When I was a young boy, my father took me to Houston Texas to see the launch of Drako 11, NASA's new operation that has been given the task of discovering the physical boundaries of human expedition. My dad, air force General Thomas Collins, was the expedition leader for this this operation. Liftoff was scheduled for 10:00 am on the 3rd of June 2027, a Friday, my dad always used to say the phrase "lucky Friday" a lot and was happy when he discovered that that was the day he is meant to take off. The mission was scheduled to take 23 years on earth but less than a year on the spaceship as they were supposed to travel through a wormhole and time shrinks and expands when its quantum mechanics are being messed with.
When he left he told me that when he will come back we should only be a few years a part.
I think it's time dad, I am 33 now, the age you were when you left for space, I think you missed that bus.
The reason he is not coming back is not that something went wrong with the mission; it is that there was none, NASA's glorified mission to find the human races own boundaries ironically exploded less than a mile of the ground; lucky lucky Friday.
My name is Victor Collins and I am the lead commander of operation Bereshit, a literal journey to the center of the universe.
NASA has discovered a wormhole conveniently placed right outside our solar system. The exit coordinates of the wormhole are X 00, 0 Y: 00, 0 Z: 00, 0 T: 00, 0 the center of it all; where the big bang originated.
Nobody can even try to guess what is over there.
The operation was nearly cancelled, several times, for several reasons, but the main one were the religious riots. They were hard, very hard and resulted in an unmistakable number of deaths. There is one image that I will never get out of my head, I opened the news and saw A Photo of a priest, holding a photo of me, with horns sticking out of my head and an upside down cross on my forehead, the headline was "Victor Collins, saint or antichrist".
I was never a religious man, but seeing that would have given even the manliest of men the chills.
The crew boarded the spaceship on 12:34 pm and liftoff was scheduled for 13:00 pm.
The crew consisted of Broady, our handy dandy engineer. Levi the cosmetologist .Simmons, an expert in quantum physics and me, a pilot with charisma. They used to call me top gun.
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, liftoff, the countdown to the end of my father's life sent a disturbing chill down my spine as we soared through the earth's atmosphere and towards the WHO wormhole.
End of part 1