In Jack's perception, everything had been him moving his limbs to walk. This sort of creation with no goal is as natural as breathing to him.
While it looked like a big bang to the mortals, the scope of a solar system with a medium sun is only a snap to Jack. Actually, Jack spent more energy walking around in the known universe than his usage to create a solar system.
Then, 58 minutes had passed.
To the solar system, it had been forwarded into a billion years later. Due to the lack of a galaxy, the solar system remained to where it originally was. Thankfully, the balance of the gravity had been enough to keep all the cosmic entities to stay where they were supposed to be.
Even though, after all of this work, Jack wasn't smiling at all. While everything looks normal, he knows that this solar system is wrong.
His handmade big bang wasn't enough.
Compared to the big bang that occurred in the known universe, his big bang was lacking in energy that it failed to produce elements heavier than radium with an atomic mass of 226.025. Of course, they still exist on the planet due to the numerous collision and the constant years of pressure, but it's definitely lower in quantity.
Well, for Jack's current needs, this is enough.
…
After a billion years had passed, all seven planets had already formed their atmosphere.
No matter how natural the entire process looked, Jack still tampered some parameters during the creation.
Due to the lower quality of the energy used, those heavier elements failed to form, resulting in the lighter elements to be more abundant.
With this, the planet most similar to Earth has an almost identical situation as Earth.
The only difference is gravity. Due to the notable lack of the heavier elements, this planet's total mass is lesser than that of Earth's. Even with the same size and all, the first habitable planet is only around 0.7x of that on Earth.
Next, the second habitable planet is almost 1.5x bigger than Earth. But due to the same problem as every planet in this universe currently, its gravity is about 1.2x compared to Earth.
Buriean, the tidally locked planet has a natural gravitational pull of 0.5x. Since it barely counts as a planet. But due to it being in the habitable zone, the colonizers terraformed the planet and turned it into something similar to Earth. With a 1.0x gravity pull, this planet was easily adaptable to any living beings with the human genes.
Facing this dilemma, Jack decided to pick the first planet to house Ninzhe. Due to the lower gravity, a person can exert lower energy for the same action.
This is to the point where even lying down increases Ninzhe's efficiency in recovery.
Now that he picked, he entered the atmosphere of the planet and saw barren lands. Not a single living creature is seen. The dark brown dirt and the blue ocean looks as pure as ever, the blue sky filled with fluffy white clouds cover the ever clean skies.
But there was a problem, the carbon dioxide content is just as high as oxygen. Not only that, but the planet's surface is too extreme—mountains taller than the highest mountain on Earth, trenches as deep as the mantle. Lava and water pools were everywhere. For short, it is still not the time to introduce life.
Jack made a mistake. This wasn't a planet but a protoplanet. Without the constant barrage of various asteroids, instead of increasing the planet's development, it slowed down instead.
This detail is outside the realm of his instincts, but now that he knew, he'd never make the same mistakes again.
With a snap, a chaotic gravity wave was sent out with the sun as the origin. Those with mass above the standards of a protoplanet were mostly unaffected, but the asteroids that are moving in the space began to shift their directions.
Jack doesn't have the time to wait for another hour which translated to a billion years in his current time. He then lowered the speed of time in that universe to allow him to observe the changes in more detail.
Actually, he wasn't really controlling the time like slowing it down or making it faster. He's utilizing the same effect as when one gets inside the dead zone of a black hole, time moves more quickly outside.
This reminded him.
The blazing horns, red exclamation marks labelled as warning blocked their screens. The entire room was burning red, not because of the flames but because of the glowing red Black Mirror core.
Its heat began to transmit towards the entire base making the place appear as if it was molten.
Being in this project, every single crew member has been trained. No one panicked.
Everyone immediately ran diagnostics on their own consoles. After a short while, Connor was the first one to speak.
"Captain, I found inconsistencies!" Connor shouted.
Besides Jack, no one else turned to Connor. They kept staring at their screens with a heavy heart wishing that no one else needs to shout during the diagnosis.
"What is it?" Jack immediately asked, pausing his own diagnosis.
"The energy crystals that the Black Mirror produced had been twice the amount of the energy absorbed by the machine."
Hearing this, everyone's heart turns cold.
Due to their past, they had a lot of enemies. Their immediate thoughts were espionage or sabotage.
This included Jack, and the first name that surfaced in his head is Nikoia Sungmas, one of the nominated captains of the project and Jack's direct subordinate.
After finished the software diagnosis, everyone left the control room. As the crew ran out of the long hallway, they couldn't help but speculate on what actually happened.
Some speculated that if the sabotage was internal, then who. Some thought that the problem occurred due to the weirdness of the Ergosphere. Annie and Nina even began to stare daggers at their captain Jack, considering that the whole thing was a trap set by the king of space pirates.
But no one acted on their own assumptions, it was best that they escape first.
As they stepped outside the building, they saw their tied ship cut in half. The edges that were cut were still molten.
Looking down, a crack more massive than the diameter of the ship is visible. Every now and then the hole flashes shooting out beams of scorching waves that keeps the molten edges of the ship hot.
For every flash, the crack on the floor quickly increased. For humanity, this kind of failure wasn't enough to throw everyone back into the primal era, but it sure is not welcome.
Looking above the skies, the crew can see the stars moving at a visible pace. Every second inside the Ergosphere took months outside. The effect of gravitational time dilation was too drastic, leaving the entire crew feeling hopeless and dejected.
Suddenly, Jack clenched his fist. Not because he was feeling hopeless, not even because of their current situation.
It's because even if they survive this, whoever sabotaged the project had already perished with time.
They wouldn't get their revenge.