The world Aznyr lived in was amazing. Spectacular. Breathtaking. He took in the view around him. Buildings that morphed into multiple shapes and could retreat into the ground or shoot upwards towards the sky, growing in a way not too different from that of plants. There were multiple smaller houses and buildings which were floating in the air, powered by rocket boosters. The roads were even more staggeringly mind-blowing. They were holographic, with bright, neon-colored sidewalks that shifted in color based on the amount of traffic on the road at a given time.
The cars people drove were hovercrafts capable of floating in the air and propelling at staggering speeds of 200 km/h. The entire getup was situated at an altitude of 1000 meters above the ground. People wore jetpack suits and special shoes that gave the illusion of walking on thin air due to the extremely precise, pinpoint accuracy of the thousands of nano-jets embedded into the jetpack suits.
Aznyr looked below him. A few hundred meters below the current roads, an intricate expanse of roads stretched out in all directions as far as the eye could see, and below that, yet another expanse of endless holographic roads. He then looked up. He saw yet more roads. Despite seeing the same sight every day since he could remember for the last 15 years, the sight always awed him to no end.
The planet that Aznyr lived on was very small. Tremendously so. Extremely small. It was so small, in fact, that you could orbit the entire planet in a few hours. Pretty soon, the ground filled up and there was no more building space. Then people moved on to building giant raft islands on the lakes and seas, but pretty soon that ran out of space too. They needed new solutions, and fast. There were 37 planets in their solar system, 14 orbiting around the smaller sun, and 23 around the bigger sun. None of them could support life, though. So they had to make do with what little they had.
That was when a brilliant genius inventor some 700 years ago came up with an invention so mind-boggling that engineers were still stumped by it, even 700 years later. The genius inventor, Veyrion Yhorm, came up with the revolutionary anti-graviton fusion reactor, which he was able to compress and condense into rocket boosters, engines, and just about any contraption which was previously deemed impossible to take off from the ground.
In his time, the most brilliant scientific minds were only starting to theorize about the existence of gravitons, the particles that make up what we know as the force of gravity. He was centuries ahead of his peers, and not only did he prove the existence of this highly evasive particle, he also found a way to artificially manufacture its anti-matter countertype, the anti-graviton. Which, for centuries to come and beyond, was the planet's lifeblood.
With this technology, engineers quickly found a way to make just about anything float in the air, and pretty soon, entire towns and cities were being converted to be airborne. Engineers were also tasked with inventing gear that would help people adapt to the higher altitudes, such as oxygen supplement systems built into jetpack suits and helmets which pumped that sweet, rich oxygenated air for people to breathe. Then, a couple of hundred years ago, a team of scientists found a way to integrate this tech into the very fabric of construction, and now buildings were able to snake their way around the sky, and burrow into underground tunnels, so that people could switch between living up in the air and down on ground (or below it).
And now, entire cities, even countries, have been built in the air, with virtual borders (later marked by holographic markers), with schools, apartments, cinemas, theme parks, hospitals, hotels, houses, all up and flying about in the air. One thing their world did not have, though, was trains. But who needed trains when the entire building you lived in could zoom about at hundreds of kilometers per hour in the air?
For a moment, Aznyr stopped at a red crossing light, briefly snapped out of his wandering thoughts, as he waited to cross the final airwalk to where his school was located. He was in his final year of high school (which, may I add, was very high indeed), and today was his last day, where he would be taking his university entrance exam. He was a bit nervous, but confident nonetheless, because he had studied the subjects required for the exam every day for the past few years.
His target university: Star-hopper Evermore Academy. The most brilliant scientific minds have graduated from there, and their professors are second to none. But the real reason Aznyr wanted to attend this university wasn't the glamorous track record it left nor the name it made for itself, but rather the simple fact that this university was the highest altitude building on the entire planet. It was situated right on the outermost edge of the atmosphere, and you could literally see about half of the planet around you from the university's viewing platform. And while their tiny planet had no moon of its own, you could sometimes spot 3 or 4 moons of the neighboring planets if you looked hard enough (although you'd need a telescope to see them clearly).
