Kaleidotrope, January 2026
This philosophical science fiction story explores the nature of probability and inevitability in an infinite universe through the improbable journey of a single bullet.
The narrative begins at the climax of the Great Mutiny aboard the generation ship Adams, which travels through space protected by a forcefield scoop. During a confrontation on the ship’s hull between the tyrannical Captain and the Last Mutineer, the Captain fires a warning shot that misses the Mutineer. While the second shot kills her, the warning shot does something extraordinary—it passes through the forcefield scoop, an event with only a 0.0000001% probability of occurring.
The author argues that in an infinite universe, even infinitesimally unlikely events must eventually happen. With countless bullets fired through forcefields across the cosmos every nanosecond, one was bound to make it through. This particular bullet, traveling at 4,390 km/h plus the ship’s momentum, begins an improbable odyssey through space.
The bullet’s journey continues to defy odds. It encounters a wormhole—not impossible, the narrator argues, since quantum wormholes exist everywhere, just too small to perceive. This one happens to be an outlier, large enough for the bullet to pass through. Emerging in a distant galaxy, the bullet finds itself in a highly unusual solar system: a gas giant in the habitable zone surrounded by moons inhabited by intelligent beings.
These alien civilizations have been at war, building telescopes and military installations. A military outpost detects the bullet but dismisses it as insignificant debris. Over dozens of years, the bullet loops through the solar system, miraculously avoiding collisions while a peace movement develops among the warring moon peoples.
The story culminates when these civilizations hold peace talks at a space station positioned at a symbolic Lagrange point. One Evil Emperor, who claims the backing of the “Great and Terrifying Storm God of the Gas Giant,” refuses to cooperate. After two weeks, he declares the talks heretical and departs in his shuttle, threatening to continue the war.
Then the ancient bullet, fired in a mutiny galaxies away and millennia ago, strikes the Emperor’s shuttle. It pierces through a fault in the armored windows, passes through the Emperor’s heart-equivalent, and lodges in a crucial pipe. The shuttle explodes. The watching delegates interpret this as divine intervention, the Emperor’s followers reconsider their beliefs, and peace is achieved.
The narrator acknowledges this would be an unsatisfying story from the aliens’ perspective—too coincidental, too convenient. But the point isn’t about satisfying narrative structure; it’s about recognizing that improbable events happen constantly in an infinite universe. The story concludes by inviting readers to consider their own existence—itself the product of countless improbabilities and coincidences—as proof that “anything not impossible” must eventually occur.
Through this tale of cosmic chance, Holmes crafts a meditation on probability, causality, and the relationship between impossibility and inevitability across the vast scales of space and time.
Jayde Holmes is an Australian writer, artist, and gamer living in Newcastle with her husband and cat. Her work has appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Dirty Magick Magazine, and on her website at https://jaydeholmes.com.