IMPORTANT NOTE: PLAY THIS WHILE READING
The Road Not Taken: Take Me to the Stars!
CLASSIFIED FOOTAGE
Project: KUNLUN
Year: —DATA SCRUBBED—
Location: BAY 0 - DECK 81 - PRIMARY CONTROL ROOM
Lai Tianru watched the clock count down to zero, nearing the end of the year, the dawn of a new era… and the culmination of Project Kunlun.
The collective dream of Guangchou would be fulfilled, the Great Leader's secret promise along with it, and a new era for their people would arise. There would be no turning back at this point. Decades of secrecy, counterintelligence and espionage would be justified as their goal was reached. The hardships and defeats of years past would be avenged and justice would finally be upheld.
Guangchou would rise. Figuratively AND literally.
They all felt the violent rumbling of the earth intensify as the engines rose to their maximum output. Lai Tianru stood proud and tall as her team held tight to railings or gripped, white-knuckled onto the their seat harnesses. The ascent would no doubt be smoother and more comfortable than the Americans and their primitive shuttles and rockets, but for many on Guangchou, they would be less than prepared and taken partially by surprise. No small number of their people would have only learned about the truth a few hours before the launch; a necessary measure to preserve the secrecy and success of the Grand Project and the Monumental Journey they would soon undertake.
The control room's displays indicated that the power plants and engines were fully in-sync and primed for the most rigorous part of the ascent, alongside the steadily rising altimeter. From there, the life support systems, environmental seals and redundancy systems finished initializing and showed green all across the board. Ahead, a new countdown appeared, signaling the final preparations for the Ascent.
Deep within the belly of the beast, a distant whine starting rising, the key piece of technology, central to Kunlun, finally waking up.
As the smallest hint of doubt crept into her mind, Lai Tianru recalled everything she'd sacrificed for the project. No lovers, no children, no life beyond meticulously scheduled meetings and long hours in the bowels of massive and near-mythical technologies and machineries. She was a nobody outside the project, a ghost, nonexistent to the people she'd sworn to serve save for the comparatively few dozen who knew the full extent of Kunlun, and the Great Leader's Plan.
Yes, the Great Leader, this had been as much his obsession as it was hers, a kindred spirit with a desire to see his people rise as grandly as Guangchou was physically about to do…
No regrets, no looking back… only forward.
Within, the main drive's whining noise finally rose to it's peak, energy levels spiking across the screens yet somehow, miraculously, staying within the optimum range. Against all odds, the once fictional, and frankly still near-magical, gravity drive was doing as it was once theorized to do so by some of Germany's most eccentric, yet brilliant, scientists. The drive whirred, the auxiliary engines roared, and the power plants rumbled.
And Guangchou… Guangchou rose…
Through the clouds, through the thinning atmosphere, past orbital paths and over gawking stares and focused cameras broadcasting a sky-splitting event across a shocked world…
…And into the void, to a future unknown, and a fate uncertain… yet with boundless hope.
EDIT: Figured I'd write a What-If scenario as to what our future might have been if we got Walkure. No, I won't write what-ifs about the catfolk project, for that future is inevitable. INEVITABLE.
Anyways, made sure to leave the date uncertain, also, the Great Leader may be our MC, or maybe a descendant or maybe someone else entirely. Either way, Guangchou is Guangchou, and she's on her way to sail the stars.
P.S. Was gonna hijack the moon along the way but figured that'd be a dick move to the people stuck back on Earth.
