It All Started With Magnets

.14.

"Can you tell me about how fast we were moving?" I glanced over all of the scientists and Duntella made a gravelly sound in the back of her throat that I was learning was similar to a hum.

"At your top speed, the one that caused the rattle, you are travelling, based on our calculations, nearly two thousand, five hundred times the speed of light." The words came from her and I blinked rapidly, my hands flexing slightly as I tilted my head.

"I what now?" I could have sworn she had said something that seemed almost impossible.

"Rough calculations only at this point, but you are travelling close to two thousand, five hundred times the speed of light. At that speed, your shielding is not holding up and it translates into that dangerous rattle we observed. Any faster and you would rip your ship apart." Her words were said slow and carefully so I knew she meant them, it was just fucking impossible.

"How the hell am I travelling that fast?" My voice pitched upwards slightly but I couldn't help it. Over two thousand times the speed of light? I should have been ripped apart at that speed. There was knowing you moved fast and then realizing how fast. It seemed dangerous given the numbers we were throwing out.

"We are uncertain but what we saw was the more you suppressed the one side of the polarity of the magnet, the faster you went. The correlation is clear. Monopole magnets, theoretically could result in infinite speed." Hallee-tie said it excitedly and I blinked rapidly as I turned to look at her.

"Infinite speed?" I nearly dragged out the words and she nodded, her ilithari swaying around her head.

"Instant teleportation. From one edge of the galaxy to the next in the blink of an eye. The implications of this are far reaching, we could potentially create teleportation from anywhere in the galaxy." She fairly wiggled as she said it, even her ilithari moving a bit more rapidly and I blinked again and then again and then again. This was... it was a lot to take in.

"But wouldn't that bend space and time?" I felt a little mind blown at the moment and I knew the question came out a little faint but I couldn't help it. Moving that fast had to break some sort of space time continuum, or something. It had to break physics.

"You already do so in your ship." Il'tig's words made my start blinking all over again. I really needed to stop with that but I couldn't help it. It was like the indication for my brain buffering.

"I do what now?" I bent space and time in my ship? How the hell did that work?

"You are travelling so fast, you are moving through space and time, not with it. As a result I can guarantee the time slippage would be minimal for you." His explanation made minimal sense and I crossed my arms over my chest, frowning in confusion.

"Time slippage?" The term was familiar and I could guarantee I had heard it before but at the moment I didn't have the mental capacity to even think about what it meant.

"Yes, the time between you standing here and travelling here, versus the time back on your planet being different." Loril-ee explained it before looking at me. "We have to work heavily around time slippage when we travel between planets. Everything has to be planned out and we have reduced it to, on average, about a month time slippage per year of travel. For those of us on the ground, for a ship to reach the furthest planet in the Galactic Union, it takes six years. But for the people on board, it will take about five and a half years." I slowly nodded, processing the information slowly in my head. That made sense and the more I thought about it the more I realized I had heard about it.

"Okay. The scientists back home mentioned that. Told me to keep track of how long I had been gone for because they wanted to compare when I got back." It had been in the quick training they had given me for my flight away. They wanted me to keep extensive logs about what I did and everything that happened while I was out in the universe. "So you are saying I could have been completely unaffected by time slippage?" I looked over the scientists and Il'tig clicked his mandibles together.