Darkmatter - Blog Posts
Ok. So. If you like my writing in “Phantom and Fent- Wait that’s a Wayne?!”, then I have another story for you …
It’s HEAVILY inspired by Dark Matter by the lovely @mysterycyclone, so it’s a spider-man in gotham thing. BUT. there’s someone with him. “Who?” I hear you ask. Read and find out 🤭.
Here’s the summary for the story:
“So. You're dumped in a dimension where you have no idea who the locals are, only a couple hundred dollars, and no way to get back (yet). That's the exact scope of my situation, and the fact that I've got a vague memory of this city and its nutjobs are only the cherry to this clusterfuck.
Well. I've always wanted to know what Gotham was like anyway...?”
Idk, this story has a special place in my heart, soo… check it out
PLEASE CHECK THIS OUT
First half of chapter 1 under the cut;
Peter looked at me with wide eyes. He was breathing fast, jerkily, and by the time I processed what had happened, he was half-way to a full-blown panic attack. “April,” he gasped, breaths coming out sporadically, “April, what the fuck are we going to do?”
I was staring at my hands, eyes blank. They were flickering in and out of visibility, my mind and body apparently unable to decide if I should hide or not. The alleyway we were in - that we were deposited in - was dark, looming, and before I had realised it, my spider-sense had warned me of the person at the mouth of it. If I hadn’t been so out of it, if Peter hadn’t been occupied with his panic attack, we would’ve heard them long before they got there.
“Hey! Brats! Scram, get out of here! This is my turf and I’m not having you lot stay here!” He looked angry, and drunk, and ironically this is what got me out of my fugue state, what helped Peter calm down a little. Getting dropped into an unrecognisable alleyway had shaken us, but it seemed that drunk, angry people were always around, no matter what dimension you got dropped in.
That thought almost had me disassociating again, before I got a firm grip on myself. Get yourself into a place where you can panic properly first before you have a mental breakdown I thought.
A plan was what I needed, and even the bare bones of what I had calmed me down somewhat. I turned to Peter, who although had snapped out of his panic attack by virtue of the drunk, wasn’t faring well. “Peter. Hey, Pete. We need to move.” Grabbing his hands, I let just the bare bones of my strength leak through, helping to ground him in the moment.
I could imagine what he was thinking - what his mind must have conjured for him to look so broken. I cursed Dr. Strange for the hundredth time in my mind, if only for the fact that the magic that had thrown us here had us feeling like we had dematerialised into ash.
Yeah. I’m sure you know what memory Peter was reliving. I hauled myself up, and still grabbing his hand, dragged him out of there.
We stumbled out of the alleyway, and into the main road - if you could call it that. It was dark, and the pollution was thick, but it couldn’t hide the gothic architecture or the grimy cityscape. The buildings loomed, dark shadows cast over the street. There were neon signs out every couple of buildings, but they flickered half-heartedly, the light dying intermittently. It was as though even the inanimate objects here were warning us to leave.
Peter was still shaking, his breaths uneven, and when I looked back at him he looked haunted. But I had the brief thought that at least he was moving - at least he wasn’t stuck in that seedy alley. More alert than I was before, my spider-sense tingled at the base of my head, a constant hum that never dimmed - warning me to not let down my guard.
My eyes flickered over the faces of people, their heads down. They walked like they were afraid of getting jumped, wary looks given to me before they hurried away. My thoughts were bitter as person after person looked at me, took a glance at Peter, and lowered their eyes before they walked off.
My faith in humanity died a little at that point.
I tightened my grip on Peter a little, trying to convey some semblance of reassurance. His tight hold on me tightened further, and I flashed him a quick smile when he looked at me. My smile was weak, fleeting, but it seemed to be enough to ground Peter a little more.
We kept walking, aimlessly, it felt but we needed to find somewhere to regroup. To think. It felt like hours, but was maybe only 45 minutes before Peter was tugging at me to stop.
“April, look.” I looked over to what he was pointing at - a small sign that was innocuous and easily passed over. ‘Narrows Shelter’ it read, and I looked over at the building. It looked - clean for a lack of description. It was by no means the Ritz, but it was a far cry better than what I’d seen so far in this depressing city. It wasn’t much but it was something.
