It has been a long few weeks, overseeing the printing of the ET/EC units and the satellites. The first one finished two days ago and I have been doing the initial testing and system verification's. It will be another week before it will be ready to have the first satellite tied to it. At which point I will have five satellites printed. They print much faster than the ET/EC units.
I find that I am excited to re-establish connectivity with home, but I decided it was more important to first get the satellites launched and collecting data. It takes nearly three weeks total to prepare it for the satellites. It is going to take a full month to set up the replacement unit to accept the settings and configurations from the old unit, and then at least two weeks to get the unit actually working. It is not a simple business to connect a new ET/EC set-up to an existing connection. It is a very delicate process under normal circumstances, with specialized equipment and the unit you can connecting to only a few feet away to confirm. I don't have that, so if I make a mistake, it is all over. That said, the key components that make the ET/EC work are not damaged in the old unit, so that should reduce the risk. I can bring those components over and run them in parallel to the new ones, giving the new unit a chance to mirror.
As this universe has grown from it's birth to it tender age of six weeks old, it has gone through a lot of changes, and a lot of growth. I am already detecting what looks like the early stages of star formation. That said, I know now that I am actually a very long way from the edge of this fledgling universe. It is actually just over a billion light years from my current position, so what I am seeing is it's birth, but it has grown far past where I see it now.
I have come to call it Trost. A word that means a lot to me out here by myself. Another version of it is solace, and that is something I need a lot of on some days. Yes, my psych profile lets me deal with extended periods of just my own company without going crazy, and yet, even I get lonely from time to time, and I take my trost, my solace, from whatever I can. I take it from collecting data, from learning more and more about everything I can. Out here, watching the birth of this universe, I am reminded of why I am out here, the reasons I have set for myself, and that gives me that trost that I need to keep going.
As beautiful as Trost is, I will be leaving it soon. Once the Satellites are launched, seven of them I will leave in a constellation here, separated by a few thousand light years. I will be heading off to the next amazing thing. Now that I know what the gravity waves of the birth of a universe look like, I turned my sensors out towards the void around Trost, and I...
When I did that. I found the signal of the birth of other universes, far out there in the void. So far that the light from these universes, if it even managed to make it this far, would be so weak that I would not be able to pick it up. I can pick up the faint gravitational ripples of their birth though. Lots of universes out there in the void. Each probably thinking they are alone out there in the abyss.
I have found dozens of signals. The gravity waves that tell you that a universe has been born out there in the black, pushing back against the darkness. I know what those signals are now, but not necessarily how to interpret them. You see. Trost, as I have watched it grow, is small. It is a really small universe. It may end up with a few hundred galaxies, if it even forms those. It really is small compared to home.
I don't know how to tell which signal represents a little universe like Trost verses one as massive as my home universe, or even bigger. If CT's writings mean anything, and they really do at this point. It is possible for universes much larger than home out here in the void. It also means that one could create their own universe, though that part is a bit beyond me yet in CT's writings.
Well. Time to get back to work. So much to do before I make my next move.