Realms Beyond: A Mission to Parallel Worlds

I was one of the first to arrive at the space station. It was just a metal frame with some wiring and a board for the control panel. I didn't really mind, though. I had never been in space before and couldn't wait to see the view!

The others arrived shortly after me. They were all very excited; especially Dr Richmond. She took this project very seriously and always had a firm belief that we would find something. It was nice that she could remain so optimistic when so many people doubted us. In fact, it was probably her faith in this project that persuaded me to join the expedition in the first place.

We all got to work on setting up the control centre and equipment so we could begin our search. While the others were busy, Dr Richmond came over to speak to me.

‘I understand that you haven’t been feeling well, Dr Joost?’ she began, ‘you should take it easy today and maybe get some rest in order to avoid making things worse.’

I looked at her with surprise. I hadn't realized that I was looking sickly. I always thought my skin tone was a bit pasty, but I didn't think that anyone else noticed it.

‘Well, thank you for your concern, Dr Richmond, but I will be fine,’ I said, ‘I am sure that this is nothing more than stress from not being able to sleep as much as I would like back home. There is no need for me to stay here when there is plenty of work for us to do! Besides, our time away from home has been so limited already; there is no way that I want to spend another day cooped up in bed!’

Dr Richmond smiled at me and said, ‘very well then; if you insist! Perhaps you can keep an eye on how everything is going while everyone else gets their work done? Just make sure that everything is going smoothly before you start working on your own experiments again!’

She gave me an understanding smile before walking off towards the others who had just finished setting up the control panel. She seemed to have an affinity for me; perhaps she knew about my condition and felt sorry for me? Regardless of her motivation, however, her kindness made me feel better about myself and my abilities as a scientist-in-training.

The other scientists continued getting ready as well, and soon enough we were all ready to go searching for signs of life inside this strange parallel universe that we had discovered last year during our expedition into Antarctica (you might have read about it in one of your tabloids). We finished setting everything up just in time because we now had two weeks left before our return trip back home was due, and we wanted to make sure we could get as much searching done as possible before then!

We all gathered around Dr Richmond, who told us what we were going to do next:

‘After yesterday's power outage which caused us to lose some crucial data back home, today we are going to continue trying out new methods of collecting information from this universe without having any interruption from Earth's own electromagnetic field!’ she explained.

‘What do you mean by 'without interruption'? Does that mean that communications between us will be useless? Did someone back home decide not to give our satellite network its annual checkup? And why would they do such a thing?! And what does it have to do with collecting information anyway?’ asked one of my colleagues named Ronald in a worried voice. He was always jumping into things without thinking them through first and often ended up getting himself hurt or even killed because of it (you may remember him from one of your news reports last year after he tried cheating on his wife by paying people money online only for them to rip him off instead).

‘Calm down Ronald! We've been through this plenty of times already! This isn't a problem at all; if anything it will help us gather more accurate data since we won't have any interference from Earth itself! Besides, how else were we supposed to collect data without sending messages back home? The only way would be if someone went back home with the data themselves... Which means... *drum roll*... Since no one volunteered for the job yet again, I guess it's time for another volunteer mission! Woohoo~!’ Dr Richmond exclaimed excitedly while clapping her hands together like a little girl who had just seen ice cream for the first time in her life. Her excitement infected us all like a virus spreading through a population with deadly efficiency until even Ronald joined in on her childish enthusiasm (after some persuasion from his peers).

Eventually, Dr Richmond managed to calm everyone down by explaining what exactly we would be doing today: testing out various devices designed specifically for this purpose whilst also gathering data which we could send back home (and also use ourselves) once our two weeks were over so that future expeditions wouldn't encounter any problems when they returned after us (although most of us weren't intending on returning home at all