The Eternal Guardian

- Alfrun Station Food Atrium, Sol Calendar 2687-03-16 , 1530 Hours -

After meeting Dalbir and giving him a hit on the shoulder, Zuman is at the atrium looking for food. Loitering around, he finds every food on offer seems to look unappetizing to him, though he is aware that is just a subjective opinion due to his current frame of mind. Thinking that it's going to be the same way regardless of whatever food he picks, he orders the rice porridge. As long as it's going to be tasteless, might as well get something that's easy to eat and digest.

"Hi Prof Zuman. Watcha eating?"

He looks towards the source, finding it to be one of the researchers on his team, Joshua Allen.

"Hey Josh. Just porridge for now. Any breakthroughs while I was gone?"

Zuman asked in a hopeful tone.

"Nah, tough luck Prof still the same old, same old. I'll join you Prof If you don't mind. I just got off from the lab myself, looking for grub."

So he says while going off to the food dispenser, ordering what seems to be a fusion mix of pasta with curry as the sauce.

"You and your fusion dishes."

Eyeing the dish, Zuman found himself surprisingly feeling not as disagreeable towards fusion dishes as he was previously. Then again, it is probably due to his utter disregard towards food in general at the moment.

"So Prof, I already heard about it from Serra. Sorry that had to happen to you and it had to happen that way."

While eating, Josh suddenly said to him.

"…. I always knew you were direct, I just never realized HOW MUCH."

He actually almost choked because even though he did say to Serra to inform them to not avoid the topic, hearing it asked within the next few hours of the order wasn't in his expectation.

"Awww c'mon Prof. It's not like today is the first day you've met me. Sides, I honestly don't think you're the type to beat around the bush. At least not from the way you've been so direct towards us for the past century."

"True, but I expected at least a few days before one of you comes asking me. At least let me compose myself will you? Tsk. Your delicacy is quite lacking, have your girl ever told you that?"

Zuman takes a jab at him.

"Aite, since you can poke fun at me like that, knowing full well I DON'T have a girl, at least I know it ain't too bad for now."

Josh deadpanned back.

".."

That shut him up.

"Eat your curry pasta boy."

"Yes sir."

Josh said with a cheeky smile.

-

"Also, I'll be back in the lab 3 days from today. While I did come back earlier than planned, I'm still using half of the planned holiday to rest first. Tell the team to carry on. If anyone suddenly gets a breakthrough, give me a priority 1 comm."

"Will do sir."

"And Josh."

"Yes sir?"

"Thanks for asking. And tell the team I said thanks."

"Sure thing boss."

Both were aware what the thanks was for, and as such, there's no need to say too much about it.

-

- Alfrun Station Research Section, Heaven's Gate Lab, Sol Calendar 2687-03-19 , 0800 Hours -

Zuman walks into the lab slowly. Observing them first. His team. His pride and joy.

The lab itself is actually quite big. There's a space of 1km square dedicated for the lab. There's a hodgepodge of apparatuses scattered around the lab, testament to 2 century of research and discard only to be picked up again when a breakthrough at one side suddenly sheds light on another research. His main project is the building of a stable portal. A wormhole if you will. The elusive Gate of Heaven. Right now, the attempt is focused on a building a connection towards Pluto, specifically the Miravia Station orbiting it, left empty for decades now for his special use as a test target.

-

His theory is that since HyperLight travel was possible due to the misalignment from a time portal, what about re-purposing the portal from a time relocation type, to a spatial relocation type instead? Wouldn't that be better? Get a team to the destination, build a portal and voila, no more need for long distance travel. Just 1 step and you'd be on different soil. So much easier to colonize new worlds or transport exports.

And the world government being the world government, after analyzing his proposal, they immediately found a way to weaponize it. Now instead of it being a pioneer team for an empty planet, they envisioned a strike force stealth jumping in, deploying the gate and voila, instant Fleet travels from anywhere. No more would they need to waste fuel and time for the Fleet to chase targets which might know that they're coming and would have time to escape. The world government is being very paranoid currently as deep space scans have revealed relics of another spacefaring civilization. And where there are relics, there's sure to be people involved with it, either descendants of the original owner, or enemies of them. Either way, there's a high possibility that there's another spacefaring civilization out there.

As for him, as long as the project is used for the betterment of humans in general, irregardless whether it's for civil or warfare use, he's fine with it. The vision was for the betterment of humanity and if the government thinks weaponizing it can bring it towards that direction, by all means please do so, or at least that is his general sentiment.

The proposal was what allowed him to receive the Immortal treatment. After all, a crazy project like this that went beyond the scale of even the original inventors would definitely take quite some time. And 200 years would definitely count as a long time. In fact, he could be said to be one of the earliest batches to receive the Immortal treatment, him and his friend Dalbir. Curiously, Dalbir's reward was because he actually independently managed to replicate the Immortal treatment by himself, though not as complete as the government's, but that was enough to land him in their sights. He was offered the streamlined therapy, with the condition being that he takes over the Nano Therapy Project and kept on advancing it. It was either that or being silenced, so it's not like Dalbir had much of a choice. It was more of a making a bad decision compared to a worse one.

-

Walking slowly towards the dormant gate, he nods towards his team. From afar, the gate seems to be a circular portal, held in place by an array of steel pillars. It's basically 3 layers of circular rings. The middle ring acts as the the anchor for the inner and outer ring. The inner ring is able to rotate. This is because the designs required the ionization to be uniform. And while there are different frequency emitters at every part of the inner ring, just waiting for them to permeate the ring structure isn't just inefficient, it is also downright dangerous as there's a chance of igniting due the unbalanced ionization. The outer ring is also able to rotate, but unlike the inner ring where ionization is the key, the outer ring is more of an external lock that will follow inner ring and acts as a safeguard once optimum ionization has been achieved.

Currently the challenge has been about trying to find the correct range on how to initiate stable transfer. They have been able to transfer items in short range within the past few decades but the received items have always been in the form of slag until the last few years where it's half slag. While half slag usually is still worthless, the whole team celebrated for 3 days when that happened. This is because the half slag signified that their steps have slowly taken them towards the correct path. It's only a matter of 'When' now, no longer 'If'.

-

Zuman sighed gently, knowing that the light at the end of the tunnel is so close. So close that he could almost grasp it with both hands if he could just jump closer.

-

"Prof!"

"Boss!"

"Chief!"

And countless other greetings flew towards him when they realized he's in the lab.

"Aye people. Relax."

He looks at his team again. All of them are recipients of the Immortal treatment, so he's surrounded by people who all look to be in their 20s, the prime of their youth. And while none of them are lower than 50 years old, him being the progenitor of the project, not to mention him being the oldest on the station (Dalbir is younger than him by a few months), and him being blunt and kind has earned him their trust and respect.

"We're getting there aren't we team?"

He said.

"You said it boss."

"Aye chief, it's been a long ride."

"Let's do our best. I think we can do it within this year. I can almost smell it!"

Zuman encouraged them.

"YEAH!"

"Boss, you're treating us to the most expensive stuff you can back on Earth when we're done okay!"

"HAAAA!!! I want Wagyu!!!!!!"

His team is getting rowdier by the minute due to excitement and his confidence.

"Hahaha. Settle down you maggots. Get it done first and once we're back on Earth, we'll talk about that Wagyu!"

He adds more oil into the burning fire that is their confidence.

"Let's get it on then you maggots."