Shaky Start

A combination of translocation technology merged with heavy energy and then paired with gravitational manipulation? I didn't completely understand what that meant or how it worked, but it was working with what it had. This ship definitely moved quite a bit faster with this new technology, but not at speeds that would allow us to find our way back to Calypso, however it was adequate enough to navigate to the nearest asteroids and mine up abundant amounts of resources. I learned that the ship had all the blueprints I had brought with me but was having trouble actually understanding how they worked. It had not encountered such things and they were a bit difficult for me to translate for it. So instead of explaining it I worked on getting it to create a manufacturing area for me. Not knowing how our manufacturing terminals had worked on planet meant it had to be something new, but all I really needed was a way to shape materials and put them together in a virtual type of environment. The holographic pad was almost adequate for it, just some modifications to that would make an excellent working area. Once the changes were made I began constructing the various pieces of technology that the blueprints laid out. It was a bit of a waste of resources as I am not perfect at constructing things, however in my use of the blueprints the ship began to learn how exactly they worked and also had some more technology to learn from. It informed me that it would continue research on this technology while trying to improve its drives. I decided that it would probably be a good time for me to let the ship do what it does best and explore the new habitat that was created.

In all that had happened in the past couple of days I had forgotten to even check out the planet. It apparently was very much like Calypso in that it had an atmosphere that was perfect for human life. The creatures on the planet were mostly vegetarian and were almost sickeningly cute. They had large eyes and were small even when they were fully grown. There were a wide variety of plants, many of which produce fruits which are phenomenal in taste. The food I had been eating had been stored for awhile and was not nearly as fresh as the stuff that was in this chamber and so my diet was going to be much improved. As I wandered through the various sections of the habitat I was astonished at just how big the ship had become. This chamber was huge. It easily dwarfed all the chambers on the asteroid combined. Due to the non-aggressiveness of the creatures they didn't need to be seperated to ensure their ability to live and so I was able to wander between the areas without having to go through any barriers. This was definitely going to be a place I spent a lot of time. As I wandered I found an area with a small waterfall, it was here I decided I wanted to be able to have a place to sit comfortably and meditate on the things that have happened and plan for the things to come. I interrupted the ship just long enough to have it construct a few comforts for me, among which was a hammock which I quickly took advantage of, swaying comfortably and listening to the sounds of my own personal waterfall and forest.

I'm not sure how long I had been dozing, but obviously I didn't quite understand soon enough that the ship just said it had finished its improvements to its drives when it started them up. I actually fell out of the hammock from the forces created as the drive rocketed the ship forward. It didn't last long which was good, I'm sure we would have killed everything living on the ship if we had gone far enough. As I headed back to the control room I asked the ship what it did. The response was that it had used the various technologies it had been researching to create a gravity drive which could create a huge force to propel us forward. I didn't ask for more details, I was sure I wouldn't fully grasp how it worked anyway, but I had a good idea of the effectiveness of it as I reached the control room. I gazed out at the surrounding stars and realized that tiny little test had propelled us to the next nearest star. I didn't even think it would be possible to do this and asked the ship what other technology it had created that could move us faster than light.

It was not really the right question to ask, I realize that now, I should have remained ignorant of it. The ship had done something I probably would not have dreamed of trying. The gravity drive itself would have moved us pretty quickly, nowhere near the speed of light but fast enough to navigate to more remote locations in the same planetary system. No, the ship decided it really wanted to fulfill my desire to be able to travel. The ship had overcome the complications of converting living things into heavy energy and being able to bring them back into existence as they were when we left. Then, to top that off, it had created an almost black hole like mass in front of the ship to propel it much faster through space. So basically, we threw ourselves really fast at a black hole like energy mass as energy and hoped that we'd stop where we were trying to and be able to convert back from energy to mass when we arrived without any additional technology. I was both impressed with the resourcefulness of the ship and absolutely frightened at what it could do. At that, I had to call it a day, I don't think I would have been able to handle anything else after realizing I had just been dematerialized, thrown through space, and brought back into existence by a technology that had never before been tested.