More writing
Last week, I wrote two days. Today is Tuesday, and I've written one. I'm not pushing too hard, because doing that at school has been fucking me up. But I'm trying to write a bit more every week.
I'm on a definite sci-fi kick. I'd appreciate comments. I haven't finished the one I posted last week. But I have been working on this:
Shipday 89
Jeena,
I didn’t think I’d write to you. Though I suppose I’m not really writing to you. I’m writing to whoever’s there when this arrives. Not much time has passed for me, but from what the computer tells me, ever minute I spend writing this letter is ten years for you. And we’re still speeding up. There’s also some kind of effect where every minute we get that much farther away, and so it takes that much longer to get to you. So every minute is longer and longer. Maybe, by the time I finish writing this, each minute I spent will be fifty years for you. Maybe it’ll take three hundred years to get to you. It’s a thin hope to think you might still be alive by the time you get it. And if you are, I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t remember me. It’s been a life time for you; for me, the pain is still fresh.
Space is boring. That’s something else I didn’t expect. When I signed up to do this, I knew it meant leaving everyone and everything behind. I didn’t want to leave you, but we both knew it was for the best. We both knew there was no way I could say no. Talk about a one in a billion chance. Even still, I thought that beyond being an honor, it would be fun. Interesting. New.
Not really. It was different for the first few days. Back then, we were passing in the same time stream. A day for me was a day for you. Then it was two days for you. It just kept getting faster. The view out the windows changed a lot those first few weeks. It was just like all those science fiction shows we used to watch. The stars stretched out into long lines of light, the glare from our sun grew dimmer and dimmer, and I passed out of our solar system, out through the belts. I saw Haley’s Comet. At least, I think that’s what it was. That’s what Doc called it.
Doc is my computer, by the way. I decided to give him a name. It’s not very creative, but there’s no one here to give me a better idea, or to say my idea is stupid. So I’m sticking with it. Besides, he’s effectively my doctor. I can tell him anything, and he has to keep it a secret. Not that there’s anyone to tell.
Anyway, after the first week or so, the view started shifting again. The white lines developed colors. The farther behind me I looked, the more things were red. The farther ahead, the more they were blue. It was pretty amazing at first. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen every color there is, even the ones that humans can’t normally see. The variety was incredible.
But it never changed. Lots of variety is great, but only if it varies. When it stays the same, variety gets boring. It stops being variety and just becomes scenery, you know?
At first I kept myself busy checking on the wormholes. You can tell all those scientists that the fields are holding just fine. Distance doesn’t seem to be having much of an effect. The fields are still too small for me to look through or anything like that. Doc says they will grow when we drop them off, but it would be too much energy to carry them if we had already brought the wormholes above the quantum level. That’s why I’m sending this the old fashioned way.
I just realized something. There’s a chance I’ll be back before this message is. Assuming everything goes okay, once I’ve dropped off all the fields, I’ll slow down and turn around. When I get back to one of the gates, I’ll pass through it. Maybe I’ll end up getting home right away. That’s how these things work, right? They’re like little time machines. One end stays home, on Earth. It passes through time normally. The other end goes with me, skipping across the surface of time. So you can get to the past by walking through the one gate and out the other.
Doc just corrected me. I’m right about how they work, but I’ve got the wrong end. I have the past end. I’ll be able to pass through a gate and get right home, but it’ll be into my future. For you, it’ll be the present. Or maybe the future. Depends on when you get this message. So I guess it does make sense for me to send this message this way. It’s not old fashioned; it’s the only way available.
All right. I hope you’re still alive when you get this. I’d hate for you to die and think I forgot you, or think that I never even missed you. I miss you a lot. I’m starting to feel better. It’s been almost three months for me. How long is that for you? Doc tells me we’re coming up on a two century difference. I hope you’re still around. I don’t know anyone else to address these letters to.
