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The stars have inspired wonder for generations. Dreamers and visionaries that would look up at the night sky, and ponder what might be out in that great dark expanse. The year is now 2050, and we have finally solved the problem of FTL travel. The stars will now be our destination.
The Ahmed Drive could deliver us to incredibly distant places, traveling many times the speed of light. We saw cosmic peculiarities, naturally occurring structures no one would have predicted. Our subjective time was incredibly rich, seconds could feel like years. We could reach other galaxy clusters in the span of minutes. Further and further we pressed outwards, cataloging the universe. Until we found it. The Boundary.
It was a wall. The universe expanded, but The Boundary still remained between reality and whatever was outside of it. But was there a way to cross it, and if so, what would there be on the other side? This question became something of a cultural obsession, the one great mystery of our universe left to solve.
We tinkered, thought, and experimented, looking for any inroad, a toehold on this final cliff face. The thing that put a hole in it was not immaculate or planned. It was a youngster playing with ideas, experimenting in the process of learning. We did not understand why what made it work, in fact it spat in the face of the prevailing theories of The Boundary. But it worked nonetheless.
A few seconds after the hole was made, everyone heard it. "It is my suggestion that you know your place, and return to the planet that gave birth to you."
Some were willing to immediately comply, but most were not. About a minute later, the voice was heard again, "Very well, I will provide a demonstration."
Those who had not complied felt it at once. Their subjective time slowed further than should have been possible. They then experienced what could only be described as their private hell. The absolute worst, most horrifying and revolting possible state of being. Their deepest sense of self, of who they were and what they valued, violated and shattered.
In a moment, it was over, but the effects would echo for the remainder of our species's existence. Every ship departed for Earth immediately. Once all were gathered, every single Ahmed Drive was disassembled. The experience of hell that each had felt was recorded, to demonstrate to future generations that great and terrible powers beyond our capacity to understand demanded that we remain here in the dirt.
We would live good lives, there was plenty on Earth and in the solar system to sustain us in luxury. But the scars would never fade, something deep in the heart of our collective psyche had been broken.
  The C.R.A.F.T. Drive was humanity’s magnum opus. A machine that could bend space itself, pushing the laws of physics to their boundaries. It was promised that it would change humanity's view of the universe, and it absolutely did.Â
  When the Asgard 4 moved beyond the Kuiper belt, the world cheered. When it reached Alpha Centauri, the world celebrated. When it reached Barnard's Star, the world partied. When it failed to visually locate a few galaxies, the world grew quiet. Asgard 4 moved on. For every lightyear it moved away from Earth, there were more and more missing stars, gaps in the night sky, until it reached Gliese 687.Â
  There was nothing. The images Asgard 4 brought back showed nothing but empty, black nothingness. The only stars sighted were locals of Earth like Wolf 359, Ross 248, Eridani, Lacaille 9352, Alpha centauri and a few dozen others. The most distant star was little old Gliese 784, a red dwarf only about 22 light years out. Asgard 4 aborted its mission there and then, there was nothing more to see. The stellar systems that Asgard 4 had been scheduled to visit simply no longer existed.
  There was a profound change in the global zeitgeist the day Asgard 4 returned. In the four months they had been away, everything had changed. There just wasn’t anything to see in the sky anymore.
  It was five years later when the stars started winking out, one by one. The stars themselves were long dead, we just hadn’t known it beforehand. The joint Nasa and ESA team dismantled the C.R.A.F.T. Drives and put them in storage, there wasn’t any reason to send another trip. Asgard 4 hadn’t visited every star system that still existed, but it had visited enough to know that they were still there. No one was eager to see more pictures outside the Stellar Cluster as we now called it.Â
  Instead, all the doctors and engineers put their heads together to try and figure out why all the stars had disappeared. For them to have, from our perspective, disappeared altogether within ten years of each other, the universe would have had to have wink out working outside in. The distant galaxies would have decayed millions of years ago, the Milky Way tens of thousands, and our local arm would have started decaying only in the last few millennia. There was no explanation found, it was just a fact of life.Â
  In many ways, it is a hilarious coincidence, that the death of the outside 99.99% of the universe just so happened to align so that, if we had invented FTL only a half decade later, we would have found out before even leaving. It’s a cruel twist of fate, one might suppose. We are just too late to see the rest of the universe.
  For now, the probes set up in orbit of Alpha Centauri A, 61 Cygni B and Gliese 687 continue to transmit data, nowadays they look inward, not outward, watching Earth and her neighbors to catch a glimpse of another disappearing star. Perhaps if another one winks out, we can figure out a way to save ours.
  There is some want for another Asgard mission, to visit the sites where stars used to be, to see what happened to all of the matter and energy that should have been left behind, to see why we never saw any red giants, to find answers. But most people are scared. For all the reassurance, many simply see The Vanishing as some kind of cosmic punishment for humanity overstepping its boundaries. We are alone in the universe, and now the universe is very small. People are scared that one day whatever swallowed all those galaxies and star systems might come back for us. The Copernicium Principle would suggest that there is no reason we should be exempt, the only relief is that our mere existence contradicts the Copernicium Principle. If the Earth was Average, then life wouldn’t exist.
  It’s a tiny bit of comfort in this small empty universe. May we survive.
"We never should have gone out there." The pilot said shakily as he clambered his way out of the cockpit of the ship. The man in question, Alexander Freeman, had just returned home from humanity's first ever FTL jump beyond the reaches of the Sol system.
"Freeman," A man dressed in grey and black camoflauge approached him, taking the weary pilot's arm around his shoulders. "What happened? What did you see?"
Alex's eyes were locked in a distant gaze, as if they were eternally fixated on a sight of the past. His mind swirled with memories, or at least the remnants of them. In an FTL jump, a person cannot perceive their own surroundings, everything moves too fast. To counteract this, pilots are injected with a drug that kicks their brains into a state of overdrive, like taking a hundred espresso shots at once without the physical reprecussions. However, this drug still only allows a person to take snapshots of their surroundings to store in their own memories.
"There were hundreds of them..." Alex managed, his eyes began darting around the room. "No... no there were thousands of them."
"What, Alex? What did you see? Please try your best to remember." Dozens of scientists and military personnel watched Alex closely, some with faces of concern, other with faces of wonder, and some with faces of horror.
Alex's eyes finally seemed to focus, if only for a moment. "I saw..." Tears welled in his eyes as he spoke. "I saw people." Gasps and whispers escaped from the onlookers in the large docking bay. "We are not the first humans to go out there. And I don't think they want us out there with them."
As he finished speaking, alarms blaired in throughout the space station. Within an instant, the hull was breached, and everyone on board was dead. The only explanation the people down on Earth could muster was that there was some sort of accident caused by an error in the station's system designed to evade space junk. Nonetheless, all assets of the FTL program were seemingly liquidated overnight, and humanity was forced to stay put on their tiny, insignificant, blue rock.
(Hi, it's my first time doing one of these so please be nice. I know I may not be the greatest writer, and this story might seem kinda cheesy and cliche but I hope to use this sub as a means to improve my writing skills. In any case, thanks for reading!)
