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Description

Ivan
Koran

Human-Kushan

Long
back, nearly 3 Billion years before the formation of earth, a small
planet near what could be called the center of the universe was
forming. On this planet existed the perfect conditions for life;
plenty of liquid water, an atmosphere containing mostly oxygen, and
an average temperature of 90 degrees Fahrenheit. This planet would
become the home world of the first and oldest species of space-goers
in the universe. After an estimated 9 million years, they perfected
space travel. Then, about 2 million years later, they learned all of
the atoms in a  area can be linked to a controlling particle that can
be used to “tune” the atoms in and out of different
dimensions. This technology proved incredibly useful when scientists
discovered that relative space increased the farther it is from ours.
This means that 3 dimensions away from us, each meter traveled in
that dimension is roughly 1000 meters in our dimension. This
discovery quickly was put to work moving great ships across the stars
at incredible speeds allowing rapid exploration of the universe.

Aboard a
large ship, the terrible side affects of the inter-dimensional
warping is finally being discovered. The ship was a simple freighter
named Kushan-Kushai, carrying a load of granite. Inside the ship was
a standard layout; all of the systems are in one room with the
captains command center at the top and the inter-dimensional travel
machine at the bottom. The captain stood at the helm and shouted down
to the crew.

“Set
us to dimension 2 and then fade into 4, we're running a little late
and I don't want to ruin this ship's punctuality record”

“right
away sir” one of them yelled back. A technician named Weebo was
in charge of setting the machine up. He was fresh from the university
and this was only his second voyage outside of the home wold. He
dialed in the directions and specified the size of the retuning
field. After making sure there was an ample cushion of space around
the ship, another crew member entered the command into a terminal to
start the process. The machine started to glow through a few windows
in the side of it. Inside, a blue, cylindrical object was being
charged and fed data by a web of cables and was held in place by 6
titanium bars. After it was glowing for about twenty seconds, it
formed a small blue sphere around itself which eventually grew and
passed outside the walls of the machine. The blue sphere started to
change it's shape to a rough outline of the ship. It stopped
expanding when it was about thirty feet larger than the ship.

“we're
all good to go”, called Weebo.

“excellent”,
returned the captain. Ordered by a smile from the captain, one of the
technicians threw a large lever. Nothing apparent happened, but
inside the machine, the blue cylinder was being rotated and if one
looked out of the portholes, they would see the stars fading away and
other start fading in from the darkness. The transition from one
dimension to the next was smooth and barely noticeable apart from a
dial on the machine that pointed to a number from one to ten. When
the trip was complete, a buzzer went off giving the all clear to
proceed in the direction of their destination. The captain walked
across the bridge to his chair and sat down. He then announced to the
crew what he had just read from some charts. “Alrighty, It says
here that we've got to keep going for about 2 days. I know this is a
long trip, so how about you guys go take a break. Not like we have to
steer or anything.” He chuckled at his last sentence, then
reclined in his chair and closed his eyes for a rest.

Weebo
and a few other technicians took one last glance at all the gauges in
the bridge to make sure everything was in order, and then walked to
their quarters. Their room was large, about 40 feet long and 30 feet
wide, and it had windows that wrapped around on all sides from floor
to cieling to give them a spectacular view of the stars. Some of the
crew pulled pads out of closets in the wall and fell asleep on them.
Most of them, however, sat down at a table after each getting their
favorite snack out of a cabinet. Fotzo, one of the few crew members
who ever engaged in conversation with Weebo sat down next to him and
slid him a large white cracker.

“here
bro, try some sap foam. Anyway, how are you enjoying your first long
haul?”, Fotzo asked.

“thanks.
It's pretty boring, but peaceful. I definitely won't get too tired in
this job. Hey, why do they put such big windows in here?”

“I
think it's so you don't feel cooped up. It makes the place a lot more
open and free than it really is. But hey, I’m not complaining
about a wonderful view like that.” Fotzo turned to point out
the window at a beautiful nebula that was slowly creeping past them.
Weebo bit into the foam block. It tasted like vanilla and had the
texture of toast. He savored the foam and stared out of the window.
The ship was headed for a cloud of seemingly harmless dust. However,
when the ship went into the cloud, an alarm went off and the head
technician looked in his computer to see what was the matter.

“OK,
don't panic. It's just a simple problem with a dimension sensor
underneath the cargo hold. Weebo, you'll go out and fix it when we're
in clear space. Understood?”
“yes sir” Weebo
mumbled with a full mouth of foam. The ship continued to plow through
the dust cloud, which later turned out to be a tremendous debris
cloud. There were chunks of stone and metal as big as people, some of
them even bigger. Luckily, the ship was designed for such things and
it's heavy armor plating in the front easily crushed debris and slid
it underneath the hull. There was still an audible crunching and
pinging sound every few seconds as a piece of asteroid was destroyed.
Hours went on and the crew occupied themselves by playing holographic
boardgames and listening to their favorite music. Most of the time
however, was spent just laying on cushions and watching the debris
drift past. It was mesmerizing and peaceful. On the end of the second
day, the ship finally breaks out of the debris field and once again,
the journey is smooth and silent.

