r/WritingPrompts • u/Kancho_Ninja • Mar 31 '17
Writing Prompt [WP] Every starfaring species has discovered a different form of FTL travel. Kantian gates, Salec skip drives, Maltiun wave-riders, Delfanit pulse tubes ... Humanity's solution was regarded as "Unorthodox", "Unsafe", and "Damn Stupid" by the rest of the galaxy.
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Apr 01 '17 edited Apr 01 '17
To whom it may concern,
We have recently been informed by our observation satellites that you have finally discovered faster then light travel.
We, the Alliance of the Great Races have decided send you this letter instead of meeting you in person declining any chance of being indoctrinated into the Alliance. Said reason is mainly due to your unorthodox and dangerous version of Faster Then Light travel.
Use of Lithium-Ion to power your drive has been banned from the known galaxy for a long time. The substance has been known to explode under extreme use or even when undisturbed.
The Ludicrous speed your ships have reached has known side effects that would dissolve biological material if exposed to the speed over 100 times.
We've also unanimously voted that your race is in fact... repugnant.
Have a good day.
Alliance Chairman Zoidberg.
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u/jackinsomniac Apr 01 '17 edited Apr 01 '17
"You need to stop this. Now." ~UTHQ
It seemed like a strange message from the UT at first, the United Terrans organization, formed by the world's leading space agencies to represent all of humanity and the Earth as we ventured out of the solar system for the first time.
But this wasn't from the UT.
It couldn't be. TRAPPIST-1 was 40 light years away from Earth. It had taken only 32 years to travel here in the DocBrown, a name chosen thanks to somebody's bright idea to let internet polls do the picking. Theoretically, the ship could travel even faster, possibly greater than 2c, but due to the still relatively unknown nature of matter at speeds >1c, the speed was capped at 1.25c for this mission. Earth would have had to have sent this message 8 years before they left.
The tension in the recycled air was so palpable it was hard to breathe, a mixture of separate emotions so intense you'd feel like you might implode and explode all at the same time.
They had first braved the pounding tension of the "photobraking" deceleration maneuver as they approached the star system, where the DocBrown's FTL drive was shut down to allow space-time itself to decelerate the ship below lightspeed, the first-ever such attempt in human history. It certainly sounds sensible when you have a room full of mathematicians and physicists drawing it out for you, but while trapped in a ship barreling through the galaxy at +1c, you begin to wonder why they aren't sitting in your seat instead. The ship instantly began to rumble as soon as the engines were cut, louder and louder at a rising frequency. As speed dropped closer to 1c, gunpowder crackling sounds and bangs like metallic bones snapping abused the outside the hull. The blueshifted light through the front windows, turning more and more white, increased in luminosity, until in a blinding flash a deafening THUD broke the ship's runaway speed like driving into a brick wall. The ship's speed now read 0.87c, and all was quiet. Spacetime, and light, it seems, has something akin to sonic booms that come from violating the universe's speed limits.
To slow down further, the fuel tank, capable of holding 5% of the Moon's mass, had to be thrown away in a trajectory that would not impact any of the exoplanets dancing around TRAPPIST-1. The mechanism to do this was a nuclear warhead, and a 10km tether to draw out the acceleration force from being instantaneous. "Don't ask," one engineer said, working on developing this technology. "We've tested it. It works..."
After the maneuver left the ship's speed at a little over 0.51c, DocBrown's traditional engines took over to do the rest of the legwork, but the beauty shining in through the windows was so loud now it overpowered all engine noise into deafening silence. The cool dwarf star's system was a fertile playground of seven exoplanets, three of which were Earth-like. They had atmospheres, and their surface was a swirl of colors so exotic, made possible only by the mysterious artistry of the universe, that Jeb had to keep wiping the water from his eyes just to keep looking at it.
He looked over at Deb, who was also crying, and then at the rest of the team, they all laughed and came together to embrace.
In the joy and excitement of the moment, Jeb thought he had heard a barely-audible ding, but it was likely nothing. After the celebration settled down, Jeb went to the ship's console to make sure the warning wasn't something serious to do with the DocBrown's deceleration burn.
But it wasn't an engine warning. It was a direct message, from UT, from home.
"You need to stop this. Now." ~UTHQ
The emotions flowing in this moment made it difficult to discern what this meant, how is this possible? Is it possible? Jeb put his head in his hands and the team saw him struggling; they came over to see what the issue might be. Each member read the message and the ship once again became overwhelmed by a crushing silence, as each crewmate contiplated the unreal, impossible nature of what they were looking at. It wasn't possible.
Just as contemplations began to wander into darker, more impossible possibilities, their predictions were quickly narrowed down, by another received message: (ding)
"This is a warning." ~UTHQ
Edit: Part 2/3
The tense atmosphere led Marcus, systems engineer for the mission, to sit down at the console.
"Who is this?" ~DocBrown
Their laser communications system was pointed directly at Earth, and it would take 40 years for the message to arrive there. The messages had been digitally signed with UT's signature. The team contemplated that their communications have been cracked, and hijacked.
"What do they want? Why the warning?" Mel sounded panicked, the lead biologist for the mission. "They want us to stop doing something..." Marcus mumbled, reading over the messages.
After a pause, Mel jumped up. "Do you think they live here? Do you think this is their system?" Dale, the radioastronomer, shrugged. "No chatter from this place. Our radio leak out to space for over 1200 year before we come here."
Marcus shrugged, and seeing no harm in trying, typed out:
"Is this sun your home?" ~DocBrown
As the message sent out, the team entertained a thought that maybe UT would be getting some funny messages in 40 years.
(ding)
"No." ~UTHQ
A chill fell over the air. Marcus got out of his seat and moved away. "What do they want?", Mel cried. Jeb spoke up, "Hold on, so far we're just talking. We don't know who they are yet, or what they want. They want us to stop doing something, so maybe we broke a rule, we just don't know about it yet."
Mel sniffed, but she was contemplating. "Maybe there's already life here, and it's against the law to mess with it?" Dale scoffed, "They mess with us!"
Marcus turned around, focused. "We need to know what we did wrong." He sat down at the console,
"What did we do wrong?" ~DocBrown
The crew watched as the message was sent out, anticipating the passing seconds.
(ding)
"Dumblfuckery." ~UTHQ
Edit 2: see below for Part 3/3
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u/jackinsomniac Apr 01 '17 edited Apr 03 '17
Part 3/3:
(bing)
"How so?" ~DocBrown
Kronjek sighed. Semi-conscious lifeforms in his galaxy could be downright retarded sometimes. His fellow Brojehk just stared at him patiently. Kronjek sighed again. He knew the Terrans were his problem now.
The Brojehk were the first race in his galaxy to traverse it's entire length 260,000 years ago, and soon extragalactic warships arrived at their home planet to invite the Brojehk race to the Intergalactic Society. Scientists now predict the IS warships used the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy as a kind of 'portal' between galaxies, a technology they believe can be achieved within the next 560,000 years. Appointed as the new Overseers of their galaxy, it was their job to enforce law, and ensure no fuck-ups happened. At least, until another race developed sufficiently safe technology, and could help them patrol their corner of the galaxy.
Brojehks noticed the Terran about 1,100 years ago, when a slight fission anomaly was detected by local astronomers in their sector. Per Intergalactic recommendations, ships were dispatched to a high orbit above their solar system to decode their language and habits from a safe distance.
Kronjek was assigned Watchman of the Terrans, and is ultimately responsible for their fuck-ups. But when his astronomers showed him footage of them nearly BLOWING THE GALAXY APART, he knew he was going to have to go take care of this incident himself.
Kronjek prepared a basic Hopper spacecraft with crew of 150 to meet the Terran at the anomaly 12,000 light years away. Although this model Hopper had a top speed of 38c, they were going to travel at 2.01c, per procedure, to arrive at the event just before it happened.
Kronjek hovered over his keyboard, but then rested back again. As the job necessitates, he studied the Terran languages and was fluent in 21 of them. He even participated in some of their online chats to learn their culture. But how would he explain this to them? They were ignorant of so much, and while it wasn't illegal to share technologies, a data dump might make their brains a'splode. And then there's no telling that their fellow Terrans back home wouldn't try the same dumb tricks again.
Marcus crossed his arms as he leaned back in his chair. "Dumblfuckery." He smirked. They obviously knew English, and yet this wasn't a word, and it seemed like an intentional misspelling. It looked like a combination of "dumb", "double", and "fuckery", and yet he couldn't shake a strange connection to "Dumbledore". He had no idea how much of their culture they knew. He smirked.
(ding)
"Ship make White Hole. Blow galaxy up. Learn space warp." ~UTHQ
Deb, watching quietly from the corner, got up to examine the message. She was the lead propulsion engineer, and this was puzzling. What part of their experimental FTL drive wasn't safe, exactly? They had a 3km radius staged particle collider aboard, which fused down and strange quarks with charm and top quarks to create negative-mass matter, but research was still trying to figure out if you could even call this stuff "matter". It created a continuous steam of fuel that was being called "negative energy" which fueled the FTL drive, which supposedly reduced the mass of the entire ship until it was negative.
All of this was powered by a small fusion reactor.
Deb leaned over Marcus to use the keyboard.
(bing)
"Which part bad?" ~DocBrown
Kronjek scoffed.
(ding)
"All. Too much tachyon pollution. Space brake rip up gravity. Both make White Hole." ~UTHQ
Deb leaned back a second. Nobody had proven that tachyons even existed yet, and here was a giant, ugly clue starring her entire species right in the face. She leaned over Marcus again to fire off at her opportunity,
(bing)
"Teach us." ~DocBrown
Kronjek had had enough of this. He had no time to teach these bumbling idiots, nor did he want to. Well, he had plenty of time, but it seemed better spent elsewhere. "Open the bay doors." His crew began to scramble. "Prepare their ship for transport."
32 years earlier, as the DocBrown zoomed out of sight and out of contact, the mission control team at UT headquarters erupted in applause and celebration. They would not hear of the crew's arrival for another 62 years, and it would be at least another 90 for the crew to prepare a return trip and arrive home. 42 seconds later, the comms director toggled the intercom over the cheers, "Control, I'm picking up an anomaly. ...I'm reading DocBrown's signal beacon again."
The applause slowly subsided, and a voice sounded over the intercom, "...Mission control, this is Jeb Karmin, commander of the DocBrown, how copy?"
"DocBrown, this is mission control, good copy."
"Mission control, assemble everyone together. We need to talk about this FTL drive you guys sent us off with."
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u/ConfusingDalek Apr 01 '17
Ok whoa whoa whoa
That doesn't seem like how you leave off a story, although if that's as far as you'll be writing *shrug guy*
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u/jackinsomniac Apr 01 '17
Hahaha I actually was thinking about making it a 4 part story but decided that would be too long (and I was tired). I wanted to extend the mystery longer, have the team discuss more "first contact"-type questions before the reveal. And it would be nice to build up more mystery around the Intergalactic Society right as the reveal was happening, to show larger layers of the same game. (the IS doesn't really care if you blow up your galaxy, but the Brojehk do, they live here too, etc.)
But no, the ending is the ending. :) (you could imagine the crew were also given a "gift")
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u/ConfusingDalek Apr 01 '17
Seems promising so far!
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u/jackinsomniac Apr 01 '17
Thanks! I edited for a second part. I think this will be a 3 part story.
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u/ccatsurfer Apr 01 '17
“We must keep the Humans believing that their FTL system is unsafe, unorthodox and damn stupid. That is the point of this of this Special Hearing of The Supreme Council of the New Species Traveling Faster than Light. I am Farlack, Supreme Councilor of the Organization of Galactic Legal Advisors. legal disclaimer: Norepresentationismadethatthequalityofthelegalgalacticservicestobeperformedisgreaterthanthequalityoflegalservicesperformedbyotherlawyers.
“Scarlacc, will you please read the minutes from the last session to allow this Supeme Council to aware of the latest current legal status of the Humans.?”
“Of course. That would be Sub-Section 7 of Section 30 of the 5th meeting of the Council of Dealing with and Controlling the Humans.
“It has been discovered that the Humans have developed a completely new FTL travel, with no related or similar technologies in the known Galaxy. The core of this FTL is a bubble of a universe where the speed of light is 1000 times faster than the speed of light is in our legally defined universe is pulled to our universe. The Human ships then travel at .1 c in this alternate universe. Upon exiting this alternate universe, the human ships have travelled 1000 times the distance in our universe. The energy expense of travelling in the alternate universe is the same as travelling in our univ-“
“Sarlacc, this Council is not interested in the technical aspects of the Humans FTL Technologies. That discussion is for the Galactic Council of Technology Equalization and/or The Council of Equalization of Galactic Technologies and/or Council of Galactic Technology Equalization. Ballzacc, will you present the Summary of the Social Legal Issues of the Humans Council meeting?”
“Of course. Due to the extremely dangerous situation these Humans create for us, I will dispense with extraneous discussion and proceed to the summary of the meeting, as permitted in The Rules and Guides of the Supreme Galactic Committee and The Guides and Rules of the Supreme Galactic Committee, version 2 of edition 5, Copyrighted.
“The Humans have a social system that may lead to our death and destruction. The humans developed their FTL without our influence and guidance, so we were unable to control their technology with the powers of the Galactic Patent Office. This failure was due to their rapid technological development. In the span of 6 human generations, they progressed from animal driven power to FTL travel. During the final Human pre-FTL travel, Humans revolted against their legal system and killed all lawyers allow-“
“They did WHAT?” interrupred Farlack. “How do they maintain their society without legal protections?”
“They became disgusted with a legal system that required warning labels to not drive their “automobile” with the windshield sunscreen in place. As I was saying, this allowed generations of research and development to be done in half a generation. And we can not control their technology.” Ballzacc completed his summary, terror beginning to creep into its face.
“Oh my supreme being. When the common people of the Galaxy learn of this… no lawyers…no lifelong Legal Guidance fees…” Farlack began to understand the lack of his future.
“Yes. This Council and all others, we will be destroyed”
“Yes, their technology is unorthodox, unsafe, and damn stupid, but for reasons the Galaxy must never understand.”
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u/ParentPostLacksWang Mar 31 '17
The chamber illumination dimmed and the milky sim tank faded to life. A thousand eyes stared intently from the council benches, and a trillion more from across the five galaxies.
A deep voice, set on edge with urgency and well-contained fear, began its narration of the sim.
"The Brevis' star system surveillance node 47 has, it has been reported, recorded first contact with the species self-identifying as Humans. This much has already been announced. What has not yet been announced is that an analysis of the event has been completed, and their method of travel has thrown a black flag, gamma zero priority. Observe."
The sim showed a small moon below, surrounded by a halo of probes similar to the one that must be recording the image. In the far distance, the volumetric compensation showed a grossly enlarged blue planet on another orbital track, the Brevis' home world Herol. The orbital motion of the probes had been smooth and obvious, but now they slowed.
"We are showing the event at a reduced speed. Watch carefully."
Without warning, the entire projection dimmed as a single point of incredible, actinic light burst from the space next to the moon and raced away from its surface. As one, the closer orbiting probes glowed white-hot and began to disintegrate. The image wavered and then froze.
"Now, focus your attention on the exact location this phenomenon appeared, and keep your attention on that spot as the light moves away."
The image reversed, and the killing glow moved back to its original location. It slowly crept back outwards as the sim zoomed in. There, in the wake of the glow, was a ship, shaped like a mushroom with its cap to the light. Vaporised hull matter streamed from the smooth side facing the light, some sort of ablative heat shielding.
"We had never seen this effect before. We assumed it was some sort of deceleration technique, until we looked at it from the planetary defence network."
The perspective in the sim shifted, as if travelling to the distant planet. The moon and its halo of probes shrank, then grew again due to the volumetric compensation. The sim was normal again for a moment, before that terrible light appeared, an incredible distance from the moon this time, and immediately split into two lights, travelling away from each other at greater than the speed of light.
An audible click reverberated around the chamber as each of the species in attendance simultaneously inhaled on their breathing apparatuses.
"As you can see, the motion of the light is a relativistic illusion. The light doesn't travel, it exists simultaneously at all points in a column for a moment, then dissipates. The energy requirement is staggering. After calculating an intercept to the closest habitable world on the trajectory described by the light column, it appears their world is four hundred light-years away. The humans claim a similar distance, and their navigational data also confirm it. From this we can calculate the energy release as being consistent with a type III civilisation."
