When the position of our spacecraft reached the constellation Centauri, I realized that interstellar travel had finally become available to mankind. At the same moment, I realized that I had become a hero who would forever go down in history. When the time comes, I will become famous, but I will remain single for the rest of my life.

Dreams and ideas about the destination are just the first step of space travel. After passing through the wormhole, all communication systems fail due to time dilation. My mission is to collect the necessary information. The real research is just beginning. The main performer of the whole process is artificial intelligence, and I seem to be an unnecessary detail here.

The main task now is to collect information about Centauri as soon as possible. We need to study very carefully the possibility of human migration into space in the future. And although half a month will not play a special role, I would like to return to my family at least a day or two earlier.

The spacecraft's intelligent system independently planned the necessary route. All I had to do was watch the monitor carefully and monitor the errors, the frequency of which was 1 in 100,000. Looking at this green screen, I completely did not notice how the whole day had passed, so I had to reconfigure my biological clock.

We are all subject to the laws of the universe. The speed of light is a value that does not apply to any existing object, regardless of its mass. Even if you walk through a wormhole in an instant, the shortest time relative to the outside world is calculated as the ratio of travel to the speed of light, and in fact it will be more than three times. Quantum teleportation with a large time difference is also relatively inefficient.

We can say that after traveling through a wormhole, glory awaits us in the physical world and at the same time spiritual exile.

"We are going to land on the planet to collect soil samples." There have already been more than a hundred such samples. I took a bite of bread and continued to work, staring at the boring screen.

Sitting absolutely motionless at this large monitor, endless memories came flooding back to me, as my son holds a toy model of a rocket in his hands, looks at me with his big, tear-filled eyes and says: "Dad, I want to be like you, I want to fly into space too..." I smiled and nodded at him, as if At the same moment, my wife hugged him and whispered: "Promise Mom not to mess with space, Mom doesn't want to lose you..."

I had been turning this scene over in my head for a long time, but what was happening on the screen brought me back to reality. Nothing terrible happened, but one parameter turned bright red.

In this space journey, people played a small role only at the moment of passing through the wormhole, the rest of the time we spent watching the operation of the spacecraft's smart system. However, moving through wormholes itself is like the gates of life and death. Some ships collided with the Sun because they could not reach sublight speed, while others were shattered because their physical armor could not withstand the unknown features of wormholes.

In memory of the dead, each ship is equipped with a compartment for candles, on the basis of which their names are engraved. And at the entrance there is an inscription: "Deepest respect to all those injured in interplanetary expeditions."

I do not know how many days have passed, I do not remember what I was thinking. Anyway, the sleepless nights were not in vain, because we had all the necessary information. The navigation system guided our spacecraft to the wormhole entry point. And now, for the second time, we had to pass this test.

Just like the previous time, I successfully went through the wormhole again. Inside, I watched as life events flashed past me: the highest grade for an exam paper, a broken rocket model, the message that I had been chosen as the operator of this spaceship, my mother's smiling face before she died... Soon my eyes began to sparkle, and I approached the other end of the wormhole—the Sun.

At a distance of more than four light years, I actually experienced a time difference of as much as twenty years! Government representatives gave me a reception and canceled the farewell ceremony that took place five years ago. My father died fifteen years ago, and my wife and children are missing.

I held the medal of honor, the audience applauded wildly, but my heart was empty.

The life of an astronaut who flew through a wormhole, regardless of whether he was successful or not, will force his loved one to accept life alone...

From time to time, I saw my parents, wife and children in the hall, who still looked the same as when I first left. I wanted to rub my eyes to dispel the hallucinations, but I didn't dare.

 

The original is in the application

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