“OK
Weebo, we're going to switch back to the home dimension, so you'd
better be quick out there”, said the head technician.

“yeah
yeah. I'm on it. Hey Fotzo, could you help me suit up?”

“sure
thing dude, I'll meet you in the airlock in a few minutes”,
Fotzo said sleepily. He walked to the airlock and began to set up a
space suit for Weebo. He finally gets all of the pieces assembled on
the frame and takes a step back to admire the amazing device. It has
all the same armor as the bow of the ship and thanks to it's
electrical assist function, can maneuver easily and dexterously.
Weebo then walks into the airlock room having changed into a
jumpsuit. Fotzo removed the helmet of the spacesuit and Weebo climbed
up a ladder on the wall and then slid inside the suit. As soon as he
got in, it powered up and even the helmet, which wasn't attached,
started to glow and display readouts on the visor. Fotzo dropped the
helmet back on to the suit and gave a thumbs up. He then went into
the airlock control room. He locked himself in there for safety and
then depressurized the airlock. Once the pressure was gone, he opened
the doors for Weebo to simply walk out of. Once the junior technician
had exited the ship's artificial gravity, the suits own gravity
generators took over, allowing it to fall to the surface of the
freighter. Weebo had only walked in space on a practice runs before.
The feeling of walking on any surface his feet could touch was
amazing and slightly frightening. It took him about 15 minutes of
walking at a snail's pace to reach the bottom of the cargo hold.
There was the sensor, with a very obvious chunk of iron protruding
from the side of it. When he began working, he found that luckily,
the slab of iron hadn't made it all the way through the protective
shell covering the sensor. This made his job a lot easier. After
removing the shell, he began to work on the sensor. He re-soldered
connection and welded up some cracks in the frame. Then, he got a
call from the captain. A small box appeared on the visor of the suit
with live video of the captain.

“Weebo,
we're right on top of the point we are supposed warp from. Are you
done fixing that sensor so we can stop in the right dimension?”,
the captain inquired

“no,
sir. But go ahead and jump, I can fix it while we re-tune. It's an
easy fix”, he answered, not taking his eyes from his work.

“ok
then, you'd better be right. Glad to see we can still be on time.”
The captain smiled and then ended the call, leaving Weebo to his
work.  Weebo saw the blue glow in the windows above and then watched
as the blue field enveloped the ship and himself. This was quite an
experience, warping while outside of the ship. He continued to work,
and finished by adding a few circuit boards he had brought along with
him. He replaced the cover over the sensor after saying to himself,
“a broken shield is better than no shield at all”. After
finishing his work, Weebo looked away from the ship as the stars once
again faded and new ones appeared. This time however, there was a
difference. He saw that some of the stars were warped and stretched.
“oh this can't be good”. He spoke into his helmet but
nobody heard him, as a matter of fact, nobody even saw the
abnormality in the starlight. However, they did notice it after the
ship started getting pulled towards a blurry area about the same size
and shape of a similar freighter.

“Weebo,
get back on board!”, the captain yelled over the radio. “you're
going to die otherwise!”

Weebo
tried to walk back towards the airlock door, but the ship was now
moving so quickly towards the  blurry area. As the ship entered the
area, it started to get bent around the shape of the blur. The cargo
holds ruptured, loosening gigantic cubes of stone into space.
Finally, the ship could take no more and it started to leak air
quickly. Weebo turned off the artificial gravity in his boots and
shoved away from the ship. As he entered the blurry area, he
experienced only a tiny bit of bending which did no damage at all to
his space suit. The Kushan-Kushai was not so lucky. It was eventually
torn into 4 pieces and crushed around the edge of the blurry area. It
was impossible for there for there to be any crew left alive. Weebo
simply watched in complete horror. His mouth hung open and he didn't
notice that he was nearing the opposite edge of the blurry space.
Once he was free o f the blur, he felt a huge increase in speed. He
was being slingshot away from his ship. However, instead of wasting
all the fuel in the suit trying to get back to the wreck of a ship,
He simply relaxed and just allowed inertia to carry him wherever it
wanted. 5 day's went by and eventually he saw a bright light. He was
headed straight for a star. This was the time to use that fuel up. He
eyed a medium sized blue planet and propelled himself toward it at
full power. His fuel only began to run out as he entered the
atmosphere of the planet. As he began to speed up, he lost
consciousness and the suits computer took over. The computer deployed
a metal shield over the visor and extended the arms to increase drag.
Once a suitable altitude was reached, it deployed two parachutes; one
from each boot. The parachutes took the velocity of the suit down
considerably and brought Weebo down to the surface with only a large
thud, making a small crater from the helmet imbedding itself in the
ground.

Several
hours later, Weebo awoke and took back command of the suit. He raised
the visor to get a look around and found himself surrounded by
people. He was curious about these people. They were about half as
tall as himself, and their arms were very short. Also, their skin was
a tan color, instead of the cool blue of his own. One of them slowly
approached with a hand outstretched. Most of the systems in the suit
were failed and he could barely raise his arm to take the humans
hand. The human  bent over to remove his helmet instead of picking
him up. Luckily, the helmet was cooled and did not burn the human. As
he took if off, cool air rushed into the suit and Weebo gasped as he
got used tot he air on this planet.