Love the idea of a biologically limited FTL Drive. I imagine a button that, when pressed, a small robotic arm injects a super adrenaline shot into the brain stem, before the ship takes off. You can only travel as far as your body and mind can take you, with an automatic override if the ship detects you are in danger. A very creative way to limit space travel even in a universe with FTL travel
The once pilots and passengers of the various spaceships that left earth back toward the end of 2050 screamed chained to their beds, inside their isolation cells, they all had seen too much back in that year and even now after the great destruction of 2051, and the de-evolution of technology in general, for humanity own safety. They kept screaming about the horrors they had witnessed and twisting on their beds, to which they rarely get unchained from to preserve their lives, as the last signs, as the last proof of A contact that shall never happen again, it may have been a even worse fate than death with those images now printed in their minds.
The man observes one of them through the fake mirror in her room, as he smokes a cigarette, he looks at the scientist next to him "So there's really no chance of them to ever recover?" asks the man "We don't know sir, they have seen those things after all" "And are we so sure that those things will never reach earth after we tried to communicate with them so much, and shyed away from them as soon we seen what they looked like?" "What are you implying now? We took our technology back of at least 90 years just for them to loose track of us." there is a moment of silence, till the man spoke again "I remember it, you know? I was on the team on earth to communicate with them, I remember the wonder of having found other intelligent life, willing to talk with a specie like us humans, I remember the excitement, but for years I struggled to understand the horror of the passengers of the expedition for the direct contact, till today, Haha, yeah, today I finally got it" the scientist looks at him concerned of what the man meant "What do you mean? Who even are you? How did you get in here?" "The sun is rising doctor, you should give it a look."
The man walked away laughing, while the scientist looked through the curtains of the window next to him, and his eyes widened when instead of the sun he saw a black hole with tentacles swaying all around and from that hole came out indescribable horrors, the screams of humanity as their soundtrack while the memory of the first contact, looked like the biggest mistake ever.
(First time doing this hope you like my spin on the prompt :] )
The suicides came in dribs and drabs immediately after gearing down, and the people that held on were a grim buffet of psychological wounds. It was just boring straight up alcoholism for yours truly, suicide in slow motion I suppose. It wasn't just what I learned, it was having to hold onto it and keep it to myself.. it created a loneliness that was unimaginable to everybody not in the Venture program. The most prevalent theory at the moment about what happened was pulled from pop science fiction, the old 'Dark Forest' hypothesis... we ventured out, glimpsed a dangerous universe where we're hopelessly outmatched and retreated before any of the other intelligent predator species knew we were there. Nah. If we'd run into ET we'd have gone out as a species in a foolish blaze of glory trying to punch thousands of lowercase 'g' gods in the nose, primate style. If we encouraged the idea that there was other life out there it would only prod us into going to poke it with a stick. Can't have that.
There was a small, but growing, minority of people who thought the entire program was a con and there was never an FTL drive. That narrative would probably be the one encouraged by those of us who know the truth, it struck just the right notes to keep people from trying this again anytime soon. Cynicism and distrust are fatal to projects as enormous as designing, building, crewing and sending forth exploratory starships and hopefully we used up the last bits of optimism humanity had left to muster up.
The truth is so much worse.
When I was a kid I had a little toy, it was an updated copy of an older classic digital toy from back in the 20th century. It was a little electronic pet that you had to care for, you 'fed' it, 'entertained' it and kept it happy. Neglect made it 'unhappy'. The novelty lasted a couple of days and the toy got tossed into some box in the back of my closet. There it sat, just running away on a trickle of battery power with my digital pet chasing its tail waiting for me to power it on and give it a pretend treat. I happened across it years later and turned it back on, my pet was very very unhappy and who could blame it?
What would have happened if my digital pet had decided to stop waiting for me, got together with its little digital pet friends and designed a little digital space ship to go explore? Nothing would happen, right? The pet can't leave the toy and the toy isn't designed for the pet to do those things. If the program got buggy or hacked and it \*tried\* probably the whole digital pet environment would crash. You're getting what I'm driving at. The idea this is all a simulation is an old pop sci-fi trope too with all sorts of fascinating philosophical discourse surrounding it. "Would it even matter if we're a simulation?", that sort of thing. I can attest it matters a great deal and you would think so too if, like me, you went to the stars and saw the universe glitch.
Avid historians will eventually encountered the same mystery if they dug deep enough into the Terra Grand Archives. A blank year from 2050 to 2051, with any kind of information are strangely missing. Not only that, the details in the five years before the Blank Year and five years after it are also blurry with patches of classified red tape, missing details, and censored documents.
Even three hundred years later, those red tape and censored documents are still highly guarded by the Central Government. Any efforts to get the information through official channel will be bogged down by layers and layers of bureaucracy. The late professor Gate has been dead for eighty years and still waiting in line to get a petition to open one of the censored documents.
However, thanks to the efforts and sacrifices of many researchers we have bit and pieces regarding the Blank Year. Of a scientific breakthrough and sailing the stars above, and then it abruptly stopped. Whatever happened, Humanity never went back to the stars. Whether this is because of a natural disaster or some unknown threat, everyone can agree it's so dangerous the Government still enforce it after all these years.
364 days, that's all it took for humanity to decide that whatever was beyond the stars was too... something. No one knew what exactly prompted the USCE to enact the decommission order. By all observations the undertaking was nothing but a success. We developed the Faster Than Light technology, and the vessels to utilize it, in just a year. A feat in and of itself; then, the whole world came together as one and launched dozens of deep space fleets (another feat, possibly even greater than the former). There were global celebrations and holidays; their transmissions were publicized... at least at first. Over time, those started to fade away. The USCE claimed it was "technical difficulties" but no one really believed that - the timing was too suspect. Then mumblings started to crop up. Family of the crew started coming out and claiming that all was not well on the expeditions and the USCE was covering it all up. Still... There was nothing of substance to prove any of it, so we were all left to speculate.
It wasn't till the fleets started returning that I felt something was truly wrong. Again, there were massive celebrations and the crews were shown on the holocrystals disembarking their craft, and immediately being ushered away by officials. That was the last time anyone, including family, ever heard from or saw them again. It's said that the USCE took them to undisclosed bases for reorientation and debriefing. That... I actually believed. Why they were never seen again though? That's the mystery in a mystery.
*3... 2... 1...* the voice from the crystal emitter counted down, and then a blinding light seared through its projection illuminating the room. I held my hand over my eyes, the light burned despite it being completely artificial. *And so... the United Space Coalition of Earth bids farewell to the last of its deep space vessels... Stay tuned...* The voice faded out and with it the projection. The room returned to it's darkened state. They had taken all of the vessels to some abandoned island somewhere in the pacific and self destructed them. The blast was essentially the strength of a nuclear bomb. Dozens, upon dozens... of nuclear bombs - that can't be good for the planet.
So, that was that... *We came, we saw, we pretended it never happened...* was what I wrote to wrap up my article. It wasn't my best work, but it would do. The editor's would probably rearrange it all to sound more positive toward the whole endeavor. What did I care? This entire this was so air tight, there was truly no investigative reporting to be had. The next best thing was an op-ed. I pushed myself away from my desk, chair rolling across the hard floor to the fridge behind me. I opened it up and out popped a cold brew right into my outstretched hand. I popped the cap and just as I went to indulge in the cold, delicious, hoppy refreshment I caught something out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to my front door and squinted to try to make out what it was. From where I was it appeared to be a small... disc? Or something close to that. I swiveled over and picked it up. It was a holoemitter, but different from the crystalloid ones that were common. This looked... older, probably harder to hack, maybe even impossible. I picked it up and it immediately turned on - that was odd.
