Dimension Gate - Chapter 1

Hey guys, apologies for the silence, but a lot has been going on, and I just haven't had time to sit down and do anything. On top of that, I had some writer's block and couldn't even think about what I wanted to write. I think it's mostly gone now, though it has led me to this.

What you're about to read is the first chapter of an Original Story I want to write. My goal has always been to be a published author, and while I did well with my Original Story Age of Gods on Royal Road, I ran out of steam on that one almost five years ago and haven't really gotten it back since then. Hopefully, this story will have me writing original content once more.

This does not mean I will stop writing my fanfics, I'd at least like to finish some of them.

You guys will be the first to read this, and I know it's not much to begin with, but I would really like some feedback on the concepts present within it.

Thanks!

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Dimension Gate

Chapter 1

“Ladies and Gentleman, thank you for coming on this auspicious occasion. Today is a day that will no doubt go down in history as one of the most important days for mankind as a whole. It was on this day, exactly one hundred years ago, that three scientists, Doctors Howard, Lewitt, and Rigdon, made an accidental discovery that changed reality as we knew it.”

Standing at a podium in front of a massive metal ring covered in thick cables moving up from the floor and hanging down from the ceiling was a middle-aged man that fit the very description of a politician. He was clean cut, wore a bespoke suit, and stood perfectly straight while speaking with well-practiced diction.

Behind him, a hologram projected an image of the three named doctors working on a metal ring similar to the one behind the politician, though it was clearly significantly smaller at only a foot in diameter compared to the fifty-foot model present. Two of the pictured scientists looked to be in their thirties or forties, while the final one appeared much older, likely his fifties or sixties.

“Like many of their time, the good doctors were working toward the goal of faster-than-light travel, specifically in the area of wormholes. The world was in a terrible place; pollution and disease were rampant, and it was believed that the Earth would soon no longer be capable of sustaining the human race as our population neared twenty billion. Many thought the only way to ensure the human race survived was to spread out among the stars.”

“They believed they had cracked the problem and activated their device in the hopes of opening a wormhole from the device in their secure lab to a companion device in a similar lab just one mile away. Their device activated successfully, yet the companion device did not. They decided to send a probe through to find out just where their wormhole had arrived. Can you imagine their surprise when the camera fed back images of a desert? The nearest desert to them was thousands of miles distant. It must have been a genuine shock!”

Another image appeared, showing the same three men caught in a moment of intense debate as they studied an image frozen on a large screen. The image was of a clear night sky showing the true magnificence of the Milky Way Galaxy as a river of stars.

“I won't go into all the testing they had to do, but soon enough, they realized that the wormhole was opening at their designated coordinates on Earth, even though the probe never appeared in the second lab. Eventually, they came to a startling conclusion. The probe was on Earth, just not our Earth. They had utterly failed to make a wormhole capable of space travel, but had succeeded in making one capable of traveling to alternate dimensions!”

“From there, they learned how to change the target to different worlds. To their surprise, many worlds lacked any sign of human habitation. Just a few years after their discovery, the first Extra-Dimentional Colony was founded and named Second Chance. Humanity has failed to become a multi-planet species, but we have succeeded in becoming a multidimensional one!”

There were claps and cheers from the crowd at his declaration while multiple pictures flashed through the displays showing the founding and growth of Second Chance until it looked like a city from the early turn of the millennium.

“With the founding of a new colony and proof that a colony could keep in contact while the Dimensional Gates allowed travel back and forth, humanity reached a new era of expansion and exploration. Over the years, many hundreds of worlds were checked; some were colonized, and the ones found to have signs of civilization were ignored. That is, until we found the world of Mysteria and found something completely new, Magic!”

At his proclamation, images appeared once again. This time, it showed an image of a man launching a ball of fire from his bare hands. Then it switched to another, showing a woman kneeling over someone with a grievous wound, her hands glowing gold and visible signs of the wound closing captured in the image. Another appeared, showing a sword made of light easily slicing through a shield made of wood and metal.

“I can't help wondering what it must have been like for the first scientist to observe the effects of magic, trying to explain it to his superiors.” That comment caused light laughter within the massive room filled with dignitaries and guests of importance all dressed in their finest. Though, standing out like a sore thumb, was a group of men and women in uniforms that bore some resemblance to military ones, though with a lot of touches to soften the image up a bit.