“Who
are you?”, inquired the human in a commanding voice.

“I
am Weebo. An inter-dimensional retuning engineer. Who are you?”
he asked, surprised that the human knew his language and didn't fear
him.

“I
am Dr. Fredrick Zachary. I am head of interplanetary race relations
for the United  Earth government. I am here to welcome you to Earth.”

“whoa!
Your species are the first intelligent life form I have ever heard of
that isn't my species. It's strange that we look so similar. Wait a
second, how do you know my language? Why are you so calm with my
arrival?”, Weebo asked worriedly

“sorry
to tell you this, but we've been secretly monitoring your race for
the last 80 years. The reason I know your language because I've done
so much research into your culture. We figured you would discover us
eventually but were waiting for the right opportunity.”

“anyway,
I need your help. I was working as an engineer aboard a freighter
ship, but it ran into some sort of dimensional anomaly and was
destroyed. The only reason I am still alive today is because I was
outside of the ship in this suit as it was ripped apart”, Weebo
told him.

“there
isn't much we can do to help you before we can identify what
happened. Please let us take you to a research center and we will try
everything we can to see what happened”

They
got into a white van which took them to them away from the crash
site. Inside the van, some assistants removed the space suit from
Weebo and helped him into his seat. He was still shocked from his
crash and his meeting with this alien life form and did not say
anything for the entire journey.  The van came to a stop after two
hours of driving. The door slid open and the assistants walked out
first. They led the way down a sidewalk into a large white structure.
There were no other buildings around this one, just fields. as Weebo
walked with Dr. Zachary down the sidewalk, he finally asked, “Is
my race the only alien race you know, or are there others?”

“We
know of four other races excluding yours and mine. However, only one
other race knows of our existence. Their technology is primitive in
relation to ours, but their skill and bravery to come so far from
their home planet amazes us”, the doctor answered.

Once
they entered the building, they took an elevator to the top floor and
entered a room with rows of computers at the back and whiteboards
covering all walls except for one large window. Dr. Zachary sat down
at the head of a conference table in the middle of the room and
motioned for Weebo and a few other scientists to join him. Weebo had
trouble fitting into the seat due to his larger stature and long
limbs, but he eventually just decided to sit on top of another table.

“now
my friend, you must tell us your story and everything you know about
what caused the destruction of your ship” said the doctor in a
kind voice.

“yes
sir.” Weebo began to tell the whole story and also explained
the basic principals behind inter-dimensional travel. Because most of
the scientists did not understand his language, Dr. Zachary sometimes
paused Weebo to explain in English. One of the scientists stood up
and spoke to Weebo as best he could.

“what
your scientists may not have considered was that not all dimensions
have the same type of space. We have actually done quite a bit of
research into this ourselves, but have not come up with a working
prototype to travel through dimensions. Anyway, what we found was
that there are ten dimensions. Six of them are expanding, like ours
is, and four of them are contracting. The cause of the anomaly must
have been some space from a contracting universe that replaced the
expanding space that once lay there. The contracting space pulled the
expanding space together and caused the entire area to warp space and
slow down the expansion of the universe. If there are too many of
these contracting space areas, it may lead to the premature
destruction of our universe.”

“oh
no no no no. we never took that into consideration. Right now, there
are hundreds of ships bringing in large amounts of extra-dimensional
space. If what you say is true, we have doomed everyone in this whole
universe” cried Weebo. He began to sweat heavily and turned to
doctor zachary. “what should we do?”

“first,
we need to alert your people of the problem they are causing, and
then we need to find a way to either reverse the damage or leave this
universe. I order a ship to take you wherever you need to go.”

“thank
you”, replied Weebo. He stood up from the table and followed an
assistant down the hall. At the end of the hall was a large double
door, they went through it and entered a hanger. They got on a small,
tracked, cart and drove for about three minutes. When they got to the
ship, Weebo was amazed at  how small it seamed, except for the
engine, which was enormous. He thanked the assistant and walked up a
ladder to a tiny door in the side of the craft. A pilot and a
translator greeted him inside. He then handed them a bracelet that he
wore bearing the coordinates of his home world. The ship silently
sprung up into the air and accelerated out of the hanger. The force
was really intense and by the time it was out of the atmosphere is
was almost up to light speed. As the ship's speed increased, Weebo
grew ever more afraid and curious of it's technology. The ship worked
simple on the idea that it could push off of the universe itself
instead of matter. That way it could move as quickly as it had power
to do so. The ship reached the coordinates in a little under 6 hours.
Weebo tried making a little small talk with the translator, but for
the most part he began to finally comprehend that his friend and crew
mates were probably dead. His attention was regained as the ship
slowed down and entered the atmosphere of Weebo's home planet.

“oh!
They will have never seen such a ship before. Be careful as you
land”, he said.

The pilot
and then translator asked where they should land.

