The Persolus Race

Shorts Story 1: Omniscience

Chapter One

Date: 2949
Location: Meridian Station: EON-1

Tara hated space. She always had. It wasn't just the night sky, it was the truly vast darkness, emptier and greater than she could possibly imagine. Yet here she was, seated aboard a shuttle as it ferried her up through the atmosphere to the EON-1, travelling up into that desolate place. Her mind continued to drift. Anything could be out there when you really thought about it.

"Care for some sweets?" came a sudden, warm voice.

She looked to the man seated to her left, his warm smile out of place against the crisp white EON Corporation uniform. He was a middle-aged Asian man with dark, piercing green eyes, a round, youthful face with a warm smile. He had a slight belly, but carried himself well.

"I'm sorry?" she asked.

"Sweets?" the man held out a bag of Jelly Babies. "I find they ease the stomach during the climb up the gravity well. They help with the transition."

There was a heartbeat of hesitation before she reached into the bag and took a candy, putting it into her mouth. "Thank you" she said quickly.

"Better?" the man asked when she started sucking on it. The taste was sweet, and satisfied her whole tongue, and then she relaxed. To her surprise, it was helping her feel better. "I'm Gabriel Sen, Medical Officer on the trip."

"Tara Dean, Engineer," she said, looking at the man sceptically.

"What is the mission, anyway? The boys upstairs didn't tell me much when they reassigned me onto it. Just said they needed a medical officer assigned as soon as possible."

The ship tumbled beneath them as they at last broke free of the atmosphere. "It's an FTL engine test, a prototype of the new Mark 4 engines," Tara said, the Jelly Baby dissolving away in her mouth.

"Ah," Gabriel nodded. "Those projects. Travelling to other galaxies...and here I thought our own galaxy was big enough," he chortled. Then he looked at her curiously, "So how does it work?"

With an eager laugh, Tara almost forgot her dread of space. "How much time do you have?"

"APPROACHING EON-1 DOCKING FACILITY" announced the ship's computer, "ESTIMATED TIME OF ARRIVAL, TEN MINUTES."

Gabriel smiled. "I guess that's your answer."

"When a conventional faster-than-light ship travels faster-than-light, it bends space time around it, creating a bubble that lets it bypass the speed of light." Gabriel seemed like a smart man, but she tried to avoid any deeply-technical terms as it wasn't the field. "The Mark 4 engine is a step in a different direction; by stimulating exotic matter at the right time, you can open a hole in the fabric of our universe, and move the object in question, in this case The Infinitum, across dimensions in the form of pure atoms, which..."

"Allows for nearly instantaneous travel between one point and another anywhere in the universe," Gabriel nodded, surprising Tara. He smiled placatingly. "I minored in relativistic physics. Oh, and I've seen films, I guess. It's a fascinating theory, but it would mean a large number of our accepted physics models would have to be wrong in order for it to work."

"Believe me, it works," Tara narrowed her eyes. We tested this, and tested this. "Now all we need to do is a field test. EON has decided to use the Mark 4 on a regular deep space mission to prove its applicability to the company's processes."

"A lot riding on this for you, then?"

"Well, yes, but I'm only an FTL engine specialist engineer," Tara responded, "The representative from the Mark 4 development team is Dr. Asif Calabash, he's the Science Officer with us on this specific trip, he's the one whose livelihood truly rides on this." She had worked closely on the FTL project, alongside several other great minds, to understand the effects on a transport ship such as theirs.