Year: 2201 – Location: Luna Science Annex, Nearside Crater Complex
The lab smelled of coolant, recycled air, and high voltage—the signature of experiments pushing boundaries. Tobias Shaw leaned over a diagnostics terminal, his sharp eyes flicking between data streams and anomaly reports. Wallace Fujikawa, younger but no less brilliant, stood nearby, rotating a crystalline model suspended in a mag-lev stasis field.
"Stabilizer coil three is resonating outside tolerance again," Shaw muttered.
"We need to widen the quantum lattice. We're trying to compress spacetime through a straw," Fujikawa replied, voice calm but excited. "But if we get this right…"
They had been called mad, heretical even, by their peers. Folding space wasn't new—ancient science fiction had imagined it. But making a ship punch a hole into another dimension and survive it? That was the realm of fantasy. Until now.
Their initial theory, published quietly in obscure but reputable physics journals, was already generating whispers in UEG defense circles. The implications of true interstellar travel—real-time jumps through "slipspace"—were staggering. But theorizing was one thing. Building a drive that wouldn't reduce a ship to quantum mush? Another matter entirely.
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Trial #001: Project SUNDIAL
A drone ship named Eventide was fitted with the first crude Shaw-Fujikawa Slipspace Induction Engine. It was tethered by a dozen failsafe protocols and buried deep beneath the lunar regolith.
At the command console, Shaw and Fujikawa watched as the countdown ticked away. The Eventide shimmered slightly, light bending around it unnaturally.
"Initiating micro-burst," Wallace said, his finger hovering over the console.
A hum, low and unnatural, vibrated through the complex. The drone vanished—and reappeared 0.4 seconds later, ten meters from where it had been.
Silence. Then—
"It worked," whispered Shaw.
"We only displaced it ten meters in local space, but…" Fujikawa was already pulling the telemetry. "It moved through a folded dimension. Slipspace exists, Tobias."
Trial #002 – #005:
They expanded the scale. Each time the Eventide jumped farther—one kilometer, ten, then the length of Luna itself. The anomalies were growing. Power spikes. Gravimetric echoes. But it worked.
Their work moved quickly from the Luna Annex to the newly constructed Einstein Continuum Dynamics Facility in high orbit above Earth—a classified joint UEG/UNSC installation. The project had a new name:
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Project SLIPSTREAM.
And people were paying attention. Naval intelligence officers, colonial oversight reps, industrial magnates—all began circling the two scientists like vultures and visionaries.
"We are no longer asking if it can be done," Fujikawa said in a presentation to a closed panel. "We're asking when we send people through."
But before they could even test a manned pod, they needed to solve the next problem: slipstream drift. Without stable navigational frameworks inside the alternate dimension, anything that entered could exit light-years off-course—or not at all.
Shaw tapped a file. A new proposal. An AI-computational interface, fused with dynamic gravitometric sensors.
"We'll need help," he said. "This changes everything."
And far below the orbiting station, the seeds of a future interstellar civilization were quietly being sown.
Year: 2202 – Location: Einstein Continuum Dynamics Facility, Low Earth Orbit
Tobias Shaw and Wallace Fujikawa stood at the edge of the most daring experiment humanity had ever conceived—but they had hit a wall. The problem wasn't the slipstream itself anymore. It was navigation.
Every test run deeper into slipspace amplified the same issue: spatial drift. Ships would return displaced by kilometers or even hundreds of kilometers. In a vacuum of precision, that might as well have been a death sentence for crewed missions. Shaw knew they needed something smarter. Something that could think faster than any human mind—and adapt.
Which led them to one place.
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Horizon Industries HQ – Olympus Mons Ring Habitat, Mars
Elisabet Sobeck accepted the encrypted transmission with measured calm. The message was short, precise, and very clear: request for Horizon's expertise in AI-integrated navigation technology for a Slipspace-capable vessel. It was signed by Tobias Shaw himself.
"They're asking for a miracle," she said to her executive team, watching the projection of the Eventide's jump logs dance across her office's floating holo-display.
"A miracle we're capable of," replied Dr. Min Jae, Horizon's head of artificial cognition. "We've already developed heuristic AIs for planetary terraformer control cores. Slipstream navigation is… different, but conceptually similar. It requires learning in real time, in an environment that changes second by second."