“The residents of Mysteria were the first extra-dimensional beings we contacted. It took a lot of negotiation, but we soon reached an agreement. In exchange for uplifting their society from its perpetual medieval state into a more modern one, they would teach us all they knew of magic. In the end, we learned it was a special kind of particle the locals referred to as Mana. Only some living beings were capable of absorbing these particles into their bodies and using the phenomena of magic. However, with that amazing discovery came some drawbacks. Namely, monsters. Animals mutated by Mana into bloodthirsty and violent creatures that had to be put down for the good of all.”

More images appeared, this time showing pictures of creatures any fan of the fantasy genre of entertainment would recognize. Pictures of monsters such as slimes, goblins, kobolds, and even a Minotaur. All of these were fighting people from the native world from which the photographs came.

“Despite the dangers, we founded a research center to discover all we could about Mana. The greatest breakthrough came when we learned how to store Mana in a manner similar to electricity. This discovery changed our entire world! An energy source that caused no pollution! An energy source that could tell the known laws of physics to bend over and pray.”

Though somewhat crude, the joke caused many in the audience to laugh. Mana was now a ubiquitous energy source the world over and allowed for things that had only been a dream to become a reality. It was now an integral part of their technology and powered the entire world, having long since replaced all fossil fuels and even the less efficient forms of green energy. Mana containers could be shrunk to the size of watch batteries capable of running for decades on a single charge. Electric vehicles equipped with appropriate Mana batteries could run nonstop at sixty miles an hour for a year. That was how great the energy density of Mana was.

“With this new source of energy, our technology changed and grew. We were able to repair the damage we'd done to our world. We could now grow food anywhere on Earth, even in the hottest, driest deserts, with ease. Medical technology grew in leaps and bounds, we now experience the healthiest lives we can. Things we thought of as only science fiction have now become fact. All of this, thanks to three men looking toward the stars.”

There were cheers and clapping from the crowd. Thanks to Medical research using Mana, the average human lifespan was now estimated to be close to three hundred years. No one was certain, as nowhere near enough time had passed to see just how much Mana had improved their lifespans. Food was cheap and abundant. Transportation was cheap and fast. All in all, the world over had improved dramatically thanks to the constant import of Mana from over fifty different worlds.

“There have been ups and downs on our journey. The loss of settlement seventeen was an unprecedented disaster. The Fornak Betrayal caused the deaths of a hundred of our people and nearly led us to our first inter-dimensional war. The less said about the extremists of 'One World, One God', the better. Those terrorists can make all the threats they want, nature can throw all the disasters it can unleash at us, fanatics can betray us, but we will persevere in the face of any opposition!”

Cheers once more rang out. Though not all the problems, disasters, and issues that cropped up over the last one hundred years had happened, the ones mentioned were some of the worst. The Earth Settlement Seventeen had been moved to was an empty one. They learned why, when eight months after settling, a massive continent-spanning superstorm destroyed the settlement and killed everyone there.

The Fornak Betrayal happened when King Fornak died, and the Crown Prince became the new King and then decided the treaty his father had signed was no longer in effect. He sent a dozen assassins who used magical stealth to invade the settlement and managed to kill over a hundred people in their sleep before they were discovered and killed in turn. Sadly, the new King died 'unexpectedly' in his sleep shortly after. Amazingly, his younger brother was more than happy to reinstate the original agreement, with some slight modifications in favor of the settlers.

The group 'One World, One God' believed that traveling to other worlds was unholy. That it removed people from the light of God. According to them, anyone who died in a different dimension would never arrive in heaven. That to even set foot on another Earth where they were no longer under the purview of God was blasphemy and a sin of the highest order. The extremists of the group became full-blown terrorists when they bombed a Mana research center, killing dozens of innocent people.

“That brings us to today, the anniversary of this miraculous discovery and the day we make our one hundredth permanent settlement. We have spent the last six months in negotiations with King Dreskel for permission to establish an outpost settlement in his territory as well as a trade agreement. Today, the fine ladies and gentlemen of DG-173 will be stepping through the gateway behind me to begin construction. I want to personally thank all the members of DG-173 for the hard work I know they will be putting forth.”

The politician led the entire crowd in clapping for the members of the expedition team. Once it calmed down, he looked to his right, “Open the gate.”

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Cameron stood in line with the rest of the members of DG-173, watching the hullabaloo going on for the mission he was about to embark on. While he understood the reasoning behind the pony show, he really just wanted to step through the gate already! He'd been training himself for this opportunity since the day he could comprehend just what stepping through the gate would mean. He had a bit of an inside edge thanks to his father, but he'd still had to earn his spot by being the best of the best like the rest of the team.