-Frances
Shipday 94
Dear Jeena,
You’re almost certainly dead now. I’m not happy about that. It makes me pretty sad, actually. But we’re traveling pretty close to the speed of light now, and it’s been almost a week since I wrote last. So I’ve been here for just over ninety days, but more than eight centuries have passed for you. They used to promise that life extension would cover that, but I’m not sure I believe it. If you are alive, and you remember me, I’m glad you’re still there. If you somehow are still around in another few thousand years, I’ll look you up. Don’t worry, I can remind you what I was like.
I dropped the first gate off the other day. According to Doc, it’s already grown to the macro level, had by the time we got away from the system. The attitude jets on the field projector started slowing it down as soon as we let it go. It should be stopping right where we want it to in just a few months. By my time, that means it’ll be in place tomorrow night. By yours, I think you still have a few years to wait.
I used to think time was a simple thing.
By the time you get this, they will have tested the gate. Maybe they’ve started terraforming those two planets I got a look at. That’s one exciting thing about this for me. When all is said and done, I get to hop onto any planet I want, wherever in the galaxy we’ve colonized them. Doc tells me that about five thousand years will have passed since I left, so there should be plenty of them. He says that predictions of human population suggest that we will have filled up several dozen planets by then. I don’t think he’s right. Something has to slow down our population growth. We can’t just consume the whole galaxy. Though I don’t know. Maybe there are another dozen guys like me out seeding more systems for human use.
I hoped I’d see an alien, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. It’s not that I don’t believe they exist. I see no reason not to. It’s just that I’m going too fast. I couldn’t say hi if I saw them, and I don’t think I’d know what I was seeing anyway. It’s pointless to look out the window. Always looks exactly the same.
You know what’s weird though? You can’t tell you’re moving. Yesterday, the toilet broke down. I mean, it still worked, but the recycling wasn’t functioning quite right. Doc told me that there was a panel loose outside, and it was shaking around. He can fix the recycling system internally, but the shaking panel was what was causing the damage, and he couldn’t fix that. So I had to step outside.
Do you have any idea how weird it is to step out onto something that’s traveling more than 99% the speed of light? It’s trippy. Like I said before, there really wasn’t anything to see, except the ship. It and I aren’t moving, at least not relative to each other. So it was at least visible. But past that, nothing. Just colors, you know? Like a big tunnel of rainbows.
But what was really weird about it was that there was no wind. I know, there has to be air for there to be wind, and there’s no air in space. There’s nothing out here. Especially where I am right now. Doc tells me I’m not far from the rim. Planetary systems are pretty sparse out here, so there really isn’t much to fill the void. There’s something like one atom of Hydrogen worth of matter every ten thousand cubic miles, not counting the ship. So there was no gust of wind, no feeling like I was going to get thrown out into the void. It was surprisingly easy. In fact, it was down right boring.
I think I might try to write a book. There isn’t anyone to read it, but it might be nice just to create something, have something to do. I mean, I have access to everything humanity ever produced, right up until the day I left. So I’m not going to run out of things to read. But that’s old stuff. There’s nothing new. I don’t know if the Cubs won the pennant, though I think I can guess they didn’t. But I also don’t know who won the election. I got some TV for the first week or so, but after the third day I was in reruns, if you know what I mean. So it might be nice to write something, just to create something that wasn’t there before. And who knows? By the time I get back, it might be a great historical novel. People might really like to hear about what I have to say. The man fifty centuries out of date. It has a nice ring to it. I’ll bet I get to go on talk shows.
Not that I’ll need the money. I was very careful, Jeena. I bought some stock before I left, and I put it under the control of a couple of different banking firms. They’re supposed to keep reinvesting it, diversifying every five years. Depending on how many stocks disappear, and how bad the market fluctuates, Doc thinks that I should have between three and fifteen trillion dollars by the time I get back. Unless, of course, you all throw money away and pick up a whole new system of commerce. Which would be just my luck. I hope I get to be rich. It would be a nice payment for giving up my entire life for the betterment of the species.
