PSO Book 3: Universes Unknown

Space, time, space time.

Pandora.

I'm done with being on Pandora, I'm leaving in 10 seconds. I checked the controls and instruments one last time, just before takeoff. I fired up the engine, ready to leave Pandora for good. The plane took off easily, but it was at that point I realised that something was wrong. The xenon levels were not very high.

I didn't know why they were not that high, maybe it was really that low or there was a hole that was punctured in it. If there was a hole in it, that would be bad. I had no time to check, I was in flight, and I was climbing up the atmosphere. I would I guess check it when I was in orbit, which would take a little time to get into, not long though.

I used my normal ascent profile, coasting along as close to the surface as possible until reaching mach 2, which I would activate the ramjet. When I was climbing, and I got to mach 4, I would switch the ramjet to a scramjet. A scramjet was a type of ramjet, only it did supersonic combustion instead of subsonic combustion, meaning that I could go faster, way faster.

The plane climbed out of the atmosphere pretty slowly, I wanted to maximize horizontal speed and use the closed cycle of the RAPIER engine at a minimum. The speed reached mach 6 near the edge of the atmosphere, and I wasn't accelerating anymore, so I pitched the nose up slowly. One very good thing about Pandora was that, even though the planet had a lower atmosphere, had denser air near the top of it.

I did the circularisation using the closed cycle RAPIER engine, only using barely any delta-V because of my shockingly horizontal ascent. I guess that was pretty efficient though, leaving about 10 units of oxidizer and about 50 units of liquid fuel. For Equestria, that used up all the oxidizer and it remained me with about 30 units of liquid fuel, guess maybe that was my ascent profile really.

Now that I was in orbit, a very low orbit, I can go and investigate the xenon tanks. I put on my helmet and went outside. Fun fact, the oxygen tank is modular and it can be attached to my flight suit anytime I want. I opened up the airlock and went outside. I used the jetpack, flying myself over to the xenon tanks.

I looked at it, examining it carefully. The tanks weren't ruptured or anything, and there weren't any leaks, maybe it was just a false reading. There had to be another explanation, there was no other way that the xenon levels decreased. Maybe it was that 2 trillion years, well I would never know. One good thing is that the Galaxy Scouter had plenty of delta-V remaining, about 300000m/s to be exact, or not exact, as that was an approximation. I was too lazy to do the equation.

I crawled back into my seat, realising something. One of the screens said that a strange thing appeared near Polyphemus, and it was detected, but not seen. It was emitting some strange radio waves, which couldn't be translated by my radio wave receiver, it was strange.

What better thing than to go to that mysterious place. What could it be? A piece of rock floating in space, a magical anomaly, or even cooler, a space-time rift. I can't say that it wouldn't be interesting, I mean, the sensor detected it, but it didn't know what it is or even take a photo of it. The thing was just invisible. The sensor did know where it was though, strange to think of it when it was invisible or something like that, but that was technology, obviously, at its finest.

I burnt my way there, spending only about 2000m/s delta-V in one go, and the transfer would take about 3 days. 3 days, not bad, but boring. There was nothing to do, so waiting would the most logical thing, or maybe playing games on that screen I had, but nope, nothing to do, no ponies to talk to, nothing.

Waiting for 3 days is hard, especially being in isolation, though I had food to accompany me, better than nothing. The food is all the things I gathered from Pandora. The food was in another service bay, yes, there was another one, which contained the instruments and all the food. The food in it should last more than a month, but most of the time in the Scouter would be in cryogenic stasis.

I didn't want to go into stasis, it was only 3 days, should be easy, right? Ok, maybe not, the voices ringing in my head bothered me, and I could barely take it after that 3 days. Right before arrival, I shook all of the random thoughts out of my head, getting extremely excited to see what was there. All I could see was nothing, could it be gone? Was this just nothing? Were the sensors and whatnot faulty? I had absolutely no idea.

I checked the sensors again, bingo, it was a space-time rift. Wait, a space-time rift, what could that do? I certainly don't know what a space-time rift would do, well, nopony knows, but I guess I'm going to find out, right? I mean, there was no other way to know than to go into one, right? That's literally the only way to know, there was no other way, and I mean it.

I got more and more excited when the rift started to get closer and closer, later being able to see into it. There was just complete darkness, a bit strange, but it was a space-time rift, and it was only in science fiction books. I can't believe I would be going into one in real life. The only thing about it was that it didn't match up with the ones in the books, but that was all fiction, this was sci-fact.

I was drifting closer and closer until I coasted into it. I felt something strange, and everything instantly disappeared. I was alone, not even in my SSTO. I was all by myself, not even in my flight suit. It felt like a dream, a lucid dream. This didn't seem right, how was this possible, I wasn't sleeping, did I black out? I couldn't have blacked out, I would be able to feel that, this was instant. I think that is what happens in a space-time rift, strange to say the least.

Even though I think that was how being in a space-time rift felt like, I still had the thought that it was a dream. I had to check, I mean, what if this was a dream? What if this was all just a stupid dream? Was this real? I just had to answer the question, so I thought of a plan to see if I was really in a dream and wasn't experiencing reality. The plan I devised was to bite myself on the hoof. I mean, I didn't have my flight suit on, and I guess I can sorta feel things.

'Ahh fuck!' I swore as I bit my hoof, 'Should've done that.'

I guess I wasn't in a dream after all, my hoof hurting like the time that a timberwolf bit me. That was another story, and that happened while I was a filly and got lost in the Everfree forest, but hey, I forgot I had wings back then, stupid me. The place was just an abyss, nothing, nothing at all.

Suddenly, I thought of something, something that posed a lot of questions for me. Firstly, there was no air pressure, and I was not breathing, how was I surviving? And secondly, I could see myself, but there was no light source, the place was just a huge void, so how am I supposed to see myself?

All I could think of is that those questions had one simple answer and a complicated answer. The simple answer was that this place doesn't obey the laws of anything, and had its own reality. The complicated answer is that this place doesn't obey the laws of anything, such as the laws of physics. The place here could have different laws of physics, and lighting properties. The reality here might not be even real, and could be physical matter torn down, and I'm only my mind, with no physical body, but I could feel myself and even touch it.

Well, that was pretty complicated, I have yet to give an answer to this. I returned to reality in about 4 seconds later, passing through that rift. Strangely, I had another theory, it was a wormhole. Wormholes would never do that, it would be instant, and it would most likely make me die in the process. At least now I was in my SSTO and was wearing my flight suit. I guess that wasn't reality, this was.

I kept thinking about that experience. It couldn't be a wormhole. That could be possible because of the laws of physics and general relativity, but it would have stability issues and other problems like that which would make it theoretically impossible to exist like the rift I passed through. Only problems about wormholes are that they would contain a shit load of radiation because of the highly condensed matter and that the theorised exotic matter would not exist in such large quantities because of its high negative charge.

For the time being, I was coasting through space, not even looking outside. Strange thing I wasn't looking outside, I always do that, but I think I was too into thinking and theorising. I thought I would take a break, I mean, I guess I needed it. I turned on the screen in front of me, looking outside via the cameras, I was not bothered to actually look outside.

The outside was back to normal, with the stars and whatnot. For what I could say about the stars, it was just like what I saw from Equestria, though the Pandoran night sky looked pretty similar because of the short distance between the stars. I looked around and saw a star, but I was very close to it, and I saw a little planet, taken from one of the cameras with very high detail.

All I could say about the picture was that I just had to go there, and strange thing was that I was just hurtling towards it.