John Archer wasn't sure why his father had forced him out of bed and into the family's new hovercar to go to some great reveal that was in his own words "Something that would change everything". To him, it was just another day no more significant than any other day of the week and yet his father had forced him out of his nice warm bed all the same. Honestly, he didn't know what all the hubbub was about. So some new ship was going to be shown off at one of the new shipyards that had started popping up all over the place. He had seen the Phoenix first hand when he was a boy of ten and to him, it just looked like a missile with a pod on the top that could seat two people if a bit uncomfortably. What was so great about this new one? Was it bigger, faster, more fuel-efficient? He didn't know and that for John Archer bugged him like nothing else could. He was a kid that loved to learn. It was what he enjoyed the most. Finding out how something worked. What made it tick and what made it go. He guessed that was why he took apart his father's old radio from back in the day or why he liked the smell of oil. His father had worked alongside Cochrane himself. He was the guy he always called for anytime anything needed fixing. Thinking back he never saw his father happier than when he was working on something be it an old car or just a chair that could pull back.

Pulling up to the shipyards he could already see a crowd. The biggest crowd he had ever seen in his whole life. But to be fair he hadn't seen many crowds. The compound housed only a few hundred people and most of them never left their underground bunker for anything besides sleep or to take a piss. He never understood why it didn't have a restroom but it didn't. His best guess was it was a simple oversight but that didn't seem right. Cochrane didn't strike him as the kind of man to do such a thing. But he was little more than a baby when the man did the impossible so maybe he was that kind of man. Anything was possible nowadays it seemed.

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Walking to the front of the sizeable crowd he could see a man in what was quickly becoming recognized as the standard Starfleet uniform though his bore a patch that signified him as an engineer. He guessed if you were showing off a new ship an engineer was about the best person to show it off to a crowd of mostly know-nothings who more likely than not still thought lightspeed was the fastest thing around. A few minutes later the sounds of the hangar doors opened pulled everybody's attention to the right. Rolling slowly towards the assembled crowd Jake could make out the name. Horizon. Looking at it he could tell right away it was bigger than the Phoenix by a good margin. If he was asked to guess he would have said it could sit six vs the Phoenix's two. Another difference between the Phoenix and this new ship was that the Phoenix was a modified nuclear missile. This on the other hand was a bonafide starship. It's two warp nacelles were fairly small and didn't seem to invoke the same sense of awe and wonder as the Phoenix did. But to be fair the Phoenix was the first of its kind while this was merely its replacement. Even so, he could see many a boy and girl eye the ship with the same sense of awe as one would at seeing the first airplane back in the 20th century. For hours the man talked about the ship and by the end of the day he had made up his mind. Once he was old enough he would join the recently completed Starfleet academy. Until then, however, he would make it his mission to know everything there was to know about this new ship. His father couldn't have been more proud upon hearing this news. So proud in fact that when everything was said and done he introduced his son to the engineer. It was from this meeting that the seeds of something far greater then the Phoenix or even the Horizon were first planted. But for now having a top speed of warp 1.20 wasn't a bad start he guessed though he would dare to go faster. He would dare to go bigger.