And I am giving up my entire life, you know. I may not be dead, but by the time I get back, everyone and everything I’ve ever known will be. This was a serious gamble. I’m hoping you’re there to pick this up, but what if you’re not? What if that comet I passed last month was heading for the Earth, and it got there before any of you got off the planet? What if humanity was completely destroyed, and the only vestige of it remaining is a dozen guys in ships setting up half a wormhole gate for a civilization that doesn’t exist anymore?
That’s the worst case scenario, sure. But there are other problems too. What if there’s some kind of dark age, and you forget that we even left? What if you lose your end of the wormholes? That would make these gates pretty damned worthless, and would mean that my only chance would be another five thousand years back across the galaxy, getting home ten thousand years later. When I left, ten thousand years ago would’ve been pretty much the dawn of civilization. I’d have to wait about seventy five hundred years just for Socrates to start walking around. What will the world be like in ten thousand? Or even in five? No one spoke English five thousand years ago. Not even England. Not that it was called that. Wasn’t there an ice age back then? I know that you could barely tell that we were the same species. We’re taller than we were then. Less hairy. Smarter, maybe. Is all that going to be true again? Am I going to be the stupid caveman walking around the shopping mall, trying to figure out what the hell those stupid shells are for?
I didn’t think this through too good.
Oh well. Not like I can do anything about it now.
-Frances
Shipday 102
Dear Jeena,
I’m very lonely. I know, they told me I would be. I was warned, and I was tested. They said I was one of the very few people who could handle being alone. Who wouldn’t crack from all the isolation, from agoraphobia. There’s so much room out here. So much room.
So I knew what I was getting in to. Still, I can’t help but wish for a friend. I can play chess with Doc, but he almost always beats me, and I know that he’s not even using all his focus on that. We can play cards, and he can tell me jokes. He’s almost fully intelligent, able to have pretty decent conversations. Sometimes I can close my eyes and pretend that he’s just a good friend I’m talking to over the phone. But most of the time, I know he’s not real. I know that in the end, he’s just a series of fluctuated quantum states. Like everything else on this ship, he is quantum tech at its finest.
So yeah, I wish I could find someone. Wish I could fly past someone, pick them up, and have a companion. Maybe an alien. That would be nice. But it would probably be really hard to communicate. I guess we could try to learn one another’s languages, but I just don’t think there would be time. I mean, I’m halfway done. I let out two more gates since the last message I sent. Three more and I get to start slowing down. Doc says that process won’t be nearly as technologically advanced as I had imagined. We don’t put out brakes or drop a parachute behind us or anything like that. There really isn’t enough out where we’ll be to make any friction. Doc says we’ll end up past the rim by the time we slow down. That should be amazing, to say the least. He says it’ll look like half the sky is full of stars, then there’s a much bigger hole where there’s just nothing. Sooner or later, I’ll make out the pinpoints of light over there. But those won’t be stars. They’ll be entire galaxies.
If I didn’t slow down, I could go to one of those, you know. Doc says that without slowing down, it would end up only adding about a week to the trip to go that far. That’s my time, of course. Something like hundreds of thousands of years will pass for you if I did that. I don’t really have any hopes that you’re still alive, but I’d rather not postpone things any more than I have to. Maybe they invented suspended animation or cryogenic sleep while I was gone, and you’ll actually be waiting for me. It’s ridiculous, but I need that hope.
Anyway, Doc says the way we’ll slow down is really simple. We just turn off the engines, then turn around and turn them back on. He’ll make sure we keep the g-force as low as possible, which shouldn’t be all that hard. You get used to that pull after a bit. Even still, it’ll take us a month or more to slow down to non-relativistic speeds. During that time, I’ll still be traveling away from you, which is awful. But I’ll try to remind myself that every second that passes is a second closer to your time frame, and a second closer to you.
