As I float through the dark ether, in space, in nothingness, I start descending again. Now I can smell my destination. It is cold and dark and musty. An instant feeling of dread and fear overtakes me.
Despite my wants, I awaken in my new reality. The dank, moist air and its smells have stayed with me. My bear shirt is drenched. There is a thick mist about us, not thick enough to be rain, but thick enough to form droplets on our faces and chill our lungs.
I am one of twelve hands, carrying a body on six shoulders.
He is our brother.
Everyone around us is mourning his death.
The elders of the tribe go before us, as the women sing songs for the dead. I’ve always loved their singing. Their voices carry me off to faraway places — make me forget where I am. Somehow, just somehow, it makes the women singing the songs look more beautiful too.
We stop at the entrance to our sacred burial ground, a cave in the side of our ancestral hill. There are some runes carved over the entrance, but I cannot recognize them. They are not from our tribe. For sure, they are not the runes that Odin gave us:
The tribe’s elders sing the magic runes, and the slab of granite moves like a feather being pushed by our shaman with one hand. We walk more than one-hundred paces in between vertical walls in the cave. The walls are wet and rivulets of water are trickling down them. The elders are holding small burning sticks, and the shaman goes ahead of us all.
“Verdammt!” curses the man in front of me. We are hunching down, with a body on our shoulders, crawling in a pitch black cave with water dripping on us. He must have twisted his ankle on the uneven ground.
We reach the center of the cave.
We can finally stand without hitting our heads on granite. The shaman holds out a protecting hand, in his old crackling voice he says, “Go no farther. The gods are here.”
In the middle of the cave, we see nothing. We stand in a circle, with our backs pressed against the wet walls. The shaman speaks again, “Take no further step, lest ye be taken up with the gods!” We still see nothing. The small burning sticks that the elders hold are useless in this black pit of doom.
“Stand back!” screeches the old shaman. A blue light now plays at our feet, and spreads itself, dancing and flickering around the perimeter that our feet define.
“Don’t move!” he screeches again. Then, in the middle of the cave, the impossible happened: the blackness got darker. I could feel the air move towards the center of the cave. I could feel an invisible hand pulling me towards the center and downwards.
“Now!” came the shaman’s final order.
We hurled our brother towards the center of the darkness. We did not hear anything, except the wind building up to a deafening, sucking sound. I tried to grab the wet granite walls, holy god of thunder, do not pull me in! — I am not the dead one! — I was not called!
The wind burns my face and whips my hair in my eyes. I can’t hear a damned thing…and then… it finally dies down.
The elders say the last rites of our tribe, “Odin vera með þér bróður.”
I say to myself; ‘can we finally leave this Hel hole!?’
As your planet runs out of resources, your civilization is faced with the question, “Whereto next?”
One of the more interesting questions is: “Who gets to go?”
But before we answer any of those questions, we must be at least a LEVEL 1 civilization! Memory Refresher… LEVEL ONE: A level one civilization is PLANETARY, and can harness the entire energy of a planet. Additionally, they are also INTERPLANETARY and can travel from planet to planet in their own solar system. LEVEL TWO: A level two civilization is STELLAR, and can harness the entire engergy of a star. They are also INTERSTELLAR, being able to travel from star to star. The profound difference; this civilization is truly IMMORTAL, “If your star dies, just go to the next one!” LEVEL THREE: A level three civilization is GALACTIC ! This civilization can harness the energy of an entire galaxy. It goes without saying that they are intergalactic, and can travel across the universe at will. What’s even more astounding and hard for us humans to comprehend; this civilzation can WARP the Time Space Continuum!
You can use any gravitational source, a planet, a star, or even a blackhole, to DOUBLE your speed, like a slingshot!
This is called "gravity assist" because you use the gravitational field and movement of a planet to add velocity to your own.
The cool part is: it's FREE! Just make sure to not get too close...
You can also use gravity assist to DECELERATE your spacecraft -for free-.
Instead of traveling "behind" the planet, relative to it's motion in space, you travel in front of the planet. This way the planets gravity diminishes your forward speed.
