Back Story

Space is vast. Unimaginably, horrendously gigantic. Never-ending. And physics being physics there is a top-end to how fast we can move, somewhere around the speed of light. Luckily a loophole exists in the laws of physics. So our long past ancestors were able to create faster than light travel using a little trick of bending space around on itself and popping through wormholes in the very fabric of space-time. Humanity rapidly spread out across the galaxy and populated numerous worlds. For a few million years we were free, unhindered, masters of our domain. We never did meet the aliens, it seems we had a whole galaxy to ourselves.

Almost inevitably, this wasn’t set to last. You see, even warp drives have their limits. Bending space-time takes phenomenal quantities of energy, and despite consuming entire stars with magnificent Dyson spheres, our technologists were unable to penetrate the void. We were stuck in our own galaxy, those who tried to cross the distance were never heard from again, presumed dead in the nothingness of intergalactic space.

So with the boundaries in place, we filled every last corner of the galaxy. And then, when we had consumed all the resources available, began once again to fight over the scraps. The rich and powerful formed empires, the poor and destitute were pushed back into slavery. The very worst of human nature reasserted itself.

Deep into this period of barbarism, a lone genius from the poorest of poor neighbourhoods was pressed into slavery aboard the interstellar freighter Enterprise. The young miss Drivesan seemed to have drawn all the short straws of her station, except she was also cursed with perfect memory and an IQ off the charts. This led to a severe case of insomnia; for ordinary people a short term death sentence, but for Drivesan, for whatever reason, the lack of sleep only fueled her creativity. She rarely had access to technical manuals. Still, when she did, she flicked through as quickly as possible memorising everything for later study. In bed at night, whilst others slept, she tried to piece together an understanding of the universe. Where she lacked information, she came up with theories of her own. Of course, this did her no good whatsoever. A slave by day, a captive genius by night. No one would listen to her ideas, she had no way to experiment with her theories. Noise in the void.

Serendipity has long been the governing factor on scientific and technical progress. The chance stumbling onto an idea, the most unlikely of events coming to pass. Luck we call it. Or some might say the guiding hand of fate. Regardless, this force acts time and again, reshaping the future. For Drivesan, luck would play out in the cruellest of ways. The freighter, on which she was conscripted, flew too close the black hole in the centre of the galaxy. During the transit, it was smashed head-on by a massive pulse of Hawking radiation. With life-support trashed, and the engines non-responsive, the captain opted to abandon ship and fled in the life-boats. Not before venting the vessel to space, of course; it was drilled into every captain that slaves should go down with the ship. In the most unlikely of oversights, Drivesan was cleaning the captains quarters at the very moment of the disaster. The captains quarters were the one place on the ship not covered by the venting protocol (one might assume captains didn’t like the idea of being asphyxiated).

Out of all eleven hundred and twelve crew, Drivesan was, therefore, the lone survivor on board. Seemingly not much of an advantage with failing life support. But things are never that simple. A ship that was set up for more than a thousand crew could handle a single person for years, even with the life-support system fully turned off. And Drivesan wasn’t just any person, either. With all the technical knowledge she had stored in her head, she was relatively quickly able to cobble together a working life-support system for herself.

Propulsion, however, was another matter entirely. When the captain left, he had naturally locked out all the control consoles and shut down all the systems. Drivesan didn’t have any way to override that lockdown - it needed a specific code, and she just didn’t have it.

Little by little, slowly at first and then faster and faster, the Enterprise was pulled towards the event horizon. It creaked and groaned as the gravity relentlessly increased.

Being as smart as she was, it didn’t take Drivesan long to figure out the problem. And then to have an extended panic attack when she realised that she was destined to be crushed to death. She could still recall, in flawless detail, the excruciating pain from when she had trapped her thumb in the door. Extrapolating that to her whole body reduced her to a gibbering wreck curled up on the floor.

Some days, no one knows precisely how many, of self pitty later Drivesan pulled herself together. She started applying her massive brain to finding a solution. Never in her life had she dreamed of having the resources available to her that she now had. There had to be a solution!

The longer she thought, the more convinced she was that the warp drive must be a part of the solution. The problem was that warp drives couldn’t be used close to a black hole, the extreme gravity distorted the space-time fields too much for the engines to be able to compensate. Still, she could either sit around and wait to die or try something. She resolved to try.

It took weeks more to figure out how to get the warp drive fixed, and months more to invent her own control system to replace the locked-out systems. She tested and tested until she was sure it would work, but the fundamental problem remained. The black hole. Even a perfectly calibrated, brand new, top of the line drive couldn’t escape a black hole.

Retreating to the mess hall, she punched in the code for a juicy steak. A year ago she had never even smelled a steak, but now with free reign of an entire star freighter, she had discovered quite a taste for them. To pass the time and distract herself from existential dread, she called up some holo films on the entertainment system. She sat there watching some old show, chewing on her steak, when the background music caught her attention. There was a terrible song playing against a lonely guitar, but the lyrics grabbed her and hauled her along.

    The only way out is through.
    The faster we're in, the better.
    The only way out is through ultimately.
    The only way out is through.
    The only way we'll feel better.
    The only way out is through ultimately.

“That’s it!” she thought. Everyone always tries to escape black holes, but why not try to go through? It was a breathtaking notion. Her mind came alight with possibilities, churning over her half-formed understanding of physics. A more educated person would have pronounced it a fools errand, but Drivesan didn’t know any better. Powered by an insatiable will to survive, a single possible solution, and with a veritable sea of resources at her disposal, Drivesan cranked the problem.

