Space
Against the backdrop of the blackness of the universe, stars of different types littered the background, ranging from blue to red, newborn main sequences to grand, old, red giants, small stars within close proximity to massive stars hundreds of light years away. They twinkled as their light was interrupted by the turbulence of an atmosphere, but one such star didn’t. It was a yellow star, with a terrestrial planet in orbit around it. There were lights on the night side, signs of a barely industrial civilization. No one star in the night sky outshined the other until now: a new star illuminated the night sky, outshining the moons, and the people of this world didn’t know what it meant; their knowledge of stellar physics was woefully limited.
Beyond the star’s Oort cloud, a number of starlike blue and gold ships parked themselves at the cloud, just beyond the farthest frozen comet. Looking at the new star that appeared, a dark-skinned woman wearing a golden helmet with a gold and dark blue armor quickly frowned.
“Shit, the light from the supernova has arrived,” she cursed under her breath. She looked at her fellow companions, similar humanoids and non-humanoids wearing similar armor and helmets.
“We better erect the shield quickly,” she ordered her companions.
“Yes, Commander Bakiar,” they echoed. They quickly stretched their arms out and split up, flying away, as did the golden and blue ships. She quickly got word that her squad each arrived at different points of the Oort cloud. A hologram appeared on the top of her wrist. There, she could see the parent star and the planetary system. It zoomed out, showing the Oort cloud. A red dot marked her location. Blue green dots were scattered across the hemisphere of the cloud facing the supernova.
“Good,” she told them.
Throughout the Oort cloud, she watched various Nova Corps members erect the shields. She nodded, looking at her holograms. From her visor, she could see the impending gamma ray burst arriving at the cloud. She could see a massive beam of bright lime green arriving at the cloud. As she watched it draw nearer, she erected a personal shield. Throughout the system, various other members of the corps did so as well. The ships went in front of them and fired blasts of golden energy around them, forming an energy lattice composed of the ships from throughout the hemisphere. Commander Bakiar closed her eyes and took a deep breath as the burst arrived, strengthening her shield upon arrival. The burst lasted for a couple minutes, and when it was over, she sighed in relief.
“Alright, Nova Corps,” she addressed her crewmates.
“You all did great. We just saved a species from extinction.” There would be little room for celebration, for one of the corps members detected something.
“Commander Bakiar, I am detecting something, a topological anomaly one hundred light years away from our present location,” a light blue starfish-like member of the corps alerted her, the blue coming from the copper blood in his veins. He then shared a visual with her, showcasing the anomaly. Investigating it was a spindly gold, silver, and dark green robot that hovered near it, showcasing an expanding, glowing bright red and white sphere.
“Initial analysis: topological defect, most likely true vacuum. Countermeasures in place…” the Rigellian Recorder was cut off as a greenish bug slashed at it. As the feed started to turn into static, she watched as other greenish bugs filled the field of vision. Bakiar’s eyes narrowed.
“Annihilus…”
Low Earth Orbit
1 million years into the future
High above the planet, inside a silvery deck, one mysterious man could see it all. From the deck he could see the curves of the planet Earth with the continent of Africa below, three million years since the ancestors of humans first walked in its plains. Three million years since then, humanity has expanded throughout the world, left the planet and explored and colonized countless others, and eventually colonized the galaxy. He watched the dominant species of the planet from when they were Australopithecines seven million years ago up to the galaxy spanning species they are now. A flash of light appeared behind him. He smirked as his arms were behind him, and turned around to face them.
Appearing out of the light were four beings dressed in blue programmable matter suits, shaking their heads as they tried to reorient themselves.
“What the? Who ruined ma beauty nap?” Ben, the largest member growled, an orange, rocky man.
“Fantastic Four, welcome to the world of tomorrow, one million years from your time,” the mysterious man welcomed them.
“One million years?!” The blonde-haired male, Johnny, exclaimed, clearly shocked at how far they’ve traveled.
“Okay, we’ve been to the past before, like hundreds of years in the past to Maxwell, but one million years? Man…” he took some time to process just how far they were. He turned around and noticed the sliver of his home planet outside the viewing deck. He saw the familiar blue oceans and white clouds, and lots of brown and green land. Down below was the Pacific Ocean and the west coast of the United States barely visible, covered by a black crescent on the right. Leftmost he noticed the Philippines and Australia and New Zealand further to the right.
He then noticed something quite unusual: a straight line going up from the Philippines to a ring. There were a few concentric rings circling the planet’s equator, connected to the planet by three lines, one of which was from the Philippines. The second line emanated from the Indian Ocean, and the third one from somewhere in South America.