He wanted to reach for the stars. Or at least the neighboring planets. Word around town was that the university was working on a top-secret project that might very well change the fate of their entire world. Rumor had it they were developing airtight housing modules that would be deployed on neighboring planets, and air canisters that would be transported on rocket propelled pods that would be launched from the university's aerial takeoff and landing pad. There was no way to confirm these rumors, though. Other than to go there and see for himself, of course.
Heck, he might even become the next Veyrion... Now now, don't get carried away, he chided himself, with a light chuckle. The dude's IQ must have been like, what, 220? No way he would ever get close to even half of that smartness, he thought as he made his way to the examination hall. This was the biggest moment of his life. He simply could not afford to screw it up. With one last look at the world around him, he shut off his thoughts and started focusing on his exam.
--------------------------------------150 years later--------------------------------------
After stepping out of the portal, Zorak took in his surroundings. The planet he stepped on was massive, with giant mega-cities sprawling the terrain as far as he could see. He was told this world had 17 continents and 9 huge oceans. He looked at the sky. Just like his previous world, it was calm, serene, and empty. But he knew that was just a deception, a trick that the light played on people's eyes. He knew that the sky was in fact buzzing with what they called 'sky snakes', flying trains which zipped from continent to continent near the speed of light. It was impossible to see one with your own eyes as a bystander.
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With this tech, one could go around the planet and come back to the same spot in a few seconds.
Enough gawking now, Zorak thought. He was here on business. He had a deadline to make, and his bosses would not be happy if he was late. He would just drop the package at his office on Vordyrsk, a country on the largest continent, Vormyra, where his office on this planet's branch was located.
A few minutes later, after he had hopped onto a sky snake and dropped off the package, he was ready to make his way to his next destination: a planet named Xelthor. The way this all worked always fascinated him, even though he had done this hundreds, thousands of times in his lifetime so far.
He wasn't a scientist, nor was he a technical person in any aspect. His specialty was economics and trade, so he did not understand how all this crazy tech worked, no matter how many times his physics professor back in school tried to explain. He was not a science guy. Not him, no siree.
Just then, his holo-phone beeped. He thought in his mind 'pick up', and a robotic earpiece and microphone built into his suit made their way to rest on his ear and near his mouth. A hologram of his friend's face popped into his vision from the glasses he was wearing.
"Hello there, Zorak, have you dropped off my latest invention at your offices in Vordyrsk?", the voice in his ear asked him. It was his friend and work colleague, Kaelor, asking him if he had delivered the latest piece of cutting-edge tech that would revolutionize the solar market (or so his friend claimed).
"Yes, Kae, I dropped it off, safe and sound. You can expect it to hit the market within 2-3 days, if the vetting and approval process goes smoothly", Zorak responded.
Kaelor then said, “Hey, do you want me to explain how the portals work again? I just thought of a crazy simple way to get you to understand.”
“I don’t know… I mean, it hasn’t really worked the last 50 times you tried. But OK, let’s see what you got for me, chap. Let’s hear it,” Zorak replied doubtfully.
“OK, you know how the most brilliant inventor in the history of brilliant inventors, Aznyr Vynari, revolutionized Veyrion’s anti-graviton fusion reactor tech and invented the portal transport system, yeah?” asked Kaelor eagerly.
“Yes, I hear this all the time. What’s your new idea to get me to understand?”
“Alright, alright. Be patient, my dear friend. First, we start with the fundamentals—the graviton and anti-graviton collision reaction,” Kaelor explained.
“And my guess is, there’s more to the story,” Zorak cuts in.
“Precisely! Exactomundo! Now imagine you’re trying to row a boat across a river. The river’s current is pushing against you. That’s like the natural resistance you face when trying to move at light speed. It’s just not possible with the energy we have. So what did Aznyr do? His genius idea was to create something like an ‘anti-current’—a way to make the river push you forward instead of holding you back. That’s where negative mass comes in.”
