Cusp of Breakthrough

As soon as Dr. Kbom came out of his meeting, he found several notifications in his comm. These notifications couldn't get through when he was in the meeting. He took a look at them.

All of them were about Kita waking up and then running back to his Lab like a madman.

"What?!?! What's the lad thinking? He's in no condition to research stuff."

He quickly gave Kita a call. It rang for a while before he picked up.

"Dr. Kita. What the fuck are you doing? Do you know how many seizures you've had just a few hours ago?", Dr. Kbom yelled directly at him without giving him a chance to formulate a greeting.

Kita looked a little startled at the outburst. He didn't expect Dr. Kbom to have an sudden outburst like that.

"Dr. Kbom, I…." Kita couldn't give a response to him. He was stuttering. Which generally never happened.

"I don't want to hear anything. Get your ass back to the med bay. You're not fit to perform any research. You need to recover fully before you enter you lab again." Kbom said with a stern voice.

"Dr. Kbom I…. I'm working on something really important. This can't wait. I will go to the med bay once I'm done.", Kita suddenly said in a resolute voice.

"What's so important that you're gonna ignore what just happened to you?" Dr. Kbom pressed for answers.

Kita stood there. He didn't gave any response. From the looks of it. It should be something related to B1. Dr. Kbom wasn't an idiot. He knew what was going through Kita's mind. Losing Helen was a huge blow for him.

He let out a long sigh..

"Kita, as a person who's ever only loved his own work, I couldn't possibly understand what you must be going through. But you need to take care of your health. Whatever you might be working on, Helen wouldn't want you to see you in this state. You need to always put your health before anything."

Kita stood there listening to his voice. It didn't seem like anything was getting through to him.

"Whatever you're working on right now. Take a break and go to the med-bay. You can continue after you've recovered."

"I.. I'm sorry to have worried you." Kita said in a low voice.

"Good, Go to the med bay." Kbom said as he finished the call.

After that Kbom let the captain know of the arrangement made with the Council.

They were gonna continue this expedition. Despite the fresh memories that everyone still held. They needed to push thorough the grief to finish what they had set out on.

The ship wasn't too far away from the B1. The orders soon came and the way was charted towards their last lagarange point.

Soon, the shore started it's rear thrusters. The FTL drives had already finished recycling. The shore was fully prepared to make the jump. But it needed to reach the jump point first. It would still take a few days to reach the point.

These few days were all the time Kita had to finish the job he had set out on. He was like a man possessed. Despite, getting ordered to go the med bay, he was still in his lab working on the machine that should be able to produce tiny amount of Anti-matter.

He had all the theories and information in his head. He could clearly visualize everything that needed to happen to create anti-matter.

While humanity understood the theory of anti-matter for over thousands of years. They weren't able to find a way to create anti-matter. It only existed in the computer models. They could prove it's existence only through simulations and mathematical models. But no one had seen anti-matter in reality.

Before the space age, It was thought that Maybe they'd find Anti-matter somewhere in the galaxy. But that was soon proved to be false. Humanity had taken to stars thousands of years ago, they'd come across and destoryed hundreds of alien civilizations. But nowhere in the currently human occupied parts of the galaxy had they found any Anti-matter.

But that didn't mean that Humans had given up on finding a way to harness it. It offered too many benefits for humans to give up on it.

It could be used as a superior form of energy production. It could also be used a one-kill-all weapon of mass destruction against aliens. The latter was partially an important part as even after soo many decades of fighting aliens and assimilating their technology, Humanity could still be considered behind on the tech level.

Aliens had better tech, ships and weapons. Humanity was only able to beat them back because of their superior numbers. In a large scale conflict, Humanity could only depend on their numbers to overpower the enemy. This wasn't a luxry that their enemies enjoyed.

But nonetheless, Humanities quest to find and harness the power of Anti-matter was of a past too distant. It was relentless and filled with failures.

Yet, Now Kita was on the cusp of it. He had gained the knowledge required and processes involved on how to create the one material that has always eluded mankind. This was the breakthrough of the century.

Yet, Kita didn't thought about all that. All of his focus was preoccupied with a single thing. To finish the machine.

He had already finished the design of the machine, he had ran the tests and everything checked out, the simulations, the math. Everything checked out. He knew that the knowledge he had gained from the cuboid was the real deal.

He was currently creating the first prototype in a trance. He had cut off everything from outside the lab. His comm and everything. Time was short. The last news he had gotten was that the Shore would be entering FTL in a couple of days. That was all the time he had to finish what he had set out on.

He planned on building a Anti-matter warhead and then somehow launch it towards the monolith. The main battery of the Shore should be powerful enough to reach the monolith in a timely manner.

But how he was gonna accomplish it was still beyond him. He put this thought for later. For now he was busy with the huge machine that he was building. He could feel it. He was close. He was almost done.