“there
is an airstrip outside of the capital. We should make radio contact
first and then land once we gain permission.” The translator
sent out a radio signal and was soon answered. He told about Weebo
and that they come in peace. He then gave the instructions he
received to the pilot who followed them immediately. They were
greeted by soldiers a few scientists. Weebo stepped out of the ship
and the tension in the air instantly vanished. Two scientists stayed
behind to examine the ship closer, but everyone else got into a large
transport to go straight to the leader. As there was no single ruler,
they stood before a council and told the whole story once more. The
council recognized the threat of these contracting spaces and sent
for multiple large arc ships to be readied for use.

The arc
ships are simply giant collapsible shells that hold air and have
hooks to secure environments to the insides. They were designed
hundreds of years ago for exploration use but kept in orbit around
the home world in case of an emergency such as this.

A
message was sent to ever civilian saying, “our infrastructure
is killing us. It has also doomed all other living beings in this
universe, who only came to us today to warn us of what we've done.
Please, leave this planet for the safety of mobility”.

Thousands
of individuals lined up and took shuttles up to the large arc ships
in orbit. The entire evacuation took two days. During the two days, a
few tug ships were sent over from earth to assist the arc ships on
their voyage. The human scientists also worked out a possible
solution. Still keeping in contact with Weebo, but mainly conversing
with the alien scientists, they told of how they could possible jump
into another universe as this one was being crushed. Of how another
universe will occupy the same space as this one for a brief period of
time and if they used the dimensional retuning just right, they would
be able to jump into the other universe, even though it is still in
the same dimension.

When the
entire population was evacuated into the arcs, the tug ships pulled
them up to speed, therefor not causing more damage by using
dimensional retuning. However, the arc ships were poorly built for
this speed and the tug captains quickly noticed this as the armor
began to chip off of one of the arcs as it went through a dust cloud.
The speed of all vessels was decreased and the journey was smooth and
uneventful from then on out.

Back at
earth, Dr. Zachary and his scientists were still working out the
specifics of how to jump into another universe.

“Could
we tune between dimensions and then fade back into ours?', asked a
scientist.

“There
is no way to know for certain that it would land us in the other
universe. We would have to instead tune to slightly ahead of our own
dimension. Then stay slightly untuned while we then continued on into
the next universe. Once we are sure that we have entered the other
universe, we can tune back and see what to do from there”,
replied Dr. Zachary.

“yes
sir. I shall give the orders to evacuate earth and commence
constructing a huge, ship mounted, dimensional tuner device”

Earth
civilians did not have such an orderly and easy evacuation of their
planet. There was much confusion as people were sent on buses and
trains to hangars where huge carrier ships were housed. The people
found room to make temporary shelters inside of the storage decks for
these ships. Unfortunately, a small percentage of the population
could not evacuate because of their distance from a carrier hanger or
the fact that only so many people could be aboard one. These people
were left behind and mourned right after the carriers entered orbit.
There was also confusion due to the short notice and lack of
information sent in the evacuation notes. They only told a brief
summary of why the universe was doomed and where to report.

This
whole evacuation took 6 days. The carriers with much of Earths
population reached orbit a few hours before the alien arc ships
entered the solar system. As all of the ships met, the people of both
races were finally told what had happened, although the fault of the
aliens was downplayed greatly when told to the humans. Both races
were very upset but could not argue with the fact that the universe
was going to destroy itself. About 2 days later, a  small freighter
ship was retrofitted with a large dimensional retuning device on the
nose of it.

All of
the ships took formation together and began to set a coarse for the
nearest edge of the universe. They traveled smoothly until one of the
human carriers experienced troubles as it grazed a contracting space
zone. The bridge was torn off along with one of the drives.
Unfortunately, there was nothing that the other ships could do to
save it as all of it's air was sucked out and the humans inside were
killed. Luckily, the rest off the ships experienced no problems until
they reached the edge. There, the retuning ship moved to the center
of the formation and began to power up.

“we
need to tune to 120 percent to stay in our own dimension but still be
able to move from this universe to the safe one”, radioed
doctor Zachary to the retuning ship. The reactor began to glow and
then emanated a field that grew to encase all of the ships. After
about two minutes of glowing, the captain of the retuning ship gave
the all clear that they were no longer 100% in their own dimension.
All of the ships moved together steadily until they had crossed into
the safe universe. As soon as all of the ships were in, the retuning
ship fired up once more to restore the fleet to its home dimension.

The arc
ships were actually filled to a very low capacity, only about a third
of their total space in each. Because of their forced alliance and
the fact that the aliens had set this on everyone, They offered up
the unused space in their arc ships to the human refugees. The humans
quickly accepted the offer as the carriers they were riding one were
cramped and uncomfortable. All of the humans except for key political
and scientific figures went to the arc ships. A carrier was set aside
as the human capital while the rest were emptied and towed along with
the arc ships. As a suitable planet to live on was no longer
available, the humans and aliens had to live together inside of the
arcs. For hundreds of years, each race built their own cities on the
inner walls of the arc until the space was all taken up. Eventually
both races had to integrate and form a single unitary nation. The
nation of human-kushan.