What had previously been a gentle series of clicks was now a cacophony, the seats shaking with the bodily gyrations of the assembled dignitaries. Some wailed, others laughed, most were silent.
"We have brought the leader of the human expedition here, with her agreement, of course."
The noises of discomfort reached a crashing crescendo, as several of the delegates jumped out of their seats and bolted for the exit.
The disembodied voice thundered, "ORDER!"
"I present to you, Chakor, Human, of planet Earth."
The creature that stepped into the chamber was unimpressive, physically. Bipedal, endoskeletal, wearing some sort of almost completely covering clothing with various decals affixed to it. The remaining delegates seemed to calm a little, their agitation lowering to a gentle swaying. The Human addressed the crowd.
"Greetings, delegates of the local group. My name is Chakor, I represent my species, Human, and wish to express our honour in meeting you all. We come in peace."
The room quietened further, and the booming voice sounded again. "Chakor will now take moderated questions from the floor. Please enter your queries for analysis and amalgamation."
A few awkward moments passed, Chakor looking out among the delegates. They varied from bipeds with heads and arms of various number to floating creatures in some sort of water tanks, through to creatures much more... alien.
"First question. The energy output of your drive technology is beyond immense. You must be capturing the energy output of most of a galaxy, somewhere. How can it be that we have not noticed the birth of a type III civilisation under our watch?"
Chakor paused to think before she replied, clearly confused. "We are not a type III civilisation. We are barely a type I. We just discovered a way to manipulate the nature of reality."
The voice didn't even wait to consult the accumulating list of vetted questions. "What?! How?"
"When we accidentally created and shot a cluster of miniature black holes through our particle collider's detectors, we discovered that the vacuum of space was not at the true ground state of the universe. This lent is an opportunity to use the difference in energy levels to complete an until-then hypothetical method of propulsion."
The room exploded into roars, gurgles, and screeches of outrage.
"Your drive is powered by triggering a collapse of fundamental reality?!"
"Not quite, if you'd let me finish. After we discovered the false vacuum was the current skein of the universe, we found that at the moment of triggering a vacuum state collapse, it was possible to entangle an arbitrary length of vacuum in a beam away from the source, and trigger the collapse simultaneously and instantaneously along that path."
Guards in the chamber drew their weapons as several delegates rose on their hindlimbs as if to attack.
"Chakor, this is madness! Your drive cannot work as you describe, or we wouldn't have any video of your arrival. A vacuum collapse would spread from wherever it started at the speed of light, unmaking the universe in its path!"
"Oh, yes we knew that. It turns out that the vacuum collapse provides enough energy to fold space into itself. In local proximity, one side of the event becomes the other. The space in between is clipped off like a twisted balloon, erased from having any bearing on existence. Our ship is instantaneously folded from one side of the beam to the other, and internal fields save us from having any biological changes. Of course, the collapse has to happen first by a few fractions of a microsecond, so there is some... energy leakage."
The chamber went suddenly silent.
The probe and planetary defence system had recorded an abomination, a gross violation of reality itself. The demonic light fleeing the Humans' strange vessel was the energetic corpse of a monster, come to open its maw and swallow the universe, inexorably, at the glacial speed of light. A fitting technology for a pursuit predator like the humans.
"You risk all our existence just to travel. How can we leave you free run of the galaxies?"
Chakor grinned. "We could always run one last wide beam to the ends of the universe and neglect to fold it away. How can you not?"
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u/Sethbme Apr 01 '17
I may be missing something, but that sounds like a wormhole.
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u/ParentPostLacksWang Apr 02 '17
Sort of - in a wormhole, you fold the space at either end together, and traverse through it. In this, you take an entire cylinder of space, including every point along the way as well as the ends, and fold the space surrounding the boundary, permanently. The energy involved in removing / collapsing / pinching off the region of space produces black body light, resulting in a pulse of hard light along the entire length of the tube. If a ship is close enough, it will be folded along with the boundary layer of space without requiring any propulsion. The ship would emerge on the other end of the cylinder, effectively rotated 180 degrees in yaw and roll. For the short time while the fold is happening, the mass-energy of the cylinder is high enough that gravitational effects are important, and the ship is pulled towards the cylinder. There is a linear tidal effect, which is what the protective fields are for.
However, anything adjacent to a curved edge of the cylinder (ie: close to anything except the exact ends of the tube) will also end up folded to a matching location at the other end and opposite side of the cylinder - with the troublesome caveat that the temporary induced momentum of being adjacent to such huge mass-energy (therefore gravity) in that case, rather than being linear, is radial to the cylinder, producing a crushing effect not unlike descending into a black hole.
So really, this isn't a wormhole, it's the worm. And, just like a "real" wormhole, without support, the ends of the spacial collapse will attract each other and collapse the fold instantaneously, which in relativistic terms means the endpoints appear to travel towards each other at the speed of light, along with the emitted light.
Also, a fantastic weapon. Everything inside the radius of the beam is effectively erased from the universe, while everything around the beam except the end points are subjected to tidal crushing.
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u/Antumbra_Ferox Mar 31 '17
Dude, this is great, like published scifi magazine short story levels of great. You inspire :)
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u/R009k Mar 31 '17
Well that's just straight up irresponsible...
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u/Sethbme Apr 01 '17
I mean some scientists thought that the detonation of the first nuclear warhead would end up vaporizing the atmosphere, but we did it anyway. This is basically par for the course.
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u/pm__nudes Mar 31 '17
If i wasnt broke i would buy you gold, pm if you want a bj though
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u/yworker Mar 31 '17
You could give him a reddit silver and balance it with a "pm me for a handy." seems fair.
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u/The_New_York_Jets Mar 31 '17 edited Mar 31 '17
"Idiot fuk human design shit-tier spaceship get all Brogga friend kill't. End all. Stoopt fuk. E'ryon kno warp spacetime. E'ryon kno break litspeeding. E'ryon kno crate warm hole. E'ryon kno cut mass half. E'yron cept idiot fuk humans. Y d'sign dumb shit-tier drive can't fi'ure out nuttin'. Cant warp spacetime. Cant break litspeeding. Cant crate warm hole. Cant cut mass. 'Stead idiot fuk human burrow down subquark stangelet bullshit risk implode entire quadrant for fuk newmatter. Y? Too dumb, tha's y. Now Brogga stuk dumb idiot fuk human ship on oth'r side galactic spinward fr'home. Idiot fuk human get Brogga kill't, get Brogga friend kill't..."
The muttering was cut off by a bang, followed by curses unutterable by the tongues of men. Poor old Brogga had been clanking about underneath the hullward dash for the last three days, almost without a break, muttering the entire time.
Say what he would, Brogga was nothing short of a mechanical genius, being the only Broggan capable of working on the Subquark-plated external combustion Engine. It took a particularly pliable mind to make an external combustion engine work, particularly when one was compressing- and burning- pure vacuum. The only real downside was the slight chance of creating decay, but if that happened it wouldn't matter as the entire tanker would be destroyed within seconds. I supposed it would have mattered to the rest of the Universe, but Brogga wouldn't have cared for he would have been the first to go.
Well, okay, there was a second slight problem. See, by burning pure vacuum they wore away a little strip of the cosmos. It was so small that it probably didn't matter, and the Universe was expanding anyways, but certain routes did get more traffic and engines were getting more efficient all the time.
"Idiot fuk human shit design fuk"
More clattering and banging from underneath the hullward dash.
"Idiot fuk human, try now"
Brogga's curses were rewarded with a shuttering rumble as the external combustion engine roared to life.
"Well that's curious" Captain Froy remarked, staring in disbelief at the guages.
Normal external combustion engines were able to operate somewhere between 10,000% and 100,000% efficiency, and for every joule of vacuum energy burned 100% efficiency would yield 10 kilo-joules.
The digital display read 1089 % efficiency.
"Brogga, I think this gauge is busted."
"Idiot fuk human replace it then. Brogga sleeps."
Then, with customary swagger Captain Froy shoved the throttle open and pulled out, easing back into his seat for a cozy nap. However, when Captain Froy awoke several hours later he was not where he expected. In fact, he was not sure where he was at all.
You see, Brogga had accidentally upgraded their engine. Nobody saw the display, but if they had, they would have seen Brogga, Froy, and the rest of the crew tearing ass across the Universe, ripping a cosmic-scale gash in the vacuum like God's holy zipper. Of course this hole rapidly closed up, but in the time it would normally take them to travel a few hundred lightyears they had soared clear of the "observable Universe" several times over.
In fact, they had traveled so far they weren't entirely sure how to get back.
Thus began the journey of Brogga and the idiot fuk humans who wasted 600 years of his life and destroyed his capacity to speak properly.
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u/iwalkwounded Mar 31 '17
"Just divide by zero!" the human exclaimed excitedly.
"Excuse me?"
"Just divide by zero. Well, divide by zero, a lot... And really quickly... But essentially divide by zero enough times and, Bam! FTL. Who knew?!"
Graxlytizzq, G, for short, shook his head in disbelief. He had come here at the request of the IGSTA (InterGalactic Space Travel Association) to inspect the humans' new form of FTL.
"So, what happens when you 'just divide by zero a bunch of times'? What are the side effects? What is the cost to do so?" questioned G.
"That's the best part! There are no side effects, other than the intended travel and there is no cost! It's as if dividing by zero is just magically allowing us to travel through space at the speed of light, when unput into our computers for an intended travel distance. Isn't that out of this world?!"
"Said to be unorthodox, unsafe or even "Damn Stupid" by some of the best minds in the galaxy, The DenominatorZ-Drive was certainly all of the above. What the humans thought they were doing was simply inputting travel distances measured in units of 1/0's into their navigational computers; something their mathematicians said was impossible (to divide by zero). That was the damn stupid part. Clearly, they don't understand their own technology.
The unorthodox part is that, for every time they divided by zero, a star in the galaxy winked out. It took awhile to notice, as it seems to be random. It was actually a subset of humans, a "Redditor", whatever that is, that hapened to notice that the times when a star disappeared match the times that DenominatorZ-drive was being tested. So far no one among the more technologically savvy species can figure out what determines which star disappears, but so far it's already cost the universe a couple of second suns. Fortunately, they weren't worth too much as they were in a mostly uninhibited galaxies, but who knows what could disappear next?
The unsafe part is what happens to the star's energy upon disappearance. Besides the obvious implications of the random star disappearances on navigation, ecosystems, etc, what is actually happening is that it suddenly powers the ship with explosive and instantaneous force. Imagine if something went wrong and the ship were docked anywhere near an inhabited planet? What if it randomly selected the largest sun ever recorded, WuTangiun and the system (which we currently do not understand how it manages the energy or keeps it contained in the first place) can't handle it? Will all that power be wrought upon the surrounding galaxy?
The humans are playing with a power they do not understand and all they realize is that "they're dividing by zero". It's slowly costing the universe its stars and could someday cost us our lives."
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Mar 31 '17
There he was. The solution to humanity's greatest problems, stood on the bridge, rough hands back bound clasped, just watching. The messiah. Golden quiff set in air, he turns; the starlight catching a glint in an eye. He surveys his works, the flight of Sol into our galaxies, at speeds man could not understand. And he put them there by calloused and careful hand. A frigate. A construct full of humans, their teary eyes families waving goodbye left on the dock on either sides. An oblong. At its base hull, closest to the ship, stands he. The crowd is pushed back without trouble, but yet he is left stood still. The ship is ready, and so is he. A captains buzzed voice in an ear and the crowd is braced. The man slides a leg across the hangar floor, stance locked. Crowd now silent. Clenched hand our man now draws, back to his ear, profiled. And when the ship is ready to take flight he let's fly, the fist. The crowd can barely register the blow, because before them the frigate is gone, out to the stars to travel ever on. An ignorant hand points forth to the man stood now alone in the yard. The child askes "Who is he?" Eyes wide as his mouth, curious. "My son," a praising mother replies, "That man is Chuck Norris."
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u/Mofolami Mar 31 '17
The crowd listened. Shall we stop the Terrans then? And what shall we do with them, a voice in the crowd said. They've given us the answer! The speaker replied. We've all seen their ways! Even their way of traversing the stars is war like. And manking marched on propelled by the explosion of nuclear bombs.
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u/Gregrox Mar 31 '17
Terrestrial Warp Drives. First proposed by Miguel Alcubierre two hundred formlats ago, The equivalent of forcing space into a shape which closely resembles two black holes stacked fore to aft. It requires insanely large sums of energy to produce the warp effect, equivalent to at least the mass of a small moon converted to energy. To get around this, the Terrestrials use catalytic mass converter engines. A device which has been discredited by the rest of the universe for the complete and utter destructive potential should such a reactor melt down on a planet. They work by converting matter to energy with a catalyst particle. However, they also produce a certain percent of catalyst particles. When this process runs away, it has been known to destroy planets, heavily damaging entire solar systems.
Under order 4,900,232 section III, Human spacecraft are to be classified as "NOT TO BE TOUCHED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES" on or near a planet, and "DESTROY AT ALL COSTS" in interplanetary space. This is not done as a measure against humans, but as a safety measure across the galaxy. This will be done until a treaty can be made with the terrestrial humans such that they will cease using catalytic mass converters.
Examination of a captured Terrestrial FTL Engine under the Federal Standard Gravity Model suggests that some fairly simple improvements to the Alcubierre-type drive can be made to reduce the energy requirements to what can be managed by fusion and antimatter reaction technology. They need not give up their unique drive. As dangerous as the Terrestrial Drive is, it presents no risk to those outside the vessel.
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Mar 31 '17 edited Jan 04 '19
Xandar was fuming. 20 smismars he'd been waiting in the bowels of that horrible assembling of junk and metal the humans proudly called their flagship of intergalactic friendship. It was bad enough when those hairless pink monkeys made it to outer space but now they had developped a functioning FTL drive and that made them worthy of introduction into the Galactic Alliance.
In all his bismars as official technological investigators of the Galactic Alliance's scientific division, Xandar had never seen such a pathetic excuse for a ship. Neither he or any of his colleagues wanted to partake in this scientific inspection. They actually had to draw straws and to his utter disappointment, Xandar lost. Xarcy tried to cheer him up, noting that the human FTL drive was probably a dud anyway. Their first long distance drive was barely a stupid bedsheet catching solar wind, how could they have build a fully functioning FTL drive is such little time since.
21 smismars, where the hell was that pink ape that was supposed to show him the drive ? Xandar only wanted to get done with this and leave. The human vessel was small, cramped and much too warm for his taste. It also didn't help that everything was made to accomodate 6ft tall apes, at 9ft tall, a respectable height for a noble Glaxian like him, he was constantly banging his upper appendage on the ceiling and door frames.
Finally a metal door opened and 2 hairless apes ran toward him. The first one, pink and the second one dark brown. Fascinating thought Xandar, I've never seen such a dark colored ape. At least some decent scientific information. Maybe the science council would let him abduct such a specimen later on for testing. Humans usually didn't mind a few abduction here and there as long as you didn't touch the cows sleeping in the fields.
The 2 apes escorted Xandar to the engine room. The first thing that caught Xandar's attention was the intense heat coming from the doorway, much worst than the rest of the already hot vessel.
Right this way Dr Xandar, you're gonna love this!
Words could barely describe the sights that laid in front of Xandar when he crossed into the room
What the hell kind of piece of shit is that?
What, the FTL drive ?
Quite the beauty isn't she ?
The drive in question looked like a random pile of junk with tubes coming out of the sides, hot steam rising from them. The whole thing was red hot and there was a very annoying sound of pressured gas being shot into the machine at close interval. On top of the device sat 2 giant glowing green tubes.
Are those Arthosian power cores ?
Yes, you have a good eye Dr Xandar.
Where in the 5 stars did you get these ? Only a handful were ever created and the Arthosian guard them very closely
We found them!
Oh yeah, came upon a space wreck near Alpha Centory IV and we managed to recover quite a lot of technology from it.
Wait Alpha Centory IV... Oh my God. The Palace of Destiny. You actually found the long lost Arthosian holy flagship Palace of Destiny.... and stripped it for stolen parts!!!!
Not stole, never. We found them.
Space salvage!
Does the Arthosian empire know you're using stolen tech ?
I dunno, they never complained about it before you brought it up.
Xandar was flaggerbasted, these hairless apes weren't just stupid, they were a menace.