I nodded at him, and we hurried over, hoping to find somewhere to sleep for the night. We walked through the doors, and the inside of the lobby matched the outside. The place was clean, and although it looked run-down, I knew that it was our best shot at the moment. Remembering the seedy bars that the neon signs advertised, I shivered a little and prayed that we got something right today.
The Universe owed us.
Wait.
That thought had me spiralling again, the thought that I was in a different dimension. A different UNIVERSE.
By the time I had checked back in, fingernail indents carved into my hands, I could hear the tail end of the conversation that Peter had with the receptionist.
“Room 3B. Keep your heads down and don’t cause trouble.” She sounded brusque, but not unkind.
I could feel a hysterical laugh bubble up at the back of my throat, threatening to come out. Us? Keep out of trouble?
Peter gave me a look, correctly identifying the look in my eye. I swallowed it down, thanked the lady, and we made our way to the back of the shelter. The room was small, with 2 small cots and a window that was so dirty it let in barely any light. But the room was clean, the beds looking not bad. It felt like a sanctuary compared to the streets outside.
Peter sank onto one of the cots, and I followed him, my hand still grasped firmly in his. “We’ll figure this out Pete. We always do.” I laid my head on his shoulder, and felt as he nodded above me.
“Yeah,” he sighed heavily, but I could hear some hesitation in his voice. “April what if we– what if we can’t find a way back?”
I stayed silent, doubt nagging at me. What platitudes could I say when that thought had been running in my mind?
I’d assumed that when I was able to find somewhere to rest – somewhere for my mind to shut down – that I’d have the panic attack I was pushing back. But I just … disassociated. I couldn’t compartmentalise what had happened and my body felt – floaty. I was in a haze, and I didn’t want to go back to the panic-filled haze that my mind had been in before.
I could just – relax. Let everything drop, if only for a minute, and if my hands were trembling, if my glassy eyes held tears, then I didn’t make note of it.
The shelter helped with that. It was quiet, the background sounds muted; footsteps, murmured conversations, the occasional cough. It was a lot louder to me than to the average person – and I think that was what had ultimately grounded me; the fact that my enhanced senses still worked in this hellhole, that I hadn’t lost my powers.
I refused to think about what I could hear outside the shelter.
“We can think of a plan later, Pete,” I said eventually. I looked up at him, and I could see the exhaustion on him. “Let’s try to go to sleep first.”
He looked down at me, and his eyes softened with an emotion I couldn’t identify. “Ok April,” he said.
We settled into our respective cots, exhaustion laying us down like a heavy blanket. We lay there for a while, and drifted off after a bit. The last thing I could remember before I fell asleep was the dizzying relief I felt in the fact that Peter was with me. That the spell hadn’t careened out of order, and separated us.
A Wider Set of Eyes on the Universe
After years of preparatory studies, we are formally starting an astrophysics mission designed to help unlock the secrets of the universe.
Introducing…
the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope, aka WFIRST.
With a view 100 times bigger than that of our Hubble Space Telescope, WFIRST will help unravel the secrets of dark energy and dark matter, and explore the evolution of the cosmos. It will also help us discover new worlds and advance the search for planets suitable for life.
WFIRST is slated to launch in the mid-2020s. The observatory will begin operations after traveling about one million miles from Earth, in a direction directly opposite the sun.
Telescopes usually come in two different “flavors” - you have really big, powerful telescopes, but those telescopes only see a tiny part of the sky. Or, telescopes are smaller and so they lack that power, but they can see big parts of the sky. WFIRST is the best of worlds.
No matter how good a telescope you build, it’s always going to have some residual errors. WFIRST will be the first time that we’re going to fly an instrument that contains special mirrors that will allow us to correct for errors in the telescope. This has never been done in space before!
Employing multiple techniques, astronomers will also use WFIRST to track how dark energy and dark matter have affected the evolution of our universe. Dark energy is a mysterious, negative pressure that has been speeding up the expansion of the universe. Dark matter is invisible material that makes up most of the matter in our universe.
