The universe was vast and boundless, hiding countless ancient secrets in its depths.
During this quiet leg of the voyage, Jason stood on the bridge, completely lost in thought.
Strangely enough, warp drive was classified as a Level-2 technology. It felt like the universe's greatest gift to budding civilizations. Exceeding the speed of light, it bypassed the strict laws of relativity and was vastly more energy-efficient than conventional thrusters. It was this very technology that made interstellar travel feasible in the first place.
The key to warp drive was exotic matter. As a specific variant of dark matter, it was woven into the very fabric of space, rendering it practically ubiquitous.
Not only could exotic matter fold space, but in sufficient quantities, it could even tear open temporary spacetime vortices. Just like a whirlpool in the ocean dragging the surface down to the seabed, these spacetime vortices could instantly bridge two unimaginably distant points in the cosmos.