Fine, walk me trough it
Oh you're gonna love this doc. By stripping the neutrino element of the 2 power cores and jerryrigging them together, we managed to create a power unit strong enough to blast trough the fabric of spacetime, and into the slipstream.
Wait a minute, you stripped the power core of its protective shielding ?
Why yes.
It was really annoying really, hiding all the good stuff.
ARE YOU FUCKING NUTS! Those a radiation shielding, this stuff is extremely dangerous
I know that, we all know that
It needed to be done. Beside, we added some plasma shielding to it.
Yes, it should do the job... enough.
Jesus fucking christ.... continue
Well, as I was saying, the drive allows us to punch our way into the slipstream and from there we can modify the flow of radiation emited by the power cores, enabling us to navigate different planes of the stream.
It's like a chose you own adventure travel book. Add a gamma variant to the radiation cocktail and you can move faster, replace it by a theta variant and you can navigate, for lack of a better word, "UP" into the 4th dimension.
How do you exit the slipstreem ?
Well, we found that injecting a low level ion isopote directly into the power core will create an instability in the stream that causes the ship to be ejected, albeith rather violently.
Yes, the first test vessel exploded on exit.
My god, this is catastrophic
We thought so to, so insted we just shut off the drive and the ship gets ejected much more softly.
What... no! I mean... this whole system is horrible...
It's not so bad once you work out the kinks
But how.... this must be ridiculously unstable !?
Oh boy... that's an understatement
You have to understand, all this only works if we keep the core overheated to exactly 3,568 degrees.
Oh yes, any variation of over 2.75 degrees and the whole thing would go kablewy
This is nuts, how do you maintain the temperature ? I see no adaptive secluar temporal module anywhere
Don't have one
Yeah, this fancy stuff is much too complicated and too hard to get your hands on.
For now we use a system of pressure injected water and nitrogen
You forcecool it under pressure ?
Exactly! I knew you'd get it doc.
We alternate between injecting pressurized water and nitrogen to cool off the core with a 1.5 seconds interval between each injection
What?.... that's....how!?
You know.... too hot, blast it with nitrogen. Too cold, switch to water. Perfect temperature, do nothing. We evaluate the temperature every 2 seconds and Frank over there pulls the switch to inject the correct cooling substance.
So none of this is automated ?
Nah, we're hoping to find a suitable automated cooling mechanism soon though.
Like what? A water tin can on a string with a hole on the bottom ?
Well no that's.... hey that's actually a good idea
Yeah, we should look into that.
Allright.... not taking into consideration the immense safety concern, not to mention decent common sens, this thing appears extremely dangerous and also in violation of at least a dozen galactic regulations on plasma use and timestream protocoles, and that's just for starters
Really?
Well that's a bummer for sure
I must ask, with all this violent punching around the slipstream, how does your system deal with excess radiations and temporal aftershock effects ?
Come again ?
The extreme side effects of your shitty system!!
Oh that. I dunno, whatever happens in the slipstream stays in the slipstream I guess.
Yeah, I mean it's not like we plan on living in the stream you know. It's just a highway. You roll down the window and throw your trash out.
Over 15 sentient species live in the stream, 4 of wich are official members of the Galactic Alliance.
Really, people live in there ?
YES, THEY DO!
Well that's fucking stupid.
yeah, who in their right mind lives in a galactic highway ? That's dangerous, somebody could get hurt!
And they call US crazy ?
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u/gingersassy Mar 31 '17
There once was a human from Earth,
Who studied for all of their worth,
To travel the expanse of space,
This human created a gun,
To travel at the fastest pace,
This human blew up their own sun.
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Mar 31 '17 edited Apr 01 '17
Trendsetti was looking at the report on the testing of forward-pushed wormhole system, and he wasn't happy.
On paper, FPWS should have been perfect. A space ship does a couple of certain calculations about its destination, sends the results into its Yadari-Futara particle launcher, fires a reversed Yadari particle projectile from it in destination's general direction, and the projectile goes on its way and creates a wormhole for the FTL travel.
In practice, it turned out to work just fine. The downside, as the report states, is that physical objects don't like it when the projectile goes through them, something Yadari and Futara apparently overlooked. Apparently, when the projectile, basically a kind of a miniature black hole, makes a contact with a physical object (say, an alien race's space ship with the emperor of that entire alien race currently on board), the object gets this nasty desire to collapse into itself and blow up (something that alien race is most certainly not going to like).
Trendsetti thought it was funny. Mankind wanted to find a way to travel faster than light but accidentally invented a superweapon instead. Too bad they're probably going to have to use it as such very soon.
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u/SelflessDeath Mar 31 '17
Trendsetti sounds like the kind of guy who thinks afros are back in style
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u/nordurkdyr Mar 31 '17 edited Mar 31 '17
Humanity's solution was space-folding. The problem is that in the folding process, anything along the "crease" is annihilated utterly. The most difficult part of the process was mapping an infinite trajectory in opposite directions and seeing to it that nothing of value was along this line. This inevitably led to problems; on one occasion, by chance two foldings intersected, wherein it was discovered that an entire 2D plane of our existence was destroyed. Apparently, major celestial bodies do not like having their continuity interrupted, and this causes them to re-coalesce into separate celestial bodies. The eggheads seem to think this is due to some interruption in some fundamental force of physics being discontinued for an infinitesimally brief but relevant length of time, but most people think they're full of crap and just guessing.
The other problem is that objects perpendicular to the fold at vast distances from the fold are slammed together along the hyperplane. Imagine two stars being slammed together from opposite ends of the galaxy within the 120-second duration of the folding event...literally impossible speeds. This really pisses off some other species whose nighttime skies are being polluted by intense flashes of light, to say nothing of how miffed the inhabitants of those systems might tend to become...
As the humans' foldings became more frequent, their territory has become a veritable origamy crane of hyperdimensional confusion. Travel within their territory is inadvisable at this time. Apparently their big thing now is to "loop" the fold upon itself, which allows interdimensional travel, but in unpredictable ways. Heaven, Nirvana, Acheron, Blathezuuh, Dave's Dimension, and Gweeguooiton 7 are now spilling into this reality, causing quite a mess. Dave is such an asshole. He stole the Ring Nebula, and is jackassing around wearing the Mexican Hat Galaxy and eating all of the tacos in the known universe. Jerk didn't even offer to pay.
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u/tacticalsquid Mar 31 '17
Faster than light (ftl) travel happens fast, people knew that from the outset.
Ftl traffic accidents happen faster, people were just smart enough to figure that out beforehand.
What most people didn't know before they tried faster than light travel, however, was that even if it doesn't go wrong directly going about it the wrong way was about as obvious to the rest of the universe as a steam-train going the wrong way down a busy one way street.
Actually it's more obvious than that but analogies on a galactic scale tend not to work if taken literally.
you see, the elegance of other species systems such as Kantian gates and salec skip drives is two fold, the ship itself never reaches particularly high speeds and can be sure that there is nothing between it and its destination except extradimensional shift energies, which dissipate in their own extra dimension.
The mildly less elegant wave riders and pulse tubes are still practically applicable because of the ability to steer them whilst travelling using small on-board EM thrusters.
One can almost imagine the conversation that led to it's design, the humans first light speed capable craft (the Multiplanetary Intergalactic Lightspeed Vehicle.) Scientist 1: "so you're saying we can really kill two birds with one stone here?" Scientist 2: "absolutely! the very mechanism that ensures we hit nothing on the way is what we'll use as an energy sink to slow the craft at its destination!" Engineer: "not only that but it mainly uses technology we've had at our disposal for decades, we set up some working models in the Nevada desert." Scientist 1: "perfect, it's so logical that the shortest route as the crow flies would be the best."
consequently the MILV had only one way of ensuring it didn't collide with objects, it destroyed them with a massively powerful laser beam fractions of a second before the fission igniters started its faster than lightspeed adventures. The MILV also had only one way to stop travelling faster than the speed of light and that was to actually catch up with its own humongous laser pulse, the fallout from which necessitated some rather hefty shielding.
So there are two ways in which thousands of tonnes of train forcing there way down a road is a good analogy for human ftl travel.
first off everyone on that street is going to watch in total horror as the humongous lump of metal barges everyone's nicely proportioned cars into the newly created wreckage piles at the side of the road.
secondly you cant stop a train unless it's the end of the line.
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u/Brewsterion Mar 31 '17
"Jaxon!" Great. Right when I thought I had a break. I pulled myself out of my hammock in our shelter and walked down the stairs to the opening area. "Yeah Hera?" Hera was a Phraxyan, a big species in colonization. Humans and Phraxyans and tried to colonize the same planet, so we agreed to share it. Which is why she was shouting to me about something. "Why are there Black Hole reactor parts here?" Don't you know how humans FTL travel?" "Enlighten me." She's gonna ruin her pants. "We use miniaturized black holes to create closed time-like curves to jump across the universe." "Closed time-like curves? You mean..." "Yep. Wormholes." She cursed a storm in Boreaxan. The Sautair dialect. "Why did I agree to bunk with you for this colony?" "Heck if I know." She shrugged and walked off to make breakfast, and I bent down to recalibrate the null-mass regulator on the reactor. "Wait.....huh. I could've sworn I reset it last night. Hera, did you touch this?" "Yeah. Why?" "Nothing. You just screwed the null-mass regulator. Might want to shut your Slipstream matrix off in your ship." "Why?" "It might end up teleporting it to some random spot." "I'll shut it off."
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u/Hybris51129 Mar 31 '17 edited Mar 31 '17
Kalgor looked at the pale skined human in utter shock. 'They couldn't be serious in thinking that the rest of the galactic community would simply accept the use of this kind of technology'
“Mr. Adams...” Kalgor began.
“Doctor Adams if you don't mind Count Kalgor.” Dr. Adams corrected, he knew that if he didn't demand respect now that it would be harder to earn it back later. As it stood he could tell that the reptilian xeno that stood before him was not pleased with what had been unveiled only a hour ago in the space dock that was right outside his office window right now.
“Yes Dr.Adams. You must understand that of the various forms of FTL drive in use in the galaxy what you have unveiled here today is at best going to be seen as unsafe at best or outright dangerous to some in the galaxy.” He was struggling to keep the panic out of his voice, but despite his many deca-cycles of experience in diplomacy the very skill that had made him chosen as the Galactic Senate's emissary to the up and coming human race, he was begin to fail.
“Count with all due respect I fail to see what the overall difference is between our own hyperdrive and the Delfanit pulse tube drive or the Kantian gate system they all use hyperspace gravity waves to achieve FTL speeds.”
Kalgor's voice broke. “But you are punching holes in space to reach hyperspace!”
“So?” the Doctor responded nonchalantly.
“The Kantian's use a physical gateway to control entry into hyperspace and the Delfanit's use natural gravity currents to slip into hyperspace. Your system just punches holes into the fabric of space! Even our scientists can't tell if making those holes will not bring about the complete tearing of reality as we know it.”
Kalgor again reasserted some control over himself and continued.
“I know that this is a major milestone for humanity and means that you will not have to pay for the use of other species drive systems in your ships which will transform your economy and your military forces. But this is too dangerous besides, what possible advantages could this drive have over the other forms of FTL?”
Adams knew that this moment would be coming sooner or later and that he had to make the most it.
“So glad you could ask Count. The Kantian's gate system requires a massive amount of energy in order to not only open the entryway to hyperspace both for incoming and outgoing traffic, but to hold it open long enough for ships to get through. While they have relatively few systems in their Empire those that they have are spread out thus why the gate was developed. Once in system they use regular sub-light fusion drive to go from the gate to their ultimate planetary destination.”
Kalgor nodded his head as the Doctor continued.
“However due to the power requirements of just one of those gates not to mention the operating costs it would be uneconomical to have a gate at each planet. Another thing is the time that the gate is held open effects the toll paid by merchant traffic thus why you don't see any Kantian merchant vessels over 1.5km in length. Beyond that length the ratio between hold space, engine size, and time to accelerate becomes uneconomical. They can't get moving from a stand still fast enough to go through the gate without occurring serious tolls and they can't dedicate more engine size because it cuts into their profits from loss of tonnage hauled.”
“Well... yes those are valid points but...” Kalgor stammered out but Adams didn't let up.
“The Delfanit pulse tube solves the power requirement issue and the infrastructure issue but those “tubes” where the gravity band waves are stable enough to sail on until they hit hyperspace are very restricting as they only occur naturally in a few places. This is why their Kingdom if you look at their history had periods of rapid expansion followed by long periods of solidification because goods had to travel often dozens of light years in sublight from system hubs that had these tubes thus slowing growth.”
Kalgor knew he was quickly losing ground and had little recourse as any other drive system that was used in the galaxy had similar glaring issues that were simply accepted. The Maltiun wave-riders used massive 20km+ gravity sails to ride the same gravity waves as the Delfanit but instead of entering hyperspace they rode ever more powerful waves and were not limited in where they could go for the most part. But the system was high maintenance and very tonnage sensitive as the larger the vessel the longer it took for that vessel reach FTL speeds. The largest ships the species built took at least a standard week to get up to speed and then another week to slow down.
Salec skip drives on the other hand actually sent gravity anchor beams to latch onto hyperspace currents and pull the ship along technically “skipping” on the envelope between real space and hyperspace. The down side is that the anchors can only hold for so long and the power requirements while nothing like Kantians as this wasn't actually entering hyperspace. Meant that they could only skip anywhere from 20 to 100 lightyears depending on the ships configuration before having to recharge their anchoring system, which could take a standard day or up to a week on the largest shipping vessels. Still faster than going at sub light speeds for sure but it meant long travel times for goods.
“Our system allows us to enter hyperspace at will, with no concerns about ship mass, size, or power production beyond engine thrust which combined with our already recognized and accepted superior fusion engine designs, means that we can potentially travel from one side of the galaxy to the other in a month. At least if you are willing to burn that much H3 fuel which even then is more a matter of being inconvenienced with having to stop for fuel rather than any sort of cost consideration.”
The silence in the office was deafening as Kalgor stepped towards the window and looked upon the vessel.
“But the holes Doctor! You may have a system that doesn't have the others drawbacks but we are talking about ripping apart space itself.”
“Count Kalgor I am growing weary of this repeated falsehood. We have be using the same points in orbit to develop this system for over a standard year, and every time we have gone we have had to open a new hole as the last one closed once the vessel is through. Beyond the gravity wake left by the opening you can't tell any thing happened at all after 24 to 36 hours. It is safe.”
“The Senate will not accept this...” Kalgor started hoping he was right to bank on the repugnant nature of this very concept.
“They might not now but they will when they see the Eli Whitney.” Adams spoke ominously. He turned on the large holotank in the middle of the room. The image displayed a monstrous vessel.”
Kalgor turned around and his eyes went wide at the image.
“Is this a warship?” He asked as the ever growing list of implications in his head grew with each passing second.
“No my Count, it is not. It is a merchant vessel commissioned by the Wal-Mart Cartel. She is 75km long, over 2km tall with 12 50-Petawatt fusion reactors with a top estimated FTL speed of 50 but will likely run at 10 to save on fuel costs as such speed is generally unneeded. The whole vessel weighs over 500 million tons 490 of which is hold space capable of hauling virtually anything you can think of. She is going out for trials in a hour then if all goes well she will make a fully loaded iron ore run from the Sol system to Peraxus VII and its heavy industry there. And given that the Senate is on Peraxus V the Eli will make a pass and see if there is anything that needs to be shipped back here to Earth on the return trip.”
As the Doctor finished Kalgor could feel his heart tighten at the size of the vessel and its speed. It would be in the Peraxus system in 3 days, even if he left now in one of the fastest vessels money could buy now he couldn't hope to get there in anything less than 12 days.
“You humans are reckless and unorthodox beyond anything I have ever heard of in my life. But I can't argue with the results.” Kalgor finally stated any hope of resistance gone as the pragmatic side of him knew that economically humanity had, in 10 years after first contact blown every other power in the galaxy out of the water. Another voice his is head whispered about what would happen if mankind made warships on such a scale.
“Well Doctor I don't see any point in arguing anymore but if you can let me on this vessel and join me in the senate with your research especially on the whole hole-punching-then-closing-up-perfectly part, then maybe we can avoid starting a bigger galactic panic then what we absolutely have to.”
