The world screamed!

      Reality itself protested against the sudden intrusion on the natural law. Deep within the bowls of the Star of Argon, kept isolated from the rest of the crew, the gravity drive twisted and churned with physical revulsion. The engineer overseeing it struggled to answer the sudden call for activation. 

      Normally it took hours of preparation to unleash the boundless energies of the great machine. The engineer needed time to calculate the holy equation so that the jump could be made safely. Given the circumstances, she nearly broke down under pressure. She lost count of the number of prayers she made under duress, while clutching onto the silver cog emblem around her neck, as she worked to operate the great machine.

      Somehow, amid the pain around her, the engineer managed the impossible. The air was thick, and there was a pressure that throbbed like a heartbeat in her chamber. It made her teeth rumble as she struggled to guide the enormous energies revolving around the precious device.

      “It’s ok,” She spoke directly to the bulky machine as if it were a living being, “Everything will be ok.” The engineer muttered another prayer to the holy cog as she finished a final sequence of calculations. She entered a long series of commands into the terminal, all the while trying to ignore the pain in her joints.

      Once complete, she reached out and touched the scorching hot metal. The engineer could feel the tortured laws of reality ripping apart around her. One miscalculation was all it took for this to become blasphemy. One misstep, or one terrible flaw, and all would be lost. The machine seemed to understand this, and protested against the sudden activation. But now, as the Star of Argon dipped through the very fabric of time and space, engineer Sophia used every ounce of concentration to ease the crude passage.

      As she maintained the gravity drive, she ignored the voices. They weren’t opposed to what she was doing, if anything they were pleased. They chuckled and laughed around her, hungrily declaring a dark truth. That this was the ultimate proof of mankind’s fall from grace, that it was a mistake to begin with, and should never have been offered any form of redemption. This blatant offense to the laws of the universe was an affront to a higher power, and the voices applauded her for the effort.

      Engineer Sophia ignored all of this, keeping the estranged voices at bay with all of her concentration. Only after the jump had been completed, and the engine finally ceased its toil, did she let herself go. Falling to the ground, doused with sweat, Engineer Sophia curled up into a ball and prayed until falling asleep.