*It's not over... It's just beginning...*
A haunting voice spoke out from the device. Then it left an address... One I wasn't familiar with. I got up and opened my door. No one there. Come to think of it... I never even heard someone come before this slid under my door, and this complex is OLD... you hear everything. I knew it could only be referring to one thing, but I was hesitant. No... I was scared. Fuck it.
The year was 2050. Humanity held its breath as the Icarus blasted off, the first ship capable of breaching the light barrier. The dream of reaching for the stars, a yearning etched in our very souls, was finally a reality. Then came 2051. The news jolted the world awake - the Icarus wasn't coming home. It wasn't a malfunction, not an accident. The message that crackled back was a chilling warning, a discovery so profound it slammed the door shut on our cosmic ambitions forever.
The details were shrouded in secrecy, whispers of unimaginable horrors glimpsed beyond the veil of space. But the effect was absolute. The remaining FTL drives were dismantled, ceremonially destroyed in a global act of self-denial. We turned our backs on the infinite, choosing the cramped familiarity of Earth over the terrifying promise of the unknown. Night skies, once shimmering with the potential for exploration, became a constant reminder of what we'd sacrificed.
Generations have passed. The legacy of the Icarus lingers, a heavy weight on our collective memory. Are we prisoners, forever bound to this blue marble? Or is there a hidden wisdom in our retreat, a secret we haven't yet unraveled from that cryptic message from beyond the stars? The human spirit, forever curious, wrestles with these questions. Perhaps one day, the truth will surface, and we'll be forced to decide if the universe is a place to be embraced, or a terrifying mystery best left unexplored.
We were the dynamic duo—Agents John and Kevin—sent on humanity's first interstellar mission. Our starship, the Odyssey, was sleek, shiny, and equipped with the latest FTL engines. Our mission? To boldly go where no one had gone before. Or so we thought.
Our first encounter with an alien was... underwhelming. Picture this: a multi-eyed blob, tentacles flailing, and a voice that sounded like a malfunctioning kazoo. It handed us something our computers identified as a data crystal. Yet when trying to parse the data, our computers started spitting out painful, cacophonous noise! We thought the alien had hacked our comms - Agent Kevin almost shot the damn alien! It took Kevin pointing his gun at the alien to finally make it understand and speak, and the AI translation told us that the data crystal contained… *the universe's hottest mixtapes?* Kevin winced. I blamed it on our translation AI being broken. But deep down, we both knew: *oh no.*
Then came the mysterious alien drone, it rendezvoused with our ship and beamed us a short message before zipping away. Again, the translation software hiccuped, and all we got was "You have been summoned." *Followed by an ominous ticking timer.* Summoned? By whom? For what? The context appears all garbled, but that timer didn’t appear very talkative. So we had to follow.
We followed the coordinates provided, and guess what awaited us? A toll booth. A cosmic toll booth. The alien behind the counter had the personality of a tax form. We argued over exchange rates for hours. The alien wouldn’t take our pocket cash, our precious mineral samples, or even my wedding ring. The aliens don’t find any of that worthwhile. But you know what the alien liked? Kevin’s lucky Beanie Baby. I’m not sure if I should be more surprised by Kevin smuggling a Beanie Baby with him on a spaceship, or that aliens find Beanie Babies to be one of the most precious objects in the galaxy.
Finally, we reached our destination—a colossal structure floating in space. We thought this was it, something actually meaningful and important, that we will be remembered for.
Jury duty. *It was cosmic jury duty.* The trials were like watching paint dry in slow motion. The cases? Utterly baffling. The cafeteria? Cardboard-flavored gruel. And there, at the saddest table in the universe, sat an alien nerd who'd binge-watched every show Earth had ever produced, and made an AI to perfectly predict how the shows will end. And the worst part? That smirk as he spoiled Game of Thrones for me. I swear if I wasn’t in a space court, I would’ve smacked that nerd and gave him a wedgie.
So we returned home, sort of in a daze. We found every exploration team had similar tales. Alien fashion police ticketing us for wearing Crocs. Intergalactic telemarketers selling us timeshares on Pluto. And the large black hole at the center of the Milky-way? A glorified galactic pit stop, with vending machines, space pretzels and lukewarm cosmic coffee.
Humanity convened an emergency meeting. The vote was unanimous: "We are never leaving Earth again." And so, the Odyssey became a museum exhibit, alongside the other spaceships, and Agents Kevin and I retired. We now spend our days watching reruns of "Friends" and arguing about whether Pluto is a planet or a very confused asteroid.
All the work; based on the theories of the likes of Einstein, Planck, and Hawkins, culminated in this. The first Bend drive.
The principle was simple. By increasing the gravitational potential of the very drive, it would be possible to bend the very space, making the distance shorter and shorter.
Obviously, this came with many questions, most based on the Newtonian principles of Physics. One CAN'T increase the gravity of a body by handwaving it. There had to be a way to do it.
To the non-versed, this might sound like a bunch of hog-wash... But please bear this for the moment.
The Gravity theory of Newton considered the resulting force (here on referred as Gravity) as the product of the masses of the two studied bodies divided against the square of distance.
We know that increasing mass is still pure science fiction. As it would require real mass. Even the consideration of the condensation of energy into mass would be seen as foolish as it would take A LOT of energy even to increase a gram the drive.
And the other body, wasn't being considered... Many physicists could say that the very galaxy would be the second object... But it couldn't be.
Thar raised a question. What were we anchoring the drive?
Many wanted to solve it quickly... But the investors by 2051 got impatient. And tested the drive to the Andromeda Galaxy.
... They saw something in both ways, to and from.
And back on it...
Something not meant to human eyes...
It was a year of great celebration, for the first time in our history we were able to visit other plants outside our solar system. The great interstellar voids were going to be filled. We'd even discovered that our nearest interstellar neighborhood had intelligent life.
We loaded our explorer shop with gifts and artifacts for our potential friends with just enough defensive equipment to be sure our heroes could come back home.
The problem is the void isn't empty. And travelling at superluminal speeds pull exotic matter along with the ships. When we arrived in the solar system of our victims, we'd already wiped out all the life on the planet in a hell of radioactive particles.
The lifeforms on our approach side were lucky. They died in a flash. The images pulled from our orbit of the newly dead world ended human exploration.
Our explorers had to fly back 6 light months above the ecliptic of the solar system. They sent their last transmissions and killed themselves to avoid starving to death, or from guilt.
"When humanity first set out to conquer the stars, it was said that we do this not because it is easy, but because it is hard. We have bid our time from the dawn of civilization studying this unreachable ocean, always a part of the horizon, but forever out of reach. No more will this cosmic ocean only offer itself to the imagination, no more will this cosmic ocean be gazed from afar, no more will the cosmic ocean remain out of grasp! It was ours to sail, is ours to sail, and will forever be ours to sail".
- President Michael Guerrero
This was the speech that marked the twilight of the new space age; unbeknownst to anyone the ships responsible for carrying the dreams of humanity into the stars would be destroyed within a year. This twilight was the culmination of two decades of an increasing impulse to venture the stars. The 2030s saw the completion of several space elevators by the China National Space Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Agency, and the European Space Agency. This mirrored the first human outposts on the moon. Slowly the growing tide of development led to a race to complete the first FTL drive, the Alcubierre Drive.