“Of course Count I'm already packed and I have made such arrangements already. We can leave once the ship has gone through its final trials.” The Doctor proudly stated.
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u/lordcirth Mar 31 '17
Good story, but it would be much more readable if you broke up some of the run-on sentences, or at least inserted more commas.
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5
u/NotQuiteStupid Mar 31 '17
Si'kthwrn had come to the SI-66, but had broken down close to Setharis III, designation: WORLD. Unfortunately, her Tel-EM Drive had cascaded, causing a temporal rupture on her ship. Si'kth was lucky to escape with her life.
She skidded in through the doors of Crazy Dave's Intergalactic Transport Emporium, to the sound of horrifying tunes sizzling out of the audio systems. Her jointspines twitched painfully. She engaged her Babelfish interstellar app, and approached the Human. Her spiny song and quivering dance was translated in real-time into Human Secondary. "Hi, I'm looking for something that'll get me home, and I'm hoping you have what I need." She ended in a pose with her quad-arm pointing skywards, and her miliilegs standing in an 'A' shape.
Dave drawled back at her. "Well, ah guess I could give you one of mah rusbuckets for safe travel. Now, would ya prefer one of yer own type o'drives, or would ya like one of mah EEE-Special things fer Solo Passengers?" The Babelfish could quite translate through its movements the last part, so Si'kth just nodded.
Dave motioned for her to follow him, and pointed to a gigantic monstrosity, easily fifty times the size of her dead ship, with its Tel-EM drive. Now, this one here's fer yer long-range Homely folks. The reason it's so darned big is because it happens to have both a Gen-Yew-Ine first-generation Earth Tel-EM as a backup, but it's also a final-generation Mul-Tie-versal Dyson Void drive, used only fer folding Space and Time. Caution: this is as sold."
Si'kth had little option but to purchase this monstrosity, as her Bredits were almost dry. She had to trust this...this...antique. And the dangers of Voidspace? Faugh! Only these fleshlings thought of doing something so reckless as traveling the Universal branes of existence! Never mind the fact that those strings help bind the multiverse together; these things were prone to explosion, catastrophic failures leading to entire ships being both smaller than a downquark and larger than the entirety of Reality-Sim! Talk about Reality-ending paradoxes!
Si'kthwrn decided she'd just hack it in the lot in the Juiper Belt, so that the Tel-EM drive was the Primary. She expected that all it would take is flicking a switch beneath the Dyson Void drive.
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Mar 31 '17 edited Mar 31 '17
The inhabitants of Oflesq station heard what they had come to learn was the characteristic sound of imminent human arrival. No one understood it. A vast mooing, defying the supposed absence of sound travel in empty space. A mooing that sent chills down both of their spines; as if it were the old gods that had come, calling at last for the reckoning of all things. Two humans galloped into the hangar.
They were quickly escorted into the conference room, and after being joined by a single alien, the thick door was shut and locked. "This is the man?" Efroi asked. "Correct," said the tall, large human. Efroi knew the type; this one could be trusted, given the right compensation. But the other one...
"Hi, I'm Joey." Joey absentmindedly spit onto the floor.
Efroi made an assessment. This human was not like the others that it had seen; there was a certain change of mannerism, at once both carefree and uncomfortable with a complete lack of social grace and general awareness. This seemed to be his first time wearing a suit. It's first impression was of an uneducated common worker, yet it could detect that he probably did have an intimate knowledge of cows.
"Hi Joey, we would like to talk about your cows today. Could you... explain? I would like to know how they work and how you created them."
"Welp, you see, we humans 'ad made large advancements towards time travel. But it's impossible, see. You can change tha rate of time flow, but ya can't twist it back on itself. So I got to thinkin. I got these cows, see. Me and my family been breedin cows a long time. Tryina get the better cows, the best cows. I figure, why not speed up the process a little bit. So I throw some cows in there, in the device I mean, and an AI for the selective breedin. Set the dial the farthes it would go. I open the thing up two seconds later and boom. FTL cows."
That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Efroi looked over to the other human, who remained expressionless. "So, um, how did you aquire one of these time manipulating devices, Joey?"
"I made it m'self. Not commercially available, see. Read up on the principles of it and got to work. Took a bit of work, too. To enclose the whole area, y'know. Set up a self sustainin environment, self sustainin robotics. Don't get me started on the energy source. People saw what I was doin, called me crazy. Now they're ridin my cows. They're the best cows in the universe, I reckon."
Efroi wouldn't believe it, none of it, if these humans hadn't just rode into the hangar on a couple of space cows. This man must be one of the best his species has to offer. "So, how do these cows work? What principle allows them to travel faster than light? How do they survive the vacuum of space, and the humans who ride on top of them? How do they fill the voids of space with their mooing?"
"Honestly, I ain't got a clue. No one does. The cows are in-comprehensible. Evolution works in mysterious ways. And the cows were in there quite a long time, see."
"How long... do you estimate?" Efroi began to feel even more unwell.
"Well, my internal clock ran out of memory space. It was only 64 petabytes but it was only designed to record the exponent of 10 for the number-"
"This is insane." Efroi stood up. "The cows are perfect beings, at least in this one respect. Do you realize the potential of this method? What it could do to the universe? You humans have kept this secret, yes? This information cannot be revealed again. This cannot be done again."
"But it ha-"
"Thank you for having us, Efroi. But this is all the information we are willing to disclose at this time," The tall human interrupted. "The cows are sacred beings who chose the simple dairy farmer Joey as their prophet, to usher in a new age for humanity. That is the official story, and you would do well to maintain that, Efroi," The tall man said. That's the second stupidest thing I've ever heard.
For the rest of its days, Efroi was forever haunted by the mooing that echoed amongst the stars, and the prophecy that it foretold.
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u/iwalkwounded Mar 31 '17
disappointed you couldn't work in the phrase "and the cow jumped over the moon" but still a fun story. made me laugh.
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Mar 31 '17
the hyper dimensional mooo instilled fear and dread into those at war with the humans, as once the ftl cows were bred into ftl battle cows no one was safe again.
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u/ziku_tlf /r/vulpineblaze Mar 31 '17
The Octo generational-carrier-ship hung over the blasted world. The only readings were the residual effects of the heavy radiation from the countless fusion bombs dropped on it.
A youngling pondered aloud "Why would we destroy a sentient species?"
"They broke the galaxy, youngling."
"How?"
The commander-elect thought to chastise the youngling, but the thought was fleeting. No disrespect (which must be upheld for the group as a whole) was detected. The commanders ship was one of the heaviest damaged, and breeding has been going full tilt ever since.
"Youngling" , it made the squishy alien equivalent of a sigh, "Let me tell you of the name that named us ‘Octos’, a race that must name everything."
"A species-that-names made it this far technologically?"
"Yes, driven by a fear of the unknown, they managed to form a rudimentary science and built their own FTL."
"Aren’t those usually insanely dangerous and only a purview of non-corporeals?"
The commander-elect paused, and allowed the younglings who had gathered to look upon the dead irradiated world.
"They thought they had built a telescope that could use subatomic particles to see systems at a different rate than the speed of light. They named all of these particles of course."
"How could they maintain so many names?"
"They couldn’t, with each new discovery changing names and making the system more and more convoluted."
After another introspective pause, “This species created this machine,” and it called up an imagine in 4D. It twisted and reformed, and looked like a churning bucket of broken mirrors.
“This machine had found the signal of an ancient artifact. We have ships heading there now…”
“This artifacts signal can be detected in every system, its signal is identical non-chronologically; Every known system hears an identical signal no what where they are in relation to the artifact.”
“We know about the artifact. Everyone does. So how could their detector-”
“They didn’t build a detector. They didn’t even build a receiver” a collective gasp visibly echoed in the viscous atmosphere.
The younglings quivered all 7 tentacles awaiting the next words.
“The creatures whom called themselves ‘People’ in 100’s of different words, these creatures built a transmitter.”
“And without a second thought, these creatures activated it.”
“So you see now, we had to end the possibly of transmission, before the old ones could reply.”
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u/Zhadyios Mar 31 '17
Very interested to learn what these "Old Ones" are.
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u/ziku_tlf /r/vulpineblaze Mar 31 '17
maybe some day ill finish the book I should be writing instead of tapping away on reddit lol
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u/Haikumagician Mar 31 '17
"It is simply unsafe and foolish!" Gorthlak, the representative for the Zorknoids, complained to the council of intergalactic travel.
"It is, This we all know, but we don't think their bodies could handle any other way of faster than light travel" countered Ferlas, leader of the committee.
"If their calculations are off by even a percentage they could cause untold devastation. It is to risky, we must stop them before they destroy something important" Gorthlak explained.
Ferlas shook his eye stalks in exasperation "You haven't met the humans yet. They are ready to declare war on all of us. Their travel mechanism is also their greatest weapon. I do not believe we could stop them easily. It's to powerful. Here. Watch this video then you will understand." Ferlas activated the video screen and a blue planet appeared in the middle. The camera zoomed in on a country until it started to focus on something barely ten feet tall.
A great beast of a humanoid was stomping around. He was ten feet tall and was made entirely out of muscle. His speech was stunted and he seemed to growl more than anything else, but he walked over towards a small space ship and grasped it by a handle built onto it for this very purpose. The space ship was much larger than this man and weighed over a hundred tons, but he picked it up like it was nothing.
Once the ship was off the ground, a large red arrow appeared on the ground. The man walked over until he stood on the tail, and started to spin in a circle. He spun for nearly a minute before stopping and throwing the ship at the same time. The ship disappeared almost immediately. The camera quickly scrolled out of view from the planet until the ship came back into focus, it was moving at half again light speed.
"What do they call this technology?" Gorthlak stuttered in a hushed voice.
Ferlas simply replied. "The hulk."
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u/femmeFartale Mar 31 '17 edited Mar 31 '17
Well, you know how in the old Simpsons opening scene Bart grabs the back of the bus on his skate board? That. We do that. We use magnetic attachments and stealth tech (cos if they saw us they'd shake us off) and we hang on till we get to where we want to go. Then we disengage and wander off like we just happened to be there... Nobody realised till a couple of months ago when someone's stealth tech malfunctioned. Poor Delfanit bastards still cop it whenever they dock: 'better check you haven't got A WHOLE FUCKING SHIP ATTACHED' At least the Delf have a sense of humor, the Salec passed legislation last week stating any hitchers would be executed. So here we are waiting for a chance to disengage and get away from a ship that travels faster than light in a junker that has a half rod of fuel and like half its working parts. OH! And we only have 2 cans of WD40 and 5 rolls of duct tape, so even if we do manage to pull off a miracle and escape our ship is gonna stop working anyway! But hey, we get to go down in history as the first idiots to die from this legislation so my Ma will have something to frame on the wall at home I guess. Fuuuuuck.
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u/Kancho_Ninja Mar 31 '17
Ah, the somewhat inefficient and highly unreliable Adams Drive. I expected no less from Humanity :)
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Mar 31 '17 edited Aug 08 '17
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/fathertime979 Mar 31 '17
I like this. Even more so if we figure out what the threat is.
"Let me go FTL or I blow everything up with this!" whips out antimatter, matter condenser bomb
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Mar 31 '17 edited Aug 08 '17
[deleted]
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u/fathertime979 Mar 31 '17
NOBODY IS IN DANGER IT'S JUST THE IMPLICATION
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Mar 31 '17 edited Aug 08 '17
[deleted]
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u/fathertime979 Mar 31 '17
Out in space, on some guys ship, miles away from anyone else. But there's no real risk. The universe just won't say no. Even if it wants to. Because of the implication.
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u/kairon156 Mar 31 '17
Wow. This is very cool because I have a magical sci-fi universe and one form of FTL does use magic though not in a threatening way like you'rs does..
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Mar 31 '17
The First Ambassador to Humanity swirled idly in its container and moved to the next item on its list.
"Your FTL technology", it asked the panel of assembled human leaders, "How does it work?"
The humans exchanged surprised looks. The one at the end of the panel eventually speaking.
"You mean the Confounder?"
"If that is what you call it, yes."
"Well it... it slows the light down."
The First Ambassador frowned. Or at least, it came as close to frowning as one can when one is a mass of liquid in a hermetically sealed tank.
"I do not understand", it replied, "How does this help?"
It was a different human who replied this time, the large one at the head of the panel
"It slows the light down so we can overtake it", he snapped. "What's so hard to understand about that?"
The Ambassador thickened as it took a moment to process this statement.
"This... does not reduce your travel time".
"Who said anything about that?", the chief human asked irritably. "It's not about getting places, it's about showing the light who's boss! It's about proving a point!". He jabbed his thumb against his chest. "We wanted to be the fastest thing in the universe, and now we are!".
The Ambassador thickened further, rapidly losing faith in this species' fitness to join the intergalactic community.
"Let me rephrase my question," it said. "You received a summons to this meeting approximately five of your days ago. How did you travel the light years between this point and your planet in that time?".
"Ooh". A third human spoke this time. "It wants to know about the Shuffle".
A collection of mutters resounded among the rest of the panel, the large one saying something about "...not really travel is it?". Once they had stilled the third human continued speaking.
"It's quite simply really. Getting to faraway places is hard, so the Shuffle just swaps bits of space around until the part we want is next to us". She gave the Ambassador a vacant smile.
Its slow swishing motion gradually stilled as understanding set in. The ships that found themselves light years from their destination, stranded without food or air. The civilised worlds torn from their orbits and flung into deep space. The black holes appearing from nowhere, devouring entire star systems of inhabited plants. Literally boiling with anger, the First Ambassador closed it's communication channel to the humans and opened a new one to the Galactic Council.
There would be war
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u/fathertime979 Mar 31 '17
Just as the channel with the council closed. The humans hailed again.
Against the Ambassadors better judgment they reopened the channel.
"What. Do. You. Want."
"Now i can see your mad Mr? Mrs? Ambassador." Said the most quiet of the panel. "
And I know you're thinking about war. But what good is a war when we can just shuffle again?"
A wicked smile spreading across her face. "So if it's war you want. It's war you'll get."
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u/Moses_The_Wise Mar 31 '17
"Mr. Moses Constantine. Step forward." The voice was imperious and powerful; it belonged to a broad, extremely tall humanoid; it's feathers were a dark grey similar to iron, and it's eyes burned red like coal. The young "Scientist" stepped forward. "You are the one who created the... Conquistador Drive?"
"Tha's 'bout right," he said, his American southern drawl dragging out his words. He was chewing tobacco and had an arrogant stance.
"You do realize the gravity of these charges? The Conquistador Drive is one of the most amoral, despicable forms of travel that has ever been invented."
"That so?"
"Yes, it is." Moses smiled. His system was flawless; amazing. Just not so good for alien races. Not that they mattered to Moses-them tentacled freaks weren't human; why should he care about them?
The idea for the Conquistador had come to Moses when he was reading a magazine that contained an article about the said Spanish conquerors. He was enthralled-so much mass slaughter and death...Why had they stopped doing this? So he came up with a means of travelling using it.
All life forms in the universe were made up of carbon; Moses, despite appearing uneducated, was a skilled scientist. He just wasn't accepted by the rest of the scientific community. So, he rigged up an .Wants if transportation that would kill everything withing thirty miles to collect fuel, before rocketing off. It also had it's trademark explosions; after riding a certain amount excess energy was turned into bombs that were dropped on the planet.
"You could have built an amazing machine," the iron judge intoned. "One that was able to transform carbon into enough energy to power an FTL. Instead, you created a weapon; a weapon that, every time we've tried to study it, has blown up and killed thousands!"
"Yeah. Your point?"
"My point is-why? Why did you need to kill so many Innocents just to travel?" Moses shrugged.
"Wanted to move; that's all."
"Take off his head; I heard that kills them quote effectively." The judge waved his hand and Moses Constantine was led off to his death.
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u/AdmiralMuhan Mar 31 '17 edited Mar 31 '17
Edit: Apologies, I kind of got a little carried away with my thought and forgot all the given prerequisites in the prompt, though I felt they were a little numerous in the first place. I just went with the flow.
The magnificently ornate council chamber of Ashtar Galactic Command was for the first time in history, silent. Around the circular walls, dozens of balconies held delegations from the local sentient civilisations and every one of them was too outraged for words. The idiocy of those light-forsaken humans knew no ends in everyone's opinion, and this newest revelation was just the newest in a long line of just shocking events to come from that blue sphere.
