Why.. WHY THIS WAS HAPPENING TO ME???
The sound of teeth grinding cannot be hidden while I ignored the hologram screen full of red exclamation marks.
Despite that, I sighed heavily since I can only sit and wait in this situation, “Hahh… I remember this began 25 days ago when I discovered this place.”
My eyes closed and I started recalling the memories from that time.
….
The bleakness of space, the grains of light brightening the hollowness of it, that was what filled my vision when my spaceship emerged from hyperspace. Although this twilight was portraying a perfectness of tranquility and stability, it didn’t make me fawned over it in the least.
I gazed around the control room of my ship; the rusty paint and scratches here and there made me remember that it hasn’t been fixed for quite some time. But the lack of damage and dents on the ship showed I had the ability to maintain it.
My hand scratched my head through my light blue-colored hair as I approached the giant glass window in the control room. It's been a habit of mine to sight-see the space outside when reaching a new place. As my eyes were going into a daze, the reflection of a quite handsome half Asian-Western face filled my vision.
It had a hawk-like eye, a deep black abyss pupil, and a quite sharp-nose which creatively made up the face. Although the look of the face was of a firm and matured looking 18 to 19-year-old teenager, I knew that it was the face of someone older. After all, the face was mine all along.
I, Victor Petard Asterisk, am the master, owner, and captain of my ship. I am an explorer that aspired to make a name for himself and be recorded in history.
Suddenly, my eyes enlarged in surprise and I tried to rub them multiple times. “Is that… No, that can’t be, there is a distortion in the middle of nowhere!?”
I hurriedly ran back to the hologram stand before I expertly navigated the hologram to make sure that my eyes weren’t tricking me. My leg twitched on its own as a grin formed on my mouth. “I cannot believe what I’m seeing, but the computer can’t lie, right?”
“There’s a lot of golden-colored grains of dust just gathering around here despite not being close to any terrestrial object; no stars, no planets." I subconsciously tilted my head, bewildered by this phenomenon.
Suddenly a picture showing a dim, golden-colored, round hole in the middle of space was projected in the hologram. A cloud of golden dust was spurting out from it just like a person vomiting.
“Is that a wormhole? A wormhole that was quite large and also stable? It’s my first time seeing anything like this.” A tingling sensation somehow began to pervade over me and made all my body-hair go tense.
No one’s ever seen this kind of wormhole, since they are supposed to be tiny and disappeared not long after.
This strangeness made me want to explore the unknown, because that had been my desire tougher with my ego as an explorer. But then, I cast that intention aside as it was too dangerous to explore a wormhole where the endpoint was unknown.
Vengeance! Yes… I’ll be able to do that now. Unknowingly my smile had sinisterly widened and a cold look glimmered across my eyes.
“ATA, collect and determine what kind of exotic material this is!” I commanded after casting that deep thought aside.
Just then, a cold and frosty female voice sounded from around the control room, [“As you command.”]
ATA stands for Artificial Technology Assistance, an A.I. that was part of the ship and helped me navigate space. It was one of the reasons that I could keep myself from falling into insanity, despite being alone in space with it being vast and very lonely.
Subsequently, the spaceship began collecting the golden-colored dust that was aimlessly floating around after being spewed from the wormhole. A few moments later, a single set of data appeared on the holo-screen and was projected clearly in front of my eyes.
“Golden Stardust!? From what I know, if someone were to rummage through a nebula star, they will only find a handful or two.”
Golden Stardust is a material used for enhancing F.T.L travel of a spaceship and one of the basic materials to make exotic weaponry. It was highly sought after by the military and explorers, but alas, the pegs were many times bigger than the poles.
The amount here is more than a thousand metric tons… no… even that was an understatement. If the wormhole were to keep spurting material non-stop, didn't this mean I had an endless wealth waiting for me to acquire?
Power, beauty, anything I could buy, anything was available with this amount! Owning a solar system and-or having a private planet is a dream for countless people.
