Subjectivity

In a future where faster‑than‑light travel has been abandoned, a unified Solar Government pours billions into a half‑light‑speed drive, hoping to push humanity across the void before boredom and madness take hold. Early attempts—crew after crew of screened “supermen” and “superwomen”—end in insanity, leaving the nation’s psyche frayed and its ambition unquenched. The narrative follows the escalating desperation of a regime that refuses to accept defeat, turning the vast emptiness of interstellar space into a laboratory for human endurance.

The thirteenth mission abandons the quest for perfect volunteers and instead drugs the crew with an untested hallucinogen, Omnidrene, designed to shatter ordinary perception. As the ship drifts toward Centaurus, the story delves into the fragile line between reality and illusion, asking whether altered consciousness can sustain a mind when the universe offers nothing but silence. The first act sets a stark, unsettling stage for a speculative exploration of how far a society will go to escape its own inner darkness.