Description

Ivan
Koran

Human-Kushan

Long
back, nearly 3 Billion years before the formation of earth, a small
planet near what could be called the center of the universe was
forming. On this planet existed the perfect conditions for life;
plenty of liquid water, an atmosphere containing mostly oxygen, and
an average temperature of 90 degrees Fahrenheit. This planet would
become the home world of the first and oldest species of space-goers
in the universe. After an estimated 9 million years, they perfected
space travel. Then, about 2 million years later, they learned all of
the atoms in a  area can be linked to a controlling particle that can
be used to “tune” the atoms in and out of different
dimensions. This technology proved incredibly useful when scientists
discovered that relative space increased the farther it is from ours.
This means that 3 dimensions away from us, each meter traveled in
that dimension is roughly 1000 meters in our dimension. This
discovery quickly was put to work moving great ships across the stars
at incredible speeds allowing rapid exploration of the universe.

Aboard a
large ship, the terrible side affects of the inter-dimensional
warping is finally being discovered. The ship was a simple freighter
named Kushan-Kushai, carrying a load of granite. Inside the ship was
a standard layout; all of the systems are in one room with the
captains command center at the top and the inter-dimensional travel
machine at the bottom. The captain stood at the helm and shouted down
to the crew.

“Set
us to dimension 2 and then fade into 4, we're running a little late
and I don't want to ruin this ship's punctuality record”

“right
away sir” one of them yelled back. A technician named Weebo was
in charge of setting the machine up. He was fresh from the university
and this was only his second voyage outside of the home wold. He
dialed in the directions and specified the size of the retuning
field. After making sure there was an ample cushion of space around
the ship, another crew member entered the command into a terminal to
start the process. The machine started to glow through a few windows
in the side of it. Inside, a blue, cylindrical object was being
charged and fed data by a web of cables and was held in place by 6
titanium bars. After it was glowing for about twenty seconds, it
formed a small blue sphere around itself which eventually grew and
passed outside the walls of the machine. The blue sphere started to
change it's shape to a rough outline of the ship. It stopped
expanding when it was about thirty feet larger than the ship.

“we're
all good to go”, called Weebo.

“excellent”,
returned the captain. Ordered by a smile from the captain, one of the
technicians threw a large lever. Nothing apparent happened, but
inside the machine, the blue cylinder was being rotated and if one
looked out of the portholes, they would see the stars fading away and
other start fading in from the darkness. The transition from one
dimension to the next was smooth and barely noticeable apart from a
dial on the machine that pointed to a number from one to ten. When
the trip was complete, a buzzer went off giving the all clear to
proceed in the direction of their destination. The captain walked
across the bridge to his chair and sat down. He then announced to the
crew what he had just read from some charts. “Alrighty, It says
here that we've got to keep going for about 2 days. I know this is a
long trip, so how about you guys go take a break. Not like we have to
steer or anything.” He chuckled at his last sentence, then
reclined in his chair and closed his eyes for a rest.

Weebo
and a few other technicians took one last glance at all the gauges in
the bridge to make sure everything was in order, and then walked to
their quarters. Their room was large, about 40 feet long and 30 feet
wide, and it had windows that wrapped around on all sides from floor
to cieling to give them a spectacular view of the stars. Some of the
crew pulled pads out of closets in the wall and fell asleep on them.
Most of them, however, sat down at a table after each getting their
favorite snack out of a cabinet. Fotzo, one of the few crew members
who ever engaged in conversation with Weebo sat down next to him and
slid him a large white cracker.

“here
bro, try some sap foam. Anyway, how are you enjoying your first long
haul?”, Fotzo asked.

“thanks.
It's pretty boring, but peaceful. I definitely won't get too tired in
this job. Hey, why do they put such big windows in here?”

“I
think it's so you don't feel cooped up. It makes the place a lot more
open and free than it really is. But hey, I’m not complaining
about a wonderful view like that.” Fotzo turned to point out
the window at a beautiful nebula that was slowly creeping past them.
Weebo bit into the foam block. It tasted like vanilla and had the
texture of toast. He savored the foam and stared out of the window.
The ship was headed for a cloud of seemingly harmless dust. However,
when the ship went into the cloud, an alarm went off and the head
technician looked in his computer to see what was the matter.

“OK,
don't panic. It's just a simple problem with a dimension sensor
underneath the cargo hold. Weebo, you'll go out and fix it when we're
in clear space. Understood?”
“yes sir” Weebo
mumbled with a full mouth of foam. The ship continued to plow through
the dust cloud, which later turned out to be a tremendous debris
cloud. There were chunks of stone and metal as big as people, some of
them even bigger. Luckily, the ship was designed for such things and
it's heavy armor plating in the front easily crushed debris and slid
it underneath the hull. There was still an audible crunching and
pinging sound every few seconds as a piece of asteroid was destroyed.
Hours went on and the crew occupied themselves by playing holographic
boardgames and listening to their favorite music. Most of the time
however, was spent just laying on cushions and watching the debris
drift past. It was mesmerizing and peaceful. On the end of the second
day, the ship finally breaks out of the debris field and once again,
the journey is smooth and silent.

