“Initiating hyper drive launch sequence, test number 666, in a minute.”

Dr. Raymond Gregory had heard those words repeated over and over again in the last twenty years. It had been a long road for him.

“Test initiating in 45 seconds…”

Please work. Please work. Please work. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I’m at the end of the rope. If this test fails, I’m quitting this project and retiring. This project was my baby, now it’s my kryptonite. The moment I saw the wreckage of this engine, it had become my whole world. I lost my family because of this. I really must get out of here.

Raymond had spent a majority of his life attempting to reverse engineer an engine that many believed was capable of traveling faster than the speed of light. It had been roughly two hundred years since the Battle and the human civilization had largely recovered from their losses. Their leaders swore that they would never again suffer so many losses in a winning effort again and laid the groundwork for another technological age.

In fact, the last six hundred years of human history had brought enormous technological advancement with it. A large part of the success was attributed to the discovery of alien technology hidden in various ruins around the world.

The first piece of alien technology was found in the year 1955 when an expedition team set out to explore the Arctic, got lost, and stumbled across the remains of what appeared to be a large shuttle, the construction and design of which was unrecognizable. It had taken the world’s greatest minds tens of years before they managed to extract anything practical from the remains. The fruits of their research led to the achievement of basic flight and the development of cars and spaceships These discoveries fundamentally changed the trajectory of human civilization for the better because the discoveries changed the way travel was conducted and allowed the military to conduct top-secret experiments to leapfrog to the forefront of weapons development.

“Test initiating in 35 seconds…”

Then came the second discovery, in the year 2050, when humanity first attempted to colonize Venus. A team of astronauts sent into space noticed an abnormality located somewhere in the jungles of Brazil. The second discovery was considered revolutionary, for it completely rewrote human history. Everything the humans thought they knew about their history, their planet, and their galaxy, was completely scrapped and changed. The humans discovered they were not the only sentient beings in the world.

There was a third discovery around the year 2132, when rescuers stumbled across a hidden cave in the side of a cliff. When they ventured into the cave, they discovered a mostly intact ship that was larger and more complex than anything the humans could’ve built. This is what changed the human trajectory for the better. Countless of scientists poured over this finding; always attempting to reverse engineer it to no avail. After another two hundred years of failure, the gavel had finally been passed to him.

Whenever he was asked which discovery was the most revolutionary, Raymond would always insist it was the second discovery. Without it, humans would’ve been kept in the dark about their origins. They never would have discovered that they weren’t the only sentient beings in the universe and wouldn’t have made it this far in technological advancements without a sense of urgency.

“Test initiating in 20 seconds…”

Raymond thought back to the day he was first handed the project. He was full of joy that he, a seemingly insignificant scholar slaving away at a subpar research facility, had been chosen to be a part of such an important assignment. Not only that, but the task he was to undertake had stumped some of the world’s greatest minds! He accepted the commission on the spot and never looked back since.

Every time he looked out his office window, he never regretted his decision because not only was the ship intact, but the ship was also perfectly functional. However, neither he nor his colleagues were able to comprehend the alien’s language and had to scrap the idea of piloting the ship. Instead, they focused on the only thing they could do: reverse engineer the ship’s core.

Raymond remembered what one of his predecessors had wrote, “Human’s are naturally inquisitive. If you give a human enough time, there is nothing their mind isn’t capable of solving.”

This statement became the focal point in his determination in solving the puzzle before him. He gathered a team—consisting of the brightest young minds the world had to offer—and worked with them to extract data from the ship. After years of analyzing the data, the team concluded that the documents found in the second discovery were most likely true—they weren’t the only intelligent life forms out there; they weren’t alone. There was one problem—the other life forms considered the humans as a threat to their galactic society and repeatedly attempted to eliminate them.

“Test initiating in 10 seconds.

The last part of the data put mankind permanently in a state of fear. They feared that one day, the aliens would come and destroy them. Quickly, leaders from all over the world set aside their differences and devoted every possible resource for the sole purpose of advancing science and technology.

Day by day, new innovations started headlining the news—spaceships outfitted for war were invented, more advanced radar systems were developed, even outposts were developed all around the galaxy. By the time the alien invaders arrived in their three colossal ships, the humans had colonized every habitable planet in their solar system and protected them with millions of combat ready ships.

The invaders put up a great fight and even detonated their ships to inflict more damage on the humans’ armada, but eventually the humans won. Originally, Raymond thought the battle had been a total waste of time and resources, until a scavenger ship discovered what seemed to be a drive floating around the wreckage of an enemy ship. Raymond and his team purchased the drive and eventually were able to piece together a working knowledge of the alien language and deciphered what the ship’s engine was really capable of. The engine he and his predecessors had been working to reverse engineer was indeed capable of allowing the humans to leave the constraints of their universe and explore numerous galaxies.

With the data’s help, Raymond and his team managed to reverse engineer the engine and built multiple copies from the remains of the alien ships floating around. They knew the models they built were not practical. The core they constructed was cylindrical in size and roughly twenty stories high and five football fields wide. At this point in their research, they didn’t care about practicality; to them, the most important item in their itinerary was getting the core to work.

In total, they had run 665 tests. Today was their 666th. They had tinkered with the engine’s design and tweaked the startup process multiple times to no avail. They hypothesized that for the engine to work, the cylinder had to spin and rotate on its own at super high speeds. So far, it was only able to do so when physically prompted by artificial tools. They haven’t been able to understand why the engine wasn’t able to operate on its own.

Raymond didn’t have high hopes for the 666th test; they had only changed a line or two in the code. At this point in the trials, he was not optimistic that the 666th time would be successful.

“Test initiating in 5 seconds…”

The engine began to slowly hum as it revved up to full force. Artificial tools responsible for keeping the engine humming slowly began to detach.

“Test initiating in 4 seconds…”

“3 seconds…”

“2 seconds…”

“1 second…”

Please work. Raymond thought to himself. A look of desperation appeared on his face, he didn’t want to see another failure. He closed his eyes and prayed.

Boom!

Through his eyelids, Raymond noticed a bright red flash of light appear. He flinched and subconsciously took a step back. He heard the rest of his team curse, as they feared another failure.

The light soon died down. Raymond opened his eyes and saw the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his entire life. The core was still spinning!

For a moment, Raymond and his team stood there shocked. They rubbed their eyes and pinched themselves to see if they were awake. After realizing that they weren’t dreaming, cheers of joy and excitement erupted. Raymond dropped to his knees in excitement—it finally worked!