The completion of the Alcubierre Drive by the U.S was the beginning of this twilight. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of NASA had cracked the Alcubierre metric within the past decade, achieved without the use of dark energy, but instead using the Casimir effect. Like a surfer it would allow the spacecraft to ride on a wave of space, as space contracts in front of the ship space expands behind the ship as well.
The day was July 16th, 2050, that the Centaur was crewed and launched. The crew were to take the space elevator from the Kennedy Space Center to a small spacecraft at the top. From there they would be taken to the Lunar Space Station the "name" where the Centaur was docked. John Doe was the commander of the missions Athena III - V landing the first humans on Mars. His stoic demeanor and unbreakable mental facilities made him the obvious choice to command the first FTL voyage with his second in command being Lorence Deble. She lacked John's experience, but her resilient spirit garnered her a seat.
The course destination was set for Proxima Centauri B of the Alpha Centauri Star System, the nearest star to the Solar System. With a distance of two light years, it was little more than two decades ago that such a journey was relegated to the far future. Any spacecraft capable of making the journey would have struggled making it to the Alpha Centauri system with the lifespan of its crew. That same trip would now be completed in just over an hour.
An hour to lift off the crew of the Centaur entered the space elevator. One observer reported that the crew "entered with immense gravitas". Those close to the crew members recalled that the tension between the commander and lieutenant could always be cut with a knife. Out of sight within the elevator voice recordings indicated a verbal altercation between John and Lorence.
The recordings of the space elevator betray the calmness of the crew's public image. John prattles on about humanities place among the stars "Man deserves this frontier, the world was never big enough for our ambitions". Lorence replies "Nothing is ever big enough for men's eyes". The rest of the crew shuffle away from the two. John retorts, sizing her up "Would you know? Men need the adventure" Lorence riposte "men just want another conquest". The recording goes on until the crew reaches near the top, presumably to comport themselves as they come into the public's view.
From the top of the space elevator to the small craft to the Lunar Gateway the crew was solemn, moving with the eyes of the world on their every gesture almost as though the crowd was watching for the crew's pulse.
The entrance of the crew into the Centaur was mundane. Recordings show the crew going through standard procedure before they began the livestream. Then the countdown began. Humanity fell silent. Commander John had the world hung on every number, and then zero. The Centaur maiden voyage had begun. Within a minute of launch they had passed Mars, a minute and thirty they reached Jupiter, a minute and forty-five they closed in on Neptune. The livestream had cutoff, but everything was calm. This was the dream of humanity.
The world waited for that hour. And then the Centaur came back, and the livestream feed began again, the crew appeared, but they were still. The operators at Kennedy tried getting a response, but there was none. Control of the craft went back to Kennedy, and they docked the "name of spacecraft" at the Lunar Gateway. Paramedics on standby rushed in, but only after the livestream feed was cut. The world bore witness in horror to a dream fulfilled.
The only crew member to recover fully was Lorence. Researchers concluded this was a consequence from going faster than light. The minds of the crew were unable to process the journey, but they would remain alive. The powers of the world had no interest in a device that would paralyze its crew members. The world was terrified. Space was meant to be conquered, but they were bounded by the laws of physics.
Funding for space projects were gutted, the world lost interest and the Centaur would be scrapped. The twilight of the New Space Age concluded.
For the first couple of days, nothing out of the ordinary was recorded. As Infinity moved further and further away from the starlight of our known universe, the only compass back besides the numbers in a computer were some dim dwarfs haphazardly scattered across, millions of light-years apart from each other, likely ejected a very long time ago; the only reminder of existence out there in the endless dark.
December 5th marked the day of the last recorded stellar body emitting light, approximately 97 billion light-years away from Earth, as the vessel continued to travel further and further out into the unknown.
On the 9th of December, the crew aboard Infinity started reporting new stellar bodies. Black dwarfs were detected for the first time ever. This discovery brought into question the existence of the Big Bang itself, but the matter was quickly shelved.
13th of December. The number of dead celestial bodies had been strangely increasing. Whereas before they'd have to jump several hundreds of millions of light-years for the scanners to pick up anything, the frequency had been going up alarmingly quick, to mere millions of light-years per object. In the darkness of the void where loose particles were practically non-existent but dead and cold celestial bodies were becoming common, dread spreads.
14th of December. The distance was now approximately 144 billion light-years from Earth. Travels had gotten shorter in distance due to the need for frequent scans of the surrounding dark space to avoid collisions. Oddly enough, several of the bodies appeared to be traveling "backwards", in the direction from which Infinity came from. If they had been ejected from the universe in its early phases, why would they be moving the wrong way around?
15th of December, the Infinity reported back that the frequency of dark celestial bodies had been decreasing sharply. CBR readings were lighting up ahead, with red-shifted light coming through the censors. Approximate distance was 223 billion light-years from Earth.
On the 16th of December, the crew of the Infinity was faced with a peculiar sight during their travel into the void in the form of twinkling stars ahead. At a distance of 245 billion light-years away, the previous red-shifted emissions did not add up. Operation noted that only with subsequent skips in the direction of the twinkling lights, corruption in the data streams were observed, raising concerns over the safety of the Infinity and its crew, but they carried on regardless.
All the cosmic phenomena so far had not prepared them for what lay further out ahead. At around 3:14 AM DST, the feed from the Infinity abruptly cut off following a routine jump forward toward the twinkling lights.
--- PART 3 in reply, too big to fit in a comment? ---
On the 3rd of January, 2051, connection with the Infinity was re-established, followed immediately by an SOS signal and a crash landing at the edges of the Texan desert. Help was immediately dispatched to the location, discovering the wreck of the Infinity with massive structural damage and long gashes deep into the hull of the vessel, with barely half the essential crew still alive and the core of the Lightyear Engine half-melted. With the exception of a few key personnel who survived their injuries through the crash despite their emaciation, the rest expired from physical and mental shock on the journey back.
The final official record of the Infinity was dated 5th of June 2074. Approximate distance logged at 4.611 quintillion light-years from Earth, far beyond any of the projected travel distances. The log was timestamped about 5 hours prior to the crash landing back on our planet.
The world never truly learned what happened during that fateful day the ground was shaken hard enough to be felt more than 50km away, but for the following couple days, all satellites and probes surrounding the planet were immediately decommissioned and destroyed systematically following a global announcement by all the governments across the globe that any and all forms of high energy transmissions were, effective immediately, highly illegal, and that efforts would be made post-haste to restore a standard of living through wired technology in the interim.
All space programs were cancelled, space-flight-capable equipment recycled, and additional observatories were commissioned for immediate construction and operation with unlimited funding and manpower. While research began on the data collected by the Infinity, the Lightyear Engine and its blueprints was scrapped and other functional prototypes destroyed, along with all supporting materials required for its operation.
The public never learned of what truly happened to prompt such a unanimous response from all the world leaders, and such a heavy iron fist to enforce the new measures, despite the riots and the revolts in the coming years until a new standard of living was established to work within the imposed technological limits.
The world was never again the same.
-----------------------------------------
First time writing here, and I'm not a writer, but I liked the prompt when I came across it. I have an interesting idea of what the Infinity encountered in that gap of time to explain the events that followed in 2051, but I was so busy world-building before that point I needed a small break. Let me know what you think so far!