“OK
Weebo, we're going to switch back to the home dimension, so you'd
better be quick out there”, said the head technician.

“yeah
yeah. I'm on it. Hey Fotzo, could you help me suit up?”

“sure
thing dude, I'll meet you in the airlock in a few minutes”,
Fotzo said sleepily. He walked to the airlock and began to set up a
space suit for Weebo. He finally gets all of the pieces assembled on
the frame and takes a step back to admire the amazing device. It has
all the same armor as the bow of the ship and thanks to it's
electrical assist function, can maneuver easily and dexterously.
Weebo then walks into the airlock room having changed into a
jumpsuit. Fotzo removed the helmet of the spacesuit and Weebo climbed
up a ladder on the wall and then slid inside the suit. As soon as he
got in, it powered up and even the helmet, which wasn't attached,
started to glow and display readouts on the visor. Fotzo dropped the
helmet back on to the suit and gave a thumbs up. He then went into
the airlock control room. He locked himself in there for safety and
then depressurized the airlock. Once the pressure was gone, he opened
the doors for Weebo to simply walk out of. Once the junior technician
had exited the ship's artificial gravity, the suits own gravity
generators took over, allowing it to fall to the surface of the
freighter. Weebo had only walked in space on a practice runs before.
The feeling of walking on any surface his feet could touch was
amazing and slightly frightening. It took him about 15 minutes of
walking at a snail's pace to reach the bottom of the cargo hold.
There was the sensor, with a very obvious chunk of iron protruding
from the side of it. When he began working, he found that luckily,
the slab of iron hadn't made it all the way through the protective
shell covering the sensor. This made his job a lot easier. After
removing the shell, he began to work on the sensor. He re-soldered
connection and welded up some cracks in the frame. Then, he got a
call from the captain. A small box appeared on the visor of the suit
with live video of the captain.

“Weebo,
we're right on top of the point we are supposed warp from. Are you
done fixing that sensor so we can stop in the right dimension?”,
the captain inquired

“no,
sir. But go ahead and jump, I can fix it while we re-tune. It's an
easy fix”, he answered, not taking his eyes from his work.

“ok
then, you'd better be right. Glad to see we can still be on time.”
The captain smiled and then ended the call, leaving Weebo to his
work.  Weebo saw the blue glow in the windows above and then watched
as the blue field enveloped the ship and himself. This was quite an
experience, warping while outside of the ship. He continued to work,
and finished by adding a few circuit boards he had brought along with
him. He replaced the cover over the sensor after saying to himself,
“a broken shield is better than no shield at all”. After
finishing his work, Weebo looked away from the ship as the stars once
again faded and new ones appeared. This time however, there was a
difference. He saw that some of the stars were warped and stretched.
“oh this can't be good”. He spoke into his helmet but
nobody heard him, as a matter of fact, nobody even saw the
abnormality in the starlight. However, they did notice it after the
ship started getting pulled towards a blurry area about the same size
and shape of a similar freighter.

“Weebo,
get back on board!”, the captain yelled over the radio. “you're
going to die otherwise!”

Weebo
tried to walk back towards the airlock door, but the ship was now
moving so quickly towards the  blurry area. As the ship entered the
area, it started to get bent around the shape of the blur. The cargo
holds ruptured, loosening gigantic cubes of stone into space.
Finally, the ship could take no more and it started to leak air
quickly. Weebo turned off the artificial gravity in his boots and
shoved away from the ship. As he entered the blurry area, he
experienced only a tiny bit of bending which did no damage at all to
his space suit. The Kushan-Kushai was not so lucky. It was eventually
torn into 4 pieces and crushed around the edge of the blurry area. It
was impossible for there for there to be any crew left alive. Weebo
simply watched in complete horror. His mouth hung open and he didn't
notice that he was nearing the opposite edge of the blurry space.
Once he was free o f the blur, he felt a huge increase in speed. He
was being slingshot away from his ship. However, instead of wasting
all the fuel in the suit trying to get back to the wreck of a ship,
He simply relaxed and just allowed inertia to carry him wherever it
wanted. 5 day's went by and eventually he saw a bright light. He was
headed straight for a star. This was the time to use that fuel up. He
eyed a medium sized blue planet and propelled himself toward it at
full power. His fuel only began to run out as he entered the
atmosphere of the planet. As he began to speed up, he lost
consciousness and the suits computer took over. The computer deployed
a metal shield over the visor and extended the arms to increase drag.
Once a suitable altitude was reached, it deployed two parachutes; one
from each boot. The parachutes took the velocity of the suit down
considerably and brought Weebo down to the surface with only a large
thud, making a small crater from the helmet imbedding itself in the
ground.

Several
hours later, Weebo awoke and took back command of the suit. He raised
the visor to get a look around and found himself surrounded by
people. He was curious about these people. They were about half as
tall as himself, and their arms were very short. Also, their skin was
a tan color, instead of the cool blue of his own. One of them slowly
approached with a hand outstretched. Most of the systems in the suit
were failed and he could barely raise his arm to take the humans
hand. The human  bent over to remove his helmet instead of picking
him up. Luckily, the helmet was cooled and did not burn the human. As
he took if off, cool air rushed into the suit and Weebo gasped as he
got used tot he air on this planet.

