'Go Fast' is a short story about not only the 'quantum go fast' spheres but also about humanity 'going fast'.

Frank Martin had never been much for science. At fourteen, his interests leaned toward comic books, the Beatles, and trying to figure out how to ask Linda Michaels from math class if she wanted to go to the drive-in. But in 1967, when the world decided to stop being normal.

It started with a rumor. Frank’s older brother, Mike, came home from his job at the local radio station buzzing about a “weird rock” found in Nevada. “Some mining crew hit it while drilling for uranium,” he said, leaning against the kitchen counter. “It’s like… shiny.” Frank rolled his eyes. “Shiny? What, is it made of gold?” Mike shrugged. “Dude, silver. Said it doesn’t react to anything. They tried drilling it, and—” He paused, lowering his voice. “It moved.”

Frank didn’t think much of it. Until the next day, when the TV news showed clips of a metallic sphere, smooth as a marble and about the size of a large beach ball, sitting in a dusty mine pit. It was filmed in grainy black-and-white, but even on the crackling screen, it gleamed like liquid metal. The narrator said it weighed nearly 100 kilograms, yet looked no bigger than maybe a yard across. “Impossible,” the reporter muttered. “The molecular structure’s… unidentifiable.”

Frank stared at the screen, his cereal forgotten. The sphere looked like something out of a sci-fi movie—except this was real. His dad, who usually tuned out the news, stood behind him, arms crossed. “They’re calling in the UN,” he said. “Something about… foreign tech.”

That’s when Frank first heard the name: Brian Johnson. The lead UN scientist, a guy with a stern face and a voice that crackled through the TV like a warning. Johnson claimed the sphere was “of extraterrestrial origin,” but no one believed him. The U.S. government denied it. The Soviets laughed. And Frank, sitting on the edge of his couch, felt a flicker of something he couldn’t name—excitement? Fear?—as the camera zoomed in on the sphere’s flawless surface.

Days passed. The media called it “The Nevada Sphere.” Scientists argued over its composition. Some said it was a meteorite; others, a secret military project. Frank’s mom kept changing the TV channel, muttering about “communists and their tricks.” But Frank couldn’t look away. He started sketching the sphere in his notebook, trying to capture its impossible smoothness.

The TV news broke it on a Tuesday. “UN Scientists Attempt to Drill Into Mysterious Object,” the headline read. Frank watched, breath held, as footage showed a team in hazmat suits surrounding the sphere. A high-speed titanium drill whirred to life, its bit glinting under floodlights. The crew had been told it was a “non-threatening anomaly.” But as the drill bit touched the sphere’s surface…

Frank’s heart pounded. The camera shook violently as the drill operator stumbled back, his face pale. “It’s… it’s moving!” he shouted. The sphere had begun to vibrate, a low hum that made Frank’s teeth ache. Then, without warning, it spun. Not slowly—fast, like a top, but with a sound that wasn’t mechanical. The drill shattered. Sparks rained down.

The TV cut to a wide shot. The sphere was levitating now, hovering inches above the ground. A crowd of miners and scientists screamed, scrambling back. Brian Johnson’s voice crackled through the speakers, calm but urgent: “Do not approach! It’s—”

A burst of light, brighter than the sun, swallowed the screen. Frank yanked the TV remote off the couch, but the image was gone. Only static remained.

The next day, the world learned what happened. The sphere had accelerated at exactly 17 Gs, leaving Earth’s gravity behind in a fraction of a second. It vanished into space, leaving no trace except for the crater where it had been and the stunned silence of a planet that had just witnessed something impossible.

Frank’s school was abuzz. Teachers whispered about “cosmic phenomena” and “unforeseen variables.” His classmates joked about aliens and doomsday devices. But Frank couldn’t shake the image of that spinning sphere, its surface reflecting the sky like a mirror. He started reading every article he could find, scouring libraries for mentions of mercury-titanium alloys, quantum structures, anything.

No one had answers. Not the UN. Not the scientists. Not even Brian Johnson, who gave a press conference weeks later and said only: “We were not prepared for what we encountered. This object… it wasn’t here to be studied. It was here to leave.”

Frank never saw the sphere again. But sometimes, on clear nights, he’d lie in his backyard, staring at the stars. He wondered if it had made it to the edge of the galaxy, or beyond. If it was still accelerating, endlessly, into the dark.

He thought about the drill operator’s scream. The way the sphere had moved before it left. And he wondered, not with fear, but with a boy’s quiet awe: What if it wasn’t a message? What if it was a test?