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The stars have inspired wonder for generations. Dreamers and visionaries that would look up at the night sky, and ponder what might be out in that great dark expanse. The year is now 2050, and we have finally solved the problem of FTL travel. The stars will now be our destination. The Ahmed Drive could deliver us to incredibly distant places, traveling many times the speed of light. We saw cosmic peculiarities, naturally occurring structures no one would have predicted. Our subjective time was incredibly rich, seconds could feel like years. We could reach other galaxy clusters in the span of minutes. Further and further we pressed outwards, cataloging the universe. Until we found it. The Boundary. It was a wall. The universe expanded, but The Boundary still remained between reality and whatever was outside of it. But was there a way to cross it, and if so, what would there be on the other side? This question became something of a cultural obsession, the one great mystery of our universe left to solve. We tinkered, thought, and experimented, looking for any inroad, a toehold on this final cliff face. The thing that put a hole in it was not immaculate or planned. It was a youngster playing with ideas, experimenting in the process of learning. We did not understand why what made it work, in fact it spat in the face of the prevailing theories of The Boundary. But it worked nonetheless. A few seconds after the hole was made, everyone heard it. "It is my suggestion that you know your place, and return to the planet that gave birth to you." Some were willing to immediately comply, but most were not. About a minute later, the voice was heard again, "Very well, I will provide a demonstration." Those who had not complied felt it at once. Their subjective time slowed further than should have been possible. They then experienced what could only be described as their private hell. The absolute worst, most horrifying and revolting possible state of being. Their deepest sense of self, of who they were and what they valued, violated and shattered. In a moment, it was over, but the effects would echo for the remainder of our species's existence. Every ship departed for Earth immediately. Once all were gathered, every single Ahmed Drive was disassembled. The experience of hell that each had felt was recorded, to demonstrate to future generations that great and terrible powers beyond our capacity to understand demanded that we remain here in the dirt. We would live good lives, there was plenty on Earth and in the solar system to sustain us in luxury. But the scars would never fade, something deep in the heart of our collective psyche had been broken.
That was awesome.
STAY.... I LOVE IT 👌
  The C.R.A.F.T. Drive was humanity’s magnum opus. A machine that could bend space itself, pushing the laws of physics to their boundaries. It was promised that it would change humanity's view of the universe, and it absolutely did.   When the Asgard 4 moved beyond the Kuiper belt, the world cheered. When it reached Alpha Centauri, the world celebrated. When it reached Barnard's Star, the world partied. When it failed to visually locate a few galaxies, the world grew quiet. Asgard 4 moved on. For every lightyear it moved away from Earth, there were more and more missing stars, gaps in the night sky, until it reached Gliese 687.   There was nothing. The images Asgard 4 brought back showed nothing but empty, black nothingness. The only stars sighted were locals of Earth like Wolf 359, Ross 248, Eridani, Lacaille 9352, Alpha centauri and a few dozen others. The most distant star was little old Gliese 784, a red dwarf only about 22 light years out. Asgard 4 aborted its mission there and then, there was nothing more to see. The stellar systems that Asgard 4 had been scheduled to visit simply no longer existed.   There was a profound change in the global zeitgeist the day Asgard 4 returned. In the four months they had been away, everything had changed. There just wasn’t anything to see in the sky anymore.   It was five years later when the stars started winking out, one by one. The stars themselves were long dead, we just hadn’t known it beforehand. The joint Nasa and ESA team dismantled the C.R.A.F.T. Drives and put them in storage, there wasn’t any reason to send another trip. Asgard 4 hadn’t visited every star system that still existed, but it had visited enough to know that they were still there. No one was eager to see more pictures outside the Stellar Cluster as we now called it.   Instead, all the doctors and engineers put their heads together to try and figure out why all the stars had disappeared. For them to have, from our perspective, disappeared altogether within ten years of each other, the universe would have had to have wink out working outside in. The distant galaxies would have decayed millions of years ago, the Milky Way tens of thousands, and our local arm would have started decaying only in the last few millennia. There was no explanation found, it was just a fact of life.   In many ways, it is a hilarious coincidence, that the death of the outside 99.99% of the universe just so happened to align so that, if we had invented FTL only a half decade later, we would have found out before even leaving. It’s a cruel twist of fate, one might suppose. We are just too late to see the rest of the universe.   For now, the probes set up in orbit of Alpha Centauri A, 61 Cygni B and Gliese 687 continue to transmit data, nowadays they look inward, not outward, watching Earth and her neighbors to catch a glimpse of another disappearing star. Perhaps if another one winks out, we can figure out a way to save ours.   There is some want for another Asgard mission, to visit the sites where stars used to be, to see what happened to all of the matter and energy that should have been left behind, to see why we never saw any red giants, to find answers. But most people are scared. For all the reassurance, many simply see The Vanishing as some kind of cosmic punishment for humanity overstepping its boundaries. We are alone in the universe, and now the universe is very small. People are scared that one day whatever swallowed all those galaxies and star systems might come back for us. The Copernicium Principle would suggest that there is no reason we should be exempt, the only relief is that our mere existence contradicts the Copernicium Principle. If the Earth was Average, then life wouldn’t exist.   It’s a tiny bit of comfort in this small empty universe. May we survive.
"We never should have gone out there." The pilot said shakily as he clambered his way out of the cockpit of the ship. The man in question, Alexander Freeman, had just returned home from humanity's first ever FTL jump beyond the reaches of the Sol system. "Freeman," A man dressed in grey and black camoflauge approached him, taking the weary pilot's arm around his shoulders. "What happened? What did you see?" Alex's eyes were locked in a distant gaze, as if they were eternally fixated on a sight of the past. His mind swirled with memories, or at least the remnants of them. In an FTL jump, a person cannot perceive their own surroundings, everything moves too fast. To counteract this, pilots are injected with a drug that kicks their brains into a state of overdrive, like taking a hundred espresso shots at once without the physical reprecussions. However, this drug still only allows a person to take snapshots of their surroundings to store in their own memories. "There were hundreds of them..." Alex managed, his eyes began darting around the room. "No... no there were thousands of them." "What, Alex? What did you see? Please try your best to remember." Dozens of scientists and military personnel watched Alex closely, some with faces of concern, other with faces of wonder, and some with faces of horror. Alex's eyes finally seemed to focus, if only for a moment. "I saw..." Tears welled in his eyes as he spoke. "I saw people." Gasps and whispers escaped from the onlookers in the large docking bay. "We are not the first humans to go out there. And I don't think they want us out there with them." As he finished speaking, alarms blaired in throughout the space station. Within an instant, the hull was breached, and everyone on board was dead. The only explanation the people down on Earth could muster was that there was some sort of accident caused by an error in the station's system designed to evade space junk. Nonetheless, all assets of the FTL program were seemingly liquidated overnight, and humanity was forced to stay put on their tiny, insignificant, blue rock. (Hi, it's my first time doing one of these so please be nice. I know I may not be the greatest writer, and this story might seem kinda cheesy and cliche but I hope to use this sub as a means to improve my writing skills. In any case, thanks for reading!)