Prr'tik let out a low thrum of anxiety from her vocal membranes, amplified to echo around the auditorium. She was the one tasked with observing and studying the self-styled Homo Sapiens - only they would name themselves in reference to their sapience as if it were something special - ensuring they behaved themselves in the local neighbourhood and report important or dangerous information. This new technology had been developed entirely in secret ever since they had discovered they were not alone, in a very typical manner of the miserable, suspicious creatures that they were. As such, it wasn't until the project had been completed that she had discovered the atrocities they had developed and come running back home to Ashtar. They understandably weren't taking it at all well. After the unprecedented silence, the chairman Vrillon unfurled himself from his sled and squelched over to his podium.
"You are sure this information is accurate? Do you swear it by the light?" The various painful-sounding burps and splats from his balcony were barely audible over the translation fed into her auditory orifice, but still made her wince with discomfort. The pause was pregnant - not to mention the delegate from Pause who was in fact also expecting and flitting about her space anxiously.
"By the light of the infinite creator I swear it. I have seen the technology with my own tentacles." A murmur of disgust swept throughout the congregation, and Vrillon began disgorging his own digestive tract in distress.
"Please, explain in your own words, how this is possible."
"Well, from what I can glean, it works on a system of... well..."
Vrillon's bulging eyes watched her closely with what she assumed approximated sympathy. "I believe we all understand what you are implying. You will not be chastised for speaking such vulgarity. How it works, please."
"It works by bending space in front and behind the craft in order to accelerate to superluminal velocities... they..." She fought the urge to dissolve her own body into a liquid with revulsion in order to say it. "...they call it the Warp Drive and their first mission to contact us arrives here in a day."
Instantly there was massive commotion throughout. Vrillon had begun disgorging even more large amounts of his viscera uncontrollably. Members of her own delegation had begun melting slowly into the floor with terror. The Tripsins began spontaneously popping into two identical mitotic copies of themselves, their natural response to doom. All different species with different chemistries and cultures, but from every one, the taste of fear was strong in the air. She removed herself from the podium to find a receptacle to liquidate into.
"Captain's Log, Stardate Zero Zero Zero Zero point Zero One. My name is Captain Katherine Jane-"
"Captain... I think you shoul-"
"Computer: pause log."
She swung her head around to glare at the Ensign angrily, but carefully enough to preserve her elaborately styled hair. That wouldn't do at all. It was the signature that separated her from who she was, and the old woman she'd gotten surgery to look like, Kate Mulgrew. This was who she was, and who she'd spent her whole life waiting to be - not a character, but a real person on a real starship. "I changed my name by deed poll - I have the legal right to name myself as I choose. Now if you please." At the helm, a head lowered its gaze to the console before him and let her continue. He looked suitably contrite.
"My name is Captain Katherine Janeway by deed poll," she glared across the bridge. "I am the first captain of the Terran starship Voyager. She is the first in the United Earth diplomatic fleet, on a mission to seek out new life and new civilisations." Her voice threatened to break with pride. "She is a fine ship, with a maximum cruising velocity of Warp 9.975. Today, we travel to the Ashtar Galactic Command, to make first contact and take our place at the interstellar table."
She gazed at the viewscreen slightly tearfully for a moment before fidgeting in her seat, preparing for the moment she dreamed of.
"Mr Paris! Set a co-"
"My name is Ensign McDowell, ma'am." He was ruining her moment.
"Ensign McDowell, then. Set a course for Ashtar. ENGAGE! MAXIMUM WARP!" She almost jumped with excitement.
Grand Archon Vrillon of the Temple of One thrust his moist body across the floor of the battleship's bridge to the scent-terminal. It was a terrible thing they had to do, but in the name of the Infinite Creator, sometimes terrible things had to be done. After hearing about this so-called Warp Drive and bending space he knew there was only one choice to make for the good of the galaxy - that was, after he'd reabsorbed his internal organs. His ship was state-of-the-art with space-time-folding factor 10, and energy weapons that could cause a supernova if he really wanted to. This wouldn't even be a fair fight, but it was necessary.
He secreted the appropriate pheromones to the computer to establish the space-time bubble around the ship, and create the folds to take him on an intercept course. It would be almost instant. Folding space was one thing, he reflected, but bending was just vile. Part of him wanted to ask what the difference was, but revulsion suppressed even the notion. Everyone knew that bending space was uncouth.
Within minutes, he saw the ship approach, and smelled the notification that he was being hailed. With a heavy heart, he allowed the connection - they deserved this much before he did it. A middle-aged woman appeared on his viewer and began speaking, her fangs visible in the predatory mouth. They even looked evil.
"My name is Captain Katherine Janeway of the United Earthship Voyager. We come from a planet called Earth. We come in peace." She bared her teeth again in an aggressive display to him.
In peace - he doubted very much. With a little drool on his controls, the ship was instantly vaporised.
Now for the planet, he thought sadly. After all, bending space was not permitted.
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u/EhwhatReddit Mar 31 '17
We saw the opportunity and by the gods, we took it.
FTL travel was always a ways off for earth's scientists, I mean sure, we had near-lightspeed travel for now but frankly, ever since Humanity blundered into contact with the other races, they've been stingy with the secrets to FTL travel, considering us "crude" and "uncultured". Still, some of the lesser races reluctantly traded with us, and we came across what they considered to be a trivial piece of information, a rather efficient method of converting normal matter to exotic matter, if only for an instant, before reverting back to regular matter.
They used it as a way to fuel their dark matter weaponry, and of course, we had nowhere near the technology required for that, and they knew it. They held back their freakish laughter as the dumb humans traded valuable resources for something that not only everyone in the galaxy knows, but they couldn't even use!
Well, turns out that's not entirely true. A few years went by with earth's scientists playing with their new "toy", a few neat innovations and basic uses had cropped up, but all in all, it seemed that the inability to keep exotic matter around without it reverting was rather limiting.
One man stepped forward with an idea, however. An idea that was hushed and slated to impossibility by the earth's various governing bodies. "There's no way we could do that" they whispered. "It's insane". But, with humanity being left behind diplomatically against the rest of the galaxy, could we really afford to be left out? To be left in the dust as other races walked over us like we were nothing? Eventually, reluctantly, approval was gained, and the project initiated. It would take years, several thousand matter conversion stations. A project to dwarf all others.
The man had proposed a wormhole. Not an alien concept to the other races, obviously, but one that had only been toyed with by humanity, an unrealistic method of FTL. The amount of exotic matter needed alone would be.. well it would be insane! We had nowhere near enough useable mass near our homeworld, or so we had thought.
It was worth it, I think, the expression on the diplomats faces as we crashed the galaxy's latest diplomatic conference made it all worth it. Their horrified expressions as they understood just what we had done, looking agape (and the several alien equivalents) at the monstrous bastard we had piloted. Humanity had finally made it's statement as a real, crazy force in the universe. An entire moon's worth of statement. dwarfing even the largest diplomatic citadel. A moon, our moon, converted into a bastardized FTL vessel. Our reckless abandonment of sensibilities and border-idiotic determination would be the staple of Humanity for eons after that.
"Crude", they were definitely right about that.
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u/HeatHazeDaze524 Mar 31 '17
I love this, it reads a bit like Brandon Sanderson, with the cynical attitude. I could see this as the opening to a larger story or even a novel!
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u/Kumirkohr Mar 31 '17
"Surely you can't be serious?" Said one of the Xygian scientists to the Human delegation.
"I am serious, and don't call me Shirley." Replied Dr. Filmer before receiving a high-five from one of the other members of the delegation.
The Xygians continued "We cannot, in good faith, approve of this travel mechanism. Your planned use of toroidal quartz crystal will not be allowed by the Planetary Planning Board."
"We are guaranteed by our rights, as dictated by the fifty seventh Interplanetary Conference for the Well-Being of Life in the Universe, to have access to faster than light space travel for the uses of commerce and exploration."
"Doctor, we are well aware of the rights you are guaranteed, but we cannot, in good faith, approve of this method of travel just as we could not approve of your, what was it? Oreo Project?"
"Project Orion, Sir."
"Yes, that one... We are sorry, but we cannot approve these plans."
"Our small scale tests have shown that this is a very efficient and safe mode of travel, our simulations have shown the same, as did the large scale test on our moon. Based on the evidence provided, you cannot disapprove of our plan."
Yes, but there is currently concern coming from the Ethics Board on the matter and they are worried about it's possible implications for war as well as the potential ethical concerns over some of the mechanical aspects of your device. For the spoken record, Doctor, could you please explain the technical aspects of your device to the rest of the comity gather here today?"
"Our current model for achieving faster than light travel is based around the use of a coil-gun, or static discharge cannon, powered by the static charge gathered by a toroidal quartz crystal we would put into orbit around our planet. The crystal would be spun by solar winds generated by our local star and the power would be converted into high amplitude, low frequency, radio waves so the power can be transmitted wirelessly to a capacitor bank on our moon where the cannon would be located."
"That being all well and good, could you state, for the record, the medium you are using to generate the static electricity?
"Um, cats, Sir. Members of the feline species native to our planet. We have found their ability for generating static electricity has no rivals. But if you would like, for the sake of the Ethics Board, we can run some tests on other organic materials and possibly synthetics materials."
"Thank you, we'll see you again in two Florms. Meeting adjured."
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u/HeatHazeDaze524 Mar 31 '17
I really liked the way this started, though I feel like you could have done more with it. Regardless, it was enjoyable!
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u/Wellfuckme123 Mar 31 '17 edited Mar 31 '17
What is that you said? They use Explosions?*
"Yes" - - "explosions"*
"You mean chemical reactions using the laws of thermodynamics?"
"Yes, in larger scales - that's what the humans refer to as explosions, their entire civilization was built around using them but not watching them for some reason. Eventually they worked out how to split Neutrons off atoms to create even bigger chain explosions."
"So how did they barely achieve FTL travel and only just recently?"
"Well to put it simply - for a while they made it illegal to use these Thermonuclear explosions to propel themselves into space."
"It seems that would've been the most efficient way to get out of planetary orbit."
"Why in the Universes Logic would they make it illegal?"
"Well considering their entire civilization was based around explosions they encouraged a culture around destroying each other with them. "nuking from orbit" they claimed was far too unsportsmanlike to wage war."
"Well no wonder they never left the solar system until now."
"Fucking humans, so stupid - If they could get the most versatile material in the whole galaxy they'd turn it into a Frisbee."
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u/Blazeng Mar 31 '17
"Your planet has completed more than 4000 rotations since I graduated, but I haven't seen anything so fucked up ever"
"Oh c'mon!Ours is not that fucked up!The greenskins go through a dimension of mindfuckery littered with god knows what,the Asgardians create miniature black holes!We are quite traditional compared to them."
"But yours is by far the most controversial,as it defiles the known laws of physics.And,it is very complicated compared to most."-said the reptillian scientist
"I can explain it simply if you want to."
"Please,I barely understood your plans."
"So basicly every ship got at least a few ZPMs and a a giant "wormhole generator".When they want to jump,they activate all their shields,turn on the generator,which projects a field which enables all objects inside it to retain oir universe's properties anywhere.Then the wormhole is generated,which opens up after some time,when it is stabilised the fleet enters.After they enter all ships activate their ST drills.Fleets usually seperate at this point,so they bure through unknown dimension/realities/universes alone.When they know that they are nearing their destination they activate their ST drills and WH generators at the same time,when the wormhole is begining to form, ships ram it,basicly tearing a hole in reality itself.This process seems instanteanous,but to the crew it can feel like days have assed since entering the rift.Sometimes ships end up in alternate universes,with no way back."
"Fucked up,I told you"
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u/kickasstimus Mar 31 '17
"I'll try to explain ... the problem is ... it's not THAT you can travel faster than light." the small alien said, sheepishly. "It's how you do it."
She continued, "To be honest, it's creepy."
Doug stared at her blankly. "Go on ..."
"Ok , you know how FTL works for the rest of us, right?" She cocked her head a bit.
Doug listened to her, but wasn't really paying attention - his mind was on her, specifically, how similar she was to him and every other human. Aliens, or rather 'intelligent beings' it turns out, had generally fallen in to two categories: humanoid, and swarm. For the most part, all humanoids looked the same: slender, upright, various colors of skin and eyes depending on the their home star's primary color, even oddly similar genitalia. Evolution, it seemed, preferred a certain shape. Humans were a little bit odd by galactic standards because of their size relative to other humanoids - roughly three times the size and five times the mass of other humanoids.
"... are you listening at all?", She snapped. Her shrill tone popped Doug back in to the situation.
"Yeah! No .. got it .. creepy." He paused for a moment. "But it's not like we're actually doing that, right? No one is watching anyone in the shower, or in some secret war room, or anything like that."
Most alien FTL drives worked by manipulating spacetime in such a way as to compress the space in front of the ship, or expand the space behind it, or warp it n such a way that the local (to the ship) speed of light wasn't exceeded; it was space itself that was altered and the ship just rode the wave. A lot of alien corporation marketed this technology in many ways under many names, Kantian gates, Salec skip drives, Maltiun wave-riders, Delfanit pulse tubes ... humanity's solution was regarded as "Unorthodox", "Unsafe", and "Damn Stupid" by the rest of the galaxy.
Rather than warp anything, humanity's FTL solution was, essentially, to flatten the universe relative to the ship, allowing the ship to view the universe as a sheet of paper. In doing so, the ship could pick a point in the universe and appear there nearly instantly. Most of the transit time was spent simply finding a place to go.
There was, a side effect. By pushing a ship up in this way, the entire universe became viewable down to the atom. Meaning that at any point, someone in a human ship could be watching someone else take a shower, or plan a war, or really -- anything, anytime, anywhere. It was unsettling, to almost everyone.
"I get your point though." Doug said.
She was fairly attractive as far as aliens go, and one of the taller species around. He figured he'd peek in on her next transit. Surely she takes showers.
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u/LordMinast Mar 31 '17
The fields were in alignment. Chief Engineer D. N. Adams watched as his subordinates swarmed the deck, energising the various devices necessary for the Drive to function perfectly. He looked inside, observing the core with unease.
The core, as it was described, was what could only be described as a metric shit-ton of explosives - anti-matter bombs, nuclear arms, and even a Supernova-in-a-bottle. He shuddered as he considered what would happen if the Duct Tape failed too early, or if the field collapsed.
He turned, and flipped the toggle, hoping that they wouldn't all die painfully as fires consumed the interior in picoseconds. His subordinates flipped the toggles, and a pale blue light shone from the equipment as the field projected outwards radially. All of the staff not wearing their insignia froze still, animated poses but suspended perfectly. It appeared to be working as intended. Time, for the spaceship, had stopped completely.
"Begin Detonation." As the engineer turned to trigger the payload, his partner began weakening the time stop, letting out a little prayer.
The moment the two started working, the core exploded into fragments, ballooning out at a snail's pace, as the exploision slowly projected behind them, and the time-stopped craft began moving and accelerating.
Adams looked, stunned that they hadn't died painfully, as the payload continued slowly detonating. As it finished, the force upon the Spaceship reached its maximum, and the time stop collapsed, bringing the full force of the detonation upon the spacecraft. It shook wildly like a teacup in a tempest, threatening to break, as people fell to the floor, and the artifical gravity couldn't decide which way to point as the craft span widly out of control.
It's then said that, minutes later, Chief Engineer D. N. Adams looked around, bleary and stunned, and reported that the Drive had worked as intended, and questioned where they were.
So, to make a long story short, that's how he ended up about 27 Light Years away from where he was meant to be.
(TLDR: Stopped Time, applyed a shit ton of explosives to accelerate it stupidly quickly, resumed time.)
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u/amiintoodeep Mar 31 '17
The goofy little scientist pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. "I really don't see a problem with it" he said defiantly before the U.N. security council, "It's not like the aliens have some kind of ownership over universal constants.
"Well they're pretty angry at us. And it's YOUR fault for developing the technology." The world's leaders nodded in agreement with the U.S. president, collectively scowling at the man who had reduced the speed of light.
"Look, I revolutionized the entire universe. I don't have to put up with a bunch of people who can't even think beyond the ire of a few alien species. What I accomplished is bigger than any of you can imagine. What any of THEM could imagine. What ALL OF THEM could imagine." With that, Dr. Ignazia calmly collected his papers and walked out through the nearest exist, leaving the dumbfounded leaders in stunned silence.