It must have taken a month, maybe more, but finally, she thought she had a solution. Her theory suggested that the blackhole was actually the end of a giant naturally forming wormhole, so theoretically there must be another end out of which she could emerge. If she could only find a way to cross the event horizon without being crushed into non existence.

The big problem, therefore, was shielding. She worked out that if she reconfigured the ship to pour every joule of the reactor output into storage and turned off everything except the shields (including life support) they would be as strong as they could be. It was the very best she could achieve, but she had no real way to know if it was enough.

The other problem would be timing the jump to warp. She would need to be really close to the true event horizon when she triggered it, and she would certainly only get one shot at that. The only way she could manage this was to trigger the warp drive automatically based off of some signal. But what signal to use? After much internal conflict she finally decided that she would trigger the warp jump when the shields had collapsed to just 1% integrity. Do, or die trying.

According to her sensor readings, time was fast running out, the event horizon was creeping ever closer as the ship spiralled in towards the hole. Unable to afford waiting longer, and with no plans left to improve, the time had come. Drivesan disabled the engines, the gravity of the black hole would suck the ship relentlessly in, and the energy could better go to the shields. After a few moments, the acceleration far exceeded the capability of the engines to fight against. For better or worse, she was now committed.

The ship groaned and creaked. The shields flickered. Across the front viewscreen, the scene was magnificent, breathtaking. Serene in its silence and yet terrifying for what she knew of the forces at work. All around the ship, gasses swirled. She could see other vessels in the distance crumpling into small rocks. Rocks shrinking away in front of her very eyes. Moment by moment, everything grew closer, until soon the view was blotted out entirely by the darkness of material pressed up against the shields. The lights glitched, the reactor squealed, the shields began to shrink. Drivesan realised she wasn’t going to make it, it made sense, no-one else had ever suggested this trip was possible. She settled back in the captain’s chair. At least she could die comfortable, and in the sort of luxury she had never known before the accident. Since there was nothing to see anyway, she closed her eyes. The ship began to rattle, to shake, and Drivesan had to tightly grip the armrests. She braced herself for the end. And then as the ship gave one last tremendous shudder, a bright light shone before her eyes and silence descended. The light grew from a pinprick to an all-encompassing effect, like she was falling down a tunnel. It was over.

Unexpectedly, Drivesan opened her eyes, blinking. She was alive. She sat as she had, in the captain’s chair. Around her the reactor hummed, the shields were dim, but there. Against the odds she had done it, she had made it through. She was just heaving a sigh of relief when the hull creaked, letting out a haunting groan. Drivesan quickly called up a 360 visualisation of space around the ship. What she saw was unbelievable, and definitely not what she was hoping for. It appeared that within the black hole was, bizarrely, another black hole. She had gone through all of that, and now ahead of her was the same again. Behind her was the event horizon she had just travelled through. The situation had gone from bad to worse.

Looking at the sensor data, the news there was both good and bad. The two event horizons were both exerting a strong gravitational force but in opposite directions, and with differing magnitudes. In total she was being pulled gently out, away from the inner black hole. The engines should be able to overcome this force easily. The bad news, however, was that running the engines to escape the backwards pull would deplete energy from the shields. Given that she had only just scraped through the last barrier, the lack of energy was going to be a problem. Still, the situation was better than before. She could hold here indefinitely while looking for a solution.

Power. Or rather lack of it, was going to be the significant problem to repeat her jump. The reactors could only pump out so much juice, and it wasn’t going to be enough. Luck, however, was still riding Drivesan’s shoulder. The sensors indicated a significant new anomoly in space which hadn’t existed outside the black hole. Here and there were little eddies in the gravity field, which must have been stable over a long time as they had accumulated vast quantities of energetic plasma.

The plasma was basically a tremendous store of energy waiting to be harvested. If she could only rig up a magnetic containment scoop and some storage systems, it looked like she would be able to get enough energy to repower the shields. It would be insanely risky, flying directly into areas of superheated plasma, but with the risk came her one shot at escape.

That was it, she had a plan. She spent the a least a year building the modifications she would need. It was slow going; typically, a whole engineering crew would be required to make stuff like this. But necessity is the mother of all invention, and she powered on through.

She had to whip vessel had to whip around the black hole collecting the plasma clumps, and then when the shields were charged, fly directly into the hole before they expired. All the while, she would be fighting the gravity of the event horizon pulling her away from her goal.

It wasn’t easy, but it was predictable. Drivesan flew the ship to three separate plasma blobs, charged the shields, and dove into the black hole. The experience was much the same as the first time. And when she finally opened her eyes, she was in the same situation. Inside one black hole with another in front of her.

She cried in frustration, and then did it all again. Opening her eyes she was in the same situation again. Although clearly the structure of the plasma had changed so she was relatively sure she wasn’t where she was before. With no other options before her and no way back, she did it all again. This time not only was the plasma a different structure again, there were debris fields floating about in space.

Flying around this debris to collect the plasma was beyond Drivesan’s piloting skill. But as a genius with lots of time on her hands, it wasn’t a problem beyond her ability to solve. It took many years of sweat, tears, and determination, but ultimately Drivesan had built a nascant AI. She hoped this AI would be able to handle the navigation on her behalf. To give it a fighting chance she built a simlulation mode for it. Only when the AI successfully pilots through the simulation would it be allowed to run the same plan in the real world.

There was one minor drawback to that approach, running the super computers for the simulation took a lot of energy. She could only let it run so many times before the energy would drop below sustainable levels and she would crash regardless. So she set a limit - the AI would get so many chances and then she would be forced to try her hand at the controls.

AI

Welcome gamer, you are Drivesan’s AI. Her fate is in your hands, fly safe and don’t run out of simulations!