With the likely exception of the other eleven guys, I’m now going several thousand times faster than any human being has ever traveled. I don’t know what the previous record was, to be honest. But latest calculations put us within one hundred millionth of a percent of light speed. That means that every day that passes for me is almost twenty years for you. Today, you’re almost two thousand years behind me. We’re still speeding up. Tomorrow, sixty one years will pass for you. The day after will be almost two hundred. Thankfully, that’s as fast as we go. Actually, at that point, we start slowing down. The last gate gets launched while we’re slowing down. That’ll minimize the travel time once we stop. Even still, I think the gate will have something like sixty years to get set up before I get there.
Kind of makes a few months not mean anything. Maybe I’ll do a bit of sight seeing while I can still see the universe. I know I said I’d rush home. But with this scale, with five thousand years passing, what difference does an extra thirty days or so make? And when will I have this opportunity again?
I’ve been thinking, and wondering if you guys have invented some kind of faster than light travel. Doc and I have been talking about it, and theoretically, if you could build a ship that could act as if it were on the quantum scale, and find an existing wormhole, you could go from where you are to where it ends instantly. Some quantum wormholes, theoretically, are very far away. Since there’s a probability factor, a good quantum computer could always find the right entrance and exit point. The trick would be either shrinking down to the quantum level or at least being able to act as though you had. I have no idea how to do either one, but if you guys figure it out, and when I stop I run into someone who left Earth as recently as that morning, I’m going to be a bit pissed off. Especially if I find out that you perfected it a few years or decades after I left.
That would suck. Aside from the fact that I just wasted my entire life, that I just lost five thousand years for no reason, it would mean that the wormholes were superfluous. Why bother with a gate that takes you only from point A to point B if you can find your own gates from point A to any other point whenever you want? I mean, yeah, it would be great for exploration, fantastic for the species. But it would mean I’d lost you and hadn’t even gained anything for it. Sacrifice is all well and good, but when it’s rendered meaningless... well, it’s meaningless. You know?
-Frances
It has this definite Frankenstein vibe for me. Do you get that?
I'm on a definite sci-fi kick. I'd appreciate comments. I haven't finished the one I posted last week. But I have been working on this:
Shipday 89
Jeena,
I didn’t think I’d write to you. Though I suppose I’m not really writing to you. I’m writing to whoever’s there when this arrives. Not much time has passed for me, but from what the computer tells me, ever minute I spend writing this letter is ten years for you. And we’re still speeding up. There’s also some kind of effect where every minute we get that much farther away, and so it takes that much longer to get to you. So every minute is longer and longer. Maybe, by the time I finish writing this, each minute I spent will be fifty years for you. Maybe it’ll take three hundred years to get to you. It’s a thin hope to think you might still be alive by the time you get it. And if you are, I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t remember me. It’s been a life time for you; for me, the pain is still fresh.
Space is boring. That’s something else I didn’t expect. When I signed up to do this, I knew it meant leaving everyone and everything behind. I didn’t want to leave you, but we both knew it was for the best. We both knew there was no way I could say no. Talk about a one in a billion chance. Even still, I thought that beyond being an honor, it would be fun. Interesting. New.
Not really. It was different for the first few days. Back then, we were passing in the same time stream. A day for me was a day for you. Then it was two days for you. It just kept getting faster. The view out the windows changed a lot those first few weeks. It was just like all those science fiction shows we used to watch. The stars stretched out into long lines of light, the glare from our sun grew dimmer and dimmer, and I passed out of our solar system, out through the belts. I saw Haley’s Comet. At least, I think that’s what it was. That’s what Doc called it.
Doc is my computer, by the way. I decided to give him a name. It’s not very creative, but there’s no one here to give me a better idea, or to say my idea is stupid. So I’m sticking with it. Besides, he’s effectively my doctor. I can tell him anything, and he has to keep it a secret. Not that there’s anyone to tell.