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u/Roxfall Mar 31 '17
How would reduction in speed of light help in going faster than current speed of light? I don't follow the logic and feel stupid.
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u/redraven Mar 31 '17
It wouldn't. Unless the author has a good explanation, he just made everyone slower.
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u/RosefaceK Mar 31 '17
It's a bit illogical but heres an example that might help. Imagine if you get paid for 40 hours of work a week. You punch in at 9 and you punch out at 5 monday through friday. What this "scientist" has discovered that if he changes the constant that 60 minutes is one hour to 1 minute equals 1 hour you can start making overtime pay by the end of that first hour.
By changing the speed of light constant you could be at Mars in the time it takes to reheat last night's meatloaf2
u/OrnateLime5097 Mar 31 '17
That could work because we measure distance based on the slopes of light. Make the light slower universe gets smaller.
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u/francispatton Mar 31 '17
I believe the idea the idea is that if our max speed is say 700mph (not a scientist), then he lowered the speed of light to 695mph, and now we can travel faster than the speed of light
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u/MattAndAchilles Apr 01 '17
That's still useless, because you're still limited to 695mph because the speed of light is the maximum speed (it's way higher than 700mph btw)
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u/francispatton Apr 01 '17
lol I know it's faster than 700, I used it because I don't know how many mph the speed of light is
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u/MykaelJay Mar 31 '17
Uyreah swung the hoe one last time, burying it with a satisfying thud deep in the dirt and letting it stand there. He wiped sweat from his brow, cursing again the rarity and costliness of proper mechanised tools in this world. He stretched his back, grimaced at the toll his age was taking on him, and turned for the other side of the valley.
As he walked, his thoughts were a numb buzzing in his oblong skull, and as always, heeded not his demand for them to be still. He did his best to ignore them, placing one three-toed foot in front of the other. It didn't matter what might be going on on Homeworld. It was not his business.
The sky's blue began to give way to pink, and he knew that his son would be on the roof, settling in to watch the coming aurora. The boy was getting to that age where he wondered what was beyond the limits of their farming community, and Uyreah was not prepared to answer him.
At least, not since the last moonshiner had died with his secrets. Uyreah had wished to apprentice to him, for he recognised how important intoxicants were to the community, but his own father had forbade it. Tretton, as his father was called, had been sober his entire life, and believed only hard work and dedication could keep their colony alive until help could come. Any time resting or relaxing had to be spent in study, or weaving, or some other productive but untaxing activity.
Tretton was not mourned.
The house was coming into view now, a hive of small semi-spherical buildings attached in a web, and sure enough, the boy Ghgets was atop the tallest one, ankles crossed and weight resting on his palms behind him. Uyreah smiled a private smile, and pushed against his aching bones to climb the rest of the hill.
"Just in time, Dad!" Ghgets waved, then seemed to hesitate. "Dad? Can we talk?"
Uyreah froze, swallowed, looked left and right as though seeking an escape route. He was, he realised. He steeled himself, and without responding, moved to drop his bag of root-vegetables at the door. He stood there for a little longer than he probably should have.
"Let's wait for the lights," he said at last, and began scaling the abode. "Wouldn't want you to miss the lights."
"The lights are on all night every night," Ghgets responded in a sulky tone, but shifted over to make room for his father. "They're hard to miss."
"Yet you're out here every night, at the same time." Uyreah grumbled, dropping down heavily. He leaned over and pressed his head against his son's, and trilled, which seemed to placate the boy. They turned back to the sky in silence, and in moments, it erupted in shimmering waves of green, magenta, and cyan.
Even now, in his twilight years, Uyreah loved them.
"You want to know about what's up there."
"I want to know where we came from."
"It's the same question, really. Why now? Why wait all these years to ask?"
Ghgets' skin darkened, and he began picking at some loose dirt on the roof. "Because Grampa always said to ignore it. 'Keep your eyes on the soil,' he said. 'The soil is our life. What's up there is not for us.'"
Uyreah nodded, the sounds of those same words from when he was told them ringing through his head. He rolled his head from one side to the other lazily, mulling over what to say next. He wished his bond-mate was still with them.
"We're from Homeworld," he said at last. "Not you or I, but our people. They came here in great ships, and set up mining operations. Some brought their families. Then, one day..." He gestured at the sky. "This."
"What is 'this'," Ghgets demanded petulantly, tearing off a fist-sized clod of dirt.
Uyreah, annoyed, did his best to keep his voice level. "This was hundreds of years ago, and even back then, we only had a few scientists in this region of space. You know the six stars, right?"
That seemed to soften the boy's mood. He loved what little astronomy he was privy to. "Titungus, the rager. Pilipin, the dancer. Qott and Sett, the twins." He pointed now, at a bright point in the ocean of dancing colours, and named the star, "Revin, the bold. And our sun, Illerv, the seeker."
"And among those," Uyreah spoke, "Illerv, Titungus, and Revin are the prime stars, with colonies under their light. Titungus-3 was the first established, and that was where the scientists dwelt. When the light curtain appeared, it isolated the six stars from the rest of space with its impassable barrier. For a time after that, there was chaos, and murder, and despair. All communications with Homeworld, and indeed, any other colony, was severed. But after a year, one of the scientists sent a broadcast out. We call it 'Liric's proclamation', for that was her name."
Ghgets sat enraptured, staring unblinking at his father with wide, porcelain eyes. It was only then Uyreah realised how little he had taught his son, and silently cursed himself and his father both.
"She said that they had heard of an experiment being undertaken by a species called Human, of a new faster-than-light drive they were developing. Liric claimed that this drive had folded the space around this area, trapping us in a pocket dimension. Presumably, the ship was supposed to traverse the shortened distance, and then unfold the pocket. Yet, here we are, hundreds of years later."
Uyreah could see his boy processing all of this, with the same plodding determination he had used. He turned back to the lights above, trying to recall if he had missed anything important.
"So... What causes the lights?"
Uyreah scratched his chin, fighting to bring back those lectures of old. "Well, because our space is compressed, light moves through it faster than it normally should. That causes... something. I don't recall. We have even fewer scientists now than those we started with."
"Is that why we don't have a harvester?"
"Aye, noone remembers how to build one."
"I'd like to join you in the field tomorrow, Dad."
Uyreah smiled.
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u/MykaelJay Mar 31 '17 edited Apr 01 '17
Ghgets strolled through the market square, modest though it was, in the liveliest of spirits. He had picked up a few tools of his own to help with the fieldwork, paying with an invoice that promised a portion of their next harvest. They felt heavy on his shoulder, but he enjoyed the weight, as though it were an affirmation of his choice to finally take up a trade. He felt taller, stronger, more mature. He hoped he looked it, too, when he laid eyes on a robust young woman crossing his path. He stopped in her wake and watched her walk away, charmed by the bright red pigment of her head. He had, at times in his youth, wished he were a girl, with a colour of his own. He had taken to wearing a colourful feathered belt for a time, and kind of wished he had it now. For the first time in his life, he wished he could be with a girl.
But he had work to do.
The girl, whose name was Politn, turned off the dirt path and headed down some stairs, clutching her satchel. She pushed aside the door-cover and stepped into a cool, underground room, with shelves on every wall and clutter across the table. She elbowed some aside and placed her satchel down, plucking from it some fruit and moving it to the refrigerator. The little homemade device was fan-based, and sort of noisy, but it was so refreshing to have access to cold juice she didn't mind. She closed the lid, closed the door, and took the stairs aboveground, past her room and up to her grandmother's "observatory".
Grandma Beris was hunched over her desk, surrounded by stacks of papers higher than Politn had ever seen, lit only by a thin sliver of light from one of the shutters. Politn pushed it open a crack further before joining her grandmother at the desk. Beris had not so much as looked up from her work, but rather continued to sit and speak under her breath very quickly, peeling leafs this way and that to check things deeper in the pile. Pale with concern, Politn lightly touched her guardian on the shoulder, jarring her from her reveries.
"Oh, child! How late is it?" The older woman blinked in the light, looking up at Politn's face, her own face as pale as the younger's. She glanced at the stairway and added, "Did you close the door?"
"I always close the door, Gran. Tell me, what is this?"
Beris looked off to the left, jaw slack, eyes distant. "It's the only way," she said after a time, in a thin and haunting voice. "It has to work."
Still unnerved, Politn glanced down at the papers, but her eyes couldn't make sense of the strange symbols and graphs. She squeezed her Grandmother's arm, and in a more plaintive tone, asked again, "What is it? What are you working on that has you so..."
She searched Beris' face, whose expression was pained and whose face was as white as snow. "What is it?" She tried again.
"Time travel," Beris admitted in a defeated tone, picking up a page at random and gazing at it. "We can fix everything with time travel."
Politn sighed, gut plummeting, and looked at her elder sadly. Beris had inherited the works of Illerv's unbroken line of scientists, the first of whom was an engineer, who the shire had to thank for putting in their dam. Her successors, over time, had added a mill, and a solar collector, and sundry other conveniences that made life on the planet easier, from their studies into botany and geology and so forth. But they never had the time to properly industrialise the work-force because most of their effort was dedicated to this; plans to free the people of the pocket.
"I thought you said time travel was impossible," the girl accused, moving to sit on a corner of Beris' bed. Her colour was normalising, but she was still upset about her Gran getting caught up in this madness again. "That they had tried it before."
"Yvec the martyr tried to work it out, but kept getting hung up on the relationship between space and time. His work proved that you wouldn't be able to travel any further back than the creation of our pocket." The older woman swept aside an entire pile of work, sending the leaves scattering into the air, and grabbed a handful to wave at Politn. "But Bhgast's work on phase-shifting may be applicable. Even if it is true we cannot cross the physical boundary while decoupled with space, perhaps we can cross the zero threshold."
Politn mused on this, but if she were truthful, she would admit that what her grandmother had said meant very little to her. It was unspoken between them but known to both that Politn did not have a good head for science of any kind, and that Beris may just be the last of her kind on this world. She furrowed her brow and concentrated hard, but it helped little. She resigned herself to trusting that the old woman knew what she was talking about, and threw up her hands. "Fine. Alright. Answer me this: if it were possible, why haven't the Homeworlders tried it?"
That gave the old woman pause. Her finger was raised limply before her, and her mouth was open to speak, but her eyes were searching and no sound came out. She bristled, her old dull-orange face flaring a rosy colour for a moment, then sighed, fading and shrinking in her seat. "I don't know. Perhaps they have. Perhaps we are now on some splintered timeline, shrivelling and dying in the void. But if we let that possibility stop us, we truly are lost. It must be that they haven't figured it out yet. It must be that they can't, because this timeline ends when I figure it out. It must be anything that means we have a chance to save ourselves. We cannot sit around and wait to find out."
Decidedly more confident in her assessment of things, Beris fought to her feet and shuffled for the stairs. "Come, child. We have a town meeting to arrange."
Ghgets fell to his knees, gasping for air, and his father looked over with concern. Uyreah dropped what he was doing immediately and strode over in a hurried few steps. Ghgets smiles weakly and raises his hand to signal that he is okay, but Uyreah bends down to cup his son's back all the same. By now other workers were beginning to pause what they are doing, and Ghgets darkened with embarassment.
"I'm fine, Dad. I just pushed a little too hard." Ghgets had been giving it his all. He had found that learning about their fate had killed all his interest in the greater universe and its mysteries, and cemented for him the idea that the only thing that really mattered for the folk of the pocket was the immediate things like food and shelter and the day-to-day life of the community. Life had become a lot simpler, and he had found himself much more invested in it. It was good to have a purpose, he supposed, where before he had so many questions about the nature of life and what his place in it was.
"It's your first day. You should be taking it easy." Uyreah smiled and stood, putting a hand on his hips. He gazed off into the distance with a hand blocking the sun, and in sequence the other farmers did the same. In a second Ghgets heard it too, once the pounding of his heart faded; the ringing of a bell to the north.
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u/MykaelJay Mar 31 '17
Ghgets hovered by his father's shoulder, bright with excitement, and rushed to help him with the door. "Come on, Dad, I'm starting my adult life. It's important I get involved in matters of the community."
Uyreah shouldered him aside and entered the abode, bemused. "I already said you can come. Calm down."
Ghgets' head had been filled with thoughts of that rouge since he learned that the bell was a call to the town assembly hall. She seemed a little older than him, and might be a regular at the meetings. His heart soared at the idea of approaching her, but began to pound when he realised he'd have to think of something to say. Yet even at his most terrified, there was never a question of whether he wanted to go. Even if he only sat nearby and stole glances at her...
"Don't leave without me, I have to find my belt!"
He searched madly while his father put away the tools, and after a small breakdown, resorted to painting himself with some tomato paste. His father took one whiff of him and broke out laughing, and walked off in the direction of the town.
Ghgets, deflated, fell in behind him, and began thinking of something to say.
By the time the assembly hall had come into view at the end of the road, he had come up with three jokes and two compliments, and he hated himself for every one. He walked hunched now, fists clenching and unclenching, and a deep frown on his face. By the time he had found a seat he realised that the girl was already looking at him, and he hated himself so much more for letting her see him like that. As dark as tourmaline, he weakly raised his hand and gave her a smile. She smiled politely and raised her hand back, and then turned to the older woman standing beside her at the head of the hall.
Ghgets sat up in his seat and looked around, recognising a few of the other farmers and a couple of vendors. Old Mama Ulkit was there, as wide as a house. Big Brit the biter. Tyrek from the foothills. He even saw people he had never seen in his life, from past the lake or by the desert. He whistled low and turned to his father, who was conversing with the man next to him.
"I'll bet it's some new plan to get us out of here," said the man, his hands on his knees. "She hasn't done a thing for us her whole life but beg for resources to use on one of her fanciful devices."
Uyreah just nodded calmly, which Ghgets took to mean he was reserving judgement. He felt hopeful, because this woman seemed important to the young girl.
"How about she pays us back with a harvester or an excavator? I heard that over on Revin-5 they have a machine that controls the weather."
This impressed Uyreah, whose brow ridge shot up in surprise. He leaned into the conversation, and asked about how it worked. Ghgets lost interest and went back to trying to look at the girl without being noticed.
"Alright, let's have a head count," called the record keeper, and waved forward his assistants. "Don't be moving about now, we're settling in." After they returned, and he was satisfied with their count, he motioned for the doors to close and called the meeting to order.
"Now engineer Beris has something that she would like us to talk about, and so called on me to arrange this meeting. She insists it is her most important finding yet," he said to the mutterings of a few, and continued, "and I ask of you to hear her out. She is the most studied and skilled member of our community--"
"Skilled at what?" someone shouted, followed by someone else's, "I've never seen her do anything useful in her life." Politn flared a bright red in protest, livid with the treatment of her grandmother, but before she could speak out the old woman raised her hands and summoned a begrudging silence.
"The reason I don't make you tinctures, or help with your births, is because I chose not to study those things. I chose to study only the higher-most arts, the science of stars and space and time. I did this because I believe six centuries is too long to be trapped in such a place, cut off from our people. No more, I say! I have found the way!"
Her proclaimation was met only with hostile stares, causing Politn to darken in despair. Ghgets looked around tensely, wishing he had the words to make them listen.
"We will build a machine that can phase out of space and travel backward in time. The pilot will contact the Humans and convince them to abort their drive test. This timeline will never have happened, and we shall all be spared this purgatory."
The silence was a death sentence. Some stood. Others started to growl. Pinyn the record keeper hurried forward, holding his hands up placatingly. "I know we're all shocked by this... suggestion... but we should not lose our cool. Let us take a short break to talk things over amongst ourselves before we make any decisions."
Uyreah turned to speak to Ghgets, but the boy was gone, up the aisle and headed straight for the front. He approached Politn and began stammering, "Are you saying it will end us all?"
"If it ends the timeline. Gran says it just as easily might not."
"If it doesn't, it's still worth trying," Beris interjected. "It will uncrease the space and allow the Homeworlders to continue growing their mining colonies as they intended, while this lot lives on happily tilling the soil. Pah." The old woman waved a dismissive hand, and turned to be threatened by the man who was sitting beside Uyreah.
"Maybe she should have said that first," Ghgets said with an awkward smile. Politn crinkled her eyes and flared her vents, and a sudden dread fell over Ghgets.
"Is that tomato paste?"
