Maximilian looked around his lab, anticipation building. This was it, this was the moment he had been working towards for the last few years. Looking out the window he saw a sea of red rocks and dust. Mars terraforming hadn’t come a long way at all, the air barely thicker than it was last century, the landscape was still the same. But in the distance you could make out a small building with huge power cables linked to this room.

You’d think he was pretty young, around 25 from his appearance, blonde hair in a short ponytail with a pretty face, not really angular but definitely male. He was in fact over 150 years old, but his body was not of flesh. Martians had long ago figured out how to replace their feeble bodies. Some flesh was still left inside, as transferring minds was still not possible. Only his brain and to some degree his nervous system was left of his former self, as with all Martian adults.

He stood in front of a huge machine. No buttons could be seen on the machine, as he was directly linked to it. Who would use buttons when you could mentally make any connection in this day and age?

This was version 31.41b of the project. Worry could be seen on his face, and he wondered. He hoped too, this project of his had made him a pariah in the scientist community. Would it be another failure ? He steeled himself and he mentally activated the machine.

A loud whirring noise could be heard as everything started up slowly. And he looked over a screen showing the interior of the distant test chamber. Even with this distance he knew there were risks involved. Making a wormhole wasn’t exactly a safe avenue of research, but risks had to be taken.

Very few people truly understood what he was trying to do, some thought he simply tried to understand space better, or gravity, or any other concept that wasn’t completely unraveled yet. Others only knew he worked on something about transportation, or was it related to terraforming ? In truth, his status as an eccentric scientist made most people avoid him, not wanting to get tangled up with his tarnished reputation.

But Maximilian was convinced that in order to advance the human race, they had to find a way to get out of the solar system proper. The speed of space ships had improved tremendously, but nowhere near what they needed to truly expand in the galaxy. Faster than light travel was still an unreachable dream, one he was convinced was the key to the human race to go forward.

One couldn’t guess it from his immobile posture, but fear was creeping in on him yet again. What if he failed again? How long could he continue to try? What if his theories were fundamentally flawed, and he was in a dead end? But he knew deep down that success was far scarier. In truth, if he succeeded in opening a wormhole, he had no idea where it would open. Meaning anything could happen. Opening a wormhole inside a star for example would probably blow up Mars. He tried to reassure himself, knowing the probability of that happening was beyond low. Risks had to be taken after all, when you wanted to change things.

The whirring noise around him was slowly increasing. It was designed to take things slow in case anything went wrong. Risks were necessary, but could and should be minimized.

Max knew he would be sweating right now if his body still could. It was nerve-wracking to wait every time he tested, and he sometimes hated that it was this slow. But in the end his logical reasoning trumped his discomfort. He had already done this so many times he had lost count.

In the early steps of the project he had been so eager to try out the wormhole creating prototype, but with every failure his eagerness had slowly been replaced with dread.

One of his friends was even more or less supporting him, discussing the possibilities and risks. But Edward had long since abandoned him to his folly as he had once said.

He remembered it clear as day, and even if he didn’t, he could still play back the memory that was stored inside his mechanical body. But he never did. Memory was a funny thing, and one often alter them unconsciously. Maybe because it’s a survival mechanism on some level, or maybe because one simply emphasized the important part for oneself in the memories. It was considered bad practice to replay memories instead of remembering them, as it always took a mental toll to readjust one's memory to the truth.

Reality could be disappointing. Of course this was not true of young memories that still hadn’t really been unconsciously integrated.

The whirring noise would soon reach its peak, as he already knew. Refocusing he looked at the screen showing the interior of the test chamber. It was a simple round chamber about 5 meters wide, and 4 meters high. Plugging into the camera feed directly was doable, but he wasn’t a fan of juggling 2 vision inputs simultaneously. Max had never been good at dividing his attention, being the type to dive headlong into his interests to the detriment of everything else.

Suddenly, a loud noise like an explosion could be heard through the screen. He almost fell down from shock. The source of the explosion was far away and had no way to affect him, but the sight before him made him doubt what he was seeing.

On the screen, a small circle could be seen, filled with an alien landscape. From the size compared to the room, he guessed it was about 2 meters wide and high, a perfect circle. Green grass, trees and diverse vegetation could be seen. The kind of stuff you only saw in natural museums on Mars. Even on earth this was not a sight you would see nowadays. An ice age had been sped up due to the climate changes wrought from humans. It was known that earth had always had Ice ages with regular intervals, but earth wasn’t supposed to go into an ice age for several millions of years, until pollution became widespread and disrupted the natural order of things.

Few still lived on earth after the dark transition age. One didn’t have to read the history books to understand that while earth slowly went into an ice age, people quickly understood that there was far too little space to house them all from the drastic changes. Civil wars and global anarchy ensued, killing billions.

Max was still frozen in front of the vision of the circle representing everything that humans had lost due to their carelessness.

He could barely believe what he was seeing. Incredible. He stood frozen looking at the screen. A true storm of ideas and possibilities was raging in his head. Some being glorious and other truly terrible. The amount of resources could speed up Mars terraforming, changing life here on Mars. Even better, people could settle in this foreign land and explore that solar system. But what if they got invaded by something unknown? Something they had never encountered before? Did he doom Mars, or was this salvation?

Pondering on the possibilities was pointless, only one way to know. To study this wormhole, and the secrets on the other side. Only then could he truly know, and decide.

He stood still, pondering on the next step, but knew deep down he had already decided what to do next. Max wanted to see this wormhole up close. He had to. Steeling his resolve, he made his way to the airlock leading outside, and put on a power-suit.