Anyway, after the first week or so, the view started shifting again. The white lines developed colors. The farther behind me I looked, the more things were red. The farther ahead, the more they were blue. It was pretty amazing at first. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen every color there is, even the ones that humans can’t normally see. The variety was incredible.
But it never changed. Lots of variety is great, but only if it varies. When it stays the same, variety gets boring. It stops being variety and just becomes scenery, you know?
At first I kept myself busy checking on the wormholes. You can tell all those scientists that the fields are holding just fine. Distance doesn’t seem to be having much of an effect. The fields are still too small for me to look through or anything like that. Doc says they will grow when we drop them off, but it would be too much energy to carry them if we had already brought the wormholes above the quantum level. That’s why I’m sending this the old fashioned way.
I just realized something. There’s a chance I’ll be back before this message is. Assuming everything goes okay, once I’ve dropped off all the fields, I’ll slow down and turn around. When I get back to one of the gates, I’ll pass through it. Maybe I’ll end up getting home right away. That’s how these things work, right? They’re like little time machines. One end stays home, on Earth. It passes through time normally. The other end goes with me, skipping across the surface of time. So you can get to the past by walking through the one gate and out the other.
Doc just corrected me. I’m right about how they work, but I’ve got the wrong end. I have the past end. I’ll be able to pass through a gate and get right home, but it’ll be into my future. For you, it’ll be the present. Or maybe the future. Depends on when you get this message. So I guess it does make sense for me to send this message this way. It’s not old fashioned; it’s the only way available.
All right. I hope you’re still alive when you get this. I’d hate for you to die and think I forgot you, or think that I never even missed you. I miss you a lot. I’m starting to feel better. It’s been almost three months for me. How long is that for you? Doc tells me we’re coming up on a two century difference. I hope you’re still around. I don’t know anyone else to address these letters to.
-Frances
Shipday 94
Dear Jeena,
You’re almost certainly dead now. I’m not happy about that. It makes me pretty sad, actually. But we’re traveling pretty close to the speed of light now, and it’s been almost a week since I wrote last. So I’ve been here for just over ninety days, but more than eight centuries have passed for you. They used to promise that life extension would cover that, but I’m not sure I believe it. If you are alive, and you remember me, I’m glad you’re still there. If you somehow are still around in another few thousand years, I’ll look you up. Don’t worry, I can remind you what I was like.
I dropped the first gate off the other day. According to Doc, it’s already grown to the macro level, had by the time we got away from the system. The attitude jets on the field projector started slowing it down as soon as we let it go. It should be stopping right where we want it to in just a few months. By my time, that means it’ll be in place tomorrow night. By yours, I think you still have a few years to wait.
I used to think time was a simple thing.
By the time you get this, they will have tested the gate. Maybe they’ve started terraforming those two planets I got a look at. That’s one exciting thing about this for me. When all is said and done, I get to hop onto any planet I want, wherever in the galaxy we’ve colonized them. Doc tells me that about five thousand years will have passed since I left, so there should be plenty of them. He says that predictions of human population suggest that we will have filled up several dozen planets by then. I don’t think he’s right. Something has to slow down our population growth. We can’t just consume the whole galaxy. Though I don’t know. Maybe there are another dozen guys like me out seeding more systems for human use.
I hoped I’d see an alien, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. It’s not that I don’t believe they exist. I see no reason not to. It’s just that I’m going too fast. I couldn’t say hi if I saw them, and I don’t think I’d know what I was seeing anyway. It’s pointless to look out the window. Always looks exactly the same.
You know what’s weird though? You can’t tell you’re moving. Yesterday, the toilet broke down. I mean, it still worked, but the recycling wasn’t functioning quite right. Doc told me that there was a panel loose outside, and it was shaking around. He can fix the recycling system internally, but the shaking panel was what was causing the damage, and he couldn’t fix that. So I had to step outside.