Speaking of his father, he looked over to the man and felt a swell of pride. His father stood among the dignitaries, wearing his formal uniform. He struck quite a figure with his salt-and-pepper hair, crisp uniform, breast covered in medals, and multiple stars on his shoulders. His father was a career military man and had worked hard to reach the position he now maintained as a multi-star general. Cameron would have joined his father in the military if doing so didn't mean his odds of stepping through the gate would drop drastically.

While early expeditions included a large military presence to protect civilians, things changed over time. Now, military personnel only ever went through in specific situations and rarely for very long. Protection was now done by civilian contractors, which Cameron happened to be. It was easy for his father to get him training and an introduction into a private military company that was contracted for these expeditions. It still took him five years of hard work, but here he was, twenty-four and getting to step through the gate!

“Open the gate!”

He came to attention as soon as those words boomed over the speakers. It was time! His light blue, almost gray, eyes swiveled to the gate so he could watch the biggest event of his life proceed. The thick cables leading into the massive metal ring of the gate began to hum as massive amounts of electricity were pumped into the deceptively simple-looking device. To all outward appearances, the Dimension Gate looked like a solid hunk of metal. Beneath the surface, the device was filled with cutting edge technology that had been refined since the first crude model activated one hundred years ago. Even with his decent education and special training, Cameron couldn't even begin to fathom how the device actually worked. All he really understood was that it took as much power to run the gate as the city of New York consumed in a year.

As the charge in the gate continued to build, small sparks of static discharge cracked in the air around the frame. At the same time, a white glow came to life in the middle of the ring, pulsing and growing as more power wad fed into the device. Once the white glow in the center reached about half the size of the ring, thick crackling bolts of electricity began lancing out from the interior of the ring and striking it. Every bolt added more power to the glowing ball of energy and increased its size.

The moment the white energy touched the inner walls of the ring, there was a crack that sounded like lighting, followed by a deep bass rumble that Cameron could feel in his bones. The white energy stabilized and dimmed slightly, revealing a small spec of black in its very center, the wormhole, visible to the naked eye.

Clapping and cheering filled the massive room, everyone celebrating the successful activation of the gate. In the old days it would sometimes fail to activate properly so it became tradition to celebrate the successful ones.

The politician, whose name Cameron never bothered to learn, turned back to the microphone and focused his gave on the leader of the expedition, “DG-173, you have a go.”

Colonel Simmons, one of the few actual military individuals within the group, saluted and called out to everyone, “Time to move, people!”

He and his cohorts were temporary members who would return to Earth Prime once a permanent functional gate was constructed on the other side, which came after the settlement was fully functional. While a gateway could be opened between worlds and allow travel back and forth, it was significantly less energy intensive to connect between gates.

At his command, everyone began grabbing cases of materials, luggage, and everything else they were taking with them. Simmons and the assigned ambassador for the settlement were the first ones through. They were followed by the first half of the group. Behind them came several boxy remote controlled vehicles carrying large loads of heavy materials, the prefabricated components to the shelters they would be assembling along with computers, and many other things they would need to get started.

Cameron stood calmly for almost an hour while materials were driven through the gate. The carriers were remote-controlled on his side of the gate until they passed through. Once on the other side, the first group through would take controls of them and move them out of the way. It was a bit annoying to him as he wanted to be through the gate to see a whole new world already. Finally, the last load-bearing vehicle went through the gate, and the line of people once again began moving.

Soon enough, Cameron found himself standing before the gate, the last member of the group to pass through. He felt excited and nervous, his heart beating excitedly in his chest. He started to step into the gate while turning his head to the left to get one last look at his father. It would be at least a year before he would have the opportunity to see the man again, and he wanted to at least see him one last time.

He was extremely glad he did when he saw the look of pride on his father's face as he watched Cameron walking into the gate. It was the last thing Cameron saw before his head was shrounded in white light.

That was when everything went wrong.

A massive explosion rocked the entire facility, causing the power pumping into the gate to surge dangerously. The small static discharge became thick, undulating bolts of lighting that struck the floors, walls, and ceiling, electrocuting anyone in their way. At the same time, the white light of the gate flashed so brightly that anyone unfortunate enough to be looking in its direction was instantly blinded. Then, the light was gone while chaos still raged.

Secondary explosions were not far behind, causing mass panic among the visiting dignitaries when shrapnel began flying about, wounding and killing people at random. The chaos was such that no one saw the severed remains of a leg right at the edge of the gate.

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I know it's short, only 2.9k words, but this is meant to be a chapter within a normal novel, so the chapters will end where appropriate. The next scene will be in a completely different area and will move the story into the next phase, where we find out what happened to Cameron.

I know it's really not much, just a fuckton of exposition, but was it at least decently framed exposition? Let me know!