space rocks

“I’d tell you to sit down, but just tie yourself down, Charlie.   A little more than eight months ago the Russians picked up on a massive meteorite making its way towards earth.  What we didn’t know at that time was that it wasn’t just one meteorite.  Our best guess is that an interstellar space rock hit a dwarf planet, the satellite images show it’s constituted of some kind of metal.  The rock smashed into the dwarf planet with a force so great that it broke into sister meteorites.” Professor Jane opens a document and shows you on the screen the path that the meteorites will follow.  “It will hit in two months’ time, no doubt about it.  By the time the Russians spotted it, it already travelled into our solar system.” 

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 “It will destroy everything,” you say as you start to feel dizzy again but courage and purpose flames through your veins.  “They didn’t read all my research, did they?”

 

“They did.  They just chose to ignore the part where biological life probably won’t survive when travelling faster than light.  Now, listen, kid, I know you’re smarter than a lot of us here.  But we have to try and make this work, or there won’t be any of us here anymore.”

 

“I didn’t say probably, I said that there is a 3.7% chance that biological life could survive.  That means there is no chance.  Everything must be built perfectly, one flaw and you die.  Do they not value life?  A calculation error of 0.0000001 can cost you your life.  Do you know what the chances are of humanity and their proneness to error for building a ship that is 100% flawless?  It’s 0.  Anyone could understand these numbers.  If we fail, No one survives.  The chances of no one dying are next to impossible.  They placed their bets on a paralyzed horse. I cannot help you.”  You slap your hand against the wall in frustration.

 

 “Listen, Charlie, they have all the smartest people in the world working on this.  Some of them are just as smart as you.  They have a team of three thousand people building this ship in secret.  They have every specialist on earth checking for flaws in the design, the metals, the thrusters, its weight, and its graviton shifter and all the other big words I don’t remember or understand.  Kid, if we don’t do this, everyone dies.  We have to blast the meteorites into space dust or earth won’t even see July this year.  Now listen I can’t do anything about them not telling you, but we can make this work, we have to.”  She points towards the laptop and opens it again to show you the satellite images.

 

“The contraction of space and expansion of space causes a warp bubble, but getting out is just all theory.  So great, you get in there and then you’re stuck and who knows how painfully you’d die.  It’s just theory, improbable possibility, but we don’t know all the variables.  The space-ship can just explode or collapse.   If we cross an unknown black hole, we are gone.  If we make a worm-hole, IF, there is no possible way to theorise or even test if we could get out alive.  You people are very stupid for smart people.  When are you even planning to tell the public?”  You poke on a black space on the image she opened last.

 

“Didn’t know you had this side to you, Charlie, good, we need feisty.  The team at NASA is working on our carrier particle theory to transport biological life, you’re theory said it was possible.  They already moved some particles in shorter distances. They have been working on the carrier particle alloy for months, hundreds of people around the world are working on this together.  That is a chance I’m going to take because there is a 100% chance that my family down there won’t live past the next six months if we don’t stop those rocks.  We are hoping to tell the public when the danger is past, people can be unpredictable.”  Professor Jane lowers and shakes her head.

 

“There are a million ways we could die.  If they just told me the truth we could’ve found another way together.  And, the people on earth have the right to know, all of them.”

 

“It’s not for us to decide to tell the public. Professor!  Get everyone back to Destiny!” She floats towards Destiny and waits for the team.

 

You, Professor Scot and the entire team reunites in Destiny.