The sphere sat in the center of the lab, glinting like a drop of liquid mercury under the sterile white light. It had been discovered beneath the Carpathian Mountains and now hidden by a government that feared what it couldn’t understand. When the mining crew unearthed it in 2030 and our state team recognized it, we knew immediately—this was no ordinary object. It was a mirror, a relic, a question without an answer from 1967.

I’d spent my life chasing the unknown. As a child in Belgrade, I’d pored over books about quantum mechanics and relativity, dreaming of unraveling the universe’s secrets. By thirty-five, I was leading Serbia’s most advanced research initiative, the Kosmos Project, a top-secret endeavor funded by the government and cloaked in layers of bureaucracy. We were told to study it, not to talk about it. But the sphere… it wanted to be understood.

We called it a 'quantum go fast', a name that felt too small for something so vast. It was identical to the 1967 Nevada sphere—perfectly spherical, .97 meters in diameter, weighing 91 kilograms. Its surface was an impossible alloy of mercury and titanium, resistant to all known forms of testing. We tried lasers, magnetism, even a high-energy X-ray scan to map its interior. That’s when it woke up.

The moment the beam touched its surface, the lab’s lights flickered. The air grew heavy, like static before a storm. I was standing beside Dr. Marko Vuković, our lead physicist, when the sphere began to hum. It wasn’t a sound—it was a vibration, a resonance that made my bones ache. The X-ray scanner’s readouts went haywire, spitting out numbers that defied physics: Zero mass. Infinite density. Quantum entanglement with… nowhere?

“Shut it down!” I shouted, but Marko was frozen. His eyes were locked on the sphere, which now pulsed with a faint blue light. Then it moved. Not in a way that made sense—no thrust, no reaction force. It simply… slipped into the air, hovering inches above the table.

The lab’s walls trembled as a force like a thousand hurricanes slammed into us. My ears popped, my vision blurred, and for a heartbeat, I felt weightless, as if the Earth itself had forgotten how to hold me. Then it was gone.

The sphere vanished in 0.3 seconds, leaving only a faint shimmer in the air. The UN detected it two hours later, tracking its trajectory as it hurtled away from Earth at exactly 17 Gs. The numbers were impossible. No propulsion system known to humanity could sustain that acceleration, let alone control it. And yet, there it was—another artifact of the unknown, vanishing into a void that had no name.

The Serbian government was furious and now I’d handed them a global scandal. They demanded I stay silent, to erase the data, to destroy the lab before the UN could come, which they surely would. But I couldn’t.

I’d seen what it was. Not a weapon, not a machine—but something older. Something that didn’t belong to us. And I knew the world deserved the truth.

The hall was packed, reporters from every continent crammed into the Belgrade Science Institute. I stood at the podium, my hands steady despite the storm in my chest. In front of me, a stack of papers—our logs, our scans, our failures—lay like a funeral shroud.

“We call it a 'quantum go fast',” I said, my voice cutting through the murmur. “But you may remember it as the same type of sphere found decades ago in America.”

The room exploded. Cameras flashed, voices shouted. A CNN reporter demanded to know if it was alien tech. A Russian scientist accused Serbia of weaponizing the cosmos. I let them rant, then raised a hand for silence.

“This object is not ours,” I said. “It’s not from Earth. It’s a message, or a warning—maybe both. We don’t know. But we do know this: it left at 17 Gs, just like the first one in 1967. And it’s heading away from the galaxy, just like that one.”

The fallout was immediate. The UN demanded my arrest. Conspiracy theorists declared me a prophet. Scientists debated whether the spheres were probes, refugees, or something else entirely. And I—well, I became a symbol. A relic of my own making.

The first sphere left in 1967, a time of Cold War fear and cosmic wonder. The second left in 2030, an age of climate collapse and AI. Are there more? What did they want?

I don’t know. But sometimes, when I look at the night sky, I imagine them—tiny, silent, accelerating into infinity. And I wonder if they’re not escaping us… but watching us.

That’s what I thought every morning as I trudged through the cracked streets of Moscow, my boots crunching over broken glass and the brittle remains of a world that had long since stopped caring. The air was thick with smog, the kind that clung to your lungs like a second skin. The sky was gray, not from clouds but from the constant haze of factories that no one had bothered to fix. People moved like ghosts—hunched, tired, eyes fixed on the ground as if looking up would remind them of what they’d lost.

I turned the corner, my backpack slung over one shoulder, and caught a glimpse of the news broadcast flickering on a broken television in a shop window. The screen showed a man with sunken cheeks and a voice like gravel: “…pulses detected in the direction of the ‘quantum go fast’ objects. Scientists say it’s… something. We’ll keep you updated.”