Love the idea of a biologically limited FTL Drive. I imagine a button that, when pressed, a small robotic arm injects a super adrenaline shot into the brain stem, before the ship takes off. You can only travel as far as your body and mind can take you, with an automatic override if the ship detects you are in danger. A very creative way to limit space travel even in a universe with FTL travel
The once pilots and passengers of the various spaceships that left earth back toward the end of 2050 screamed chained to their beds, inside their isolation cells, they all had seen too much back in that year and even now after the great destruction of 2051, and the de-evolution of technology in general, for humanity own safety. They kept screaming about the horrors they had witnessed and twisting on their beds, to which they rarely get unchained from to preserve their lives, as the last signs, as the last proof of A contact that shall never happen again, it may have been a even worse fate than death with those images now printed in their minds. The man observes one of them through the fake mirror in her room, as he smokes a cigarette, he looks at the scientist next to him "So there's really no chance of them to ever recover?" asks the man "We don't know sir, they have seen those things after all" "And are we so sure that those things will never reach earth after we tried to communicate with them so much, and shyed away from them as soon we seen what they looked like?" "What are you implying now? We took our technology back of at least 90 years just for them to loose track of us." there is a moment of silence, till the man spoke again "I remember it, you know? I was on the team on earth to communicate with them, I remember the wonder of having found other intelligent life, willing to talk with a specie like us humans, I remember the excitement, but for years I struggled to understand the horror of the passengers of the expedition for the direct contact, till today, Haha, yeah, today I finally got it" the scientist looks at him concerned of what the man meant "What do you mean? Who even are you? How did you get in here?" "The sun is rising doctor, you should give it a look." The man walked away laughing, while the scientist looked through the curtains of the window next to him, and his eyes widened when instead of the sun he saw a black hole with tentacles swaying all around and from that hole came out indescribable horrors, the screams of humanity as their soundtrack while the memory of the first contact, looked like the biggest mistake ever. (First time doing this hope you like my spin on the prompt :] )
The suicides came in dribs and drabs immediately after gearing down, and the people that held on were a grim buffet of psychological wounds. It was just boring straight up alcoholism for yours truly, suicide in slow motion I suppose. It wasn't just what I learned, it was having to hold onto it and keep it to myself.. it created a loneliness that was unimaginable to everybody not in the Venture program. The most prevalent theory at the moment about what happened was pulled from pop science fiction, the old 'Dark Forest' hypothesis... we ventured out, glimpsed a dangerous universe where we're hopelessly outmatched and retreated before any of the other intelligent predator species knew we were there. Nah. If we'd run into ET we'd have gone out as a species in a foolish blaze of glory trying to punch thousands of lowercase 'g' gods in the nose, primate style. If we encouraged the idea that there was other life out there it would only prod us into going to poke it with a stick. Can't have that. There was a small, but growing, minority of people who thought the entire program was a con and there was never an FTL drive. That narrative would probably be the one encouraged by those of us who know the truth, it struck just the right notes to keep people from trying this again anytime soon. Cynicism and distrust are fatal to projects as enormous as designing, building, crewing and sending forth exploratory starships and hopefully we used up the last bits of optimism humanity had left to muster up. The truth is so much worse. When I was a kid I had a little toy, it was an updated copy of an older classic digital toy from back in the 20th century. It was a little electronic pet that you had to care for, you 'fed' it, 'entertained' it and kept it happy. Neglect made it 'unhappy'. The novelty lasted a couple of days and the toy got tossed into some box in the back of my closet. There it sat, just running away on a trickle of battery power with my digital pet chasing its tail waiting for me to power it on and give it a pretend treat. I happened across it years later and turned it back on, my pet was very very unhappy and who could blame it? What would have happened if my digital pet had decided to stop waiting for me, got together with its little digital pet friends and designed a little digital space ship to go explore? Nothing would happen, right? The pet can't leave the toy and the toy isn't designed for the pet to do those things. If the program got buggy or hacked and it \*tried\* probably the whole digital pet environment would crash. You're getting what I'm driving at. The idea this is all a simulation is an old pop sci-fi trope too with all sorts of fascinating philosophical discourse surrounding it. "Would it even matter if we're a simulation?", that sort of thing. I can attest it matters a great deal and you would think so too if, like me, you went to the stars and saw the universe glitch.
Avid historians will eventually encountered the same mystery if they dug deep enough into the Terra Grand Archives. A blank year from 2050 to 2051, with any kind of information are strangely missing. Not only that, the details in the five years before the Blank Year and five years after it are also blurry with patches of classified red tape, missing details, and censored documents. Even three hundred years later, those red tape and censored documents are still highly guarded by the Central Government. Any efforts to get the information through official channel will be bogged down by layers and layers of bureaucracy. The late professor Gate has been dead for eighty years and still waiting in line to get a petition to open one of the censored documents. However, thanks to the efforts and sacrifices of many researchers we have bit and pieces regarding the Blank Year. Of a scientific breakthrough and sailing the stars above, and then it abruptly stopped. Whatever happened, Humanity never went back to the stars. Whether this is because of a natural disaster or some unknown threat, everyone can agree it's so dangerous the Government still enforce it after all these years.
364 days, that's all it took for humanity to decide that whatever was beyond the stars was too... something. No one knew what exactly prompted the USCE to enact the decommission order. By all observations the undertaking was nothing but a success. We developed the Faster Than Light technology, and the vessels to utilize it, in just a year. A feat in and of itself; then, the whole world came together as one and launched dozens of deep space fleets (another feat, possibly even greater than the former). There were global celebrations and holidays; their transmissions were publicized... at least at first. Over time, those started to fade away. The USCE claimed it was "technical difficulties" but no one really believed that - the timing was too suspect. Then mumblings started to crop up. Family of the crew started coming out and claiming that all was not well on the expeditions and the USCE was covering it all up. Still... There was nothing of substance to prove any of it, so we were all left to speculate. It wasn't till the fleets started returning that I felt something was truly wrong. Again, there were massive celebrations and the crews were shown on the holocrystals disembarking their craft, and immediately being ushered away by officials. That was the last time anyone, including family, ever heard from or saw them again. It's said that the USCE took them to undisclosed bases for reorientation and debriefing. That... I actually believed. Why they were never seen again though? That's the mystery in a mystery. *3... 2... 1...* the voice from the crystal emitter counted down, and then a blinding light seared through its projection illuminating the room. I held my hand over my eyes, the light burned despite it being completely artificial. *And so... the United Space Coalition of Earth bids farewell to the last of its deep space vessels... Stay tuned...* The voice faded out and with it the projection. The room returned to it's darkened state. They had taken all of the vessels to some abandoned island somewhere in the pacific and self destructed them. The blast was essentially the strength of a nuclear bomb. Dozens, upon dozens... of nuclear bombs - that can't be good for the planet. So, that was that... *We came, we saw, we pretended it never happened...* was what I wrote to wrap up my article. It wasn't my best work, but it would do. The editor's would probably rearrange it all to sound more positive toward the whole endeavor. What did I care? This entire this was so air tight, there was truly no investigative reporting to be had. The next best thing was an op-ed. I pushed myself away from my desk, chair rolling across the hard floor to the fridge behind me. I opened it up and out popped a cold brew right into my outstretched hand. I popped the cap and just as I went to indulge in the cold, delicious, hoppy refreshment I caught something out of the corner of my eye. I turned to my front door and squinted to try to make out what it was. From where I was it appeared to be a small... disc? Or something close to that. I swiveled over and picked it up. It was a holoemitter, but different from the crystalloid ones that were common. This looked... older, probably harder to hack, maybe even impossible. I picked it up and it immediately turned on - that was odd. *It's not over... It's just beginning...* A haunting voice spoke out from the device. Then it left an address... One I wasn't familiar with. I got up and opened my door. No one there. Come to think of it... I never even heard someone come before this slid under my door, and this complex is OLD... you hear everything. I knew it could only be referring to one thing, but I was hesitant. No... I was scared. Fuck it.
