Challenge #02123-E294: I Can't See My House From Here
A combined research team of a number of species of the galaxy invents a device that is capable of accelerating any object to significant portions of C, the human member of the team proceeds to be a human. -- Anon Guest
The breakthrough came, as breakthroughs often do, by accident. One person noticed that the interference on their experimental quantum computer was too regular to be just interference. The paired electrons weren't merely paired. They were grouped. They were grouped with other electrons somewhere far, far away, and someone was using them as a communications method.
With that realisation, the herculean effort to understand what they were saying and how they encoded it began. Decoding an unknown language is never easy, just ask the people attempting to decipher Mayan hieroglyphs. With no rosetta stone, with no common ground, with only basic mathematical concepts, they did it inside of fifty years. Crowd-sourcing really cut down on the problem solving.
Communication began, soon after that. The other side simply assumed that these distant people with a rudimentary understanding of GalStand Simple were new members in the Alliance. Assumption has wrecked more than one life. It would wreck many more after this one. Understanding grew. Concepts were exchanged. Invention... followed.
"In combination with the gravity drive," said Parson Phillips, "I should have a pretty seamless flight from here to within the orbit of Saturn. We're lucky we're launching from the moon, or we'd have to give it more wellie."
The rest of the build crew laughed.
"Traditionally, we should send a dog, but they're lousy at gathering data, so... I'm doing this."
Hoots. Some people in the background were giving thumbs' up signs.
Parson Philips clambered into the vehicle. "If I don't come back, or if I smack into an asteroid between here and there? Well. It's been fun, I guess. Still totally worth it." They blew a kiss before they sealed the hatch and put on their helmet.
There was half an hour of system checks before the final countdown. The gravity drive took them away from the moon, and then the Enterprise[1] effectively vanished with a tiny bit of red-shift. Even with quantum-paired comms, it was a breathless moment.
"Enterprise? Enterprise, do you read us?"
"Tsiolkovsky? I read you just fine, and Saturn looks beautiful from up here." Parson was a little out of breath. "That was a fucking amazing ride, I'm still laughing." Indeed, they were. "Narrowly missed a fuck-off sized asteroid on the way, like nyoooom, and it was too late to panic."
"Enterprise, this is a reminder that we're live across civilisation as we know it. Keep the potty mouth clamped, okay?"
It was a pity, indeed, that Humanity's introduction to the Galactic Alliance included the phrase fuck-off sized asteroid associated with hysterical laughter. It might have been a contributing factor into the 'space orc' attribution.
[1] Because nerds will be nerds.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / oorka]
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