Zorak raises an eyebrow, still unconvinced. “Anti-current? Negative mass? You’re losing me already, mate.”
“Right, right, let’s simplify. Think of it like this: imagine a ball rolling downhill. Normally, gravity pulls the ball down, right? Well, negative mass is like creating a hill that pushes things up the slope instead. Aznyr figured out how to create that uphill push, which lets the ship or portal ‘slide’ forward much faster than usual.”
“So, it’s like turning the hill upside down?” Zorak asked.
“Exactly! Instead of fighting against the hill, you’ve got it helping you. But it doesn’t stop there. This ‘uphill push’ also messes with the light around it. Normally, photons—particles of light—are everywhere, bouncing off things, slowing them down. But with this ‘negative hill’ in front of you, the light gets deflected, creating a clear path. It’s like driving a car down an empty highway instead of through traffic. That’s the photon vacuum.”
“And this creates the wormhole?” Zorak asks, a little more engaged now.
“Bingo! Picture it like this: when you get that uphill push and the light gets out of your way, it’s like opening a tunnel in the river that lets you cut straight through. The water parts for you, just like the photons move aside. That tunnel is what we call a wormhole. It forms just long enough for you to zoom through before everything goes back to normal.”
“So the object just... slides through the tunnel, huh? Like a magic carpet ride?”
Kaelor grinned. “Exactly! A magic carpet ride through a tunnel made by messing with gravity and light. Simple, right?”
“Well it certainly seems simple enough now that you explain it,” Zorak said excitedly, for the first time understanding all that mumbo jumbo his physics professor used to drone on about. “But I expect that it was no easy task to invent tech that can actually do all that with these light and gravity particles, or whatever they’re called.”
“You’re right on the money, my dear friend”, Kaelor exclaimed. “Rumor is that Aznyr had an IQ of 250 after graduating from Evermore Academy.”
After a brief thought, Kaelor suddenly exclaimed “I just realized something! I’ve known you practically my whole life; we’ve been best friends since preschool, yet for some reason I never knew your last name. Even on the school records, your last name was always abbreviated to just V. Could you do me the favor of telling me what all the fuss was about? I think it’s about time I knew.”
“Errmm… I’m not sure….. It’s.. well, it’s sort of a family secret, you see. Don’t wanna make a huge fuss or anything, now do we?” Zorak replied.
“But I can’t for the life of me see what could be so big or important for the whole family to-... Wait… wait just a moment… No way… No way it could be true… Are you-”
“Well, I don’t see any reason to hide it anymore now that you’ve guessed. Besides, you might end up blabbering your theory to your lab colleagues, and I wouldn’t want all the attention that would come after that. Yes, as you very well guessed, my name is Zorak Vynari, the great-great-great-great grandson of Aznyr. But don’t breathe a word of this to anyone else, got that?” Zorak remarked.
“Okay, okay, you got a deal. But how come you don’t even have an ounce of his extraordinary scientific intelligence? No offense, of course. You’re still one of the most brilliant businessmen in our solar system. But, you see, that just got me wondering…”, Kaelor asked, his eyes shining like he was back in first grade when their teacher took them to the Inventors Museum for the first time to learn about Veyrion and Aznyr.
Zorak shrugged, saying “Beats me. It could have all gone to my younger brother, for all I know.”
“That reminds me. What’s your brother up to again? And was he in his 11th year of school or his 12th? Sorry, it’s just that I got so much going on, sometimes these little details slip my mind”, Kaelor remarks.
“It’s fine, don’t worry about it. My brother just finished his 12th year of studying, and today is his entrance examination for some science university. Now which one was it again? I don’t remember him telling me”, said Zorak.
“Oh I think I know just which university he’s applying for, Zorak”, Kaelor said, smiling, a knowing look on his face.
The End