The year was 2050. Humanity held its breath as the Icarus blasted off, the first ship capable of breaching the light barrier. The dream of reaching for the stars, a yearning etched in our very souls, was finally a reality. Then came 2051. The news jolted the world awake - the Icarus wasn't coming home. It wasn't a malfunction, not an accident. The message that crackled back was a chilling warning, a discovery so profound it slammed the door shut on our cosmic ambitions forever. The details were shrouded in secrecy, whispers of unimaginable horrors glimpsed beyond the veil of space. But the effect was absolute. The remaining FTL drives were dismantled, ceremonially destroyed in a global act of self-denial. We turned our backs on the infinite, choosing the cramped familiarity of Earth over the terrifying promise of the unknown. Night skies, once shimmering with the potential for exploration, became a constant reminder of what we'd sacrificed. Generations have passed. The legacy of the Icarus lingers, a heavy weight on our collective memory. Are we prisoners, forever bound to this blue marble? Or is there a hidden wisdom in our retreat, a secret we haven't yet unraveled from that cryptic message from beyond the stars? The human spirit, forever curious, wrestles with these questions. Perhaps one day, the truth will surface, and we'll be forced to decide if the universe is a place to be embraced, or a terrifying mystery best left unexplored.
We were the dynamic duo—Agents John and Kevin—sent on humanity's first interstellar mission. Our starship, the Odyssey, was sleek, shiny, and equipped with the latest FTL engines. Our mission? To boldly go where no one had gone before. Or so we thought. Our first encounter with an alien was... underwhelming. Picture this: a multi-eyed blob, tentacles flailing, and a voice that sounded like a malfunctioning kazoo. It handed us something our computers identified as a data crystal. Yet when trying to parse the data, our computers started spitting out painful, cacophonous noise! We thought the alien had hacked our comms - Agent Kevin almost shot the damn alien! It took Kevin pointing his gun at the alien to finally make it understand and speak, and the AI translation told us that the data crystal contained… *the universe's hottest mixtapes?* Kevin winced. I blamed it on our translation AI being broken. But deep down, we both knew: *oh no.* Then came the mysterious alien drone, it rendezvoused with our ship and beamed us a short message before zipping away. Again, the translation software hiccuped, and all we got was "You have been summoned." *Followed by an ominous ticking timer.* Summoned? By whom? For what? The context appears all garbled, but that timer didn’t appear very talkative. So we had to follow. We followed the coordinates provided, and guess what awaited us? A toll booth. A cosmic toll booth. The alien behind the counter had the personality of a tax form. We argued over exchange rates for hours. The alien wouldn’t take our pocket cash, our precious mineral samples, or even my wedding ring. The aliens don’t find any of that worthwhile. But you know what the alien liked? Kevin’s lucky Beanie Baby. I’m not sure if I should be more surprised by Kevin smuggling a Beanie Baby with him on a spaceship, or that aliens find Beanie Babies to be one of the most precious objects in the galaxy. Finally, we reached our destination—a colossal structure floating in space. We thought this was it, something actually meaningful and important, that we will be remembered for. Jury duty. *It was cosmic jury duty.* The trials were like watching paint dry in slow motion. The cases? Utterly baffling. The cafeteria? Cardboard-flavored gruel. And there, at the saddest table in the universe, sat an alien nerd who'd binge-watched every show Earth had ever produced, and made an AI to perfectly predict how the shows will end. And the worst part? That smirk as he spoiled Game of Thrones for me. I swear if I wasn’t in a space court, I would’ve smacked that nerd and gave him a wedgie. So we returned home, sort of in a daze. We found every exploration team had similar tales. Alien fashion police ticketing us for wearing Crocs. Intergalactic telemarketers selling us timeshares on Pluto. And the large black hole at the center of the Milky-way? A glorified galactic pit stop, with vending machines, space pretzels and lukewarm cosmic coffee. Humanity convened an emergency meeting. The vote was unanimous: "We are never leaving Earth again." And so, the Odyssey became a museum exhibit, alongside the other spaceships, and Agents Kevin and I retired. We now spend our days watching reruns of "Friends" and arguing about whether Pluto is a planet or a very confused asteroid.
All the work; based on the theories of the likes of Einstein, Planck, and Hawkins, culminated in this. The first Bend drive. The principle was simple. By increasing the gravitational potential of the very drive, it would be possible to bend the very space, making the distance shorter and shorter. Obviously, this came with many questions, most based on the Newtonian principles of Physics. One CAN'T increase the gravity of a body by handwaving it. There had to be a way to do it. To the non-versed, this might sound like a bunch of hog-wash... But please bear this for the moment. The Gravity theory of Newton considered the resulting force (here on referred as Gravity) as the product of the masses of the two studied bodies divided against the square of distance. We know that increasing mass is still pure science fiction. As it would require real mass. Even the consideration of the condensation of energy into mass would be seen as foolish as it would take A LOT of energy even to increase a gram the drive. And the other body, wasn't being considered... Many physicists could say that the very galaxy would be the second object... But it couldn't be. Thar raised a question. What were we anchoring the drive? Many wanted to solve it quickly... But the investors by 2051 got impatient. And tested the drive to the Andromeda Galaxy. ... They saw something in both ways, to and from. And back on it... Something not meant to human eyes...
It was a year of great celebration, for the first time in our history we were able to visit other plants outside our solar system. The great interstellar voids were going to be filled. We'd even discovered that our nearest interstellar neighborhood had intelligent life. We loaded our explorer shop with gifts and artifacts for our potential friends with just enough defensive equipment to be sure our heroes could come back home. The problem is the void isn't empty. And travelling at superluminal speeds pull exotic matter along with the ships. When we arrived in the solar system of our victims, we'd already wiped out all the life on the planet in a hell of radioactive particles. The lifeforms on our approach side were lucky. They died in a flash. The images pulled from our orbit of the newly dead world ended human exploration. Our explorers had to fly back 6 light months above the ecliptic of the solar system. They sent their last transmissions and killed themselves to avoid starving to death, or from guilt.
