My first stop after leaving my new home behind. I do hope things will be alright. I left lots of automated systems to keep things going, tend to the garden, mine the resources of the rocky world, as well as several of the moons of Skrimsil, of which Home is one. Only been gone three months. Been keeping a tab on things back there.
Funny thing. Having the stuff back on Home, gives me new data about time while in ARC space. There is a temporal deflection, but one that is not significant, accept over VERY long periods spent in ARC space. On those long stints in ARC space, time outside moves faster, and the speed of that deflection increases. Over the first three week jump to the nearest universe to Home, towards the signal source, the deflection was about 15 seconds. Meaning that Home experienced 15 more seconds of time than I did in ARC space. It was less than a second for the first week, over the second week it only grew to three seconds, if slightly less than that. By the time I dropped out of Jump however, the difference was up to 15 seconds.
Given this. I have to wonder if there is an upper limit on the deflection, as I have spent sometimes months at a time in Jump. More than that. Just as I know having the crew compartment strapped to the Viteză Furie totally threw off the Jump into and out of ARC space. It also, I suspect, will have effected this temporal deflection, which I suspect is directly related to the mass build up in ARC space, which as noted in CT's writings, directly correlates to speed in jump in relation to the outside universe. I will need to dig into CT's writings on ARC Space to see if they wrote about this, or even thought about it. No telling until I dig into that.
I stopped in a solar system to pick up some fuel from the gas giant there and picked up something. A collection of living worlds in the system, one of which has intelligence on it. They are not yet space faring, and only one of the living worlds have that intelligence, but it is there.
Took a drone photo of the Viteză Furie skimming past, with the lights of these intelligent beings on their world behind. Their world is actually the smallest of the three worlds, orbiting almost as a moon to the other two. The larger two orbit each other, the center of gravity near the edge of the atmosphere of the larger of the two. There is actually an exchange of atmosphere between them. A fascinating interaction. The third world, small as it is, orbits both, but in a very complex pattern where is orbits one, than every few orbits it slides between them, which is what I caught as I flew by, passing through that atmospheric connection between them, and now orbiting the other until it repeats again. I've mapped it out, and the system is stable. Amazing really.
I watched them for a few days. Wondering if they could see me, and what they might think. Funny looking creatures. Not like anything I can compare to. They have hands, after a fashion, sensory organs, eyes if you will, that are long thick lines across what I assume would be their head. I did not take one for study, though I have left a probe here to keep an eye on them. I may come back and do further study. They are curious creatures. I like their music and have recorded as much as I could. At least... I think it was music.
I'm moving on. I'll be in Jump a full seven weeks to make the next universe, nearly a third of the way to the source of the signal. That should give me a better reading on how much temporal deflection takes place, and if there is any sort of top end to it, or if it is an exponential increase. That is kind of terrifying. If it is exponential, and doesn't top out, it could mean that, from the point of view of my original home, I have been gone for literally billions of years. That sure would explain why they don't respond on the ET/EC.
Well, time to finish up a few things, then off to the next stop.