“Who
are you?”, inquired the human in a commanding voice.

“I
am Weebo. An inter-dimensional retuning engineer. Who are you?”
he asked, surprised that the human knew his language and didn't fear
him.

“I
am Dr. Fredrick Zachary. I am head of interplanetary race relations
for the United  Earth government. I am here to welcome you to Earth.”

“whoa!
Your species are the first intelligent life form I have ever heard of
that isn't my species. It's strange that we look so similar. Wait a
second, how do you know my language? Why are you so calm with my
arrival?”, Weebo asked worriedly

“sorry
to tell you this, but we've been secretly monitoring your race for
the last 80 years. The reason I know your language because I've done
so much research into your culture. We figured you would discover us
eventually but were waiting for the right opportunity.”

“anyway,
I need your help. I was working as an engineer aboard a freighter
ship, but it ran into some sort of dimensional anomaly and was
destroyed. The only reason I am still alive today is because I was
outside of the ship in this suit as it was ripped apart”, Weebo
told him.

“there
isn't much we can do to help you before we can identify what
happened. Please let us take you to a research center and we will try
everything we can to see what happened”

They
got into a white van which took them to them away from the crash
site. Inside the van, some assistants removed the space suit from
Weebo and helped him into his seat. He was still shocked from his
crash and his meeting with this alien life form and did not say
anything for the entire journey.  The van came to a stop after two
hours of driving. The door slid open and the assistants walked out
first. They led the way down a sidewalk into a large white structure.
There were no other buildings around this one, just fields. as Weebo
walked with Dr. Zachary down the sidewalk, he finally asked, “Is
my race the only alien race you know, or are there others?”

“We
know of four other races excluding yours and mine. However, only one
other race knows of our existence. Their technology is primitive in
relation to ours, but their skill and bravery to come so far from
their home planet amazes us”, the doctor answered.

Once
they entered the building, they took an elevator to the top floor and
entered a room with rows of computers at the back and whiteboards
covering all walls except for one large window. Dr. Zachary sat down
at the head of a conference table in the middle of the room and
motioned for Weebo and a few other scientists to join him. Weebo had
trouble fitting into the seat due to his larger stature and long
limbs, but he eventually just decided to sit on top of another table.

“now
my friend, you must tell us your story and everything you know about
what caused the destruction of your ship” said the doctor in a
kind voice.

“yes
sir.” Weebo began to tell the whole story and also explained
the basic principals behind inter-dimensional travel. Because most of
the scientists did not understand his language, Dr. Zachary sometimes
paused Weebo to explain in English. One of the scientists stood up
and spoke to Weebo as best he could.

“what
your scientists may not have considered was that not all dimensions
have the same type of space. We have actually done quite a bit of
research into this ourselves, but have not come up with a working
prototype to travel through dimensions. Anyway, what we found was
that there are ten dimensions. Six of them are expanding, like ours
is, and four of them are contracting. The cause of the anomaly must
have been some space from a contracting universe that replaced the
expanding space that once lay there. The contracting space pulled the
expanding space together and caused the entire area to warp space and
slow down the expansion of the universe. If there are too many of
these contracting space areas, it may lead to the premature
destruction of our universe.”

“oh
no no no no. we never took that into consideration. Right now, there
are hundreds of ships bringing in large amounts of extra-dimensional
space. If what you say is true, we have doomed everyone in this whole
universe” cried Weebo. He began to sweat heavily and turned to
doctor zachary. “what should we do?”

“first,
we need to alert your people of the problem they are causing, and
then we need to find a way to either reverse the damage or leave this
universe. I order a ship to take you wherever you need to go.”

“thank
you”, replied Weebo. He stood up from the table and followed an
assistant down the hall. At the end of the hall was a large double
door, they went through it and entered a hanger. They got on a small,
tracked, cart and drove for about three minutes. When they got to the
ship, Weebo was amazed at  how small it seamed, except for the
engine, which was enormous. He thanked the assistant and walked up a
ladder to a tiny door in the side of the craft. A pilot and a
translator greeted him inside. He then handed them a bracelet that he
wore bearing the coordinates of his home world. The ship silently
sprung up into the air and accelerated out of the hanger. The force
was really intense and by the time it was out of the atmosphere is
was almost up to light speed. As the ship's speed increased, Weebo
grew ever more afraid and curious of it's technology. The ship worked
simple on the idea that it could push off of the universe itself
instead of matter. That way it could move as quickly as it had power
to do so. The ship reached the coordinates in a little under 6 hours.
Weebo tried making a little small talk with the translator, but for
the most part he began to finally comprehend that his friend and crew
mates were probably dead. His attention was regained as the ship
slowed down and entered the atmosphere of Weebo's home planet.

“oh!
They will have never seen such a ship before. Be careful as you
land”, he said.

The pilot
and then translator asked where they should land.

