole lobby. In its heyday, this place must have been beautiful. Dark wood paneling covered the walls. A kiosk of brasswork and ornately carved wood stood in the center of the lobby.

Her footsteps clacked across the marble floor as she made her way to the dome where she would find the telescope. The instrument filled the room, a twelve-inch refractor of brass and dark iron, its long slender tube stretching nearly twenty feet along the equatorial mount. Dust lay in layers along the lens barrel and the counterweights.

Evelyn could still see the opulent beauty even after all these years. How could such a beautiful instrument be left to ruin? She reached out and touched the cool brass. Her fingers pushed away a thick layer of dust to reveal a shine beneath. She blew on the controls. Her breath cleared away the years, revealing shiny brass knobs and graduated dials. 

She held the lantern close. Every engraved detail caught the light as if inviting her to touch them. They seemed to whisper, “Open the dome. See the wonders of the sky.” Did the instrument truly crave human touch? No, it was transference. She was the one longing to touch it.

Stargazing had been a passion of Evelyn’s ever since childhood. Many cool autumn nights had been spent with her father, staring up into the sky, their hands warm around a cup of hot chocolate. Well, at least she had hot chocolate. He probably spiked his cup with something stronger.

She laughed at the fond memories together with their telescopes and then forced back her tears. After her father’s death, she’d stopped searching the sky. She still loved astronomy but missing him hurt too much. Life got busy as she pursued her engineering degree and then employment. Now, standing before this beautiful instrument, all those memories came flooding back. Her father would have loved to be here and see this old relic of traditional astronomy.

The dome had manual controls. Would they be frozen with age? No. The wheel turned easily, and overhead a sliver of moonlight appeared. This mechanism was from a time when people built things to last. Did she dare? Yes, she did. A few more turns were all it took to see the sky in all its starry magnificence.

She felt the rapid beat of her heart deep in her chest as she moved to the eyepiece. How could an old telescope create so much excitement? It wasn’t the telescope. It was the memories of her father saying, “There is magic in the sky where mystic energies flow.”

The end of the telescope was pointing right up into the brightest part of the sky, where colorful nebulae swirled amid bright pinpricks of light. She pulled off the eyepiece cover. In her haste the brass cup slipped from her fingers, and when it struck the floor, a small piece of folded paper popped out.

Evelyn bent down to retrieve both. She placed the eyepiece cup on the shelf and carefully opened the folded note. She read the cursive script out loud. “There is a flaw in the main lens causing it to not only refract light, but also time and space. On certain nights, when the stars are right, and mystic energies flow, staring through the eyepiece will pull the viewer into another world. More than a dozen astronomers have disappeared. There is talk of closing the observatory, but the best thing to do would be to smash that lens. If you are reading this warning, then I am one of the missing.”

“Now that’s a funny joke,” Evelyn said, chuckling and putting the note in her pocket. The paper looked old, but so did parchment purchased from Amazon. The writing had been elegant, but any one of her fellow engineers could have emulated the style. She was betting it was Eddie. He had that quirky sense of humor.

Getting serious, she stared down at the eyepiece. Odd that the jokester had used the words mystic energies. Her father had used the same term, hinting at an ancient mysticism tied to the stars, something that the modern world had forgotten in their haste to embrace technology. Her father often said, “All religions have blind spots, even the religion of science.”

For a moment, Evelyn considered the possibility that some old-time astronomer had written the note as a real warning. Other worlds might exist, but the idea that a person could look into an eyepiece and be teleported across time and space was utterly absurd. People back then were superstitious. They foolishly believed in magic and monsters.

Evelyn leaned close, peering through the eyepiece.

For a long moment, Evelyn saw only darkness. Frowning, she turned the focus ring, and was rewarded with faint, shifting colors. Twenty hues all flowing together and blazing white where they blended into each other.

“Now that is exciting,” she murmured.

As Evelyn refined the image, she did not see stars. Another reality came into focus, a tunnel where space and time bent and shimmered, showing geometries no human mind was meant to endure. Rivers and roadways twisted into impossible loops, mountains folded in on themselves to become valleys, and the horizon seemed to stretch infinitely, yet return back into a single point.

“Wow!” she gasped.

Evelyn felt a pull on her forehead. She tried to stand. Her eyeball locked to the glass lens. Her head tightened against the eyepiece. She screamed and desperately tried to push away. Her muscles strained against the invisible force.

Her body compressed as the unexplainable pull increased. Somehow, she was sliding up the barrel of the telescope, moving with ever-increasing speed. Colors and shapes streaked past her, a kaleidoscope of fractured light. She burst through lens after lens, the brass fittings and dust motes blurring around her. The telescope seemed to stretch infinitely as she was propelled through galaxy-spanning starfields. The brilliant hues, the scent of ozone, and the feeling of nothingness overwhelmed her senses.

Then, in a moment, or maybe after an eternity, she burst from the telescope’s muzzle, whole again and standing in a world far removed from her own.