This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/ivivan on 2024-09-27 21:24:35+00:00.

This is my very first attempt to write something. As English is not my first language I decided to write something short - just to see if I like it or not. Constructive criticism is always welcome.

The galaxy is big. I mean really big. I mean really-really-really big.

Okay, let’s go back to the beginning.

In 2276 humanity achieved faster then light travel - commonly known as FTL. Unfortunately no galactic community invited us to join and no neighbor said hello. Even though the politicians have prewritten speaches for the occassion.

The first prototype probe travelled about 1 million kms (yeah, by the 23rd century we finally all switched to metric) in 3.3 seconds. Which is just above the speed of light - or 1c. The first test ship capable of carrying humans could do about 2c. The first commercially available FTL ship could do about 10c.

Which sounds a lot, and we did colonize the solar system by the end of the century, started visiting the closest solar systems and sending probes to basically everything within a 100 light-years. Did you know that there are less then 500 stars within 100 light-years? By the early 24th century probes could travel around 20c - but still required around 5 years to reach those 500 stars. We had colonies on Proxima Centauri and a couple of other close solar systems, but it took us another hundred years and reaching 100c speed to colonize that 100 light-years.

Fortunately we very early discovered FTL communication based on the same principles our FTL drives worked - and since that travelled around 500c we suspected that is another “hard” limit, similar to the speed of light in normal space. By the end of the 25th century we were very near that confirmed theoretical limit.

But 500c sure is fast, right? It should be more than enough to explore the galaxy, right? Well - we are back to the fact that the galaxy is big. Our galaxy is more than 100 thousand light-years in diameter - which means our FTL communication still takes more than 200 years to travel from one side to the other and slightly more than that to do the same with our ships.

So that’s when we realized we either have to discover something even faster - or maybe better we have to find a way to jump. And when humanity decides something we usually deliver.

It took more than a century, but here we are: our very first manned mission with our new jump drive. We sent a couple of probes and everything went well, but the big test is always the manned mission. We plan something simple: jump to Proxima Centauri and then jump back. Nothing fancy for today, just a simple confirmation that everything works as expected. At that distance a classic FTL ship can scoop us up in a matter of days.

The ship is just an old military scoutship stripped down anything we could get rid off and added the new jump drive. It is just the first test and the ship would’ve been scrapped anyway. If this first test works as we expect we try something a bit better next time.

We calculated the jump, set the coordinates and after the more then half a millennia old count down to zero we pushed the button and we jumped. And we arrived beside a planet just as the plan said we will. But it didn’t take us too long to realize that it is definitely not Proxima Centauri. A couple of seconds and the onboard computer calculated our position - somewhere the other side of the galaxy. Great.

Okay, let’s take a look at the sensors, what do we have here: yellow dwarf star, a planet within the habitable zone, water on the surface, radio communication, seems like vegetation, definitely there’s oxigen in the atmosphere - not the first planet with plants and vegetation, but it’s still rare. Wait - radio communication?! What?! Don’t tell me we just bumped into our very first sapient species on our very first jump…

And this is how we accidentally met the first aliens and how we ended up finding a new friend. But that’s definitely another story for another time.