Chapter fourteen

Some of them, however, seem more natural, or at least possible. Take for example anomaly PA-A-295, which is a habitable zone around a leaking gas giant with peculiar lifeforms.

“We are gathered here today to celebrate the launching of our first true FTL spaceship. The UTN Enterprise will embark on a maiden journey around the colonies, before being commissioned as the flagship of the Rapid Response Fleet.

We will equip all new ships with the new drive and will begin retrofitting all existing ships with it. We aim to have upgraded every ship in twenty years.”

Stepping off the stage after having answered the inevitable barrage of questions, the science minister wiped his head with a tissue before yelling at his assistants.

“How far along is the investigation? That one piece of technology could advance us thousands of years! Have we figured out anything new?”

“No sir, we’re still trying to figure out how to connect to the new dimension. we have made some progress on the materials used, though. As far as we can tell its an alloy that contains graphene and cobalt, as well as a material that, frankly, shouldn’t exist.”

“What do you mean?”

“This new material contains extremely high amounts of energy, but is nearly metastable. It does not react with anything, and seems indestructible. We have fired a piece of it through a star and it didn’t even become warm.”

The minister seemed to gain a glint in his eye. “Transfer more people from the Superconductor experiment to this one. If we can make even a pale copy of it just think of all the things we could upgrade, and all the projects that were abandoned because of material constraints!”

“Yes sir.” The assistant scuttled off as the minister strode into a black, armoured car with no windows. When he got off the car, he was in an underground parking lot filled with identical cars. Walking towards what seemed to be a bare, concrete wall, he said a phrase and a hidden blast proof door opened. After being put through a battery of tests, the last door opened.

In the room was a chair surrounded by six monitors. On each monitor was a different symbol, with there being one on his chair as well. Each symbol stood for a person’s role: a sword crossed with a gun stood for military, a syringe crossed with a scalpel stood for medical, a coin in front of a bank note stood for economy, a man standing at a pedestal behind a scale stood for politics and law, a crate with a pile of tins on top stood for logistics, and a crowd of people stood for the public, while his own chair had an atom inside a lab beaker, standing for science.

As he sat down, military spoke.

“Now that we are all here, this meeting of HYDRA can begin. Our first order of business is the anomaly we have discovered. We, as well as our surrounding group of stars, are moving faster than the rest of the galaxy. On average, we complete an orbit of the galaxy a thousand times faster than everyone else. We had not noticed before because it still takes hundreds of millions of years, but now that we are looking we have found that this effect seems to be in a sort of spherical shape, centring on Terra.”

Science poke next. “we should send the Enterprise to the edge of this sphere on her maiden flight. She’ll arrive the quickest. We need to find out what’s causing this phenomenon as well as the nature of it.”

Public cut in. “If this phenomenon is centred on Terra, its cause should also be on Terra.”

“But if it is on Terra we should’ve found it by now, with all the deep scans we’ve down over time.”

“Maybe the cause is located somewhere else in the solar system? After all, we can only pinpoint the centre of the anomaly to around 2 light years.”

“Let’s send the Enterprise off to the edge, while we investigate back here at home.” They all agreed.

Military spoke again. “I hereby bring this HYDRA meeting to a close. For Humanity.”

“For Humanity.”