I'm working with the most impressive machine in the world, but my job is as boring as it can be.
Let me explain...
Three years ago scientists created what seemed impossible, a portal to another point in space. It used lasers and a magnetic field to turn a ring made of graphene and a lot of rare elements into a portal that was five feet in diameter. It's equally astonishing that it only uses as much energy as 1000 houses to bend the laws of space and time. People cheered when they heard this news. The whole universe seemed to be in reach, but it had one critical flaw…
We can't aim it.
When we activate it, the target destination is dependent on wavelength, the direction of the laser and the magnetic field we use. When we change one of these variables, the portal will be at another location in space... anywhere... without any pattern we could use for aiming it. Even when we tried to copy this portal-ring, we found we can’t do that because of the tiniest differences in the composition of the portals-rings. So we are dependent on chance alone, we open it, record what is visible and change the parameters just a little for the next portal. Everything is automated to open a new portal every 5 minutes. Since only 0.000000000000000001% of the universe are planets we calculated a 4% chance to open a portal on the surface of a planet within the next 100 years... and most planets are just an extremely toxic wasteland.
If I worked here for the next 25 years, I had a 99% chance I produced nothing but stacks of boring data. My chances of winning the lottery until then were much better than finding something of interest.
To make matters worse, our government had completed the built of two much larger portals within the last year, 25 feet in diameter, large enough to send heavy machinery through. With these it would be easy to quickly build mining stations and other critical infrastructure. Lots of personal and machines were assigned to these facilities… and they both had their own nuclear reactors since the energy needed to open a portal increased exponentially with a larger diameter. Meanwhile, the government quickly lost interest in our little prototype portal.
My job is to look through all the data the portal generates. The program I wrote tries to calculate positions of the portals by measuring the stars we can see through it. Half of the positions can't be calculated since none of the star formations are known to us, and there are two reasons for that.
One: These positions are so far away from us we could not make out any of them from earth.
Two: They are located in another dimension.
It's sooo boring, nothing other than black space and different arrangements of stars, of course they assigned this task to the youngest female scientist. I had tried to get a transfer to one of the bigger Portal projects but my request had been denied. I had even thought about quitting this job, but my grades hadn't been the best and sitting around wasn't work experience I could put on my resume. On the plus side, I had a LOT of time to read books while waiting and the payment was pretty nice.
In short, I was sitting around in a job that no one expected to bring any results.
I arrived at work shortly after sunrise, I preferred to be early and have a lot of free time in the evening to shop or watch some of my favorite movies and series. I nodded towards the heavily armed guards at the front door, as always they just stood there motionless. The security background check before I was able to start working in this lab had taken more than a month. I walked through the corridors until I reached my lab, I used my key card and the eye-scanner to unlock the door.
I started to look into the data of night 1109. I was greeted with the usual black pictures with stars on it, sometimes at least with a sun in range so there was a bit of color in it, then I opened picture 319.392…
…
I stared at it for a good minute, it could not be, it must be a joke by another scientist... but no one else ever showed interest for what I did.
The picture was dark but showed a forest by night with a moon and stars above it. Could it be that by chance the portal had opened somewhere on earth? It would be great news too, instant transport to this one place on earth from wherever you open the portal? It would make our plans to colonize Mars so much easier.
I ran the star recognition software, but it showed no match. I stood up from my desk and walked around the room. It couldn't be possible, it shouldn't be. I looked through the window into the next room where the portal was located. At this moment it showed some random dark place of the universe. But what if this was true? I sat back on my desk and submitted the parameters for picture 319.392 to the portal. Now I just had to wait for five minutes to change its characteristics. It felt like an eternity while I watched the portal through the window.
Finally, it changed and showed a beautiful day in a forest. I watched in awe while the trees moved in a gentle breeze. I activated the sensors, and they moved through the portal. Normal temperature and air nearly identical to earth, nothing toxic to humans. It took the bacteria and virus checker a few more minutes to show me there wasn't anything dangerous to humans... at least in the air I had analyzed. I checked the data twice and recalibrated every sensor, but the results had been the same. My thoughts ran wild. 'This is a perfect world, it's the discovery of the century. I have to report it immediately so... so what? To give one of my bosses the fame and glory for this finding? They don't care what I do here, they expect me to fail.'
I stood up again and started to pace around the room. 'If I put a bit more research into this, I can publish a paper and will be treated like a real scientist for once. All I would need are some samples and pictures.' I looked through the window at the portal again.
"Screw my bosses, this will be my ticket out of this hole.”, I said in a grim tone. I put the portal on automatic again and waited until it changed, then I left the building to go shopping and order some special things online.
I drove to a nearby store for hiking equipment to get more appropriate clothing for what I was about to do. I spend about 200 dollars for a huge backpack, hiking shoes, and a warm parka.
As soon as I was in my apartment again, I went online to search for a tranquilizer gun like a zookeeper would use, I had to look on some very shady websites and had to pay 500 dollars, but it would be money well spent.