...we use molecular scale automata to prolong our lives. This maintenance gives us time to construct the structures necessary for our trek.." Lohi was saying.
"We use several millions of classes of molecular automata to construct antimatter production facilities.
John interrupted, "We can only produce a few nanograms of antimatter in our labs. It takes years to make that much. It seems there are barriers to faster production..."
"Barriers yes!" Lohi interrupted, "we use the matter in a solar system to make billions of arrays of production facilities. Only on this scale can we produce enough to be practical for inner-system propulsion."
"Inner-system? Then how…" he collected his thoughts, “if you come from as far as you say, how do you travel between galaxies?!"
Lohi's mind expanded to encompass the memory of the first of hundreds of launches; the launch of their 100 km long ship to the nearest suitable star system, over 10 light-years away. He remembered coming out of storage to begin the project. Automated programs came online, semi-sentient nano, micro, and asteroid size robots were constructed from matter in the ort, and from a planet they began to scrap. They reduced a mars size body plus other inner system planets and asteroids to 3 billion antimatter production arrays. Automated collection bots went from facility to facility siphoning off nanograms of antimatter like bees going from flower to flower. This was all stored in several hundred large holding facilities for later use.
With the fuel from those facilities, the first order of business took place. The Rikmaj was refueled with 10 billion tons of antihydrogen and 10 billion tons of hydrogen.
The next phase had 50 percent of the antimatter production facilities switch to strange matter production. Two more planets met their end, a planet about the size of Neptune and another gas giant the size of Saturn. They were used to construct an array around the local star. The array, when finished actually cut the visible output of the star by 23%. The strange matter was stored and prepped, the last of the antimatter producers were either scrapped, dropped into the sun, or converted to service the massive array around the star.
At the appointed time a sequence of events was triggered. An especially shaped strange matter pallet about the size of Manhattan, was inserted precisely into the star. Hours later the raging torrent of matter conversion began to spike through the star. First perceived as high energy gamma rays, superheated arcs of energy rose through the photosphere. Eerie shadows were soundlessly cast by antenna arrays on orbital structures as fluctuating starlight danced out of the chromosphere of the star. Curling lops of flaring star boiled out in a symmetrical pattern. Collectors, inducers, and generators of an unimaginable scale arrayed around the star, came online, run by hyper-networked semi-sentient automata.
The light output of the star began to drop by about 2% per hour. The perceived surface of the star began to measurably recede. The rate of recession was calculated by arrays of programs and fed directly into the consciousness of stored beings in the kilometers long ship light minutes away. The laser signals had to be adjusted for Doppler shift as the Rikmaj accelerated towards a pre-calculated spot in what would soon become a new artificially enhanced trojan point of the star.
A web of intense fields guided super heated plasma and hard radiation in order to accelerate the ship to 95 gravities toward the soon-to-form trojan point. So fierce was the matter-antimatter interaction that the light produced surrounded the Rikmaj in a coronal glare so severe that it completely occluded the ship. From afar, it seemed as if a micro-star was headed toward the local star.
The surface of the collapsing star began to rip. From the center of those rips shone actinic light. Soon the star was all actinic light expanding outward in an energetic burst that would last for hours and be visible for thousands of parsecs. Within 30 minutes of the beginning of the burgeoning supernova a crucial point was reached. The solar array was fully charged and began to stretch a particular wormhole from the cosmic foam, lengthening it until it was long enough to connect two areas of the universe 1048 parsecs distant in flat space. The wormhole got wider until an electron would be able to fit through it, then a hydrogen atom, when it achieved a diameter of molecular size, the aperture size shot up. It soon reached the size needed for Rikmaj to traverse it. Cutting the powerful light from the antimatter drive, the Rikmaj stopped accelerating, and shot a rod of pure strange matter forward and aft; as it entered the opening of the wormhole.
Discontinuity.
No time passed, yet all of the strange matter had evaporated precisely as calculated, maintaining the integrity and stability of the wormhole during traversal. The Rikmaj emerged 1048 parsecs distant. The wormhole popped out of existence. 250 years of work building a wormhole had been a success.
In 3000 years, the light of an artificially triggered supernova will weakly bathe this part of the universe.
When Lohi had finished relaying his race's means of superluminal travel, Andy was blankly speechless. He realized he had not been breathing...
