The Last Exploration

Thirty years ago, my entire life changed in a single day. That day has continued to haunt me ever since. It hasn't been until the present time that I have chosen to speak of it, and I am still choosing to remain anonymous. Not many people know about my early career, and not once will I mention my name in this account. This is my own experience from a devastating event, so if any of you feel sensitive to this topic, I strongly suggest you stop reading here. For the rest of you who want to know firsthand what happened to the survivors of the VT934 incident of DAVO, you have been warned.

Ever since the equation for space jumping was discovered in 2118, humanity has been obsessed with the exploration of the unknown, like never before. And then DAVO came into the picture, using government funds to mold this equation into physical machinery. They invented the jump chamber, a titanium steel room capable of jumping trillions of lightyears to any destination in the universe, and it seemed as if they had replaced NASA overnight. I remember watching the first announcement of the jump chamber on the widescreen in our family room when I was ten, and at that moment I was inspired to one day see that chamber for myself. After high school, I managed to make it into METech, and at age twenty-one, I started working for DAVO for my internship. I began pretty low on the chain, correcting the industry’s more basic technicalities. Malfunctioning computers were my forte, and they hardly ever told me to do anything else. I worked my way up the chain for months until I finally reached the exploration team. I finally achieved my dream of seeing the jump chamber right before my eyes. Almost every week, I would watch fifteen or more people enter the chamber, and then in a flash of blinding light that was blocked by my specially made eye protectors, the whole chamber vanished to someplace across the universe.

It felt like we were always discovering new worlds to explore. From what I asked the control room team members, there were only a handful of worlds out there that we had successfully reached. Some of them were habitable, while others were not. Most of DAVO’s research of the other worlds went towards discovering new species of life. I once managed to snag a peek of a very interesting lizard-like animal that had two long canines like a sabor-tooth, webbed feet, and sleek red feathers along its back. There were so many more, but they were always kept in a secure wing of the facility, so I didn’t see much else. But however wondrous and strange those animals might have been, my main focus remained on my own work. After being moved to the jump team, I started looking after the explorer’s gear. Communication devices, hazard suits, toxin masks, electrical shock guns, you name it. After a year of working on computers, I was glad to start working on other things. And then one day, I was approached out of the blue by one of the people from the control room. I had only started working close to the jump team for a few weeks, so I was shocked when a man in a fine suit came to me and asked if I would like to join the jump team on an expedition. They bring two or three trained mechanics on the explorations just in case something malfunctions, and apparently, one of the mechanics broke their leg in a nasty fall. I was afraid to accept at first, but this had always been a lifelong dream for me, so without further consideration, I said yes.

After that, I went on two trips in the jump chamber with a group of trained explorers. They used to be called astronauts, but the name fell out of favor when rocket ships were no longer necessary. DAVO’s official name for them was simply “Explorers,” but a lot of my coworkers liked to joke about it and call them “Jumpers.” Even I managed to let my tongue slip and called them jumpers to their faces, but the explorers all seemed to find it amusing. In fact, they were the liveliest, most excited group of people I had ever had the pleasure of knowing. My two voyages were on separate worlds. The first was a very green, very tropical forest filled to the brim with all kinds of life. The only way I can describe that place is if I told you to imagine yourself in a prehistoric world before mankind evolved and only mother earth reigned supreme. That one was my favorite. The other one was more of a desert, yet somehow still teaming with life. It was beautiful, especially with sand so white it looked like snow and numerous moons in the sky both day and night. I only liked it less because when the blue-tinted sun was up, it became a scorching hundred and ten degrees. Not even sun protectant could save me from the burns I earned there. Those two worlds, whose documented names I’ve forgotten with time, were long-term projects for DAVO. By the time I visited them, they had already been under exploration for a couple of years. But the third voyage I went on was the first exploration ever of a new world. They gave it the name, World VT934.

It was the last exploration I ever made.