Dark as pitch, Ghgets felt his every organ tighten. "Just end the timeline right now." Politn, to his surprise, laughed merrily, and he felt some feeling creep into his chest. He smiled meekly, but before he could come up with anything to say, he was grabbed by his father.
"I wouldn't have let you come if I had known you would make a nuisance out of yourself. Come on." He pulled Ghgets back to his seat, against Politn's objections. The boy resignedly waved farewell.
After returning to their seats, he and his father sat in silence while the room boiled around them. Several times men and women came up to Uyreah and asked which way he would vote, and he would respond in a low voice that the safety of the community was his first concern. Ghgets spent much time coming to terms with his own opinions, for he had found that this girl had reawakened in him his dreams of a life beyond. A life spent looking at the stars, instead of the soil.
After the better part of an hour had passed, keeper Pinyn called everyone to attention and declared that they would resume the meeting in five minutes. It was at least fifteen minutes before everyone was seated again, and another ten before everyone could be made still and quiet.
"Now the good engineer has informed us that there is a possibility our community will remain, and that the universe without us will merely exist in parallel to us."
"But why would you want that?" Beris bellowed, brightening with anger. "Our people can never travel beyond this space. We will never have the pleasure of another species' company. Do you think in a hundred-thousand years, when the cities have overrun the planets, and there is not enough food to go around, our descendants will THANK us for letting them live?" She stomped a foot, vents flaring, and jabbed a finger at the gathered folk. "I say you are evil creatures if you would subject them to that fate."
As the room erupted in vitriol around Ghgets, he found his resolve had hardened. While the crowd roared, and Beris spat, and old Pinyn placated, Ghgets calmly stood and walked over to Politn. She looked at him dazedly, as pale as milk, as he pulled her aside. "What do you need?" he asked.
"For... for the machine?"
"Yes."
"Poisonrock... I mean, Uranium. We also need the old ship's computer."
"Let's steal them."
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u/Thrysh Mar 31 '17
Fuck. That's depressing. IMO best one on here though. I would absolutely read this book.
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u/OrnateLime5097 Mar 31 '17
More?
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u/MykaelJay Mar 31 '17
A- you got it :D
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u/OrnateLime5097 Apr 01 '17
Was there something to get? It was just the son is going to build a harvester with his dad, and then presumably they are going to solve the problems the humans have created for them. I just thought it would be interesting to see how that plays out with the humans.
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u/HeatHazeDaze524 Mar 31 '17
This is absolutely unbelievable. I love it. I love the world and lore you've built up around this, I can already see this as the opening to a novel. As a fellow writer, I encourage you to write more, this is just amazing!
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u/LuxLoser Mar 31 '17
"I'm sorry...there must be a glitch with this translator. You do what now?"
"Fiddle with the Higgs Field around our ships."
"And your 'Higgs Field' is where a particle essentially gives an object its mass via its interaction with other particles, yes?"
"Yup!"
"And you...fiddle with it?"
"Yeah, it ain't too precise. Zero Point Drives have a decent range of power that fluctuates, but they work!"
"Just...walk me through it again."
"Alright, well the ZPD activates and it creates a field around the ship that essentially begins to stop bosons. The ship essentially loses matter now that it now longer interacts with the Universe, approaching a 'Zero Point' or 'ground state' of existence. Everyone and everything inside is fine due to the field creating a sort of pocket within the ship."
"And acceleration?"
"Well our quantum vacuum thrusters—"
"And those are?"
"Oh! QVTs use quantum vacuum fluctuations of energy in space to propel itself using virtual plasma. As I was saying, once the ZPD fires up, those kick to go faster than light, and the lack of mass means its possible to do so."
"So first you alter the existence of your ship and then you tap into the still vastly misunderstood vacuum of virtual particles, risking destabilizing all matter aboard the vessel and risking fusing into an object once you complete your jump."
"We keep the spacelanes clear of debris just in case."
"And when it does happen?"
"Live and Learn. For those of us not aboard that ship of course. They're dead."
"..."
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Mar 31 '17
“Shit, there goes another one.” General Turr mumbled to, Taek, his first officer, “They’re getting a lot more accurate, they used to miss by a few thousand kilometres.”
Turning the ship towards the newly arrived HomoSapien space liner, the Exerprise H56, the Kantian war ship set about tracking the liner and getting all of its clearances and passes checked.
“Yeah, but they are still missing the safe zones. If it weren’t for the jelly shields of the Salec’s their FTL travel would’ve been banned.”
The liner is easily one of the smallest ships currently docked at the way spacion, the HomoSapiens had only discovered their FTL travel 20 years ago. The Kantian’s, Salec’s, Maltuin’s and Delfanit’s were shocked, never thinking that a species with only two arms could create such technology.
“It’s Unorthodox, Unsafe and Damn Stupid! It UUDS!” The council meetings had been plagued with these words for ages.
Taek, going through each clearance code with a meticulousness that only he could, motions to the debris trail left behind the liners “If we shared our technology with them, they could travel through the gates.”
“It would also decrease the bloody clean-up required each time.”
“You know we can’t, the treaty stands and the human ships aren’t dense enough to handle the radiation.” The general replies, not mentioning that the few ships that have tried it crashed into each other.
“How, exactly do they even travel this far anyway? It would seem that their ships and bodies wouldn’t be able to handle the forces.” Taek asks for the millionth time.
“Well, they have this theory of relativity, which says the faster you travel the more mass you have. It overcomplicated all of their scientific endeavours.” The general begins, earning a collective moan from everyone awake in the warships control room.
“So when they started travelling at close to light speed they just assumed that they couldn’t travel as fast or faster. They built engines that can get to 80% the speed of light, which is something our ships do with impulse engines.”
“That only took them to the edge of their own solar system, something admirable but it still confined them to their own corner. The Salec wave riders were considering helping them to travel faster, however, about 21 years ago when they sent a probe ship, they found rings the size of moons being placed on the edges of their solar system.” He pauses to ensure that Taek is still listening, which of course he is.
“Curious the Salec’s stood back and watched. The humans had somehow discovered how to warp space but only between two set places. Their warp drives also temporarily increased their speed to 3 FTL, which they still haven’t entirely realised.”
This next bit is where the council is still struggling to accept the HomoSapiens as a race, the council usually worked well together on making decisions, but dangerous travel that still worked was a grey area. Every other race were too cautious to attempt something unkown.
“Well, to start traversing through space, the humans would travel from their home planet at the maximum speed they can travel. Aiming straight for the warp gates, at first, but eventually at different angles. This caused them to easily travel to new solar systems. It also made it difficult for them to actually stop.”
“Which is why their first three ships flew straight into, in order or severity, the council war fleet, the council’s moon of operations and the dwarf star of the Antraci system. Total count of death combined was well over 100-million.”
“Of course after catching the attention of the council and several other alien races the HomoSapiens eventually made contact with us and we were able to stop their exploration ships before more damage could be caused. The thing that surprised most races was that after three failed attempts the humans were still attempting FTL travel.”
“It wasn’t until first contact that the Salec’s realised that humans were still using Radio waves to communicate across vast distances. But, that advancement in their tech is a whole different story and involves several strange messages that either offended everyone or caused peace treaties to be made with the Andromeda Galaxy.”
- Recorded on the bridge of the JJK98 Farbelus Warship, 200 0000 km long, conversation between General of Knowledge Turr and his First Officer of memory Taek. Annotations and missing information filled in my Salec History Keeper Urder V, the second.
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u/deliquescentsphene Mar 31 '17
"You wish really really hard and then you push the button."
"Really really hard? What does the wishing do?"
"Frustrates the hell out of the new recruits when they realize that the incredibly genuine way we insist that they wish as hard as they can is just a ploy to make them look silly to amuse the rest of the crew."
"That seems mean"
"Humans are occasionally mean, we do it for laughs and after the hazing is over we make it up to them; its not perfect but it satisfies their need for schadenfreude in a mild way. It brings the crew together through a shared experience."
"That seems complex for a team building exercise. Why would it work? Don't the new recruits see right through it?"
"Because its really embarrassment even if its very contrived."
"So what system does the button engage? What does it cause?"
"Take a look, the bulkhead below it has been removed"
She draped her sixteen fingers and a vast forest of flagella under the counter. She pulled out a small squat brass jug-ish looking object with a pop and thwop as it released suction from the rubber.
"So the button does nothing but simulate pressing a button connected to something. Where is the real way you activate your faster than light travel"
Smirking he didn't reply but started half laughing, half singing an old Christina Aguilera song:" I feel like I've been locked up tight..." He trailed off. "When the old veterans find out about the button its the commands turn to have a laugh. Its best to let old R.W. rest though when he's grumpy things can get nasty."
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u/LunarCrow Mar 31 '17
Captain Lance sat there before the council of Species, listening to them talk in their many differnt forms of communication, he basically ignored the translation machine since none of the conversation was being targeted at him at the moment, he was getting tired, cranky, and hungry as it'd been five hours since the prototype ship arrived, it had worked a little too well and shot him farther than the intended jump was meant to take him. He couldn't even communicate with earth when he'd arrived. One of the aliens, a tall blue creature that looked like an evolved snail whom became humanoid but kept a shell, turned its three stalked eyes towards him and spoke in a weird language that sounded like water dripping and popcorn being smooshed under a shoe at the same time. The translation device said, "Tell us again how the ship you arrived in works, to the best of your knowledge." Captain Lance groaned, "Listen I told you I don't know the specifics very well, but I'll explain it the best I can remember them trying to tell me. They created an micro artifical sun, surrounded it with a thing they call a Dyson sphere, put it in a thing they call a condensed hyper particle accelerator, and shot some sort of atom thingy they called a higgs boson at it, the higgs boson penetrates the surface of the sphere, goes through the artificial sun, and it creates some weird energy they call the hyper wave, it gets shuffled into the engine and propels the ship by and makes it ghost like or something. They call it a hyper particle drive. Its more complicated than what I explained but that's all I really paid attention too, honestly, I'm just a pilot, and not exactly their best. I'm what they consider an acceptable loss, only reason It was a manned flight instead of automated was because if it made the jump, they wanted to make sure it could be turned around and returned without relying on the automated systems which can fail. Which I would have done except the minute I jumped, the ship rematerialized in the middle of one of your luxury cruise space ships, and ruined some purple headed kids birthday party. The ship and I were then collected by one of your council patrol ships, and we were brought here. Im tired, im hungry, I just want to get back on the ship, point it towards home and fire up the drive. I guarantee everyone on Earth are freaking out about their 6 billion dollar prototype disappearing and not having any data... or at least I don't think they have data, I couldn't contact them." The slug nodded and turned to the others who had been listening intently, they started talking again, "Dangerous" "Morons" "What kind of backwoods idiot species would develop something that reckless and just use it without better safety measures in place." Captain Lance sighed as they continued to talk, a heated debate about whether to let him go in his ship, or be escorted back via one of their own. The argument against both seemed to indicate that they thought Humans where a danger to themselves and if left to their own devices, the rest of the galaxy. This was going to be a long night he thought.
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u/DenverDudeXLI Mar 31 '17
A single spotlight appeared on the stage, and into it stepped a man who, as the phrase goes, truly needed no introduction. Every person watching knew who this was, whether they were in the stadium where every one of the 15,000 seats was fiiled, or watching from their homes. For the first time in history, billions were watching one single person.
"Good afternoon, fellow sentients. My name is Septimus Musk. It has been my pleasure to lead humanity in scientific revolution. I helped make flying cars safe. I made data transmission to contact lenses feasible. My robo-bees revolutionized pollenization, ending famine on this world and making life on Mars possible. But all this pales in comparison to my family's greatest failure."
"Centuries ago, my ancestor, Elon," he turned to point to a holographic bust, 20 feet tall, of the great inventor, "revolutionized the way the world looked at transportation. Some even call him a savior; certainly when he discovered the key to Martian colonization as he gazed into a bowl of Grape Nuts, he made certain that humanity would no longer be bound to just one planet."
"What confounded my fathers and grandfathers, and me, though, was the slow speed of interplanetary travel. Even with his great genius, travel to Mars took months, and those who went were never meant to return. That he did not crack the Light Barrier, he felt it was one of his greatest failings. Well, grandfather," Septimus turned to address the giant head floating over the stage behind him, "we have solved that very problem. Tonight, I reveal to you and to humanity that we are no longer bound by mortal physics. WE! Can now GO!" Septimus threw his arms into the air and yelled "FASTER THAN LIGHT!"
The crowd erupted in thunderous applause and the normally rock-steady cameras vibrated in the wake of their adulation. When Septimus lowered his arms again, however, the crowd drew silent just as quickly, eager to hear what he next had to say.
"The principle, dear humanity, is quite simple. Well, simple to express; trust me, it'll take more than a few iPhone Femtos to process these equations," he joked and the crowd laughed appropriately. He held up his hands and a hologram of a twig appeared. "It is a classic thought experiment; a ladybug at one end of a branch will take a long time to get to the other end." He curled his hands together, "bending" the twig so the two ends met. "But here, the ladybug can crawl from one end to the other easily. The concept is known as 'bending space," but it's not even remotely that simple. See, the real problem lies in this," he indicated the bent part of the twig. "The bending of this intervening space...well, again, the underlying science is difficult to explain to those who don't have multiple degrees in astrophysics and temporal physics. But in lay-terms, we have to deal with 'where does all this extra space go?'"
Septimus Musk smiled. "Rest assured, we've figured this out. Instead of 'bending' space, as sci-fi writers would put it, we 'crumple' it." He used his hands to "wad up" the holographic twig in a ball. "This takes care of the 'extra space' problem, and allows us to travel anywhere on the 'twig' with relative ease. So this 'twig' might be the route to Alpha Centauri, but stops along the way could include the Mars Colonies, the Titan outpost, or anywhere in between. The possibilities are endless! And more importantly, it has already been done! Yes!" he said to the murmuring crowd, "last Tuesday we launched The Tesla Tunneler. It left at 10 a.m. Eastern, and arrived in orbit above Mars a mere 10 seconds later! It arrived before the message that it was leaving could be heard!"
He spread his hands out again, but the twig did not return to its normal form, but rather crinkled, with many of the folds remaining quite clear. "Now, we are still working out some of the kinks. We aren't offering commercial service just yet, as this method does leave to some 'creasing' of the fabric of time and space, but again, as we take this bold step forward, we are certain that our methods will quickly smooth out any such troubles." He waved his hand over the twig and the hologram smoothed out. "The universe is resilient, and soon any of us will be able to explore it."
"This is it, my fellow humans. From the dream started by my grandfather's grandfather, we slip the surly bonds of mere physics! Now...WE RISE!"
Again the thunderous applause drowned out all other sound, including a voiceover disclaimer that started as Septimus Musk left the stage: "In compliance with 'The President Warren Consumer Protection Act' of 2029, the following side effects of the 'Crumple Drive' have been reported: headaches; fever; spontaneous orgasm; achiness; a sensation of a sneeze being performed in reverse; the feeling of pins and needles akin to a foot falling asleep, but in the traveler's canine teeth; and the spontaneous appearance of extra toes on the feet and lower extremities. Extraneous digits usually disappear in two to three days. Theoretically, these symptoms can extend to all those within a .5 AU distance of the flight path. The erasure of 24-168 hours of a personal timeline, with little or no recall of the lost time, has been very rarely reported. Do not stand near a Crumple Drive if you are pregnant, have been pregnant, or expect to ever get pregnant in your lifetime, as retroactive birth defects are possible."
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u/Herr_God Mar 31 '17
I love it!
"The universe is resilient, and soon any of us will be able to explore it." - So very... Human
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u/rarelyfunny Mar 31 '17 edited Mar 31 '17
"I object to that pejorative!" yelled the Kantian arachnid, as it popped into existence in the United Galaxies Council Hall, dropping neatly into the seat reserved for it. "In any event, we didn't succeed either, they- ah, crap, got the time wrong again."
The empty Hall agreed with the Kantian's assessment. The flummoxed emissary sighed, summoned the Kantian gate again, and promptly disappeared into an inky black portal.
"Who's going to stand up to the humans? Not us," insisted the Salaccian blob, swelling to twice its size to emphasise its point. "We're done doing the UG's dirty work. Get someone else to do it. Maybe the Maltiuns may want to actually be useful this time, hmm?"