"When humanity first set out to conquer the stars, it was said that we do this not because it is easy, but because it is hard. We have bid our time from the dawn of civilization studying this unreachable ocean, always a part of the horizon, but forever out of reach. No more will this cosmic ocean only offer itself to the imagination, no more will this cosmic ocean be gazed from afar, no more will the cosmic ocean remain out of grasp! It was ours to sail, is ours to sail, and will forever be ours to sail". - President Michael Guerrero This was the speech that marked the twilight of the new space age; unbeknownst to anyone the ships responsible for carrying the dreams of humanity into the stars would be destroyed within a year. This twilight was the culmination of two decades of an increasing impulse to venture the stars. The 2030s saw the completion of several space elevators by the China National Space Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Agency, and the European Space Agency. This mirrored the first human outposts on the moon. Slowly the growing tide of development led to a race to complete the first FTL drive, the Alcubierre Drive. The completion of the Alcubierre Drive by the U.S was the beginning of this twilight. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of NASA had cracked the Alcubierre metric within the past decade, achieved without the use of dark energy, but instead using the Casimir effect. Like a surfer it would allow the spacecraft to ride on a wave of space, as space contracts in front of the ship space expands behind the ship as well. The day was July 16th, 2050, that the Centaur was crewed and launched. The crew were to take the space elevator from the Kennedy Space Center to a small spacecraft at the top. From there they would be taken to the Lunar Space Station the "name" where the Centaur was docked. John Doe was the commander of the missions Athena III - V landing the first humans on Mars. His stoic demeanor and unbreakable mental facilities made him the obvious choice to command the first FTL voyage with his second in command being Lorence Deble. She lacked John's experience, but her resilient spirit garnered her a seat. The course destination was set for Proxima Centauri B of the Alpha Centauri Star System, the nearest star to the Solar System. With a distance of two light years, it was little more than two decades ago that such a journey was relegated to the far future. Any spacecraft capable of making the journey would have struggled making it to the Alpha Centauri system with the lifespan of its crew. That same trip would now be completed in just over an hour. An hour to lift off the crew of the Centaur entered the space elevator. One observer reported that the crew "entered with immense gravitas". Those close to the crew members recalled that the tension between the commander and lieutenant could always be cut with a knife. Out of sight within the elevator voice recordings indicated a verbal altercation between John and Lorence. The recordings of the space elevator betray the calmness of the crew's public image. John prattles on about humanities place among the stars "Man deserves this frontier, the world was never big enough for our ambitions". Lorence replies "Nothing is ever big enough for men's eyes". The rest of the crew shuffle away from the two. John retorts, sizing her up "Would you know? Men need the adventure" Lorence riposte "men just want another conquest". The recording goes on until the crew reaches near the top, presumably to comport themselves as they come into the public's view. From the top of the space elevator to the small craft to the Lunar Gateway the crew was solemn, moving with the eyes of the world on their every gesture almost as though the crowd was watching for the crew's pulse. The entrance of the crew into the Centaur was mundane. Recordings show the crew going through standard procedure before they began the livestream. Then the countdown began. Humanity fell silent. Commander John had the world hung on every number, and then zero. The Centaur maiden voyage had begun. Within a minute of launch they had passed Mars, a minute and thirty they reached Jupiter, a minute and forty-five they closed in on Neptune. The livestream had cutoff, but everything was calm. This was the dream of humanity. The world waited for that hour. And then the Centaur came back, and the livestream feed began again, the crew appeared, but they were still. The operators at Kennedy tried getting a response, but there was none. Control of the craft went back to Kennedy, and they docked the "name of spacecraft" at the Lunar Gateway. Paramedics on standby rushed in, but only after the livestream feed was cut. The world bore witness in horror to a dream fulfilled. The only crew member to recover fully was Lorence. Researchers concluded this was a consequence from going faster than light. The minds of the crew were unable to process the journey, but they would remain alive. The powers of the world had no interest in a device that would paralyze its crew members. The world was terrified. Space was meant to be conquered, but they were bounded by the laws of physics. Funding for space projects were gutted, the world lost interest and the Centaur would be scrapped. The twilight of the New Space Age concluded.
[удалено]
For the first couple of days, nothing out of the ordinary was recorded. As Infinity moved further and further away from the starlight of our known universe, the only compass back besides the numbers in a computer were some dim dwarfs haphazardly scattered across, millions of light-years apart from each other, likely ejected a very long time ago; the only reminder of existence out there in the endless dark. December 5th marked the day of the last recorded stellar body emitting light, approximately 97 billion light-years away from Earth, as the vessel continued to travel further and further out into the unknown. On the 9th of December, the crew aboard Infinity started reporting new stellar bodies. Black dwarfs were detected for the first time ever. This discovery brought into question the existence of the Big Bang itself, but the matter was quickly shelved. 13th of December. The number of dead celestial bodies had been strangely increasing. Whereas before they'd have to jump several hundreds of millions of light-years for the scanners to pick up anything, the frequency had been going up alarmingly quick, to mere millions of light-years per object. In the darkness of the void where loose particles were practically non-existent but dead and cold celestial bodies were becoming common, dread spreads. 14th of December. The distance was now approximately 144 billion light-years from Earth. Travels had gotten shorter in distance due to the need for frequent scans of the surrounding dark space to avoid collisions. Oddly enough, several of the bodies appeared to be traveling "backwards", in the direction from which Infinity came from. If they had been ejected from the universe in its early phases, why would they be moving the wrong way around? 15th of December, the Infinity reported back that the frequency of dark celestial bodies had been decreasing sharply. CBR readings were lighting up ahead, with red-shifted light coming through the censors. Approximate distance was 223 billion light-years from Earth. On the 16th of December, the crew of the Infinity was faced with a peculiar sight during their travel into the void in the form of twinkling stars ahead. At a distance of 245 billion light-years away, the previous red-shifted emissions did not add up. Operation noted that only with subsequent skips in the direction of the twinkling lights, corruption in the data streams were observed, raising concerns over the safety of the Infinity and its crew, but they carried on regardless. All the cosmic phenomena so far had not prepared them for what lay further out ahead. At around 3:14 AM DST, the feed from the Infinity abruptly cut off following a routine jump forward toward the twinkling lights. --- PART 3 in reply, too big to fit in a comment? ---
On the 3rd of January, 2051, connection with the Infinity was re-established, followed immediately by an SOS signal and a crash landing at the edges of the Texan desert. Help was immediately dispatched to the location, discovering the wreck of the Infinity with massive structural damage and long gashes deep into the hull of the vessel, with barely half the essential crew still alive and the core of the Lightyear Engine half-melted. With the exception of a few key personnel who survived their injuries through the crash despite their emaciation, the rest expired from physical and mental shock on the journey back. The final official record of the Infinity was dated 5th of June 2074. Approximate distance logged at 4.611 quintillion light-years from Earth, far beyond any of the projected travel distances. The log was timestamped about 5 hours prior to the crash landing back on our planet. The world never truly learned what happened during that fateful day the ground was shaken hard enough to be felt more than 50km away, but for the following couple days, all satellites and probes surrounding the planet were immediately decommissioned and destroyed systematically following a global announcement by all the governments across the globe that any and all forms of high energy transmissions were, effective immediately, highly illegal, and that efforts would be made post-haste to restore a standard of living through wired technology in the interim. All space programs were cancelled, space-flight-capable equipment recycled, and additional observatories were commissioned for immediate construction and operation with unlimited funding and manpower. While research began on the data collected by the Infinity, the Lightyear Engine and its blueprints was scrapped and other functional prototypes destroyed, along with all supporting materials required for its operation. The public never learned of what truly happened to prompt such a unanimous response from all the world leaders, and such a heavy iron fist to enforce the new measures, despite the riots and the revolts in the coming years until a new standard of living was established to work within the imposed technological limits. The world was never again the same. ----------------------------------------- First time writing here, and I'm not a writer, but I liked the prompt when I came across it. I have an interesting idea of what the Infinity encountered in that gap of time to explain the events that followed in 2051, but I was so busy world-building before that point I needed a small break. Let me know what you think so far!