“No! No! No! No! No”

“What my chief engineer is trying to say...”, Tasha interrupted, “...is that it’s a really bad idea. While we have not actually tried it, as far as I know,” she continued while looking at Kaiya slowly rocking back and forth, “all the scenarios we have modelled came to the same result - the total collapse of the galaxy. Trillions and trillions of lives dead almost instantly.”

“Ah, fair enough then. I should let the team know to stand-down the testing area. We found a nice little black hole to try it on too.”

“Yes, please do so as soon as possible. Were there any other questions, Doctor?”

“Well, no, not any more. We were really looking forward to testing the FTL drive / black hole hypothesis, so everything else can wait. I suppose I’ll just be going then. I should be back home in a day or two. I’ll see you there?”

The chief engineer had stopped rocking. “What? Two days? It’ll take us about three weeks at maximum speed. How can you do it so quickly?!” he exclaimed.

“Ah well, I did say we had made a couple of improvements” the doctor replied sheepishly. “It’s not even the fastest one we have. It’s all I could afford on my limited budget.”

Tasha and Kaiya both said, “We are going to want to look at your engine!” The commander continued, “We’ll give you some quarters and you can stay with us until we reach your home world. I am sure Kaiya will have one or two questions for you.”

* * *

After quite a few strong drinks, Tasha and First Officer Tokra were sitting in her quarters. “I am sure there is nothing in the second contact guide about this.” Tasha started rubbing her nose gently - she could feel a headache coming on.

“I think we are way past second, third and fourth contact at this stage,” Tokra agreed, “We’ll just have to wait for Kaiya and his team to tear apart the shuttle and learn how it works. I have decreased power to the FTL drive by 10% to give him a little more time.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Thanks, Tokra. It’s been a long day. Let’s see if we get any more surprises tomorrow.”

* * *

“I have no idea how this works. It’s missing most of the critically required parts and has a welded-shut extra box labelled ‘Dave’s Magic Whatsit’ that just sits on top of the engine. It isn’t even connected to anything! If I remove it, the engine stops!” Kaiya slumped into his chair, defeated.

“You’ve been at this for two weeks now, have you spoken to the doctor at all since the first day he came onboard?” Tokra asked. “We arrive at their home world in just over a week.”

“No, I just can’t bear the shame of not knowing and having to ask. I have maintained FTL drives for over 135 years; I should know how they work by now!”

“Go talk to him or send one of your team. We need to know how this works – the humans have only been at this for less than a year, how can they be so far advanced?”

* * *

“Ah well, Dave came up with that bit. Stroke of genius really. He was fiddling with some new parts and they just sort of... disappeared, with a whoosh”, the Doctor explained. “We found them a few days later on our moon. Turns out they had ‘moved’ themselves when he applied power. After a bit more experimentation and a growing pile of parts on the moon, we found out that if they are stored in a sealed box, they can’t escape.

“But the box is not connected to anything, how does it work?” Kaiya asked.

“Well, when it’s in very close proximity of an engine, it turns it into a fully working FTL drive. It’s pretty cool right? We call it ‘Near Object InDirect Energy Actuator’, or ‘NO-IDEA’ for short.”

“But how does it work?” Kaiya asked again.

“Oh I don’t know, you’ll have to ask Dave!”

* * *

“Commander Xen, Sir. We are within sensor range of the humans home world. It’s not what we were expecting.”

“Show me”, replied Tasha walking over to the radar operators console.

“There is far too much EM radiation coming from the human system - Thousands of times more than the First Contact team reported. It looks like they are constructing something huge”

“Bring the Doctor up here now,” Tasha ordered, “I want to know what’s going on. Let me know the moment we leave FTL and are within visual range”

“Yes Sir”

* * *

“Sir, the Doctor as ordered”

“Sir, we are out of FTL, bringing up the main screen now...”

“Doctor, can you tell me what the hell that thing is?” Tasha asked pointing at the screen.

The Doctor stood, mouth wide open. “Oh I didn’t know they had started on the Dyson Sphere project already.