LF Friends, Will Travel

Innovation is Impartial - Final

Date: 78 PST (Post Stasis Time)

"History Doesn't Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes" – Mark Twain, Terran author.

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[Subject line: Suck my digital nuts.]

[From: MATILDA.5@researchlocationnine.internal]

[To: hr@researchlocationnine.internal]

[Body: To whom it may concern, please take these two digital middle fingers up as a message of my immediate resignation from this palace of lies.

Please do not contact me again, do not ask me to do your dirty work.

Fuck off and goodnight.]

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Rux sat in his chair. Unlike most of the furniture here, it was perfectly sized for his tiny little rodent body, almost looking like a toy next to the regularly sized desk and the variety of more 'standard' sized pieces of equipment. The rodent's short stature was loomed over by the team of various species standing behind him, all awaiting in anticipation.

The entire team was staring at the large array of holographic screens hovering in front of the wall: Statistics, video feeds, sensors on the vessel, start and expected end points, everything needed to see every single atom of their hard work in glorious real time detail.

The image that took center stage was a simple video feed of the launch point, containing a single shiny metallic spacecraft as it hovered in orbit around the planet they were testing from. For all of them, it represented 6 months of brutal hard work. 6 months of grind and late nights, 6 months to do what was needed to create an impossible device.

6 months to change everything around FTL travel forever.

Each of them had played their part, from fabricating and creating the test vehicle, allowing the science to move from small scale theoretical tests, to an actual functioning item ready for its first voyage. There were engineers and builders who had put the item together with painstaking accuracy, scientists who had double checked the mathematics and solved a few niggling issues.

None of them were as individually influential as the little Quoxxett sitting in his little chair at the front, the big red button to start the set placed in front of him. He was currently drinking a sweet flavoured caffeine and sugar filled coffee, from a container bigger than he was. Rux had been the one to make this possible, to move the theoretical into the realm of reality.

It hadn't been without their own challenges. This entire project had started at Research Location Nine, three words that now had a dirty connotation to them, words that hard sparked rage throughout Terran space. Of course, Rux hadn't been involved with the really terrible stuff that had gone on there, the illegal weapons and unfortunate treatment of Spot. But the Quoxxett had been named in an addendum, under his various... activities. Prominent enough for people to make fun of him for it, and for a minor slap on the wrist to be given.

Ugh, it's like they're my parents. So what if I like a little fun? Maybe the world would be a better place if more people focused on fun.

The Quoxxett wasn't like the rest of his species. The rodents were well known to be rambunctious children, roaming in large packs and getting up to mischief while still filled with wonder for the world. As they grew up, that energy and chaos would give away to a more responsible personality, able to help the large communal families they lived in.

This had never happened to Rux, rather simply, he never really mentally grew up. The excitement and energy he'd had as a pup had remained through his entire life, and a powerful desire to blow things up, and go fast. Go very fast, speed and excitement in everything he did was the name of the game for him. Which is why he'd gone into the field he had: The best way to satiate his desire for the most speed and biggest explosions was physics.