“Ah, I see you’ve noticed the orbital rings,” the mysterious man told them.
“Orbital rings?” The brown-haired male, Reed, inquired.
“Yes,” the mysterious man responded. “There are billions of people who live there, almost as many people there as those on the surface.” Reed scrutinized the orbital ring, noticing it was mostly silver with some concentric gold rings within them. He figured that the gold was used for absorbing the heat from the Sun, which would have been quite daunting in his time but simple for a species in the era he was in. [1]
“What is that thing made of?” asked Ben. “Don’t look like carbon nanotubes or something.”
“You are right in that they initially were carbon nanotubes but since then they have been updated repeatedly, using the strongest materials of their time to build it. Right now, they’re using magnetic monopole material to build it.”
“How come no one’s ever built anything with them, Reed?” Ben turned to the genius on his team.
“I mean they were only discovered recently,” the scientist replied. “It's not like I can automatically make stuff out of monopoles without really knowing what they are.” The mysterious man nodded at his answer.
“Anyway, you’d better notice the Moon, it’s time I take you there.”
The ship then approached the object in question, entering its orbit and circling it as the passengers saw the maria and craters pass them by. They crossed the terminator and saw the various lights lining the Moon’s nightlit surface.
“Millions of colonies, starting from the year 20XX, but there are many more in the Lagrange points of both the Earth-Moon and the Earth-Sun system.” The man remarked.
There were lots of lights lining the dark side, and the ship hovered close although no one detected them. From the deck they could see people walking outside with no helmet. Many of them were human, but some looked rather odd, with weird additions to the body like extra eyes or extra limbs or exotic colors like blue or green and some being alien to begin with.
“Thanks to the marvels of genetic engineering, people can now survive the vacuum of space, although cybernetics have allowed us to do that earlier.”
The ship then turned away from the Moon and towards the Sun, which was surrounded by what seemed to be a faint, dusty aura, which arched from a spindly point passing through the center and surrounding it like a fountain.
“Ah, that?” The man noticed, watching the four look at the arc extending from the Sun.
“It’s a Dyson sphere, well, more of a swarm, really, thousands of solar panels swarming around the Sun to collect all of its energy and to power the rest of the Solar System. It was accomplished some thousand years or so after your time,” the man replied.
The four explorers were then whisked away to the fourth planet from the Sun, once red but now the second blue planet [2]. They marveled at the look of the once red planet. In front of them they could see the famous crack near the equator of the planet, spanning the length of America, now filled with blue. Looking up northwards from the valley, they could see the source of the blue: a large portion of its hemisphere, created when a large object smashed into the planet.
Looking at other places, they noticed that a region home to an optical illusion that appeared as a face, was filled with water, same with the places where the first rovers to land on the red planet landed. They marveled at the view of the planet for a while until they were whisked down to the surface.
"Just on the right, below Valles Marineris and to its right, you can see Argyre Planitia. If you didn’t know it, it was famous due to it hosting an optical illusion, the Face on Mars.” The man pointed out Argyre Planitia, south of the great canyon of the red planet. He then piloted the ship they were in through the atmosphere, where they passed through white clouds and hovered above the surface, which was largely greenish but with a reddish tinge. They passed by a field of crops where various people were tending to them. Many of them were humanoid robots, some reddish tinged humanoids, and some aliens, including a humanoid plant-like creature.
“And here, you can see all sorts of flora and fauna transported from Earth. Notice the large farmlands of genetically modified and adapted flora and fauna, many of which were from the early days of terraforming. They were designed to adapt and grow in the harsh Martian conditions and paved the way for various crops that would grow in space.”
They watched as various humans, transhumans, and aliens, many trans humans reddish and bald, and green plantlike species, walked the planet near a large city as a waterfall roared in the background. After exiting the atmosphere, a hologram appeared in the center of the room, showcasing the full scale at which the red planet had been changed.
After that, they were whisked away from the red planet and flew to a faint, pale orange star. It grew bigger in size, and they then saw it was the marmalade striped planet of Jupiter. They saw its massive cloud bands colored in a gradient from yellow to scarlet and in the resulting tints, shades and tones. Reed quickly noticed that a specific storm raging for 300 years had been missing.
“The Great Red Spot, it’s gone.” Reed remarked.
“Indeed it is,” the man told him. “It’s been gone since the year 5650. What you’re looking at is the hemisphere where it once was.”
“Thought it lasted like forever,” Ben remarked. “And that wuz before we went there.”
“You and me both, Ben. It still looks the same, yet so different.”