Single WFIRST images will contain over a million galaxies! We can’t categorize and catalogue those galaxies on our own, which is where citizen science comes in. This allows interested people in the general public to solve scientific problems.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
I am thrilled to announce that I have found and am working with a brilliant narrator, a Princeton Alumni, who has a wealthy breadth of experience in the science, technology, and creative industries. • Further than Before: Pathway to the Stars, Part 1, will be released first, followed by Part 2 and the Tome (for those who are patient). Otherwise, Part 1 and Part 2 will help to break down the cost, since the Tome is a half-million-worded heft of a manuscript, for all who dare! • “Life is about to get quite fantastic, and I assure you there is a lot of benevolent purpose behind all of this. For one, we need to preserve life, and in a way that brings joy and meaning to our very being. We need to have the ability to adapt to environments already teeming with life, rather than destroy entire sentient ecosystems wherever we travel. We need to have a healthy and robust focus of love, beauty, and kindness that will allow us to advance civilization in a manner that demonstrates genuine empathy, compassion, and respect for each other’s uniqueness and irreplaceable individuality. We can enjoy our uniqueness while attaining full understanding of each other and mitigating issues that would threaten our existence throughout the cosmos." • ~ Eliza Williams during a very important presidential address to the public, in "Further than Before: Pathway to the Stars, Tome," Chapter 55, "State of the Union" • #thetomechallenge #spaceoperanovels #sciencefictionnovels #politicalsciencefiction #darkmatter #exoticparticles #neuroscience #biotech #nanotech #futurism #matthewopdyke #pathwaytothestars #furtherthanbefore https://www.instagram.com/p/BvtieWwgamY/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1i71kzia7fjkw
Further Than Before: Pathway to the Stars, Tome
This gigantic manuscript consists of the stories in both “Further Than Before: Pathway to the Stars, Part 1 and Part 2” compiled into a gigantic scholarly text, called the "Tome." For Eliza and her crew of friends, it is a race against time to meet new cultures, preserve life, and share our legacies with distant civilizations, so we can span the Cosmos and go further than before! Purchase this eBook or HEFT this TOME in the printed format and enjoy the entire original Space Opera! The "Further Than Before" series, subtitled "Pathway to the Stars," consists of all of the stories in an abridged format, ready for people to see what happens before each of the more detailed "Pathway to the Stars" series booklets are released, and is available in a Part 1 and Part 2, which are in-turn compiled into a gigantic scholarly text, called the "Tome." Eliza Williams, Yesha Alevtina, James Cooper, Vesha Celeste, Sky Taylor and a host of friendly heroes tackle some of the greatest dilemmas of the day to bring humanity out and into the stars bearing a legacy we would be proud to share with other civilizations--a legacy of kindness, of mind-to-mind communication, of love, and of healing instead of harming. If we are to overcome the great expansion and the death of all life, we must overcome the smaller challenges to progress and focus on even greater ones. Eliza and her team work diligently to speed the pace of society in her world with the belief that beauty and untold potential are within every being. If we find ways to bring that out in ourselves and others, a future where we can breed longevity, a collective and high quality of life, augment the clarity of our minds, and innovate to span the Cosmos may be in our grasp. Within the organization Eliza founded, called Pathway, she and her team takes us on a fantastical and near-Utopian journey to get us out and into the farthest reaches of space, as we advance further than we have before, to make this happen. There are dilemmas such as the need for longevity and the ability to visit loved ones following long journeys, and they put in place the capabilities to overcome the effects of space travel on our physiology and neurology. We journey as Eliza, and her growing crew of friends, are determined to stabilize a rocky economy, wipe away undue suffering, violence, disease, terrorism, and trafficking in persons. They work together to tame seismic activity, weather, and fires. She and her friends tackle ways to prevent extinction and provide solutions to quality of life concerns. They even consider the longevity of