Lucas Tarson was bored. The lecture droned on and on, but it was all about things they already had been tested about. Ok, clear, those things were important, understanding the biology of different earths would likely be their job after they made it through the Academia Exploratus, but still.

Finally, bell rang. He left the lecture hall and moved to the cafeteria to grab a quick meal.

After a short walk, he began to see the queue. Lucas sighed to himself: Well, I wanted to finish reading that book. Let’s wait…. He pulled up his arm, and moved to an app on his watch. That app then sent a handshake to his glasses, after which a document sprung into place directly in front of him. It was slightly transparent, just enough to not accidentally run into someone, and would automatically minimize if the sensors all over his stuff thought he was either moving quickly or, alternatively, was moving on stairs.

Using his eyes, he controlled the scrolling of the document.

He continued from where he stopped reading, and was forced to snort involuntarily about some of the more absurd things he read. Sometimes he really hated that he was actually trained in exobiology.

Although only in what was essentially Terran atmosphere and gravity, but, well anything else would be useless, considering that the Gates could only move to a smilliar greater object to the one they were placed on.

Yes, some had managed to get to some extremes using chained portals, but that was a rare, unnecessary expense. Still, even with their limitations, the transdimensional gates were true wonders of technology, especially considering how old the basic technology is.

The basic technology going back to the year 2032 AD, it had shaped humanity now for over 5000 years. It’s raise had seen the change from the United Nations over to the United Earths, which was, well not quite a government over the whole of humanity, but it was getting close.

The security council for example had been completely transformed, the only special right they had were very carefully managed emergency powers. And…

Oh, the line was finally through. That was faster… Nevermind, it took thirty mininutes. Stupid watch, please do not tell me truths I do not want to hear! Hmm, something from Therion? Strange, considering how niche Therion was, but one can try if its as good as it is at home. Or at least is nearing that quality enough to be acceptable, Lucas amended to that thought.

After eating, just to put it on record, the food was not nearly as good as it was at home, he went to his next class: practical studies of the trans dimensional gate, or something like that was it officially called. Most students as well as the professor who teaches it called the subject a bit different: screwing with Gates and hoping they do not kill you.

Well, it was not that dangerous, but still. If you were careless and stepped through a Gate with an unknown address put in, you could end up somewhere hostile to life. Admittedly, that you could only end up on a different earth, in a different universe (assuming that the Gate you were using actually was on an earth, not necessarily one on Terra, the home of the original Gate, otherwise you could end up to the equivalent of your position in the target universe.

The less being said about tests on the moon, the better.

At least Gates had an barrier in their basic design which actually needed intent to cross. It was not impossible to simulate with technology, but it was not easy. Which meant that there were protocols for letting through unmanned transports build into the device.

Gates were unmovable. Crashing into them was not pretty.

Although, admittedly, no one really understood what a Gate registered as intent or not, generally it meant that a living being (or the simulation) was in a radius of 20 meters around the Gate and wanted the object to pass.

The nice thing was, that a Gate could only be traversed on one side. On both universes, even at the same time, but only on one side. If you came from the wrong side, you ran into an unmovable object. This eased testing significantly. You simply build a chamber out of the most resistant materials possible and put the gate in a chokepoint. You sat down behind the Gate, activated it, and said you wanted everything to pass through.

If air is sucked out of the room, the pressure is smaller on the other side. Which is one of the reasons why on that side there is a near vacuum. You will get a sample of the atmosphere on the other earth, as well as anything else that is floating against the disc of energy on the other side. Temperature will go to that of the other universe, assuming you are waiting long enough.

This gives you a nice snapshot of the conditions on the other side. Afterwards, procedure is to send out a drone specialized for those conditions and gather further data. Then it is decision time. Will a human traverse or not? If yes, what equipment will he need?

Lucas sighed as he reached the place where the testing Gates were. The elevator would take a few minutes to come back down. While he understood the need to make as certain as possible that the Gate could not screw up and place them in solid matter, it could still be annoying. And he was not walking up the stairs, thank you very much.

Oh, Jon had sent him a message: Hey, Lucas, did you see those details about the new BR-event? Is that not cool? A gigantic battle, over 1k players in total, will all be dishing it out against each other, at the same time. I checked, we both qualify! Do you have time?

Lucas checked the website of the Battle-Robots sport and read through the details while waiting on the elevator.

