Chapter 2

And April was magic. And Waaay past fast. April was instant ... I wanna go to ... and you were there. At least on earth. One thing though ... you had to tell her WHERE you wanted to go... the second star to the right and straight on til morning didn't mean a damn thing. Another thing ... besides listing a direction that changes as one leaves the earths atmosphere ... refraction ... most stars ... suns ... are either too big, too little, the wrong color or don't have planets. Still, with a best guess scenario, there just has to be some stars where everything matches.

Science ... doesn't really know how many of the even close suns have planets. Out of the between one hundred billion to a possible four hundred billion stars in our galaxy ... the Milky Way ... some of them surely have planets that might fit in the general definition of worlds.

Planet: Rocky mass held in orbit by the gravitational pull of a sun.

World: Rocky mass held in orbit by the gravitational pull of a sun and supports life ... or could support life if the chemistry was right ... but doesn't because there are missing chemicals. All this crap is available on Google but most people like their science spoon fed ... so.

What we refer to as Earth is the third planet out from the sun Earth=Sol 3. The solar system consists of eight planets and a few odd bodies. In our neck of the woods there are most of the eye visible stars... 87 hundred of them ... give or take a few ... the solar interstellar neighborhood.

The solar interstellar neighborhood is part of the Milky Way Galaxy ... one hundred thousand LIGHT YEARS across. (186,000 miles a second. Speed of Light)

The Milky Way is part of a Local Intergalactic Group ... a bunch of galaxies ... and those galaxies are part of a Super Cluster called Virgo.

The Virgo Super Cluster is part of a Local Cluster of Super Clusters and that is so big ... the Virgo Super Cluster doesn't show up on the map. Get the idea?

April can do our Solar system in nanoseconds ... the Solar Intergalactic Group in milliseconds and the Galaxy ... our own Milky Way in seconds ... the Local Intergalactic Group in minutes and the Virgo in hours.

It's not the speed of light ... it's not warp ... it's not folded space ... it's the thought that counts. "I think and therefore I am" becomes "I think and therefore I am there." This horse is before Descartes.

The empty space between the Virgo and the next closest Super Cluster is farther than the Milky Way is across.

You have to be able to TELL April WHERE you want to go. April is a girl ... she takes excellent notes and never gets lost ... as long as she knows where to go. If YOU don't KNOW ... neither does she.

OK?

It's not like a guy ... we don't do instructions, or directions ... we just go and figure it out later.

"OMG I'm lost!" and like that ... so I pull into a 7-11 and ask the girl ... yup ... girl ... behind the counter, "How do I get to?..." And since she has a map ... which I could buy ... but don't ... and since our mythical lost person doesn't write it down ... instead of the trip from Bozeman to Knoxville being 1960 miles it's 26 hundred and change ... and I did it twice!! Cincinnati is really out of the way.

But Wait! There's more.

All that has gone before is still astronomers practicing an ART ... and art changes almost daily. Nobody knows for sure because we can't SEE it. Every time someone thinks it's set in stone, another somebody discovers a new light wave ... a new filter or color ... and everything changes. Some new professor or scientist writes up a paper based on this or that new theory ... some other idiot denies and derides it ... others come to the same knowledge the first guy had ... badda-bing badda-boom.

Is it not demonstrated that a true flying machine, self-raising, self-sustaining, self-propelling, is physically impossible?

— Joseph Le Conte, Professor of Natural History at the University of California, Popular Science Monthly, November 1888.

It is complete nonsense to believe flying machines will ever work.

— Sir Stanley Mosley, 1905

The Wright Brothers thank you for your confidence.

I cannot suspend disbelief, David. What you write is too fantastic to believe and I don't want to hear about it. Mark W.