Project Kugo

Kita wondered what had he gotten himself into. It seemed like His mentor had somehow managed to put off another one of his eccentric projects onto him.

Integrating an alien technology like the Lines with a highly complicated device such as a FTL drive was easier said than done. It felt almost Impossible to Kita. But somehow Dr. Kbom had managed to accomplish it. Although only to a minor degree, it was a start.

That's how most of modern human technology had been developed. Some mad researcher had obsessed over something for an awfully long time. Not knowing whether their dedication will bear fruit or not. But those that did, propelled humanity forward.

So when Dr. Kbom asked him to take a look at the internals, he honestly wanted to refuse. He had good reason to. He didn't know much about the complicated internals, And he didn't have enough idea about what new things had Dr. Kbom stuffed inside the drive.

But as he had never refused his mentor. He didn't start now.

"Fine. I'll take a look inside. But you need to send me all the research files related to it. I've taken a look at the internal schematic. And it doesn't make any sense. I can't understand half of it. This drive is more complicated than the others." Kita retorted. If he was gonna do it, he was gonna do it properly. He couldn't stand doing something sloppily.

"Of course, Of course. I'll send you everything."

"And...."

"Oh, I need to go. Talk to you later."

"Huh?!?!"

Before Kita could add anything more, Dr. Kbom cut off the call. Kita knew that he tended to do this when he wanted to get away from something.

It was frustrating, but there was nothing Kita could do about it.

As the Call ended, Kita pushed back on his chair as he looked at the bright light hanging over his head.

The bright white like felt blinding at times. But now, it felt quite serene.

When he asked Dr. Kita for a recommendation, he didn't expect to get himself wrapped up in the development of the next generation of FTL drives. But now that he was here, It felt like he had been played.

And if his guess was right, that was exactly the case. Kita would bet good money that Dr. Kbom knew about the really high power consumption of the FTL drive. And he wanted to get Kita back into the research community. That's why he had purposefully sent him the drive and now they were here.

"That Old fox...." Kita sighed internally. He didn't expect to get played so hard by his mentor.

A sudden beep brought him out of his deep thought.

Dr. Kbom had sent over all the research materials and everything related to the development of the drive.

Kita stopped thinking about it for now. As he had already accepted it, he was gonna see it through.

He gave York a call and asked him to come over.

He started by creating a new project called Project Kugo.

After setting up everything, he began to take a look at the files Dr. Kbom had sent over. There was a couple of Terabytes worth of files, documentation, research materials, test results and other information related to the drive.

Having all this felt like he was back in the Development center. That was where most of the development for the Kbom Industries took place.

Kita has spent a few years there while under Dr. Kbom.

As Kita began to read through the documentation, York entered the room.

He looked around the lab before coming over to Kita's desk.

"Hey, You're here. I've got something for you." Kita said before explaining the situation to him.

He explain everything about the drive and how he'd been played by Dr. Kbom.

York just laughed at Kita for being gullible enough to not know when he's being played. But as they were already in the situation. There was little they could do.

They both divided the parts of the documentation and each began to read through them. It was gonna be a long day.

Hours went by as the paid of researchers read through all the different bits and pieces of the documentation.

A FTL drive was inherently a really complex device. There were a lot of parts to it that didn't make any sense to the laymen or to even accomplished researchers like Kita and York. These parts and systems could only be understood by someone specializing in this field. Someone like Dr. Kbom.

But even then, there were parts that didn't make sense to even Dr. Kbom himself. These parts were basically a 1:1 copy of the original FTL drive that humanity had managed to scavenge from the alien wrecks. These were basically black boxes of alien tech that no human understood clearly. They only knew that these parts were essential in the operation of the FTL drive. So they worked to replicate this and succeeded. They didn't need to know how this worked or why. They only knew that it worked and that's it.

As the hours went by, Kita and York marked out the important stuff about the Internal Energy Delivery system of the drive.

They came up with their own theories and conclusions based on what they already knew about the drive and the lines themselves.

But that was where they encountered a problem. Dr. Kbom didn't have much documentation about how he had managed to get the energy pattern working with the new composite that he was working with.

Kita wasn't familiar with the composite.

So he began looking into the composite itself. It seemed to be a mix of a few different exotics. But it wasn't a perfect 1:1 mix of the exotics that the lines was made of.

"Why's that?" Kita asked himself.

He looked through the test results. It seemed that Dr. Kbom had indeed tried to create a mixture of the exotics used in the lines. But it seemed to have ended in failure due to the unknown process of creating it.

As Kita read through the process, he seemed to feel like there was something wrong.

There was something wrong with the whole thing.