They spent time marveling at the giant planet, watching as the clouds churned and swirled just as they had for over four billion years. They then flew into the planet’s atmosphere, into one of the belts, passing by white ammonia clouds before arriving at the layer of yellow, orange, red, and brown ammonium hydrosulfide clouds. From their viewpoint they could also see the Sun, a fifth the size it would appear from Earth, as well as the volcanic moon of Io as a sliver of a crescent. They could also see the other three Galilean moons, although they were a bit small. They could see the two large moons Ganymede and Callisto, as well as the icy moon of Europa, designated a natural wildlife preserve.
Down below, in the cloud layer, they could see the various floating, jellyfish and or balloon like creatures that inhabited this layer of the atmosphere, the same colors as the cloud layer, which is why they were able to somewhat blend into it. The closest description one could give them were living balloons, gigantic balloon-like beings that had thin skin and large cavities inside of them which they used to store air in to stay afloat, keeping in the hydrogen and ejecting anything heavier.
“The Jovian floaters, now finally spread throughout the planet,” the man pointed at them. “They developed their astronomy through watching the Galilean moons and the Sun. Didn’t take them long to realize the Sun was at the center of the Solar System.”
“I do wonder what made them see them in awe instead of fear,” Sue remarked.
“They’re absorbers, will absorb any form of knowledge. Even if Tsiolkovsky’s rocket equation worked against them for a while, they figured out math and the natural sciences faster than we did. They’re just that hungry for knowledge for knowledge’s sake.”
For a while, the four and the man watched as the floaters continued to float haplessly through the skies of Jupiter before the man broke the silence.
“Oh, and I forgot to tell you, Jupiter’s a massive computer now, the floaters did that.”. The four turned their attention to him.
“You know the native Jovian life, yeah, they became really smart, and over time, their communications with one another turned the planet into a supercomputer. All of the floaters can link with one another, performing calculations that even quantum or DNA-based computers cannot do, hence the planet wide computer. It’s a quirk of their biology, a fascinating one. Let me show you.” He led them to the center of the deck, showing them a hologram of Jupiter.
As they looked at the planet, they watched it become dotted with various green dots all throughout. They then watched as the dots linked together in green lines to form various patterns and structures that enveloped the planet. More and more dots and lines appeared until the planet was thoroughly covered in green.
“Each one of those dots represents a floater. Well, there are multiple types of floaters but we’ll just consider them as one type for now. And each line represents the link between two floaters. Some of them form clusters and networks similar to neurons in the brain. Some act as one floater and send messages to other groups. The whole planet has become a brain, a Jupiter brain, really.”
They noticed various structures, watching as the various floaters dotted the planet in green, linking with one another, revealing the extent of the planetwide supercomputer. After showing them the hologram, the man piloted the ship out of the atmosphere and out past Callisto, where the four noticed a weird looking structure in orbit around the planet.
“Those are the largest libraries in the known galaxy, Dr. Richards,” the man told him.
“The weird structures you see up there, those are libraries and relays for the information the Jovian floaters store, they were the ones who built them as well. In fact, these libraries are all part of a galactic spanning library. We call it the Encyclopedia Galactica, and it’s been under construction for a long time.” His eyes lit up upon hearing that. He looked at his wrist and started typing into it, but the man stopped him.
“Now now, Reed, we know you wanna see it but there’s too much to see with your own eyes first.” The man told him as a pale yellow star in the distance started to grow in size. It turned out to be the sixth planet. The four stared in awe at its extensive ring system as they neared it.
“Saturn’s rings, truly one of the most impressive sights in the cosmos, for millions of years the place served as a popular tourist attraction for both humans and aliens alike,” the man remarked.
Flying over the thin F ring and into the large gap in the rings, they passed various habitats and colonies along the way. Arriving at the large gap within the ring system, they settled into orbit, flying past giant chunks of ice and dust, some of which were boulders up to ten meters long or wide. They also passed large waves within the rings extending high up and they surfed along those spokes.
After that, they flew above the rings and hovered above them, circling around the planet once. The ship then turned towards the planet, passing over the bands of lemon yellow and streaks of white. Up north was a bluish region covering the North Pole and up to thirty-ish degrees south of it. They flew into the planet just below it, entering its atmosphere, passing through yellowish haze and swirling cloud structures made of clouds of yellow, and on top of them wispy clouds of white. Suspended among them were bases, hovering pieces of land with domes covering them.
“Bathyscaphes, inhabited by humanity, transhumanity, and their descendants,” the voice replied. Looking inside the bathyscaphes, they could see buildings and lights inside of them, like mini snow globes. The four marveled at the vast cloudscape of Saturn for a while. Looking down, they could see the cloud structures and looking up, they could see the rings, massive, pale golden gray arches extending up and down from the horizon, the Cassini division seemingly cutting the rings into two main rings.
