Everything is ready. Drive is charged. All systems are in sync, and I now really understand what that means. I've got smooth space for a hundred light years in any direction. The only disturbance from my own passage at .9385c. I keep wondering if the speed of entry into Jump isn't why I ended up where I am now, that maybe I needed to be going much slower, but the tech's would have, should have told me that. Wouldn't they have? Maybe they didn't know.... Why equip the Viteză Furie with these drives, they told me to go fast....
I don't know anymore. This little corner of the universe is amazing and beautiful. Terrifyingly so at times. I cannot get that distant lightning bolt like structure. That rift is space-time. I cannot get it out of my mind. It is so far away. The implications just keep screaming at me. That it means that the universe, or at least space itself, is far older than we think. That our universe might be one of many, out there in the darkness. One instance of creation, sharing the same space as others, but separated by distances so vast....
No. I cannot get pulled into thoughts like that. That isn't for me to speculate on. That is for the tech's, if they ever get the data I have collected. The only way I can do that, get the data to them, is to jump again, and hopefully figure out where I am when next I come out of jump. Which will be any time now.
The systems are in final preparation for jump. I am just waiting for the green light. Everything is ready, but the system does a final check, just to make sure. Thus, just like the first time. I wait.
The drive was something new. A new tech. An experiment. I am forced to wonder if I only needed to be in jump for a few seconds at most. How many light years per second does time in Jump translate to? If I ever get a reading so I can find my way home, I may have the chance to figure that out. I wonder though. If the techs understood so little about the drive, how come it wasn't tested more... Maybe this is the only way they could test it. Maybe it didn't work the way they thought it did. I will only ever have the answers to these and so many other questions if the ET/EC systems start working again.
The ET/EC comm system diagnostic didn't find anything, so I am running it through a maintenance sequence. That will at the very least confirm that the system is actually working properly. It might even confirm that I am in fact still connected, and there just isn't anyone or anything on the other end listening anymore. I'm not sure what would be preferable there. That the system is broken and I don't have a way to talk to home, or that the system is fine, and connected, but there just isn't anyone on the other end to hear me..... I think I like broken better. I don't like where my mind goes when I think about the other option.
Another one of those other possibilities for where I am, that has cropped up in my mind... The idea that the drive has delivered me far through time. So far that the entire universe moved around me, in addition to my own travel. It would explain multiple hundreds of billion year old structures that just seem impossible based on what I thought I knew.
I don't know anymore. All the assumptions, the stuff I knew after my training. When it comes to the universe. None of it is more than guesses. Guesses that I am not equipped to consider alternatives to or question.
Alright... Enough with the existential angst about where I might be, when I might be, or even if someone at the other end of the ET/EC comms is actually there to listen. I can do nothing to effect these things, and they distract me from my more immediate concerns. Jumping, and surviving the jump.
I have the green now. Just one button push away from jump. I am strapped in. Everything on-board is secured. I don't have anyone at control to check the readings for me. No one on the radio to complain about the loud music. No one to tell me when to trigger the drive. I am on my own this time, and maybe for the rest of time.
I really don't know if anyone is listening, so I have the transmission going out on all frequencies, as well as the ET/EC comm. Assuming that it is actually working.
This is the Viteză Furie. Ready for Jump. Count down from 10, because I don't know why to wait longer than that.
10...
9...
8...
7...
6...
5...
4...
3...
2...
1...
Jump!
Drive engaged. Damn.... There are those gravity waves again..... I woanasdn.lkja;slkdfj;l;laksj ;ldkfj;ilksd;i23rwefsdkjfa;lkj;alskdf;lakm;lma;lskduf;sdk