Securing the Launch

Grid exploration events were pretty normal across the Sectors. However, each year there would be an organized Sector exploration event in which adventurers from across the Grid would get together and create an elite team. This elite team was tasked with exploring un-reached Sectors that were outside of the Grid system.

Sometimes, these teams never made it back.

Interestingly enough, many still volunteered to join the exploration team year after year. In fact, there were so many applicants each year that the waitlist had already been pushed back many years. Even with over 2000 adventurer slots available each year, the waitlist was already well into the hundreds of thousands.

Of course, this was completely understandable. The entire Grid system boasted a population size of 230 billion documented homo sapiens. With such a large population size meant many people who were interested in risking their lives for science.

To ensure that everything would go as smoothly as possible, the engineering team was tasked with locking warp zones, inspecting the equipment, and overseeing the operation in general.

Sam, being one of the main engineers, was tasked with maintenance this year. This meant that he would be constantly monitoring the stability of the warp zones and also the durability of each exploration team's equipment. Each team contained 50-100 explorers, and also had a seasoned exploration captain who would help Sam out by giving him hourly reports on their status.

Before launching the teams though, there would have to be 2 major final inspections. The first inspection was on the team's equipment. This inspection was important as it checked off if all the teams had the right amount of gear and food.

The secondary inspection was to be of the warp zones themselves. Each warp zone was constantly monitored by a senior member of the engineering team. And along with the senior member, there would be a team of 4 other engineers who would help monitor as well.

The warp zones had to be constantly monitored because if a zone shut down while someone was traveling through it, the unfortunate soul would be forcefully thrown out of the zone at 57 times the speed of light, vaporizing them instantly.

Of course, this rarely ever happened as warp zones were relatively stable and shouldn't ever shut down for any reason, but the possibility for error was always present.

Finally, after all of the inspections were completed, the organizer of the event started the countdown.

Thus the automatic response began:

"T-minus 10 minutes and 30 seconds before launch, final inspections, please wrap up"

. . .

"All systems inspection finished, prepare for launch."

. . .

"Warp Zones activated, all zones are at 100%, awaiting cargo."

. . .

"All cargo secured, T-minus 3 minutes and 21 seconds before launch."

. . .

"Warp Zone receivers are now online, warp destinations are secured."

. . .

"30 seconds before launch, Captains report go for launch"

. . .

"Captains go for launch"

. . .

"Roger, all zones go for launch."

And then, they were off.