Chapter 2

No one else is crazy enough

He glanced out the round window, about ten centimeters across, at his reflection, from which only his bright eyes set in his dark skin stared back. The planet loomed ahead of him. The ‘heart’, the feature discovered by the New Horizons space probe over two hundred years ago, dominated the scene.

How far have we come in that time? How far haven’t we come?Brian wondered, his mood turning sour. Back then, they thought we would have faster-than-light speed travel by now

He chuckled without humor. “We still can’t go from one planet to its next-door neighbor without hibernation sleep. Where are our warp speed, hyper drives and jump gates? Where are all those alien worlds out there ready for us to exploit? We’re stuck exploiting and ruining the planets and asteroids in our own solar system.”