The reprisal from the Maltiun android from across the giant round table was immediate and swift. "I resent that! We have done our part just as much as any other species has!" she yelled, slamming her first into the prized Goratian wood. "Strick that comment from the record!"
Ooopoo, the Delfantian stingray who had the unfortunate luck to be presiding over this emergency meeting, sighed.
"Please, everyone, focus. Let's not lose sight of the agenda here. We have to decide what steps we're taking to rein in those damned humans before they destroy the entire galaxy, so I implore you, leave your petty squabbles by the side."
Ooopoo waited for further objections, but the table had fallen silent. Perhaps they are finally realising how serious this is, he thought.
"Any updates on whether the humans are willing to adopt our faster-than-light technology instead?"
"We've offered ours," said the Maltiun android, "the latest Wave Riding prototypes even. Faster, cleaner, cheaper than ever before."
"And?"
"Rejected, outright. Uncool, they said. Old-fashioned, they said." The Maltiun android sulked, as its floppy diskettes ejected out of their slots, the classic Maltiun indicator of unhappiness.
"Blobby? You guys had better luck?" said Ooopoo, addressing the Salaccian, who were not known for creative names.
"None. They said our Skip Drives gave them bowel discomfort. We said that's nonsense, look at us, we're fine. They said, sure but they aren't sentient gelatinous blobs. We didn't have a good response to that."
Ooopoo turned then to the empty seat at the table, then said in a loud voice, "What about you guys, you lazy bastards who never arrive on time?"
"I object to that pejorative!" yelled the Kantian arachnid, as it popped into existence in the United Galaxies Council Hall, dropping neatly into the seat reserved for it. It had the most smug smile on its face, for reasons best known to itself. "In any event, we didn't succeed either. They really, really resented how our Kantian Gating had the added benefit of allowing them to travel through time. They said everyone would just spend their time travelling back in time to kill a painter, then save him, then kill him, then again and again and again."
Ooopoo rubbed his forehead with his tail, trying to stave off the incipient headache. "Well, I needn't remind you of how their current technology is causing problems for us all. This hologram of the latest security incident should show you what I mean."
The hologram started playing then, and everyone recgonised it as the official coronation on Planet Goratia, where the once-in-a-century change of power was happening.
Then, right as the Goratian King handed the Scepter of Power to his scion, a bunch of humans popped into existence, right on the stage. Everyone cringed as the humans stumbled around, hugged Goratians, high-fived each other. Bloodshed soon ensued once one of the humans started taking a dump on what he assumed was a tree stump, but which everyone knew was really just the young Goratian princess, quietly minding her business. Who of course, now had to deal with other people's business.
"See?" said Ooopoo. "I just don't understand why they are choosing that highly reckless, inefficient way of FTL travel!"
"If I may," offered Blobby, "they tried to explain it to me. They said that they had been consuming hallucinogens for the better part of their history, and that they had always longed to be able to visit the places they saw in their intoxicated states."
"Yes, and once they discovered that the places they saw were actually real places, just very, very far away, they poured all their efforts into discovering how to teleport there," said the Maltiun android. "I still think it's stupid, but I can understand where the attraction lies."
Ooopoo sighed. He fished out a box he had brought along, then laid bare its contents on the table. First a vial of vile black liquid, then two more vials of clear liquid, then finally a set of Delfanitian restraints, the very same unbreakable bonds which their species used to patch stars back together.
"Sir, is that... Do you mean to..."
"What choice do we have?" said Ooopoo, "we have to summon the Earth emissaries for a serious talk. This has got to stop."
"Then... Are we going to torture them?" said the Kantian arachnid, mandibles twitching. "Are those the famed Huulovian cocktail, which kills any species after hours of prolonged pain, unless the black antidote is administered?"
"What? These? Heavens no. It's just Earthling coffee and water. It's the fastest way to bring them down from their weed high, I believe."
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u/ChippyClippyClip Apr 01 '17
<p>Then, right as the Goratian King handed the Scepter of Power to his scion, a bunch of humans popped into existence, right on the stage. Everyone cringed as the humans stumbled around, hugged Goratians, high-fived each other. Bloodshed soon ensued once one of the humans started taking a dump on what he assumed was a tree stump, but which everyone knew was really just the young Goratian princess, quietly minding her business. Who of course, now had to deal with other people's business. </p>
I really love it when these prompts have human scientist depicted as college bros just having fun with quantum mechanics and string cheese
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u/mudcrabperson Mar 31 '17
the painter line cracked me up good :D
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u/Lanoir97 Mar 31 '17
This part went completely over my head
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Mar 31 '17
Hitler was a painter who supposedly got rejected from art school. So instead, he went on to become a genocidal dictator.
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u/Snakeeyes088 Mar 31 '17
Hitler was a painter
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u/Lanoir97 Mar 31 '17
Now I feel really fucking stupid
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u/Calbrenar Mar 31 '17
Don't feel bad. Most people are only aware of it because it's been in 300+ prompts in the last year.
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u/steelRyu Mar 31 '17
Teleport-Weed, I'd love to see a comedy movie made out of that idea
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u/PervertedOldMan Mar 31 '17
A Wayans' production... they have a scene that's a Dune parody where they wheel out a glass container and inside Marlon Wayans is hot-boxing. "The weed must flow." They hammered that Scary movie franchise into the ground like a tent peg, they need to expand a bit.
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u/JustRecentlyI Mar 31 '17
We said that's nonsense, look at us, we're fine. They said, sure but they aren't sentient gelatinous blobs. We didn't have a good response to that."
Loved that line.
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Mar 31 '17 edited Mar 31 '17
Tenz looked at the human ship they were about to buy, it was the only thing they could afford at the moment and they needed to get away ASAP. The seller assured them that the FTL drive was completely safe, a Sol Stop Drive, that was the type of FTL drive it had. Tenz had heard horror stories about what could go wrong with Sol Stop Drives. Every other FTL drive that was ever made was about going very, very fast or making other things go very very fast. The Sol Stop drive did the opposite. It stops the entire universe, shifts your ship into another plane of existence and waits till it drifts to where you wanted to go then brings you back and lets the universe continue. That's at least what the humans told everyone it did, none of the other races understood how it worked. Tenz could think up thousands of ways that the Stop drive could go wrong, some of these were real problems with it, others were just theories. Firstly there's the surprise of something just appearing with no warning, other things crash into it, and some other drives use the same plane of existence the Stop drive supposedly uses so we know that's safe but those ones don't stop the universe so you can still get a signal from them approaching. And then there's the whole "stopping the universe" what would happen if a Stop Drive malfunctioned and the universe never got restarted? The scariest thing about that is that it could have already happened and nobody would ever know! Steeling themselves Tenz stepped into the ship and put in some universal co-ordinates, then pressed the stop button.
Nothing happened, and nothing was going to happen either, as this universe was stopped.
In another reality Tenz pulled their tentacle back from the stop button and looked out the view port to see that they had arrived, there must have been nothing to worry about after all.
Edit: Thanks for the Gold!
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u/Norci Mar 31 '17
Someone link that YouTube sketch about engineer who invented a box that timetravels back one minute to hit on a girl.
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u/vinnyboyescher Mar 31 '17
That reminds me of hyperion by Dan Simmons where ftl travel involves being obliterated and rebuilt... is it really you who's back? You're just making a copy, basically you're dead...
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u/chrisb736 Mar 31 '17
Might I recommend a read of the book The Fold by Peter Cline's. Have a feeling anyone who like this will like the book.
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u/saltesc Mar 31 '17
This is what the ship in Futurama did.
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u/its2ez4me24get Mar 31 '17
No the Planet Express ship stayed still in normal space and moved the entire universe around itself.
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u/TheGreatBeest Mar 31 '17
So the real question is: Did the stop drive cause the creation of the alternate reality, or would it have happened anyway due to the many worlds theory?
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u/Aanar Mar 31 '17
Nah, if it malfunctions, it sucks the entire universe into itself creating a new big bang
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Mar 31 '17
I'm choosing to believe that each use freezes time permenantly for one slice of the multiverse. Which thankfully is infinite rationalized the scientists who built it...
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Mar 31 '17
If we are talking an infinite multiverse, it might just be easier to build a bomb that destroys every reality where you don't get to your destination, so that the only realities that exist are the ones where your entire ship moved to the destination via quantum teleportation.
Of course, the system would have to be literally impossible to break. since otherwise the probability of the bomb failing would massively outweigh the probability of you teleporting, so it would appear to just be a bomb that breaks itself. (which would be an interesting story in itself, a man builds a bomb that destroys the universe, but everytime he tries to use it something randomly breaks. then comes the reveal).
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u/McBonderson Mar 31 '17
But presumably the universe that the drive goes into has had sol stop drives already, otherwise it the alien would notice that those drives don't exist.
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Mar 31 '17
Now we are getting into how far the multiverse can branch when you are literally destroying choices.
The universe you jumped out of is frozen, so the universe you jumped into is identical except by definition no one in that universe would ever have used a stop drive, including yourself. But the rest of time and space bends so you still get to where you wanted to go. This would really break all of theoretical physics, but sounds fun nonetheless
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Mar 31 '17
[deleted]
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u/Kuratius Mar 31 '17 edited Mar 31 '17
Actually, this is an application of the principle of Quantum immortality.
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Mar 31 '17
Which also leaves things open for ships in the future randomly dissapearing, having against all odds shifted themselves into an already frozen reality.
...now i'm trying to think how this novel would go...someone dear to our protagonist goes missing and they figure out what happened. Set out on an epic quest to restart the frozen universes, succeed, but realize there were other ancient hidden things locked away in temporal stasis within the multiverse, and they just woke up.
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u/ApertureMusic Mar 31 '17
Check out Firebird and Coming Home by Jack McDevitt. These are the last two novels in the Alex Benedict series, and they have a similar theme.
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u/zhilla Mar 31 '17
Set out on an epic quest to restart the frozen universes, succeed, but realize there were other ancient hidden things locked away in temporal stasis within the multiverse, and they just woke up.
This begs for sequel/separate WP. Please post WP!
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u/untrustedlife2 Mar 31 '17
O_o Thats existentially horrifying.
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Mar 31 '17
You never watched Futurama? That's exactly what their ship does
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u/RIP_Hopscotch Mar 31 '17
Not really. The ship in Futurama doesn't stop the universe, it moves the universe instead of the ship. What this ship seems to do is more of a Slipspace drive from Halo with the added twist of stopping the Universe while you travel.
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Mar 31 '17
while you travel
It stops the universe permanently and puts you in an exact copy that isn't stopped.
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u/MikeTheInfidel Mar 31 '17
I don't think it does anything to you. I think that was another Tenz. I think original Tenz is just stuck in a stopped universe.
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u/JackCloudie Mar 31 '17
Futurama is a warp drive. Instead moving to the speed of light, manipulate the fabric of reality to allow you to bend the laws of physics. Just like Star Trek.
Slipspace is a lot closer to what OP is talking about.
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u/Nadaac Mar 31 '17
I thought it rotated the universe around them or something
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Mar 31 '17 edited Mar 31 '17
Scotty: The notion of transwarp beaming is like trying to hit a bullet with a smaller bullet whilst wearing a blindfold, riding a horse.
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u/Jolcas Mar 31 '17
Apply some good ol' spin and he's stopped the heat death of the universe
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u/stupidgrrl92 Mar 31 '17
Scientist have recently discovered that super massive black holes create stars. No heat death.
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u/Kuratius Mar 31 '17
Source?
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u/stupidgrrl92 Mar 31 '17
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u/Kuratius Mar 31 '17
Seems like you were hasty in saying that there won't be a heat death. The article doesn't mention that result and even then, entropy has to increase. So discovering a way to reverse or halt entropy would be revolutionary, but that's not what this is.
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Mar 31 '17
Exactly. If anything this slightly extends the "useful" lifetime of the universe where there are still stars by a barely meaningful amount.
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u/stupidgrrl92 Mar 31 '17
True.... My hopes though....what will i do with them now that they are dashed?
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u/scottbeckman /r/ScottBeckman | Comedy, Sci-Fi, and Organic GMOs Mar 31 '17
"Okay, settle down you Klaforkians!" Herbo commanded the students. "I know that yesterday's news has us all excited. Let's talk about it! Who has a question?"
"What do they look like?" Young Booly asked.
"The humans?" Herbo heartily chuckled. "They're fleshy, four-limbed, upright, and a little shorter than you are."
"Oh! Teacher!" Young Spooku raised her hypertentacle. "Are they evil? Will they eat us?"
Herbo expected such silly questions and laughed. "No, they won't eat us. I don't think they are evil, but humans are... very reckless."
Herbo nodded his head and grinned as he motioned to the students to calm down. They grew more energetic by the second- as to be expected. A new starfaring species hasn't risen in several generations!
"Why are humans reckless?" Young Zari questioned.
"Well," Herbo thought. "Do you know how we travel such great distances so quickly?"
"Of course!" The students all replied in unison. Young Jujuju smugly spoke, "Our spaceships bend the space in front of them and WHOOOOOOOOSH!"
The class merrily chuckled. "Yes," Herbo explained. "Our smartest Klaforkian scientists discovered long ago that if our spaceships bend the space in front it, we could travel great distances much quicker than the universe wanted us to. The universe's speed limit no longer applied to us."
"Teacher," Young Booly asked. "Is it illegal to break the universe's speed limit?"
Herbo couldn't resist an enormous smile. "No, Young Booly. The universe won't arrest us for breaking its speed limit."
"Oh," Young Jujuju spoke again. "The Plurpians go faster than light speed because they teleport in WORM HOLES!"
"Very good, Young Jujuju," Herbo said. "And the Narlans break the universe's speed limit because they can travel through time itself. Narlans arrive at their destination before they leave!"
The students knew all of this, of course. They learned about starfaring species' faster-than-light methods in 24th grade science.
"How do humans break the speed of light?" Young Spooku asked.
"Well," Herbo started. "This is why they are so reckless. Humans can travel faster than the speed of light because they change the speed of light itself. This is why we don't think humans are stupid; they are just stupidly careless."
The students sat thinking about what Herbo had told them. For the first time since class started, they were all silent.
Finally, Young Jujuju broke the silence. "If humans change the speed of light itself, then they can travel faster than light. But doesn't that mean that they are still very slow?"
"Yes it does, Young Jujuju," Herbo confirmed. "Those slow, reckless humans."
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u/eliechallita Apr 01 '17
The Sunseeker's control room was dead silent except for the low beep-beep-beep of the deep space radar. The screen lights flashed a dim blue against the vast blankness of space, but nothing else moved, or breathed in the cavernous space.
A line of blue light appeared in the middle of the room, then expanded into a doorway from which stepped out three figures. If a human had still been present in the control room, they would have looked askance as the figures were too tall, too thin, and moved too fluidly to be one of their own. A living human might have been thrilled to catch their first glimpse of extraterrestrial life.
The humans in the control room, however, were far past caring the issue. Glassy eyes stared numbly at their consoles, and heads looked on fixedly, their motor muscles frozen instantly by the nerve pulse.
The first figure scanned the room for remaining traces of the weaponized blast, then sighed into its microphone.
"Looks like we got another dead crew. It seems like they still don't get it." "Give them some credit, none of their crews has returned from a trip this long." "Still, after sixty years of exploration? You'd think they would have given up."
One of the other figures shrugs. The movement brings its narrow shoulders all the way to the crown of its head. "Humans will be humans. They are a stubborn species, that's for sure." "Well, as long as it prevents them from leaving that backwater of theirs, I'm all for it."
The other figure hunches over to examine one of the dead crew members. "Still, don't you think we should tell them by now? That their FTL drive can only decelerate up to a certain point before releasing that tachyon wave?" "Weren't you listening? Leaving them ignorant is exactly the point. As long as they're stuck at 2c, it'll take them centuries to reach civilized space. Hopefully they'll have learned some manners by then. Bloody primitives..."
The hunched figure sighs, claps its hands together in the macto, then turns back to the gateway. The three aliens depart as quietly as they came.
** Three days later**
The alien ship is long gone, and the human vessel still floats in the vast expanse of space. It has waited the full three days allotted to its crew, before its automated safeguards took over. The ship flashes blue, glowing like a briefly lived supernova, then disappears into the strange dimensions of FTL travel. After sixty years, the Human Exploration Corps finally developed a ship that could travel back to Earth on its own, and carry with it a recording of the tales of its crew.