First Light Speed Trip

Story

First Light Speed Trip
Copyright 2022 by John Wells. All Rights Reserved.

"We did it. Our light speed engine returned successfully with images of the Alpha Centauri system and Barnard's Star system. The trip took eighty minutes, with thirty spent at each star system." Marissa smiles on hearing the news from her top engineer.

The plan was a triangle to test both the engine and its AI pilot. The engine uses thousands of chambers holding simultaneous collisions of matter and antimatter to push the craft past the speed of light. Each chamber holding one continuous stream of those collisions.

Marissa asks, "how soon until the living compartment gets mounted?"

"Within the week," the engineer replies.

"Let me know the moment the testing is complete," states Marissa. The completed ship will do a different triangle test to make sure it is passenger ready. Nobody knows, but Marissa plans to be one of those aboard its maiden voyage, meaning its third trip. What is the point of owning the company without making use of the perks?

The week passes quickly and so does the second test triangle to Ross One Twenty-eight and Luyten's Star. That trip takes one hundred six minutes. The ship is just a passenger tour bus. No possibility to explore just a sightseeing trip with thirty minutes at each destination.

All the triangles went to stars with planets in the suspected habitable zones for their stars, and the maiden voyage trip would be as well. Each trip gained telescopic images of those planets, so far proving they had an atmosphere.

The world has significantly changed since her father's engineers solved energy to matter conversion. The UN is now the planet's government. They turned farms into animal reserves. Everyone has plenty of whatever they want.

Power is free so you can make anything. Change yesterday's clothes into energy back into today's outfit. No worries about having breathable air in space. Just keep creating oxygen in the chamber.

Now comes the fun and games. Picking the thirty people to travel. This will be a triangle trip to Wolf Ten Sixty-one and Gliese Eight Seventy-six. Expected to take one hundred and nine minutes.

Marissa looks down on Earth from her space station factory as she ponders who to invite. She selects nine employees that were critical to the success of the project, plus herself, ten of the top astrophysicists, and lets the UN pick the last ten.

Two weeks later, everyone is on board and the ship takes off. It gets towed a safe distance from the factory, same as the other two trips. Once alone in the area, the factory instructs the AI to execute its preordained trip. Its plan is to be outside the system's orbits above or below and midway between all planets that are in the habitation zone, so to produce the best images.

To say light speed was weird is an understatement. It was a hallucinogenic experience without the drugs. Marissa was sure she had a conversation with God that lasted decades. The fourteen light years to Wolf Ten Sixty-one felt like it took one hundred forty years of time. In truth, it took fourteen minutes to accomplish or sixty light years per hour. Seeing the new star system felt like a bore, and only the AI did any work.

The second trip was the same. The conversation continuing were the first left off. By now, Marissa was sure it was God she talked to. It seemed everyone had their own unique conversation. They completely ignored the windows. Each talking about their conversation. Around a twenty-minute trip that felt like one hundred ninety-eight years.

Marissa wished she could shift the trip across the galaxy and back so the conversation could last much longer. It seemed to be related to the distance traveled, meaning the relative time spent in transit got multiplied, so each light second traveled felt like ten seconds.

The third trip was the same as the rest. Fifteen minutes feeling like one hundred and fifty-two years. Fortunately, the experienced time did not affect their bodies. Outside the windows, there was a bright glow hiding all but the brights stars. Those seemed fixed in place but moved slightly during the trip.

Marissa and God talked about her whole life. They discussed all of her mess ups with how she would do it if she had a do over. Such as the time she lied to avoid a spanking. It did not work and earned her double. Definitely tell the truth like she did from that moment on. All of her done correct moments got the praise they deserved. Her getting a beating to save a cat from the neighborhood’s bully. The cat escaped, and he got caught at it. He stopped killing cats. God stated that was the best thing she ever did because of all the lives it saved.

They talked about things coming in the future, including spouse and descendants. God hinted it was soon and worth waiting for. God also talked about her ancestors and all the past. Her father built the company by cheating others but redeemed himself with the energy to matter conversion device. It saved billions of starving people.

Marissa was glad she did this trip, but wondered if it would always be a similar experience. She also wondered if she attempted to work, how much would she have accomplished? The whole four hundred ninety years of work. The conversation was definitely more than normal for the forty-nine minutes of the elapsed time for the travel.