The L.S.C. Project

Testing The Limits

"No."

"WHAT?" Alfred scrunched his face up with disappoint. "But why not? We can totally do it if we try hard eno-" 

"Mr. Jones, we are not sending anybody up there without sending up a rover or even a probe to see if it's even safe. It would be a mission waiting to fail."

"You don't understand!" He pulled out the diagram he had quickly drawn. "I've done all the calculations. Next year will be our only chance to get up there! After that it will be over 70 years until we will be within the range of the moon, and that is without counting in the asteroid belt. This is our only chance! How will we know it's not possible if we don't even try?"

He sighed. "I have a fairly large team already working on figuring out what this holds. Prove to me ten months before your 'deadline' and I will take it up higher into the chain of command to consider it."

Alfred's face lit up like a Christmas tree.  "You mean it!? Aw yeah!" He turned back to the large screen in the front of the room, displaying a somewhat pixel-ey picture of Jupiter's newly discovered 68th moon. "It needs a name. Something cool and modern, like a planet from Star Wars. Something like Bantherna or Goranthent or Xzenofratz or.." He paused for a moment. "Actually, Xzenofratz doesn't sound half bad. That's what we'll call it!" 

"Why not."

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"Alfred."

"What is it dude?"

"How are you going to fit seventy people, some sort of camp or base, and all of the necessary technology into one rocket?? Even if you manage to pull that off, you still need some sort of heating device on board. I can guarantee that you are gonna need that in your base."

"Well we might not.. We could model the base thing after the one on Hoth, its pretty damn cold there."

"That would be a good idea if Xzenofratz wasn't over twice as cold as it is on Hoth at night."

"Crap..."

"You also need something to recycle air, concentrated carbon isn't something you can live off of."

"Back to the drawing board, I guess."

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The strong, loud noise of thirty magnets moving up and down at almost eighty five miles per hour was almost deafening. Each magnet was four feet in diameter, and about two feet tall. That was crazy on its own. Stepping out of the room, Alfred rubbed the side of his head to get rid of the ringing noise. 

"So what even was that..?"

The woman holding a full clipboard looked up. "Alright. So from the data we have gathered, Xzenofratz has a pretty strong magnetic field. You mentioned that you needed heat, and this is a great heat conductor that uses a minimal amount of energy by distorting the flow of the magnetic field, making electrons rub against each other, and creating heat."

He nods along as she speaks.

"You also mentioned that you needed a way to recycle air. Well this machine moves so fast at a constant rate, within five months of this running non-stop, you have got yourself some homemade wind currents. The only remaining step would be to try and plant some vegetation and see if all of that combined would create oxygen."

Alfred was silent for a moment.

"Isn't that really dangerous? What if the magnets snap?"

She shrugs. "We haven't gotten that far, this is highly experimental."

He looks through the clear glass at the huge machinery. "Sweet."

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Nobody noticed the little girl peering around the corner.

Nobody knew her either. 

She barely knew herself.

She looked to be only three.

Filled with something like a passion mixed with hope, she ran through the halls of the lab.

Barefoot she glided past the research rooms.

Stopping outside of the main research room, she peeked inside and found the pixel-ey image staring back at her. 

Nobody noticed her walk up to the screen.

Nobody noticed her put her small hand on the screen.

Nobody noticed her at all, until now.

"Wanna go."