Andromeda and beyond

The beginning of it all

I remember the day when I started my adventure to interstellar space. The warp drive spacecraft was first launched into Earth's atmosphere by the Explorer-2 spacecraft carrying the Alcubierre-X spaceship. Me and my team were eager to steer it around the depths of this universe. At first, we were nervous. WE didn't know how this would turn out. We feared that we might be devoured by aliens. When it was time for the grand launch, I remember myself taking the Admiral's seat. "Vice Admiral Luvox, Start the engines!" I exclaimed. Everyone on Earth were watching us. Not even a single eye gazed away from our spacecraft. They were focused like lasers. The display in front of me said "space time bubble generating" - and made a high pitched noise as it did. When the space time bubble was generated, it was time to go. Vice Admiral Luvox ordered our crew to sit down respective stations. Suddenly, red lights start flashing as sirens blare. "WARNING: WARP DRIVE INITIATED" yelled the computer systems. We sat down and watched as the giant engines started to flare up. There was a blinding flash, and a loud whooshing noise that followed after. We braced down and closed our eyes, hoping for a successful start. We look through the windows with our blurry eyes, and we never forgot what we saw. Trillions of stars passed beside us every second, making it look like a sandstorm, with the stars being as small as small, fine sand grains. What Einstein said was impossible, was possible today. We felt motivated and proud as we watched these stars pass by, as we cross light years within minutes. Soon enough, in an hour, we were 5000 light years away from home- and we recognised our first star- Betelgeuse. As a kid, I always looked up in the sky searching for the Orion Constellation, and identifying Betelgeuse - the dim, red star at the end of the constellation. Now here it is, only half a mile away from us. We watched as we passed through big stars, small stars, blue stars, red stars, yellow stars, orange stars, and neutron stars that made our spaceship take a slingshot turn due to its enormous gravity. Its powerful magnetic field interfered with our systems. "WARNING: SYSTEMS MALFUNCTIONING!" Sounds another panel. We were going at such a high velocity that even the smallest particle of dust would be the end of us. We watched as we pass through Sagittarius A - the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. We put our electromagnetic goggles on, and saw something bloody amazing- A supermassive black hole, millions of times heavier than the sun, with a blinding white ring around the event horizon. "WARNING: STRONG GRAVITATIONAL FIELD" sounded yet another alert. Were we done? Was this the end of our mission? Thankfully n0t. We grabbed onto the steering yoke and shoved it all the way to our right. Our spaceship started skidding away from the black hole, but the danger wasn't gone. We looked through our goggles and saw intensely concentrated beams of gamma radiation bombarding us constantly as we try to move away from the black hole. It was so intense that the engine started to glow red. A loud bang then followed, after which we all headed over to the front of the spaceship. The first half of the spaceship was gone. Finished. The automatic fire doors closed, separating us from the engines forever. With that, we lost most of our equipment. The communication system was the only one that remained.