Realizing just how big this was of a matter, a cold sweat trickled slowly down my body. I cannot reveal this secret to anyone, or I might get into serious, deep, trouble.
“Screw that, I’ll just collect as much as I can and sell it!" I said as my hands clenched into fists and brought them up in front of me.
A solitary person I was, but that didn't mean that I didn't have any channels to sell all my spoils from my exploration.
I am, after all, a veteran explorer. I’ve had years of experience exploring the unknown parts of the galaxy, even though I’m only a 25-year-old man. Sadly, I’m still poor since I used all my funds for space-exploration necessities.
“ATA, take us to ‘Blue Moon Station’ in sector 79!”
[“Affirmative."], ATA acknowledged and before long the ship started to move its direction facing the part of space where sector 79 was located.
[“Initiating Space-Warp Travel… Hyperspace line connected… Initiating jump from sector 837, to sector 79.”]
As that was announced, the sound of the hard-working engine at the back of the ship started filling my eardrum. Then, I moved my eyesight to the hologram that showed a camera at the back of the ship.
From there, blue light started to appear from the Warp engine, and the space behind the ship expanded while the front contracted. An invisible layer of a bubble also appeared surrounding the ship.
Not even a few seconds passed, a black void formed in front of the spaceship before the ship blinked out of existence, disappearing into space. The void then closed into the calm state of before.
Blackness was what filled the view of my eyes from the surrounding of the void outside the control room. As the ship was moving faster than light, no visible light could be seen from outside. Not even the faint light of the stars could be seen, making anyone gazing at this scenery felt lonely.
Just when I was gazing at the outside space with my lonely eyes that were accustomed to the scenery, a frosty female voice cut of my reverie, [“Estimating the travel from sector 837, to sector 79 to be 5 days 7 hours and 28 minutes!”]
A close distance is one of the reasons why I choose that place. It was located not far from sector 837, only 500 or so light-years away.
Technically, it was quite far. But since the invention of the previously Alcubierre Warp-Drive and the combination of Hyperspace travel; a hundred light-years could now be crossed within just a day.
“If only I had the newest model of spaceship instead of this derelict one, going there would just take at most 2 days.” I lamented the fact that I didn't have one.
My eyes shifted towards the holo-screen that was displaying all kinds of information. Just to not get bored, I opened the folder about the recent history of Human Civilization. In it, was explained the forming up of U.G.E or United Government of Earth.
It had been a millennium since the human race started colonizing space. It began with the private companies that colonized and terraformed planets and moons within the inner solar system.
It may sound absurd, but the reason U.G.E was formed in the first place was because of mankind's fear of extra-terrestrial lifeform, thanks to a bacterial lifeform that was discovered under the ice layers of Jupiter’s and Saturn’s moons.
But human greed never ended, just colonizing the solar system couldn't satisfy them. By the end of the 23rd century, humanity finally invented the first Faster Than Light drive.
As that line crossed my eyes, I grinned in amusement. I had been very thankful for having been born in this era as had I been born half a millennium ago; it would have taken years just to travel to a nearby solar system.
Fantasizing about it, I would have been going with a generational ship to a star system with an Earth-like or ‘Goldilocks’ planet. Once arrived then having to wait in terraforming said planet, until turning old before having to leave it to the future generation.
But then my smile disappeared as I scrolled down the holo-screen. There, the question that had been pervading humanity was written:
‘Are humans the only intelligent life in this Universe?'
The human race never found a lifeform as intelligent as them. Even the rumored Dyson Sphere located at the Tabby star wasn’t real. It was only a cloud of dust together with lots of meteorites blocking the imperfect telescope visuals that humans had at that time.
The question of how unique the Earth was, making an explorer such as myself determined to seek the answer in the vast reaches of outer space. My hands clenched in front of my chest before declaring full of determination; “I shall be the one to discover all of it!”
