The Strangest Love of All – The Sequel - Part One

He studied physics, science, the elements of weather patterns, black holes, different forms of anomalies. He studied dark matter, solar flares. He amassed every book he could find on inter-dimensional space travel. He so wanted this to work.

Countless hours zipped by over the next fifteen years of his life since he met and fell in love with the only girl, now a woman that ever mattered to him. And that woman bore his child. Boy or girl? He had no way of knowing and would never know if his planned idea didn’t work.

He spent the last eight years devising a method to cross over in to a parallel world, but would it actually work? He had done testing, sending various objects through the portal but when he tried to reverse the mechanism, the items such as an apple, a plastic bottle, a cardboard box—never came back. But that proved one thing—it went somewhere, but where?

He was running out of time though. His research project was given one last funding grant for ten-million from private investors in hopes he would … could, devise a way to transport a human being like they did on the show Star Trek. Logic says it can never happen. Science says it is probable. If this actually worked, his investors would be angry at him, but he didn’t care. He was defrauding them, but if this worked, he would never be arrested. His primary goal was to unite with the only woman he ever loved. Elyse.

When he first graduated from college, he went to work for the Allied Institute. They did various projects of a scientific nature for the space program. In his second year with them, he found a way where astronauts would no longer float in their ships simply by wearing what he called a “shift belt” designed to balance the weightlessness with a normal person’s weight. That not only gave him recognition but a huge raise, a title, and some prestige.

His colleagues called him Robert (no one has called him Bobby since he entered college, with the exception of his parents). It was shortly after that when a few investors offered him money to come up with a way to transport humans from one planet to another to repopulate, providing the planet could sustain human life, such as earth.

But after many long hours studying the density of many of the known and not quite so known planets, he found there wasn’t a planet in our universe that could do that, nor would human life survive without protective gear, and actual breathing air. Most planets hadn’t the compounds, or for that matter any of earth’s properties to reconstruct homes, businesses, cities and so on.

Well there is one. A rocky planet in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri, the closest star to Earth (not counting the Sun). Another possible candidate is Alpha Centauri, Earth’s nearest Sun-like star system 4.37 light-years away. The problem with that; it would take a hundred and thirty-seven-thousand years to get there.

As far as he knew, there was only one place and it wasn’t seen through any powerful telescope on earth.

Elyse’s home world.

Preparing the next test, he grabbed a white mouse and placed it in the teleporter-transporter. Bending down, carefully placing him on the flooring, he said, “Zach, I hope you come back. If you do, you’ll make history come alive.”

Closing the door, he went to the instrument panel and pressed a few buttons and then hit enter.

A few lights brightened in the machine, the white mouse scurried about not knowing where to go, and a whirring sound emanated from within. Thirty seconds later, Zach was gone.