“We should go here again someday, Reed, just the two of us,” Sue turned to him.
“Perhaps, though I thought you wanted to see Saturn in its full majesty, outside of the atmosphere, though all of the planet in of itself is already majestic,” Reed remarked. “Or we could just go to J1407b, the two of us.”
“Oh, this is already majestic, Reed. Being here with you, hearing you talk about and explain all that science to me, it’s all I could ask for.” She smiled at him lovingly as he smirked back, turning his head back to the view outside. She then went closer to him to enjoy the view as well. For a while, the two shared a brief moment together as Ben and Johnny smirked as they watched the two, elbowing each other, as the former slightly elbowed the latter a bit hard.
“Ow…” Johnny remarked annoyedly, making an annoyed face as Ben smiled bashfully.
“Okay…” the man interrupted, putting himself between Reed and Sue. “I know you two wanna get all lovey dovey, just the two of you. I’ll give you that moment soon, but not now, we got a tour to complete.”
Sue turned to give the man a very annoyed look as Reed continued to marvel at the view uninterrupted. The man then piloted the ship out of the atmosphere. They watched as they saw the planet turn its back on them, its night side covering the sliver of the dayside, the rings looking like they were chipped off by the night side. They then passed by the ice giants Uranus and Neptune.
“Well I’d love to take you to the ice giants but we’re on a tight schedule here,” the man looked at his wrist. “A total shame, you would have loved to see Miranda, but here we are at what was once considered the farthest planet from the Sun.” The four could see the distant, icy dwarf planet of Pluto out in the distance, looking at its icy brown surface and the brownish white heart at its center, Tombaugh Regio, named after its discoverer.
They then hovered above the surface, noticing weird looking humanoids with icy, crystalline structures roam around the nitrogen ice, some of them skating over it. Some looked at the faint, dusky glow of the Sun, which seemed to appear as a faint, gray halo. It was zodiacal dust, dust from asteroid and comet material around the Sun.
“Now those, those are also humans, genetically modified to adapt to the frigid environment of Pluto, plus hundreds of thousands of years there.” The man pointed at the weird, crystalline humans. After a while, they then set sail for other icy objects located in the Kuiper Belt. They passed icy comet after icy comet, dwarf planet after dwarf planet before arriving at a few unusually green colored objects.
The man steered them towards one of these unusually green objects, and as they got closer, they noticed the green was actually a canopy. Looking closely, they could even see the leaves and the stems emanating from the center. Moving in closer, they hovered near the surface of the object, also covered in green. They noticed various kinds of flora sprawling over the surface and even noticed weird plant-like creatures, the same ones they encountered on Mars, walking around.
“Those are the Cotati,” the man told them. “They have been hard at work at transforming yet another Kuiper Belt object into a Dyson tree, and they’ve been transforming boring icy comets like this for over a million years, ever since they were first stranded here in our Solar System by the Kree. Any warmth they need, they themselves provide. The atmosphere, they have generated it themselves, what with all the plants around them. It’s breathable to humans, don’t worry.” He then whisked them away from the current Dyson tree, showing them multiple kinds throughout the Kuiper Belt, many of them spherical, others asymmetrical. The common thing they all had was that they were generated by the Cotati and were sprawling with flora.
“Now,” the man gathered the four’s attention, “we go beyond. That’s the gist of what you gotta see in our Solar System. Way more to see back there, but the rest of the galaxy awaits.” He then led them back to the center of the room, where a hologram appeared. A yellow dot appeared in the center and various colored dots started to appear as the yellow dot shrank. Blue white paths started to trace themselves, connecting the various dots together.
“Let’s start with just our Local Bubble. We’ll be traveling through a cosmic string network. Now Reed, you discovered way back in the 21st century that the universe is permeated with cosmic strings, and that cosmic strings thread the cosmos, and one can travel on these strings to get to another location. It’s a form of FTL, and a highly efficient one at that.” He then led them to the vantage point, the hologram turning off.
They then saw a wormhole appear in front of them, glowing blue and white, with a very white hot center. They then flew into the wormhole and within a few seconds, found themselves in an empty area of space with various stars surrounding them. Looking at the W-shaped constellation of Cassiopeia, they noticed a sixth star at one of the edges.
“That’s the Sun,” Reed remarked.
“Whoa,” Johnny said with awe. “It looks so small. I’ve seen Earth from Saturn but this is nothing like that, it’s even smaller now.”
“We’re at the Alpha Centauri system..” Reed realized.