Battle-Robots was a strange sport, he would be the first person to admit. It also was a fun one, with you controlling a large, roughly three to five meters large war mech and shooting at other, player controlled war mechs.

And the best part: It was all real. You controlled them through neural interface capsules placed on a different earth, while the robots were on an earth that very pointedly did not have a biosphere.

While the weapons admittedly had some artificial limitations, those were for a very good reason, to appease the god called Game-Balance.

He saw that he could play when the event was happening, registered himself, and send a short message to Jon, confirming that he would join.

Finally, the elevator was there. Julia, a new transfer-student seemed to think that it was unbelievable that she managed to get on the Academia Exploaratus, and tended to tell anyone near her how great the university was.

Primarily funded by the UE and some of its members, the Academia was cheap. At least if you qualified. While it had over one thousand different campuses, mostly on different earths, considering how many humans lived, that was just a drop in the bucket. Although, admittedly, the Academia was only interesting for those wanting to work either with Gates or exploring and categorizing new earths. Economy, for example, was mostly left out from what it offered.

There was a small course about it somewhere, but it was meant to help understand new found cultures. And while that did happen sometimes, most of the time earths with active intelligent live were ignored and protected from exploitation. So that course focused on detecting outside influence in the natives economy.

Still, basically everyone of the people who went through a Gate first, were trained by the Academia. If you wanted to be the first human on a new earth, it was more or less your only choice, excluding private enterprises that did very dangerous and technically illegal things, but you could still amount to much in your relevant field if you did not go to the Academia Exploratus. It looked mostly on the practical side of things, actually doing field research. There were significantly better universities out there if you were more interested in the theory.

Nonetheless, it was in the forefront of the publics mind, especially because of documentaries and fictional series about exploring new earths. After all, you wanted to see the ones who were there first, and not the ones in the lab, save on Terra or another earth long since part of the UE, figuring out what the samples the explorer team brought with it actually mean.

The professor would be running late, a notification over the universities scheduling system was informing the waiting students. Someone screwed up royally in one of the testing chambers on the other side of the campus, and until more expert reached that area, their professor would be needed to help out over there.

Lucas reopened his book and tried to ignore Julias ramblings. While that did not work perfectly, it did work well enough. But it was clear that the book was in a phase were it was boring, so he opened up his web browser and checked some other things.

Oh, the first space elevator of humanity was still on track? Great, that should help keep those fanatics quit. While he openly admitted that space was great - he was from Therion after all, and being fascinated from space was essentially your civic duty over there, he also accepted that space was a lot less interesting and important since the Gates had been developed. Only Therion ever reached mars, and that was during the time when the Order essentially was Therion. And those were religious fanatics that thought space travel was necessary to get closer to their God.

While Therion spend a lot on space exploration and research, in fact, it spend, excluding satellite launches meant to support an earth (communication, position-detection (quite often still called GPS, although that particular protocol was not relevant anymore), etc), roughly half of the entire space exploration and research budget of every member of the EU, including them, combined, it also had reduced that spending massively since the olden days of the Order of Therion. This amounted to a staggering 2% of its GDP.

For the fanatics of the Order, which were still left, this was far to little. They wanted to return to the glorious old days, where up to 30% of the GDP was spent on space exploration. Nevermind that those actions had been ruining Therion’s economy, and only the fact that humanity was already approaching a post-scarcity society, at least for basic products, had saved Therion’s citizenry from actually starving. Good that this was in the long forgotten past.

The space elevator was a wish from that time, and its concept went back even further. The main reason why it was not build during those days was that nobody was able to produce the parts needed, ignoring an one-off production which Therion, even with its spending, could not afford. Still, they began laying the cornerstones of what would eventually become the space elevator. A fund, in which every year a minuscule amount was paid into, which was explicitly meant to pay for the damn thing, as well as developing the industry necessary for the difficult to get parts.

Still, now that work was finally going, the timetable was anything but ambitious. Construction, as well as gathering of prefabricated parts began in the year 6890, and construction was planned to take 200 years. Which meant, that now, in the year 7163, more than 75% were done, and especially the time consuming things which could not be parallelized were finished. Missing were some of the more niche things necessary for assembly, although the cables were ready. Those things took time to create, and buying, renting or otherwise gaining access to more workshops capable of producing them would be prohibitively expensive.

Finally, they received the message that the professor was underway.