"With a hundredfold more stress parameters and no planetary anchors," added Sobeck. "But we've built minds that map chaos before."
The decision was made within hours. Horizon would assist, but with stipulations—no true AI would be made. Only advanced VI systems, based on Horizon's Heuriscan Core architecture, the same design philosophy used to guide Venus' terraforming engines. Anything more would risk violating the interplanetary regulations passed after the Heuriscan Intelligence Ethics Accord of 2185.
Sobeck herself flew to Earth orbit to oversee the integration.
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Einstein Continuum Dynamics Facility
The lab became alive in a way it hadn't in months. Horizon's arrival brought engineers, neural architects, and quantum physicists—all guided by Sobeck's calm but sharp vision.
She stood with Shaw and Fujikawa in the main engineering dome as her team began installing the HELIOS Prototype—a dynamic VI cluster fused to a lattice of quantum gravimetric sensors and real-time predictive modeling systems.
"HELIOS can't think in the way a true intelligence would," Sobeck warned. "But it will feel the currents of slipspace, like pressure on skin. It'll guide your vessel through the folds with predictive reflex."
"Good enough to stop people from blinking into a sun?" Fujikawa quipped.
"Or worse," she replied. "We've built something that can hold your hand as you step into the void."
HELIOS interfaced with the ship's drive coils within days. Trial #006 was scheduled: a manned jump, limited range.
Sobeck remained onboard the facility, overseeing calibration. When Shaw asked why, she simply said:
"If this works, you won't just be opening doors. You'll be holding the keys to an empire."
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Year: 2203 – Location: Low Earth Orbit – Experimental Ship: Pioneer One
The hangar of the Einstein Continuum Dynamics Facility had never been this silent.
Not out of fear—but reverence.
Pioneer One sat gleaming at the center of the launch chamber, a sleek vessel no larger than a corvette but packing the most advanced technology humanity had ever fielded. It housed the latest slipstream engine prototype—the Shaw-Fujikawa Core—coupled with HELIOS, Horizon Industries' crown jewel of cognitive VI navigation.
No AI, no emotion. Just pure instinctual logic born from synthetic nerves and quantum reflexes.
Tobias Shaw and Wallace Fujikawa stood shoulder-to-shoulder behind the reinforced glass of Mission Control. Both men had aged in these last few years—but today, there was a fire in their eyes.
"HELIOS synced?" Shaw asked.
"Integrated and baseline calibrated," said the Horizon systems lead. "It's reading spatial fluctuation vectors in real time. Margin of error is… microscopic."
"Crew ready?"]
Three astronauts—all seasoned, all volunteers—stood aboard Pioneer One. Their eyes locked on the display panels and the faint blue glow pulsing from the slipspace coil beneath their feet.
The countdown began.
T-minus 30 seconds
Elisabet Sobeck watched with practiced calm from a private deck, her arms folded. She didn't pray. She calculated—watching waveforms cascade across her private data feed. HELIOS was reacting to quantum ripples before they occurred. It was working.
"If we see deviation beyond 0.1 on vector Y-6," she whispered to her aide, "cut the jump."
"Copy."
T-minus 5 seconds
The Pioneer One's drive coils began to hum, folding local space like paper. For a moment, everything became silent.
And then—
T+0: Slipstream Initiated
In a flash of violet-blue distortion, the ship vanished.
T+7 Hours
No one in Mission Control moved. No one breathed.
Then a signal came.
"Pioneer One to Control—jump complete. Reading all systems nominal. Local space-time stable. We are… 0.2 AU from Mars orbit. Visual confirms. No displacement."
The room erupted.
People stood and cheered. Some cried. Sobeck allowed herself a breath and a faint smile. Shaw leaned forward against the console, head bowed.
"We did it," Fujikawa said quietly, awe-struck. "We… actually did it."
The success of the Pioneer One trial became the most tightly controlled victory of the decade. Publicly, only a test flight of high-orbit maneuvering was announced.
But in private, the UEG Council knew the truth: humanity had broken through the cage of its solar cradle.
Colonial powers, Horizon Industries, ONI, and the UNSC all now quietly jostled behind closed doors to decide what came next.
The stars were no longer distant.
They were reachable.