Gravius 3.0

The Gravius project initiated within the space colonization program that included a state-of-the-art spaceship with 1000 inhabitants. My parents were one of the participants. They met during training back on Earth and left the planet forever onboard the Gravius in 2185.

That's how I ended up here, staring at the endless darkness of the cosmos through my illuminator window in the room where I’ve lived for the last 20 years. My parents passed away two years ago and left me a collection of Earth plants, an old Buddhist paper book, and many research files. In their files I’ve seen a lot of visuals of so-called ‘space-time shortcuts' but nothing was close to what I was seeing at that moment.

We were approaching the Einstein-Rosen bridge, a passage through spacetime that connects vast distances of billions of light-years and creates a shortcut across the universe. I couldn't see it clearly since it was even darker than the space around it. However, the perimeter of the wormhole looked like a colourful storm where gravitational bending captured light at the event horizon. After many years of theoretical speculation and computerized photographs, we could finally see it with our own eyes.

We needed the shortcut to get to the Earth-like planet located within the habitable zone of the star Ora, which otherwise would take a million years of travel. We called the planet Earth 3.0 since it was identical to Earth apart from its size which was a bit bigger than our native planet. That was the first colonization attempt of humankind outside the Solar system.

The Gravius ship was built for this moment of truth. Its main function is to take humans through the Einstein-Rosen bridge safely without being destroyed by high radiation, exotic matter and other dangerous qualities of negative energy. It has outer rings that operate as a shield from these dangers, which start operating as the spaceship approaches the event horizon. Many scientists worked on the technology, and if we can safely go through the wormhole and remain alive it will be the third giant leap for mankind after the Martian landing.

We were getting closer and the light from the event horizon became intense enough that I had to squint my eyes. I increased the glass toning and sat down next to the window. I haven't seen such a beautifully terrifying thing in my life before.

I noticed a burning smell, and then suddenly the smell of the chemicals. It was the fire system spraying the affected areas. I felt the heat underneath and then sudden cooling – the secondary cooling system of the spaceship was activated. The spaceship started shaking and then suddenly calmed down – the secondary stabilizer has been activated too.

Suddenly I felt very dizzy and looked around the room. The window frame was burning, and the fire system started spraying pressurized chemicals. I looked back to the window and saw how the external walls of the spaceship looked much thicker now. It seemed like they stretched towards the wormhole and looking at it made me feel even dizzier.

I tried to breathe deeply as we had been advised to do in such situations. My heart was racing, dizziness overtook me, and my head started to ache with intense pain. It was very hot, I was sweating and trembling, so I lay down on the floor and passed out after a minute or so. 

I woke up in outer space looking at the exterior of our spaceship that was transformed into the shape of plasma. Then I looked at my hands – they were plasmatic too. I stood up and realized that I was still in my room, however my room was now in outer space. Some parts of our spaceship were burning, including a section of my room. I then noticed the boundary between interior and exterior had disappeared.

Everything was in a constant movement like running water. I moved and space around moved together with me. It felt like I was in some sort of thick liquid. I wondered if I was still alive and decided to check my breathing. Suddenly I became my lungs. It was obvious and I knew that I was lungs.  All I had to do was to keep the creature around me alive by getting enough air inside of me and releasing it once I had enough oxygen.

I wanted to check if anyone else was around and focused my thoughts on my partner. Straight away I became her. She had sustained some burns and injuries during the entry to the event horizon. I felt the burning pain on my skin and called out for doctors. Then I turned into paramedic robotic arms and helped out my injured partner. At the same time, I felt her awareness of my presence and she said thank you – words that I heard both inside and outside of my physical head.

I wondered how many people survived the journey and heard the voice of our commander saying '56 injured with burns, 136 in mental disorientation and unfortunately, 2 passengers did not survive'. Suddenly I turned into our commander and felt her physical exhaustion and her mental strength. She said, ‘everything is under control now, thanks for helping with the medical care.'

Then I felt someone's presence and heard the voice of my old friend ‘you're missing out on the most fun things in the 4th dimension'. 4th dimension?! ‘Go and have a look'. I felt his excitement.

He was right. It was a different dimension where the comprehension of the interconnectedness allows us to travel through the complexity of our universe. I feel and see everything and everyone now. I feel their pain; I feel their love; I feel their happiness and anger.

I thought about humanity and my consciousness took me back into the 20th century. I was aboard Vostok 1 in Baikonur Cosmodrome feeling the excitement and then heard myself saying ‘Poyekhali!'. Then I saw myself in lunar orbit saying, ‘Hand me that roll of colour quick, would you...' and took a first coloured picture of the Earthrise. I was experiencing every major event of human history that let me see a clear picture of who we are. 

Then suddenly I felt the presence of someone else. Someone who had been following me since I entered the 4th dimension. I then realized that my observer was still in the 3d dimension. I thought it's impossible - you can't observe or even comprehend the 4th-dimensional being from the 3d dimension.

My consciousness took me back in history again and I saw myself in 2019 sitting in front of an old school personalized computer typing on the keypad. Suddenly I realized that I was observing my observer from the 3d dimension. I was very confused and then saw that my observer typed these exact words about me being confused. Then I looked around the desk and saw printed pictures of me, of the Gravius and of everything that I’ve seen through my eyes when I entered the 4th dimension.

Despite being in the 4th dimension it took me a while to comprehend such complexity of our universe. I then understood that we are one complex matter interwoven into each other in equilibrium. My comprehension expanded even further when I started feeling multiple readers reading a story of me.

I felt different people in 2019 reading the story but not feeling me in the way I could feel them from the 4th dimension. I thought it was unfair that 3-dimensional being couldn’t experience this amazingly complex connectivity.

I went back again to 2019 and turned into the writer who created my world. ‘How can I let them know?’ I thought. Then I/we started typing…

Hi! Do you feel me now?

Try it. I believe you can feel this complexity too. Don't think about it but feel it. It’s strange that on Earth humans think too much and feel too little. Maybe this resulted in all of the political, environmental and humanitarian problems of your time… Try to feel the fear, pain, and anger that's happening on the planet. Feel the air, water, wind, trees, animals and other humans. You don’t need to be in the 4th dimension to do that. Feel the interconnectedness of our beautiful and complex universe. Stop being yourself and be everything…

Then we both smiled.