Two astronauts travel faster than light in stasis chambers and, upon receiving a distress signal, their ship automatically disengages hyperlight speed. One of the astronauts wakes up in her chamber, finding themselves stranded in space, away from their ship. She manages to take both chambers back into the ship, but, even after connecting the other astronaut, her husband, into the medic bay, she is unable to wake him. The computer cannot find a reason for him to be non-responsive. He's neither alive nor dead. Then, she discovers that there is a third person in the ship. When questioned, the computer says there are only her husband and her in the ship, although it still counts three persons in the ship. Eventually, she discovers that the other person is her husband, fine and alive! The explanation is that they had arrived and, during work, an accident happened and killed her. The ship issued a distress signal, that the ship "still" in hyperspeed detected, leaving the hyperspace BEFORE it had arrived, therefore, previously to the accident that had/would kill her. So far, so good.
Unfortunately, then comes the "explanation" to why her husband #1 cannot wake up: the universe avoids paradoxes, allowing only one copy of each person to live. The woman #1 (just arrived from hyperspace) is alive/conscious because the woman #2 had died earlier in the accident, That's bad news for husband #2, because the woman goes nutsy cuckoo and kills him, prompting husband #1 to restart living... What?!
The premise of the story is interesting, with a ship catching its own distress signal while travelling faster than light. Yes, it completely shatters the Principle of Causality, so that already pushes it into the Fantasy realm, and away from Science Fiction, but, at least, it still tries to explain something. Unfortunately, the idea of the universe avoiding paradoxes by knocking people off is just dumb (if breaking into one's self timeline wouldn't be enough to collapse the universe, meeting oneself afterwards would make absolutely no difference, that's too anthropocentric).
The production is good, but the story goes down faster than light.
Unfortunately, then comes the "explanation" to why her husband #1 cannot wake up: the universe avoids paradoxes, allowing only one copy of each person to live. The woman #1 (just arrived from hyperspace) is alive/conscious because the woman #2 had died earlier in the accident, That's bad news for husband #2, because the woman goes nutsy cuckoo and kills him, prompting husband #1 to restart living... What?!
The premise of the story is interesting, with a ship catching its own distress signal while travelling faster than light. Yes, it completely shatters the Principle of Causality, so that already pushes it into the Fantasy realm, and away from Science Fiction, but, at least, it still tries to explain something. Unfortunately, the idea of the universe avoiding paradoxes by knocking people off is just dumb (if breaking into one's self timeline wouldn't be enough to collapse the universe, meeting oneself afterwards would make absolutely no difference, that's too anthropocentric).
The production is good, but the story goes down faster than light.