Do you have any idea how weird it is to step out onto something that’s traveling more than 99% the speed of light? It’s trippy. Like I said before, there really wasn’t anything to see, except the ship. It and I aren’t moving, at least not relative to each other. So it was at least visible. But past that, nothing. Just colors, you know? Like a big tunnel of rainbows.
But what was really weird about it was that there was no wind. I know, there has to be air for there to be wind, and there’s no air in space. There’s nothing out here. Especially where I am right now. Doc tells me I’m not far from the rim. Planetary systems are pretty sparse out here, so there really isn’t much to fill the void. There’s something like one atom of Hydrogen worth of matter every ten thousand cubic miles, not counting the ship. So there was no gust of wind, no feeling like I was going to get thrown out into the void. It was surprisingly easy. In fact, it was down right boring.
I think I might try to write a book. There isn’t anyone to read it, but it might be nice just to create something, have something to do. I mean, I have access to everything humanity ever produced, right up until the day I left. So I’m not going to run out of things to read. But that’s old stuff. There’s nothing new. I don’t know if the Cubs won the pennant, though I think I can guess they didn’t. But I also don’t know who won the election. I got some TV for the first week or so, but after the third day I was in reruns, if you know what I mean. So it might be nice to write something, just to create something that wasn’t there before. And who knows? By the time I get back, it might be a great historical novel. People might really like to hear about what I have to say. The man fifty centuries out of date. It has a nice ring to it. I’ll bet I get to go on talk shows.
Not that I’ll need the money. I was very careful, Jeena. I bought some stock before I left, and I put it under the control of a couple of different banking firms. They’re supposed to keep reinvesting it, diversifying every five years. Depending on how many stocks disappear, and how bad the market fluctuates, Doc thinks that I should have between three and fifteen trillion dollars by the time I get back. Unless, of course, you all throw money away and pick up a whole new system of commerce. Which would be just my luck. I hope I get to be rich. It would be a nice payment for giving up my entire life for the betterment of the species.
And I am giving up my entire life, you know. I may not be dead, but by the time I get back, everyone and everything I’ve ever known will be. This was a serious gamble. I’m hoping you’re there to pick this up, but what if you’re not? What if that comet I passed last month was heading for the Earth, and it got there before any of you got off the planet? What if humanity was completely destroyed, and the only vestige of it remaining is a dozen guys in ships setting up half a wormhole gate for a civilization that doesn’t exist anymore?
That’s the worst case scenario, sure. But there are other problems too. What if there’s some kind of dark age, and you forget that we even left? What if you lose your end of the wormholes? That would make these gates pretty damned worthless, and would mean that my only chance would be another five thousand years back across the galaxy, getting home ten thousand years later. When I left, ten thousand years ago would’ve been pretty much the dawn of civilization. I’d have to wait about seventy five hundred years just for Socrates to start walking around. What will the world be like in ten thousand? Or even in five? No one spoke English five thousand years ago. Not even England. Not that it was called that. Wasn’t there an ice age back then? I know that you could barely tell that we were the same species. We’re taller than we were then. Less hairy. Smarter, maybe. Is all that going to be true again? Am I going to be the stupid caveman walking around the shopping mall, trying to figure out what the hell those stupid shells are for?
I didn’t think this through too good.
Oh well. Not like I can do anything about it now.
-Frances
Shipday 102
Dear Jeena,
I’m very lonely. I know, they told me I would be. I was warned, and I was tested. They said I was one of the very few people who could handle being alone. Who wouldn’t crack from all the isolation, from agoraphobia. There’s so much room out here. So much room.
So I knew what I was getting in to. Still, I can’t help but wish for a friend. I can play chess with Doc, but he almost always beats me, and I know that he’s not even using all his focus on that. We can play cards, and he can tell me jokes. He’s almost fully intelligent, able to have pretty decent conversations. Sometimes I can close my eyes and pretend that he’s just a good friend I’m talking to over the phone. But most of the time, I know he’s not real. I know that in the end, he’s just a series of fluctuated quantum states. Like everything else on this ship, he is quantum tech at its finest.