I rolled my eyes. Something. That was the word everyone used now—something, maybe, perhaps, could be. The government had stopped trying to explain anything. They’d just shrug and say, “It’s something.”

My name is Alisa Petrova, and I’m 16 years old. I live in a half-collapsed apartment block that used to be part of the Soviet Union’s dream. Now it’s just a pile of concrete and memories. My parents are gone—my father died in the food riots of 2063, and my mother… well, she left for St. Petersburg a year ago to “find work.” I don’t know if she’s alive or not.

I’ve spent my life listening to adults talk about “the 40 years”—the time between now and when the “visitors” arrive. The ones from the spheres. The ones who left in 1967 and 2030, vanishing into the void. The ones who might come back.

They don’t build ships. They don’t stockpile food. They don’t even talk about it, except in hushed tones at the market or behind closed doors. The government says there’s no need to panic—“It’s 40 years away, and we’ll figure it out.” But what does that even mean? How do you figure out an existential threat?

I remember the stories. My grandfather used to tell me about the first sphere, the one that left in 1967. He said it was a miracle, a thing of beauty. But he also said that the scientists who studied it were terrified. “They didn’t understand it,” he’d mutter, his voice shaking. “And that’s the worst part.”

When I was 12, I found a book in my mother’s old closet. It was called “The Nevada Sphere: A History of the Unknown.” I read it cover to cover, even though most of it was in Russian and some parts were too technical. The book said that the sphere had accelerated at exactly 17 Gs, a number so precise it defied logic. It was like the universe itself had given it a command.

And then there was the second one, in Serbia. The 'quantum go fast'. My teacher at school once mentioned it in a history class, but she said it was “a failed experiment” and told us to focus on the present. But I remember the look on her face when she said it—like she was lying to us, or maybe just afraid.

We’ve stopped building. We’ve stopped dreaming. Even the scientists who once studied the spheres have gone silent, their labs abandoned to rats and dust. The United Nations? They’re a joke. Their meetings are held in empty halls, their leaders more concerned with keeping power than solving the problem that’s coming.

I’ve seen the pulses. They come in waves, faint but deliberate, like someone tapping on a door that’s been locked for decades. My friend Misha says it’s just cosmic noise, but I know better. The pulses are patterned. They’re not random.

The government says we have 40 years to prepare. But what if they’re wrong? What if the visitors don’t come in 2130, but sooner?

I think about the spheres. The way they left—so fast, so quietly. They didn’t destroy anything. They just… vanished. Maybe they weren’t here to hurt us. Maybe they were here to watch.

Every day, I sit on the roof of my building and look at the sky. The stars are still there, cold and distant. I wonder if they’re watching us too.

I don’t know what will happen in 2130. Maybe the visitors will come, and maybe they’ll destroy us. Maybe they’ll save us. Or maybe they’ll just… leave.

I’ve started collecting data. I’ve been listening to the pulses, trying to decode them. I know it’s risky—my school says I’m wasting my time, and the government says I should focus on “the present.” But I don’t care.

The sky above Berlin had always been a canvas of smoke and ash, but in 2130, it was something else. It was empty.

Dr. Karl Hölder stood on the observation deck of the Max Planck Institute, his breath visible in the frigid air. The telescopes had just confirmed it: four objects—each as large as the planet Mars, smooth and unblemished, like polished obsidian—were orbiting the edge of the solar system. They hadn’t come closer. Not even a meter. They had waited, watched, and then—after three days of silent vigil—turned and vanished into the void.

No signal. No message. No attempt to communicate. Just four monoliths, gleaming in the dark like the eyes of something ancient and unimpressed.

Karl’s hands trembled as he clutched the data tablet in front of him. He had spent his life believing that humanity’s first contact would be a moment of triumph, not defeat. He’d studied the 1967 sphere and the 2030 quantum go fast with a fervor that bordered on obsession. He’d poured over the logs, the theories, the failed attempts to decipher their purpose. And now, here they were—them.

The world had been waiting for this moment since 2070. For forty years, the pulses from the 'quantum go fast' spheres had been a constant hum in the background of human existence—like a heartbeat that never stopped. Scientists debated their meaning, governments argued over how to respond, and ordinary people… well, they’d stopped caring.

Karl had been one of the few who hadn’t. He’d spent his career at the European Space Agency, pushing for a unified response to the unknown. He believed in dialogue, in the possibility that the spheres weren’t a threat but a test. A chance to prove humanity wasn’t just a species of warlords and cowards, but something more.

