-or- The seventh installment
Supernova part VII
I feel so cynical now. My cynicism has grown steadily over the years, corresponding to a loss of idealism. I was not a lone cynic through the course of the years, there were many of us. And when this “wonderful” idea was proposed we raised our collective voices in defiance to this plan. We were sure it was doomed to failure. Sadly, we were not possessed of clairvoyance sufficient to know how right we were. Perhaps we would not have relented so easily.
Our protestations were silenced quickly through bland reassurances and thinly veiled threats. This hammer to fall became the goal behind which humanity could unite itself. The final dilemma was the creation of a matter-anti-matter engine with the power to open a hole large enough to allow passage of the mammoth Ganymede. The actual engine itself was not the problem, rather an energy source sufficient to power an engine of that size. Our ships relied on the readily available energy generated by nuclear fusion reactors. But, as the protestors stated in their complaints, a fusion reactor of that size would create a star.
Ah, the irony of life, for as the protestors raised these very concerns, the military scientists discovered a ready made, convenient, and nearly limitless (to our finite minds) fusion reactor: Our own sun. After years of research, practice, and a number of failed, fatal attempts we gained complete control of our own solar system. We discovered how to siphon previously inconceivable amounts of energy from our own sun.
Numerous successful tests were run with the new matter-anti-matter engines. We opened holes and pushed ships, cargo, and transports through, and retrieved them again. Everything worked beautifully.