It was a decently modern version, nothing compared to the military ones but still serviceable. It looked like a water-suit used for surfing, slim and hugging the body. But the appearance was different with various lines making a diamond pattern over it, like small flexible plates somehow linked together. A small backpack was included where the jetpack was. And last but not least, a foldable helmet for full coverage was just above the jetpack.

Once fully suited, he activated the helmet which unfolded around his head. The pressure difference was still very dangerous for his brain, and being unable to breath always left him uncomfortable. Any mechanized adult had a small oxygen storage, but the habit of breathing was ingrained in all of them from before their transformation.

Finally out in the cold Martian landscape, eyes on the test chamber, Max took off with the jetpack. Shortly after he arrived in front of the test chamber. Steeling himself for what was next, he opened the door and to his surprise a huge burst of wind came at him. Pushed back slightly despite his weight, he lost balance and just sat there for a second, taken by surprise. There was air in the chamber. He still had no idea about the air composition. Quickly getting to his feet and pushing through the rushing air, he closed the door.

The explosion like sound was due to the rush of air from the portal. This was not something he anticipated at all. As he thought it would lead to space. The universe was mainly empty space after all. The probability of the portal opening on a planet, much less one with an atmosphere were beyond slim.

Turning around to look at the wormhole, Max couldn’t help but stand there for a minute. Fascinated. Like he thought it would be, the portal was a sphere, the natural shape of the universe. At 2 meters wide and high, he could easily walk through it. As he slowly walked around it, he could see an alien landscape just beyond. The glory of this breakthrough ! Not only had he succeeded, but the wormhole seemed to lead to a habitable planet ! This was more than he ever expected.

Checking the air composition he noticed it was indeed breathable. Things just seemed impossibly good. The odds of this happening were abysmally low, bordering on the impossible.

Max couldn’t help but think of all the ramifications of this. This could save mankind from this rotten corner of the universe, where resources were now hard to get and in high demand. Earth was still a treasure trove beneath the ice, and there were outposts there already, but with the weather, the atmosphere to go through, it barely covered the costs.

On the other side of the portal, one could see trees, a forest really, an alien concept to a martian. It was so weird. When continuing around the sphere, Max could see that the forest gave way to plains in the other direction, with hills in the distance. Further still, huge mountains, green on low altitudes but white on top. The white part was familiar, he had been on earth a few times and would recognize ice and snow anywhere. But all the green was new, and exciting. He knew what a tree was, obviously, grass too. But it was one thing to see a few in an enclosed space and another to see an endless amount on the horizon.

Max could barely stop himself from running through to explore it all firsthand, but he knew to be cautions, and as such took out a small rock. He threw it through and it simply fell down on the other side. It didn’t even look like it went through something, it was simply the continuation of this space now. Being reassured slightly, he took out a small round sphere. A custom-made robot for exploring. He connected to it and it whirred to life, floating in front of him. It was made to explore space rather than a planet, and as such lacked a lot of the sensors needed for proper planetary exploration.

Annoyed at the delay, he quickly took the robot back with him to his lab to modify it and add all the necessities. It was done quickly, for the amount of changes. Engineering was his original field of study, and he had modified these kinds of robots for a long time. The process still took a few hours, even with helper bots. Testing, as usual, took longer than expected, with all the small details one tended to miss at first.

Finally back to the portal, he mentally controlled it to go through and up in the air to get a good look around. It flew through without any issues and took to the air. Activating the different sensors he could see there were small animals around in the forest. Up in the air he saw that the forest was vast. Even with the explorer at about 2 km above the ground he could not see the end of it.

He let the explorer go on auto mode, recording its findings.

It was time. This was the last test and the most important. Everything seemed to point out that a living being should be able to go through, but there was so much he didn’t know about wormholes. So much only theories, old ones from before his time, and new ones based on what we now knew. But in the end, no one had ever interacted with a wormhole. Maybe he could have prepared an animal to test this out, but he had decided against it long ago.

If people couldn’t go through, then all of his research, his life work would be useless. Steeling himself for the ultimate test, Max took a tentative step forward, stretching out his hand to go through the border of the otherworldly sphere.

Nothing happened and he was relieved. A clump in his imaginary stomach started to make itself known. He had guessed that the arm would work as any robot, as no living tissue was inside it. Now for the hard part. He took another step towards this unknown world, his head now a few centimeters away from the sphere. He felt his mechanical heart pump faster, his brain unconsciously pushing it.

Finally bracing himself, he took the last step.

Suddenly he wasn’t on Mars, the gravity felt slightly off and all around him, green plants, trees and bushes. He felt overwhelmed for a second. He truly was on an alien planet. Max had never seen nature in its, well natural state. Mars was a marvel of engineering, but it was never like Earth. Like Earth had been, long ago.

The pent-up nervousness soon left him, and the only feeling left was, hard to describe. A mix of fear of the unknown, but that wasn’t really it now, was it ? No, it had a hint of fear for what was to come, but mostly, just that amazing feeling at achieving something really hard you had worked for a long time. Glory? Close, but not really. A huge smile spread across Max face. There was no word that was good enough to describe how he felt. He felt like he was the king of the world, like anything was possible. That he could do anything !

In this small area of the new world, no one could hear the strange sound, except Max himself. A laugh filled with joy and relief, the kind that made you smile no matter your mood. There he stood, on the border of the forest. Laughing his heart out. The most honest laugh one could make.