They flew past the red dwarf Proxima Centauri, passing over a massive starspot and watching as a massive superflare erupted from below, the red dwarf ejecting plasma as they passed through it, the ship unharmed. They then passed the two planets orbiting the red dwarf before arriving at Alpha Centauri B and heading towards a teal world with brownish land on its surface [3]. They hovered above the surface, noticing bluish green aliens with reddish mohawks under a pinkish sky. They were dressed in garbs and were equipped with bows and arrows.
“They are the Centaurans of Centauri IV, one of humanity’s first alien contacts. They do have a name for the planet but it’s unpronounceable even by galactic standards,” the man informed them.
The four watched as the Centaurians aimed their bows at a target, launching the arrows which landed on a target simultaneously at the center. Other archers launched arrows at nearby targets, obtaining the same result. They cheered and jumped and bumped their chests and arrows against one another, chanting and yelling.
They then exited the atmosphere and entered another cosmic string wormhole, arriving at a reddish orange star twenty five times the size of the Sun. Upon getting closer to it, they could see the star was covered by a mesh of structures. There were some structures that were twisting gas on the surface into gigantic arcs that were sucked in by spinning donut-like structures that then siphoned them into sphere-like structures glowing red orange. There were six of these structures, all placed ninety degrees from one another [4]. Surrounding the star were at least four planets, the fourth having lights on its night side. The man then approached that planet for closer inspection. Up close, the four could see that it was a planet with a dark teal ocean and orange fauna. They entered the atmosphere, and they could see massive towers reaching towards the sky with humanoid people flying in dark blue and gold suits hovering above the ground in lanes.
“There we have the Arcturans of Arcturus IV, a race descended from humanity who have discovered starlifting technology, which has kept their star Arcturus from further expanding by tearing out material from the star, mostly the heavy stuff.”
He then piloted the ship out of the planet, entering another wormhole. Upon exiting they entered orbit around a yellow dwarf star not unlike the Sun. Orbiting it was a planet like Jupiter but its colors were much more fiery as a result of it being close to its star. The man then piloted them into the atmosphere, where they were met with ferocious winds blowing red hot clouds into their direction and massive thunderstorms crackling in every direction. They flew past hot clouds as they descended into its interior, finding floating jellyfish-like creatures with five tentacles, swimming through the intense conditions of its home planet.
“Whoa, and I thought those places were too hot ta support any kind of life.” Ben remarked.
“Life is remarkably adaptable, Ben, even in a hot Jupiter that doesn’t have rubies or sapphires in its atmosphere,” Reed responded, amazed at what he was seeing.
“What you are seeing here is a type of creature similar to the Jovian floaters. Creatures like both species are very rare, most Jupiter-like worlds are barren. And yet they’ve managed to evolve intelligence like the Jovian floaters. Heck, the two of them are in contact with one another. Many species similar to them are. They collect knowledge and store it within themselves and in the Encyclopedia Galactica. Collectively, they’re known as the Archivists. A fascinating bunch, aren’t they?”
Exiting the planet’s turbulent atmosphere, they noticed a structure circling the planet similar to the one they found around Jupiter. The man explained it was another one of the libraries. They then entered a wormhole and found themselves in a region of space full of gas and dust. There were ruins of a once great structure made of dust, now being blown away and apart by the stellar winds of new stars being born.
“You may have once called this the Eagle Nebula, the Pillars of Creation, M16. Of course the pillars are long gone, but have been replaced by forming planetary systems, many of which could soon be bearing life. This is why we designated starbirth nebulae off limits in the case planetary systems could arise there. Any normal molecular clouds are free real estate though.” The man explained to them. They continued to tour the nebula, finding large Herbig Haro objects and unusually shaped Bok globules and watched as disks of gas and dust spun under their own angular momentum, soon to give rise to new life and to new civilizations. They watched as new stars were born, blasting away the envelope of gas and dust that once surrounded them.
After traversing another wormhole, they found themselves in a triple star system. They passed two yellow dwarfs and one red dwarf, arriving at a planet with blue oceans and brown and green land. It resembled the Earth, but had differing landmasses and structures. A number of aliens wearing dark blue and gold armor with shoulder blades and a golden helmet, three stars in white in a V-position, the V outlined in white, passed them by, flying somewhere alongside blue and yellow star-shaped ships.
“Ah, the Nova Corps, they’ve more than rebuilt since Thanos decimated Xandar, ever since they built the Worldmind.” The members and ships zipped past the four and headed someplace else.
“Let’s see what they’re up to,” the man suggested. They followed the Nova Corps soldiers and flew through a wormhole, arriving at a massive star. The star was massive, spanning a distance all the way out to Saturn, and glowed an eerie red.