our Sun and our Earth's capacity to preserve life. Eliza tackles each of these issues to get us out, and into the stars, so we can begin our biggest quest--to help our Universe breathe ever so lightly. Allowing it to expand and contract ever so gently, may allow us to preserve its life as well as all of life, allowing us to maximize our mental capacity. With intellect, experience, perspective, kindness, and graciousness we will have the ability to gain more wisdom leading to longevity and clarity of mind. For Eliza and her crew of friends, it is a race against time to meet new civilizations, preserve life, share our legacies, and go further than before! Heft this Tome and join me on the entire original Space Opera of this Pathway to the Stars! No matter the challenge, there will always be an opportunity for greater pursuits! #spaceopera #spaceoperabooks #scifibooks #futurism #scifiauthor #sciencefiction #scififantasy #biotech #nanotech #neurotech #spacetravel #solarsystem #sciencefictionbooks Amazon Author Site: https://www.amazon.com/author/matthew... Author Website: https://www.ftb-pathway-publications.com LinkedIn Company Site: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ftb-... Facebook FTB General Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Furth... Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Further-Than... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matthewopdyke/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Besokster Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/besokster/
Please enjoy my new sci- fi fantasy novel as our heroes prepare for a giant space adventure in this two book series. Currently available on Amazon! Further than Before: Pathway to the Stars ( 2 book series) amazon.com/author/matthewopdyke #scififantasy #spaceopera #sciencefiction #mustread #scifinovels #fantasynovels #sciencefictionnovels #biotechnology #nanotechnology #theoreticalphysics #physics #darkmatter #utopian #strongfemalelead https://www.instagram.com/p/Bo1bqokgeJT/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=98bv21jpi1jt
Please enjoy my new sci-fi fantasy novel currently available on Amazon! Further than Before: Pathway to the Stars (2 book series) amazon.com/author/matthewopdyke #scififantasy #spaceopera #sciencefiction #fantasy #mustread #scifinovels #fantasynovels #biotechnology #nanotechnology #theoreticalphysics #physics #darkmatter #utopian #strongfemalelead https://www.instagram.com/p/Bo1Z9Xlg2uc/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1rhtcswancrx1
Pathway to the Stars: Part 1, Vesha Celeste Posted on October 6, 2018 by Matthew Opdyke (FTB) Soon to be released (eBook-Kindle, Oct 9, 2018), is the first in a latched-on (or related) series, Pathway to the Stars: Part 1, Vesha Celeste. This will be a slightly more descriptive portion that goes into more detail of the first character introduced, Vesha Celeste. Please pre-order, read, review, comment, and enjoy! Thank you! Vesha Celeste journeys with Yesha Alevtina and her dream-angel, Sky, following a long life of high hopes, dreams, and professional achievements in astronomy and astrophysics. Yesha shows and teaches Vesha about biopods, spaceports, tech cities that are hidden, cloaked with invisibility, and located solar-system-wide. She introduces Vesha to the Virtual Universe and teaches her how Eliza Williams worked with Yesha and James Cooper to develop all of her advances and designs. There is a lot for her to learn, in this more-detailed prequel to a giant space opera awaiting humanity, in their quest to save the Universe, one very important step at a time. Enjoy Vesha’s beginning journey, in the first of a multi-story series, called Pathway to the Stars! https://matthew-opdyke-ftb.com/2018/10/06/pathway-to-the-stars-part-1-vesha-celeste/ #scifi #strongfemalelead #fantasy #spaceopera #biotechnology #nanotechnology #politicalscifi #physics #theoreticalphysics #darkmatter #utopian #hope #edifying #entertainment https://www.instagram.com/p/BomBkaNHxWv/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=19fgl64n8927t
Ok but honestly HOW IS TUMBLR NOT CRAZY ABOUT DARK MATTER. Also Android is best space mom.
Gahhh I'm a DarkMatter character! I've peaked.
@bricksandbirds
Guys DarkMatter is so cool we in the B&B studio (a room with a shark on the wall) like it 10/10 good characters
Theo: You can’t adopt every gay, autistic, depressed child that you see
Cy: *dramatic gasp*
The kids: *dramatic gasp*
Theo: We can adopt every gay, autistic, depressed child that you see
*bridal theme plays and Cy and Theo get married and nothing horrible happens ever again, I promise*