“there
is an airstrip outside of the capital. We should make radio contact
first and then land once we gain permission.” The translator
sent out a radio signal and was soon answered. He told about Weebo
and that they come in peace. He then gave the instructions he
received to the pilot who followed them immediately. They were
greeted by soldiers a few scientists. Weebo stepped out of the ship
and the tension in the air instantly vanished. Two scientists stayed
behind to examine the ship closer, but everyone else got into a large
transport to go straight to the leader. As there was no single ruler,
they stood before a council and told the whole story once more. The
council recognized the threat of these contracting spaces and sent
for multiple large arc ships to be readied for use.

The arc
ships are simply giant collapsible shells that hold air and have
hooks to secure environments to the insides. They were designed
hundreds of years ago for exploration use but kept in orbit around
the home world in case of an emergency such as this.

A
message was sent to ever civilian saying, “our infrastructure
is killing us. It has also doomed all other living beings in this
universe, who only came to us today to warn us of what we've done.
Please, leave this planet for the safety of mobility”.

Thousands
of individuals lined up and took shuttles up to the large arc ships
in orbit. The entire evacuation took two days. During the two days, a
few tug ships were sent over from earth to assist the arc ships on
their voyage. The human scientists also worked out a possible
solution. Still keeping in contact with Weebo, but mainly conversing
with the alien scientists, they told of how they could possible jump
into another universe as this one was being crushed. Of how another
universe will occupy the same space as this one for a brief period of
time and if they used the dimensional retuning just right, they would
be able to jump into the other universe, even though it is still in
the same dimension.

When the
entire population was evacuated into the arcs, the tug ships pulled
them up to speed, therefor not causing more damage by using
dimensional retuning. However, the arc ships were poorly built for
this speed and the tug captains quickly noticed this as the armor
began to chip off of one of the arcs as it went through a dust cloud.
The speed of all vessels was decreased and the journey was smooth and
uneventful from then on out.

Back at
earth, Dr. Zachary and his scientists were still working out the
specifics of how to jump into another universe.

“Could
we tune between dimensions and then fade back into ours?', asked a
scientist.

“There
is no way to know for certain that it would land us in the other
universe. We would have to instead tune to slightly ahead of our own
dimension. Then stay slightly untuned while we then continued on into
the next universe. Once we are sure that we have entered the other
universe, we can tune back and see what to do from there”,
replied Dr. Zachary.

“yes
sir. I shall give the orders to evacuate earth and commence
constructing a huge, ship mounted, dimensional tuner device”

Earth
civilians did not have such an orderly and easy evacuation of their
planet. There was much confusion as people were sent on buses and
trains to hangars where huge carrier ships were housed. The people
found room to make temporary shelters inside of the storage decks for
these ships. Unfortunately, a small percentage of the population
could not evacuate because of their distance from a carrier hanger or
the fact that only so many people could be aboard one. These people
were left behind and mourned right after the carriers entered orbit.
There was also confusion due to the short notice and lack of
information sent in the evacuation notes. They only told a brief
summary of why the universe was doomed and where to report.

This
whole evacuation took 6 days. The carriers with much of Earths
population reached orbit a few hours before the alien arc ships
entered the solar system. As all of the ships met, the people of both
races were finally told what had happened, although the fault of the
aliens was downplayed greatly when told to the humans. Both races
were very upset but could not argue with the fact that the universe
was going to destroy itself. About 2 days later, a  small freighter
ship was retrofitted with a large dimensional retuning device on the
nose of it.

All of
the ships took formation together and began to set a coarse for the
nearest edge of the universe. They traveled smoothly until one of the
human carriers experienced troubles as it grazed a contracting space
zone. The bridge was torn off along with one of the drives.
Unfortunately, there was nothing that the other ships could do to
save it as all of it's air was sucked out and the humans inside were
killed. Luckily, the rest off the ships experienced no problems until
they reached the edge. There, the retuning ship moved to the center
of the formation and began to power up.

“we
need to tune to 120 percent to stay in our own dimension but still be
able to move from this universe to the safe one”, radioed
doctor Zachary to the retuning ship. The reactor began to glow and
then emanated a field that grew to encase all of the ships. After
about two minutes of glowing, the captain of the retuning ship gave
the all clear that they were no longer 100% in their own dimension.
All of the ships moved together steadily until they had crossed into
the safe universe. As soon as all of the ships were in, the retuning
ship fired up once more to restore the fleet to its home dimension.

The arc
ships were actually filled to a very low capacity, only about a third
of their total space in each. Because of their forced alliance and
the fact that the aliens had set this on everyone, They offered up
the unused space in their arc ships to the human refugees. The humans
quickly accepted the offer as the carriers they were riding one were
cramped and uncomfortable. All of the humans except for key political
and scientific figures went to the arc ships. A carrier was set aside
as the human capital while the rest were emptied and towed along with
the arc ships. As a suitable planet to live on was no longer
available, the humans and aliens had to live together inside of the
arcs. For hundreds of years, each race built their own cities on the
inner walls of the arc until the space was all taken up. Eventually
both races had to integrate and form a single unitary nation. The
nation of human-kushan.