“Ah, a red hypergiant,” he remarked. He then showed the Fantastic Four the interior of the star. They noticed the core of the star starting to develop a gray center that grew and grew.
“Wait, that star, it’s gonna blow,” Johnny remarked.
“I know, but watch this,” he redirected their attention to the monitor. The Nova Corps members and ships surrounded the star, firing concentrated magenta beams directly at it. After a few moments, the red star suddenly disappeared. They then moved in for a closer look – the star was now far smaller, around the size of the Earth. A swarm of microscopic technology then surrounded it, encasing it entirely. A few moments passed, and a burst of light emanated from it.
“That was a hypergiant star,” the man informed them. “And it was supposed to go hypernova, sterilizing light years of space and robbing planets of life and civilizations. And you just saw that prevented by the Nova Corps. That little sphere of theirs, it will provide untold amounts of energy to power galactic civilization.”
“Pym particles, fascinating. The particle density of that beam must have been in the twenty fourth magnitude or higher,” Reed remarked.
“Indeed it is, like you, Dr. Pym’s legacy is still seen even a million years from now. I hope he feels vindicated, never showed it to him. Hopefully a talk from Eternity will convince him.”
Once they saw the Nova Corps members disappear, taking the sphere with them by shrinking it, the four decided it was time to see something else. The man took them through another wormhole and they arrived at a yellowish white star. The star was massive, certainly much wider than the orbit of Jupiter. It was surrounded by an artificial ring and two spinning rings above and below its north and south poles. Large pockets of gas were siphoned off the surface of the star, passing through the spinning rings and into large spheres.
“Now that, that’s another hypergiant, a yellowish-white one though at that,” he informed the four. “It’s another way to save the lives of trillions or quadrillions of species and prevent the sterilization of cubic light years of space. If it’s not too late, we construct gigantic structures that will siphon off any extra material from the star, preventing it from going hypernova, which provides us with plenty of energy for an emerging galactic civilization.”
“So there are thousands, if not millions, of similar efforts happening across the galaxy?” Sue asked the man.
“Correct, although it is rather difficult to do in the galactic center. Far too irradiated and far too massive hypergiants although the metallicity of the stars has been increasing over time. We’re still trying to come up with solutions, but that’s just the galactic center, no one really lives there, unless it’s the Future Foundation. A million year legacy is something to be truly proud of, Dr. Richards.” He wrapped his arm around him.
“Please, don’t do that…” he told him politely.
“Sorry about that, but anyway, the Future Foundation, they’re still solving the greatest mysteries of the universe, have been at it since the 21st century, like converting Galactus into a life bringer, a life restorer. Right now they’re figuring out how to reverse entropy and how to get information out of a black hole, they’re doing that right at the galactic center.”
“Really, they’re still figuring out how to do that? All you have to do is map the surface area of the event horizon and get its entropy and you can retrieve the information lost.”
“The engineering is rather complicated. The theory is simple, sure, but putting it into practice, not so much. But if you’d like to see a more small-scale project and rather simpler one, I’d be more than happy to show you.” After jumping through another wormhole, they arrived at a black hole, which was surrounded by a weird structure. A brief glance, and Reed figured out what they were doing with it.
“They’re harvesting momentum from the black hole, they’re using the Penrose process.”
“Correct, Roger Penrose and quite a number of physicists from the 20th and 21st centuries, theri works are still highly regarded today,” the man remarked. “And there are many more of these black hole energy harvesting devices throughout the galaxy, but I figure it’s time to head back to civilization.”
They jumped in orbit around a reddish hypergiant, surrounded by a large number of concentric rings all rotating around the star. When it exploded, the rings covered it, preventing any energy from escaping. Another jump, they found themselves in the outskirts of a planetary system’s Kuiper Belt, passing by chunks of ice that could never form a planet. They soon passed a number of grayish triangular pyramids hiding amongst the comets.
“What you’re seeing here is the Future Foundation’s attempt at preventing the destruction of a civilization by natural causes,” the man told the four. “Watch."
They headed closer inwards towards the parent star, which had a bluish planet with lights on its nightside. A comet was headed straight towards it. The pyramids then headed towards the comet, accumulating into a large mass nearby. It stayed near the comet for a long period of time until it passed right past the planet, giving its inhabitants an extraordinary view.
“What you saw was the prevention of the destruction of civilization, all thanks to those brilliant machines. Now, let’s go outwards.” They left the planet and went out of the system’s Kuiper Belt, arriving at the outskirts of its Oort Cloud, where there were even more of the pyramids. A planet headed towards it, and the machines accumulated into a large sphere just as massive, if not more so, than the planet, which upon passing by it, redirected the rogue planet out into interstellar space.
