1 Transcending

Year 3467, Boston

From afar, a giant city could be seen. In the streets, flying cars passed by at huge speed and formed a river of silver metal above the buildings, that were made principally of glass. At the sidewalks, men and cyborgs came and went, saying good day, chatting with each other.

A curious thing was all the trees present everywhere around the premise. The glass walls were filled with virtual commercials too, like:

"Come buy the new VR simulator X, the last generation of virtual reality games. By buying one, you win a Call of Duty Black Ops XX for free!!!"

...

Close to the center of the city were colossal cybernetic buildings, giving off a feeling of greatness. Around the infrastructure, everything was green, filled with forests and animals in their wild lives. Obviously, such a big and technological place was MIT.

After the Great War, which almost collapsed the planet back then in 2650, MIT was one of the main contributors to the global recuperation. It invested in biotechnology researches, sustainable energy technologies, advance cyborg technology and of course, tactics to clean radiation from places attacked by atomic bombs.

So, after some centuries of hard work and investments, the institute became even more famous worldwide, receiving sponsorship from lots of countries and organizations, leading to their comfortable situation nowadays.

In the south part of the institute, there was a square like steel-plated construction. People entered and exited all the time. This was the Energy Research Department. Here researchers from all around the world worked together, implementing new techniques to obtain clean energy, or even working on the eternal search for an infinite source of energy, a dream of humanity for millenniums.

However, people that walked the path of the "infinite energy source" were not well seen in the academic world. They were called lunatics and their works were know as wasted money. Even the space theses academics had to work was limit and the resources were few.

Also, since most of the energy problems were solved, the government started to focus on interplanetary exploration. NASA already was midway in the construction of a space elevator to mars and was cultivating cereals in the moon. So the energy research program was losing its forces with the passage of the years.

...

Energy Research Department, 28 of June, 3467

Teachers and students were everywhere inside the building. Some were making experiments, having classes about some energy theoretics, eating and chatting together at the cafeteria.

Although security was were strong outside, the space inside was very calm, with nobody telling where you can or can not go.

As so, today was the visit day for newly graduated Energy Engineers. A group of ten young men, following their senior academic teacher, a middle-aged man with an outstanding beard, walked to the entrance.

Like this, the tour through the place they would work in the future. Between these new graduates, a skinny tall man could be seen, with his black hair, green eyes, and a somehow bronzed skin.

His name was Hammed, and he was the first of class this year. Although graduating this year, he was just twenty. People knew him as the biggest genius of this century.

At seventeen, he by himself built ea inter-spacial microsatellite. Things like this were common in this advanced civilization, however, his project was revolutionary. It could move through space just with an anti-matter engine.

However, its capabilities were very restricted, not sufficient for human daily use. But he heard of a senior from MIT that was working in a usable anti-matter engine, finishing his studies, he came here to seek this senior's teachings and works.

...

When the group was heading to the cafeteria, as everyone was distracted

"I have to go to the bathroom."

Hammed said as he separated from the group and started to wander alone through the halls.

After walking for some time, he found a lab with the name "Anti-matter Research Laboratory". Seeing this, he became were curious and started to ask himself how that senior's work was.

Getting close to the doors, he found out they were closed by a security system.

"Seriously, everyone here is a genius and the best they can come up with is a shabby password system? Security really is loose inside the department."

Hammed said as he took out his phone and a cable, connecting it to the lock.

After typing some codes for a few seconds, the locked doors opened after a beep.

With a big smile in his face, Hammed entered into the lab and closed the doors behind him.

The lab was filled with counters and strange machines on them. Experiments and prototypes were everywhere.

"Want a magnificent laboratory. At high school and college, I didn't have half of theses tools for my work"

Hammed thought as he walked around.

After some time studying through the prototypes, a peculiar machine caught his attention. It was placed at the corner of the room, with a warning saying "Don't touch!"

He got close to it step by step and found paper documents next to it. Picking them up, Hammed started to read.

"... this was the closer prototype of an anti-matter engine I worked on till now. This beauty is a 24 ampoule nitrogen-cooled fission reactor that is capable of creating a neutral force camp in a 5 meters ray... permitting the accumulation os anti-matter. The only defect is that I failed to implement a stabilizer, so it almost exploded with me a few times. After lots of failures, I kind of gave up."

As Hammed read this, he had a confident expression on his face. Since college, he already grasped the theorems used by this senior and even came up with an efficient idea for a stabilizer.

As so, he started to work on this stabilizer of his and to build up a code to load it and put it in action together with the fission reactor.

About an hour later, everything was ready. Without even checking, Hammed pressed the enter button to start the program and a black aura started to accumulate inside the reactor, making some loud sounds. For the first few minutes, everything was going smoothly, and if successful, humanity would have an infinite source of energy from anti-matter, since it was everywhere and was as "big" as the universe himself.

However, as the stabilization stage started, the aura started to grow in an uncontrolled way. Seeing this, Hammed looked at his phone and a little red point lit up in the corner...a syntax error in the code...

Hammed, realizing the imminent explosion caused by a minute syntax error, cursed the heavens!!

As the reactor exploded, he thought to himself

"Looks like in my next life, I'll devote more of my time in coding..."

Everything around started to disintegrate and a thunderous sound could be heard. Hammed's vision just went black and the surroundings turned silent.

...

An unknown amount of time later, Hammed opened his eyes and had an astounded expression on his face.

"How didn't I die? Am I in the heavens? Probably not, since I wasn't a religious person. But it's not hot either, so it can't be hell. Well, if I'm not in heaven and either in hell, where am I ?"

His head was about to explode from pain. After calming down a bit, he looked around. The surroundings were like a sleep chamber from those wuxia novels he read in his childhood. It was very simple, with just a stone bed, where he was laid, a little table, and a mirror.

Although all these items looked very simple, one could feel a strong aura from them. Curious about his appearance after the explosion, he got up and looked himself in the mirror.

What he saw almost made him faint on the spot. This definitely was not his body. Although it had some similarities, it was much more muscular and it was even taller.

But as he saw himself, a strange mix of unknown memories started to pass through his mind...