Cochrane's Tessering Discovery.
By TimeTraveller-1900.
"Ready to make history, Zee?" Lily Sloane, Cochrane's assistant and fellow engineer asked.
"Yeah, I guess," Cochrane was fidgeting in his pilot seat, the straps were really tight and made moving around difficult for him, but he needed to make sure he had the disc.
Lily stopped. "What's wrong?"
"I think I've forgotten the disc."
"Oh, no," their co-pilot, Rick groaned and Lily knew how he felt; Zefram Cochrane's music was a nightmare to listen to. After listening to him and watching him desperately look for the disc while the countdown played out, they knew it was only a matter of time before he found what he was looking for. When he played the disc, Lily and Rick both felt the earsplitting sensation of Cochrane's terrible music blaring away, but it was something good to focus on as the g-force of the chemical rockets pushed the former nuclear missile into space. Lily regretted that they hadn't found the resources designed to properly redesign or rebuild the nuclear missile they'd built Cochrane's FTL engine, because the g-force was unbearable.
"Can you turn that down a little bit?" Lily asked as the Phoenix broke through the atmosphere.
She had to be careful with asking him to do that since Cochrane sometimes cranked the volume up until it felt as if your eardrums would pop. But his mood was a good one today, and so he turned it off.
"There's a red light on the intake valve," Rick said.
"Ignore it. We'll be fine. Prepare for the first stage on my mark. 3…2….1…MARK!"
As the Phoenix escaped the rocket, like a butterfly emerging out of a chrysalis, Cochrane stared out of the window while he and his crew worked on powering up the FTL drive, but then he caught sight of the Earth. "Oh, wow," he breathed in awe.
"It's beautiful," Lily whispered, just as awestruck.
"It doesn't look damaged," Rick and the others were aware of how much damage the Earth had taken after the war. But looking at the planet from space, it looked as healthy as ever.
"No, it doesn't….," Cochrane said, trailing off as he wished some of those narrow-minded bastards were here, overlooking the Earth, and seeing for themselves just how small their ambitions were. But right now he didn't care about the ECON and their fanatics. Right now he wanted to focus on the drive. "Okay, setting up the drive now," he went on.
"How far are we going?" Rick asked as he pushed more energy from the fusion reactor into the engine. Seeing the increase of power, Cochrane absently accelerated and the Phoenix went faster, and they slowly left orbit.
Cochrane considered the question and the possibilities extremely quickly. The FTL drive worked perfectly and could teleport someone through space extremely quickly and back, but this was the first large-scale experiment he'd ever made. The last thing he wanted was to take Phoenix too far out and something to go wrong, and for them to be stranded.
"Let's just go to the edge of the solar system," he said and he began setting the controls; he had designed the computer system extremely carefully and he had also designed the safeguards.
"The edge?" Lily said.
"Yeah, there are colonies there, isolated since the war's end, and they've been thriving after the war I think, and it would be good to drop in on them at some point," Cochrane grinned back at Lily.
"Okay, the drive's been charged and ready, the fusion reactors are on," Rick said.
"Engage," Cochrane said.
Lily and Rick grinned at each other.
Zefram Cochrane had known faster-than-light travel was possible. Nothing was truly impossible until everyone just…gave in, and he refused to give in. He refused to believe it was impossible to travel to distant star systems, to other galaxies. There were loopholes to everything. He had looked back in history, and he began dismissing ideas as impractical. Warp drive was the most simplest FTL technology, but there were so many things it needed that it would likely take forever to find out if exotic matter existed. In the same vein, it looked just as likely that wormholes would not be discovered until they got out into space anyway.
Cochrane was inspired by an old book of his from childhood, a favourite. A Wrinkle in Time, in the novel it was possible to travel through the higher dimensions to cross vast distances. These dimensions were nature's shortcut to achieving faster-than-light travel. When they were discovered, and there was plenty of evidence to claim they existed, Cochrane had begun experimenting to see if it was possible to tesser across the universe, which would make all other forms of interstellar or intergalactic travel virtually obsolete. Anyone who could tesser across the universe could do so without worrying about making the jump, and being stranded there.
Cochrane had spent years designing and building the drive. He had made so many experiments, witnessed hundreds of failures and was discouraged a few times, but he had persisted…on and on. He had tessered dozens of objects from one part of his lab to his house after he'd set up the equipment for receiving it, and he had perfected the technology until he had finished fitting the drive to the Phoenix.
"Activating…tesser drive, now!" Cochrane triggered the drive.
The crew of the Phoenix experienced a brief moment of disorientation, and for one moment they were in orbit around Earth, and then they were in orbit above the moon. And then they tessered across space towards Mars, and then they were in the Oort Cloud. As they watched the numerous Terran colonies bustling around, it was not long before the Phoenix was detected.
-8-
Morale back at the Montana settlement was quite high. Cochrane, Rick, and Lily had spent a few hours in one of the asteroid colonies, swapping stories. The colonists had been largely isolated and separated from Earth for the best part of a decade since the bombs dropped. Since the distance to and from Earth and the asteroid colonies had been too far, they'd had to make a new life out here, under the assumption that Earth and humanity might have been wiped out forever. They just had to focus on themselves while promising to return home. Cochrane had made it simpler for them, and he had given them the design specs of the tesser drive, and he hoped they had the means of duplicating it. After jumping around the rest of the solar system and seeing more of the sights, like the Titan colony, where they met the people living out there, and once more sharing the drive, Cochrane spent a lot of his time at the bar, in his favourite seat. Unlike on other occasions, he wasn't interested in drinking, and he had been nursing his drink for hours while he mused on what to do about the drive. It offered them so much for the future, and since he had shared the designs several times with engineers and other physicists in the asteroid colonies and on the moon and Mars, there was no doubt in his head that it wouldn't be too long before other astronauts were zooming around the system in the blink of an eye, and even expeditions to other solar systems.
Cochrane currently had plans to deliver the Phoenix to the Indonesian Space Probe Agency. They would have the resources needed to build a small fleet of FTL rockets, and since they were the only ones still out there, they were the only logical choice. He would have preferred it if there were other space probe exploration organisations out there but needs must and all of that.
Cochrane was taking a sip of his drink when a commotion attracted his attention and he rushed out with everyone when they heard a rumbling sound in the air. Looking up into the sky, they saw a light before a ship emerged. Looking at it, they saw it was not human, but an alien pterodactyl of a ship. It landed elegantly on the ground, and a moment later a ramp extended. As the aliens approached, Cochrane walked slowly towards them - it offended his pride as a scientist to just stay away, and he stopped in front of the leader. An amused thought of that infamous phrase, 'Take me to your leader' echoed in his head before he shut it up.
The alien lifted a hand and parted his fingers. "Live long and prosper."
Cochrane tried to duplicate the gesture, and couldn't. He instead held out his hand, and when the alien took his hand, Cochrane smiled, "Thanks."
He didn't exactly know what would come out of this meeting, but with the tesser drive and these aliens, nothing would be the same. With luck, people like the ECON would wither and die out.