Interstellar Travel

Due to the small size of the space vessel, the interior was quite cramped. It was only 4 meters wide and was comprised of compartments, the main section with seats, and the cockpit. The walking platform directly led to the main section, where the first things Daemon saw were six ripped and barely intact seats, three on each side of the main section.

The Captain sat down on the cockpit seat, in front of him a huge console with numerous unlabelled buttons, levers, and switches. He started pressing, switching, and pulling them in an order he had long memorized after performing them hundreds of times.

Daemon peeked into the cockpit, the wide array of a seemingly random assortment of controls instantly confounded him. He didn't even understand why there were so many.

"How do you know which buttons are which?" He asked.

"This is an aftermarket console, so half these buttons aren't even wired up. Half of the ones that are wired are non-essentials while the twenty-five percent I've memorized are the essentials used most commonly" The Captain replied.

The Captain then flicked a large switch in the center of the console, which resulted in the three engines rumbling into a high-pitched whine, indicating they were revving up. The vibrations caused by the engines reverberated heavily throughout the space vessel, almost causing Daemon to fall over.

"Grab a seat and put on the seatbelt, the launch isn't gonna be calm and you might get hurt"

Daemon agreed and moved back into the main section where he sat down onto one of the seats, only to find its seatbelt strap didn't have the clip. He shifted along twice before moving to the other side and finally finding a seat with a functional seatbelt. The clip satisfyingly clicked onto the bucking which switched a red indicating light on it to green.

"I'm done" Daemon shouted towards the cockpit.

The Captain hearing this presses a few buttons on the console, causing the ship to rumble violently as it started to rise vertically. Daemon held both his hands down onto the sides of his seat to try and keep his body from being thrashed around. As the space vessel rose, Daemon could feel large mechanisms underneath the floor his feet were on which he presumed was the landing gear retracting.

Once the landing gear had successfully retracted, the Captian pushed a large lever beside his cockpit seat, causing the engine to suddenly burst with power, accelerating the space vessel as its nose rose to quickly gain altitude. The instant acceleration caused Daemon to be pulled to the back end of the ship, the only thing holding his body from being thrown around being this seatbelt.

"Kenny is off!" The Captain exclaimed while softly chuckling.

To be honest, the right engine had previously been acting up, which caused him to be concerned. In the case that it fails, it would still be possible to get the ship off the planet, but it would require very sketchy flight maneuvers that every very risky and difficult to pull off. Fortunately, the right engine seemed to be fine.

The vessel flew up quickly, eventually exited the atmosphere, and entering space. By then the feeling of weightlessness set in and Daemon was now floating in his seat. He unplugged his seatbelt and started to freely float around the ship, doing flips and tricks.

"Hahaha this is awesome"

"Brace yourself!" The Captain shouted as he flipped a switch.

Suddenly the feeling of weightlessness disappeared, causing Daemon to plummet face down onto the ground.

"OW"

The Captain chuckled in response. This was one of the most common hazing techniques that most newbies were subjected to. It reminded the Captain of the first time he left his birth planet.

"What the hell was that?" Daemon muttered as he massaged his sore face.

"Artificial Gravity. Being in zero-g for a long period of time brings a lot of hassle, so most spaceships are equipped with artificial gravity modules to compensate for it".

"By the way, why did you say Kenny?" Daemon asked curiously.

"It's the ship's nickname. The model is a Kensington C104 but we used to call it Kenny for short. By the way, your name is too much of a hassle to say, so your new nickname is now Dae"

"I like it!"

The vessel continued into space, leaving the orange planet behind.

The Captain started manipulated a screen on his console. He was setting his navigation to point to the local planetary system jump port. Once it was done, he grabbed the steering yoke and shifted the vessel's direction towards the jump port.

"Where are we headed" Dae questioned.

"To the local system jump port"

"Jump port?"

The Captain raised his eyebrows before realizing Dae likely had no knowledge of FTL travel.

"A jump port is a port in a planetary system where you can safely initiate the interuniversal travel as well as receive accurate directions for popular destinations. We use Unidrives that allow us to temporarily phase our ship into one of the scaling universes. Our universe is indexed at 0. Our first stage Unidrive allows us to temporarily phase into the first universe. We do this because each successive universe has space condensed by a factor of one million in relation to our universe. This means when we travel one kilometer in the first universe, we travel a million kilometers in our universe. This is what allows us to travel very large distances quickly."

"Interesting" Dae commented as he was trying to understand its specifics.

"So I'm guessing a first stage unidrive can't phase into the second universe?"

"Exactly! Not only that but the quality of the unidrives allows us to travel at different speeds within scaling universes. Our unidrive is a real cheap one, so while it still can phase into the first universe, it still cant travel very fast in it.