Linelayer

All is prepared.

The alignment is ready.  My bow spindle is perfectly aligned with the empty central apertures of the paired stargates, themselves aligned in matching orbits; in time, they will drift again out of alignment, but for now forced thrust keeps them together.

My accumulators seethe with energy bound into their superconducting coils, fusion reactors laboring to pump them with more energy still.

The final confirmations come in from external sources: traffic control confirms area clear.  Legal department confirms litigation threshold clear.  Kalcír Operations is ready to accept the new structure.  The new gatekeeper-pair has spun up its frame buffers and is ready to accept its duty.

I shift into my quantum-compiled submind, feeling my consciousness expand into a superposition of possible selves, and leak energy from the reactors – not touching the accumulators yet – into the spindle, feeling the shape of the manifold with its subtle field-manipulations.  Down at the quantum level, space is frothy, a tangled polydimensional labyrinth of impossible topology, twisted spatial constructs forming and collapsing in microtime, awash in a sea of virtual particles – existence and non-existence intertwined, causality itself impalpable at this – and among them all, a few possible wormhole candidates.

There.  My superposed selves reach consensus, and collapse back into my singular self.  The broad-spread radiators at the base of the spindle flare abruptly bright, as my accumulators discharge, exajoules of energy expended in a moment as I force inflation onto one knotted tube’s hypersurface —

And between the stargates, a space-black sphere – a distorted inside-out starfield, surface defined by the blue-purple glow as it struggles to radiate away its energy and collapse again – blossoms into reality.  My body feels the tug and shudder of the gravity-wave splash as space is bent far beyond its natural limits.  With a final thrust, I separate the wormhole’s overlapping ends – stretching the distortion into an ellipsoid, a barbell, and finally two separate spheres, pushed a little further, further, until they snap on to the exotic-matter frames held ready to accept them within the stargates.

A flood of information pours in from the gatekeepers, accepting responsibility for the new wormhole.  I let the spindle power down again – although the radiators will keep burning bright for hours yet – its work done.  The first and hardest part of the job is done; the wormhole is forged.

But now comes the longer part.  Vanlir 22-882 is nearly 20 light-years away, so I should have the gate in position in 22 years, or so.  At least I’ll only have to experience half-a-dozen of them.