“That rogue planet had life under its surface, hence the machines just redirected it back into space. If it were just a normal planet, the machines would have consumed it to make even more copies,” the man informed them.
“But wouldn’t the civilization notice it?” Sue asked.
“Ah, but they are quantum computers, and they can manipulate data to hide any traces of them or their interventions, and the native civilizations carry on their lives in peace,” he told her.
With another jump, they found themselves in another star system, just outside of its Oort Cloud. A star was approaching the system. Donut-shaped structures formed above its surface, harvesting its energy. An orange cube formed around it, and after a few minutes, the star was gone.
“They can create what we call time stasis fields. They speed up time for the object inside of them while the rest of the universe goes normally. When they open up, the object will have been altered or been destroyed over the equivalent of billions of billions of years. It works for black holes as well.”
The four then noticed the Oort cloud become enveloped by the machines, which then started to glow with a purplish energy. Filters started to appear on the viewing screen, showcasing a bright, lime green beam head toward the system. Upon hitting the envelope, it glowed an even brighter shade of purple before returning to its normal shade and dismantling itself.
“What you saw was a gamma ray burst heading right for the system. Within a year, the native civilizations would have been roasted chicken upon the burst destroying its ozone layer, but enough of that, time to head back to see new civilizations.”
With another jump, they saw a massive blue star gurgle and churn in front of them. They noticed it was surrounded by a number of starlifting technologies, particularly the spinning disks siphoning off gas. They also noticed a large ring around the star storing all the energy siphoned off. Looking closely, they saw a number of ships flying to and from it. Going outwards from the star, they passed a hellish planet with lava flowing everywhere on its rock surface, and then a barren rocky one.
“Ah, here we are at Deneb.”
“Deneb? It’s a blue giant star, it should have exploded or have become a red giant star by now,” Reed remarked.
“Well yes, but see the technology around it? The starlifting has kept it young, and if you noticed, it’s actually billions of years old.”
Reed then looked at his computer, typing in commands. A spectrum appeared with various dark lines breaking it up. He narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing the dark lines.
“It’s still a Population I star, but the metallicity content is slightly lower than I expected, this would put it in the same star generation as our Sun, if slightly older.”
“Once again, Reed, you never fail to show your genius,” the man remarked. “Deneb is actually quite old. Someone built this technology around the star billions of years ago, why do you think it’s been around for quite a while? Oh, and coming up is the planet Oerlani, home of the Askavarii.”
They passed a swampy planet that was teal and a murky brown, with white clouds heavily obscuring most of the land. After a while, they arrived at a rather bluish purple world once again looking similar to Earth. Looking closer, they flew into the planet, passing clouds along the way and stopping by a skyscraper. Surrounding the skyscraper were various hovercraft and people on hoverbikes whizzing by in a pinkish orange sky with multiple skyscrapers on end in the foreground. They then noticed a large statue erected in the middle of the city they were in: a man holding a long surfboard and a woman with long hair who held the planet in both of her hands.
Norrin Radd - astronomer, hero, savior.
Shalla-Bal, leader, visionary, rebuilder.
“Those two, Norrin Radd and Shalla-Bal, are the legendary couple of the cosmos, the two of them having done great good in their own right, the former the first one to rebel against Galactus and a restorer of worlds, the second the one to rebuild her home planet and expand true peace across the cosmos. Their legends are still revered after a million years.”
They then exited the planet, entering yet another wormhole and finding themselves passing another blue giant being starlifted.
“This time, it’s Rigel,” the man remarked. Reed scanned the star, taking notice of its spectrum. He noted it was the same thing.
They looked around and noticed a bluish world. Up close, one could see that it was similar to the Earth, blue oceans, white clouds and green and brown landmasses. However, the main difference between it and the Earth was the gigantic ring that surrounded it. It was a ring of blue, blue oceans, white clouds, and green and brown landmasses, as if someone took a piece of the planet and mapped it onto an artificial ring.
At a vast distance from the planet, there was a small sphere. It was an observatory located at the Lagrange points of one of the planets, an area where the gravity of the planet and the star Rigel balanced out. They also passed similar structures to the ones encountered around Jupiter and the hot Jupiter. Upon getting closer, they noticed gold and dark teal spider-like robots pass them by, jumping into FTL.
“Ah, those are the Rigellian Recorders, they’re scanning the universe for data. They are some of the biggest data collectors and contributors to the Encyclopedia Galactica.” He then pointed at the structures.