So yeah, I wish I could find someone. Wish I could fly past someone, pick them up, and have a companion. Maybe an alien. That would be nice. But it would probably be really hard to communicate. I guess we could try to learn one another’s languages, but I just don’t think there would be time. I mean, I’m halfway done. I let out two more gates since the last message I sent. Three more and I get to start slowing down. Doc says that process won’t be nearly as technologically advanced as I had imagined. We don’t put out brakes or drop a parachute behind us or anything like that. There really isn’t enough out where we’ll be to make any friction. Doc says we’ll end up past the rim by the time we slow down. That should be amazing, to say the least. He says it’ll look like half the sky is full of stars, then there’s a much bigger hole where there’s just nothing. Sooner or later, I’ll make out the pinpoints of light over there. But those won’t be stars. They’ll be entire galaxies.
If I didn’t slow down, I could go to one of those, you know. Doc says that without slowing down, it would end up only adding about a week to the trip to go that far. That’s my time, of course. Something like hundreds of thousands of years will pass for you if I did that. I don’t really have any hopes that you’re still alive, but I’d rather not postpone things any more than I have to. Maybe they invented suspended animation or cryogenic sleep while I was gone, and you’ll actually be waiting for me. It’s ridiculous, but I need that hope.
Anyway, Doc says the way we’ll slow down is really simple. We just turn off the engines, then turn around and turn them back on. He’ll make sure we keep the g-force as low as possible, which shouldn’t be all that hard. You get used to that pull after a bit. Even still, it’ll take us a month or more to slow down to non-relativistic speeds. During that time, I’ll still be traveling away from you, which is awful. But I’ll try to remind myself that every second that passes is a second closer to your time frame, and a second closer to you.
With the likely exception of the other eleven guys, I’m now going several thousand times faster than any human being has ever traveled. I don’t know what the previous record was, to be honest. But latest calculations put us within one hundred millionth of a percent of light speed. That means that every day that passes for me is almost twenty years for you. Today, you’re almost two thousand years behind me. We’re still speeding up. Tomorrow, sixty one years will pass for you. The day after will be almost two hundred. Thankfully, that’s as fast as we go. Actually, at that point, we start slowing down. The last gate gets launched while we’re slowing down. That’ll minimize the travel time once we stop. Even still, I think the gate will have something like sixty years to get set up before I get there.
Kind of makes a few months not mean anything. Maybe I’ll do a bit of sight seeing while I can still see the universe. I know I said I’d rush home. But with this scale, with five thousand years passing, what difference does an extra thirty days or so make? And when will I have this opportunity again?
I’ve been thinking, and wondering if you guys have invented some kind of faster than light travel. Doc and I have been talking about it, and theoretically, if you could build a ship that could act as if it were on the quantum scale, and find an existing wormhole, you could go from where you are to where it ends instantly. Some quantum wormholes, theoretically, are very far away. Since there’s a probability factor, a good quantum computer could always find the right entrance and exit point. The trick would be either shrinking down to the quantum level or at least being able to act as though you had. I have no idea how to do either one, but if you guys figure it out, and when I stop I run into someone who left Earth as recently as that morning, I’m going to be a bit pissed off. Especially if I find out that you perfected it a few years or decades after I left.
That would suck. Aside from the fact that I just wasted my entire life, that I just lost five thousand years for no reason, it would mean that the wormholes were superfluous. Why bother with a gate that takes you only from point A to point B if you can find your own gates from point A to any other point whenever you want? I mean, yeah, it would be great for exploration, fantastic for the species. But it would mean I’d lost you and hadn’t even gained anything for it. Sacrifice is all well and good, but when it’s rendered meaningless... well, it’s meaningless. You know?
-Frances
It has this definite Frankenstein vibe for me. Do you get that?