The 2070s were a time of collapse. Climate disasters had turned much of the planet into wastelands, and the governments—already fractured by decades of corruption and nationalism—had abandoned any pretense of cooperation. The UN had dissolved into a shadow of itself, and the so-called “Earth Alliance” was more a collection of failed treaties than a real coalition.

Karl remembered the moment he’d first seen their image on the screen and when the telescopes at the Atacama Array confirmed it, he’d known: this was what we had been waiting for.

He’d called a press conference that night, his voice cracking with emotion. “They’re almost here,” he’d said. “They’ve come back.”

Karl stared at the data on his tablet: the spheres had moved at a speed that defied Newtonian physics, their trajectory a perfect arc back toward the direction they’d come from. No debris. No energy signatures. Just four voids in space, as if the universe itself had exhaled and held its breath.

He thought of the 1967 sphere, the one that had left so suddenly it had taken years to track. He thought of the Serbian scientists, who’d tried to study it and failed. And he thought of the people who had chosen to ignore the warning signs, to let Earth rot while they hoarded resources and built walls.

The beings had seen the smoke, the dying forests, the poisoned oceans. They’d seen the wars, the lies, the greed. And they’d decided we weren’t worth the effort.

Karl’s chest ached with the weight of it. He’d spent his life believing in the goodness of humanity, in our potential to rise above our flaws. But this, this was proof that we had failed.

He thought of the children who would never know a world untouched by pollution, of the cities that would crumble under the weight of their own neglect. He thought of the quantum go fast spheres, which had left without a word, and wondered if they’d been the first step in some grand design—a test of our worthiness.

The world would never understand what they’d lost. They’d shrug, mutter about “cosmic indifference,” and go back to their lives—sipping overpriced coffee, watching holograms of the past, and pretending that the stars were nothing more than distant lights.

Then, he turned away from the window and walked back into the darkness, where the last remnants of a dying civilization clung to hope like a child clutching a toy in the storm.

The wind howled through the skeletal remains of Anchorage like a living thing, tearing at my coat as I trudged through the snow. The sky was a sickly gray, streaked with ash from the fires that had burned for weeks. I didn’t know where they came from—someplace south, maybe. Or maybe the last of the factories in Seattle had finally gone up in flames. Either way, it didn’t matter. The sun hadn’t been seen for weeks, and the air tasted like rust.

I was 32 now. Thirty-two years old, and I’d never seen a tree that wasn’t dead or burned. The world had turned to ash, and we were all just waiting for the final spark.

I used to think the spheres would save us. That they’d come back with answers, or help, or at least a warning. But three years ago, when they left—those four planet-sized things that glowed like black holes—they didn’t say anything. They just left. And we were left with nothing but our own failures.

The nuclear wars started in 2032, or was it 2031? I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter now. The details are a blur of fire, fear, and the sound of planes flying low enough to shake the ground. The governments collapsed first—nobody could agree on who got what, and who had the right to the last barrel of oil or the last drop of clean water. Then came the wars. Not full-scale, but enough to make sure no one was safe.

I remember the first time I saw a bomb drop over Fairbanks. It wasn’t even aimed at us—just some rogue faction trying to take out a power station in the Yukon. But the fallout spread for miles, and we all paid the price. The air got worse. The crops died. And the people? They turned on each other.

I’ve seen it happen. Men with rifles, women who would kill for a can of beans. Every day is a fight to survive.

I live in an old bunker now, deep underground near the Arctic Circle. The others call it "the last safe place," but I don’t know if that’s true. There are a few of us—maybe ten, maybe less. We share what we have, but it’s never enough. The food is rotting. The water is poisoned. And the cold? It doesn’t care about us.

I used to think we were the last ones left. But I’ve seen signs—strange symbols carved into rocks, old radio signals that don’t make sense. Sometimes I wonder if the spheres were here before us, or if they’ve been watching all this time.

I don’t know what they saw when they left in 2130. Maybe they saw the cities burning, the people starving, the earth poisoned beyond repair. Maybe they saw us and decided we weren’t worth the effort.

The world doesn’t deserve to be saved. We destroyed it ourselves, one war at a time, one resource at a time. And now we’re paying the price.

I don’t know if there’s anything left to save. Maybe the spheres are gone for good, maybe they’re out there somewhere, watching as we burn ourselves to the ground. And if they come back… I don’t know if we’ll be any different.

The wind howled again, and I pulled my coat tighter around me. Somewhere in the distance, a plane passed overhead—too high to see, too low to ignore. I didn’t look up.

Go Fast

Go Fast

Go Fast - Chapter 1

Go Fast - Chapter 2

Go Fast - Chapter 3

Go Fast - Chapter 4

Go Fast - Chapter 5