“Those are similar structures to the library. The Rigellians of Rigellia are scholars by nature, and build things cool. They are highly intelligent after all and the Rigellians themselves are some of the largest contributors to the Galactica. All of those structures are libraries. In fact, Rigellia hosts the most libraries in the galaxy, like if the Library of Alexandria never burned down.”
“And that weird sphere you just passed, it is the largest known map of the universe. Well, housed inside of it is the largest known map of the universe. And they’ve thoroughly mapped our galaxy to near one hundred percent accuracy. And they’ve even mapped the other galaxies out there. Did I tell you all that we just went to many other galaxies in the Local Group? The LMCs, the Andromeda, the Triangulum. All of those galaxies are just, wow, insanely fascinating. But we’ve only entered a small portion. The Milky Way though, that was massive. Back to the map, just access it and you would see pretty much the observable universe, the entirety with all the voids and all. You wouldn’t exactly wanna know what’s in those voids."
Reed then started to access the ship’s holograms, wondering what secrets of the universe the sphere hid. He noted that the interface was rather weird but within a few minutes he figured it out, accessing some of the library’s data. He saw a spherical hologram of the entire universe and quickly navigated through it, his eyes wide in awe. His three teammates went over to him to see what he was doing, and were also equally amazed at the scale of the cosmos.
They then hovered around the ring of Rigellia, passing the lights. The nighttime side of the planet was lit by lights, as was the dark side of the rings. They looked at the ring, and there were multiple ships flying. They noticed a man on a motorbike whizzing around the planet, he was fast. The man had a helmet. They followed the man, arriving at a bustling city.
“Alright, I think we have had enough of exploring the cosmos for a while,” he told them. “Why don’t we explore around the great ring of Rigellia for a change of pace?” Everyone nodded as their suits generated a helmet surrounding them. They exited the ship, which opened up its hatch, allowing them to exit. Reed then opened his palm, unveiling a white sphere. It unwrapped itself and revealed itself to be a hovering white robot with a black screen and yellow eyes and a mouth.
“HERBIE, initiate a toxicology scan, check if the atmosphere is breathable.” After a few seconds of scanning, the robot indicated that it was safe, and the four took off their helmets.
They then found themselves in a bustling city with all kinds of races from across the galaxy. There were people going to school, hovering trains and all. There were all kinds of humans, aliens, Xandarians, Krylorians, Kree, Skrull, etc. There were a large number of humanoid species, including the red-tinted Krylorians, the greenish gray Kylosians, the swamp-hailing Askavarii, the black, sentient goop that were the Symbiotes, and others. There were also the robotic Rigellians, who have long shedded their biological forms and are now one with their Rigellian Recorders.
The four wandered around the city, passing various vendors, one of which had Symbiotes there, selling what seemed to be black goop. What it was, they did not know, although they were intrigued at the way it moved, wriggling around the platform it was on and forming the shape of a spiky ball.
“Ah, the Symbiotes, they’ve had quite a bit of a history with our galaxy, but over the years, they’ve mellowed out,” the man remarked.
“Now this is the galactic capital of the galaxy, here you will find all sorts of races, Xandarian, Krylorian, Rigellian, Kree, Skrull, Symbiote, Kylosian, Eternal, Deviant, Askavarii, Zenn-Lavian, Cotati, Sagan-type floaters, etc.”
A visor appeared on Sue’s face as she tried to make sense of what was going on around them. She didn’t know what language the races were speaking and it would take long for their translators to work. She noticed that throughout the city the aliens all seemed to be using a common language. Her visor’s HUD soon displayed the translated language.
“There’s a restaurant nearby,” she noticed a large sign displayed in neon, where multiple beings were seated, conversing, eating, and drinking. “Wanna go get something?” she asked her teammates. They all nodded.
“I’m starving,” Ben remarked, his stomach audibly growling.
They then proceeded to the restaurant. From there they could see a large portion of the surface of Rigellia, they could see the land and the clouds hovering above it, casting shadows on the land. They could see a blue strip surrounding the surface, the thin blue line that protected the planet from the cold and harsh environment of space. Around them, there were various people of various races and aliens of various species all eating food there. The restaurant was dimly lit, orange lanterns illuminating the place.
“I think this would be a good place to stop. Why don’t you all go take a stroll around this place? I’ll just be waiting here with the ship,” the man told them, walking away. “You’ll know where to find me.” The four then sat themselves in one of the tables, browsing the holographic menu, which did not feature anything from Earth. As they did so, a man with brown hair and a dark blue and white suit approached them.
“You don’t happen to be the Fantastic Four, do you?”