Chapter 1 - 01: Another Day at Work

"All employees are reminded to go for regular health checks every week. Please keep in mind that your safety is our priority," the speakers on the rail transport system bleared into our ears.We heard those words at least once a week while in this facility. "Don't they ever get sick of using that dang message?" one of the workers complained. The rest of them nodded, and told him that they changed it every year. Last year, it was drumming into their ears the importance of using a protective suit. A voice came from behind. It was Kamal. "Alten, why do we even bother taking this train around the space station?" I replied, "Apparently, it supposed to be the most cost-efficient. Teleportation is apparently too expensive." We all knew where we were headed: the transport labs. We were actually a team put together to study a new way of transport. A more logical way of teleportation was found when zero point energy became practical, but it still required massive amounts of power to generate the molecular pattern as well as quantum pattern for a person. It worked now, but only one person could be transported at a time, and after that the machine would need to be charged for roughly one hour. We were supposed to build a system to compete with Takamatsu-Ran's system. Takamatsu-Ran intended to make a new leap in motion engines, apparently enough to surpass the 'hyperspace drive' engines from the Kanrians. The 'hyperspace drive' engines were merely engines capable of moving roughly 200 megametres per second, or one third of light speed. Of course, these would do for simple travel to wormholes and other planets we inhabit within the Milky Way Galaxy. According to industrial spies within Takamatsu-Ran's labs, the current person in command of operations ordered that an engine capable of travelling several lightyears per second be created. All scientists have long pondered how to build such an impossibility, and so have we. We were now calculating the possibility of using a long considered fictional method of hyperspace travel. We had been doing this since we were assigned to GMT Station 2G9I. Others in the facility were assigned to simpler duties, we thought, such as researching new alloys and construction methods, as we were assigned to do something that might not be possible in our universe to begin with. Our dependency on wormholes has increased tremendously over the past few years, causing TRI and GMTi to form a company to manage this wormholes - the Raumfalte Network. "You there?" Jill called out to me. We had already reached the station - we alighted from the train to meet the door on the other side of the corridor. It had projected on it: Theoretical Physics. Another day of work has begun.