Cedric Heidel was standing on the precipice of history, his team of hundreds of engineers and scientists not to mention the thousands of others who contributed to the building of the quantum relay. The cost was so great and effort so difficult he even had to sell his soul to the United Navy. It wasn't that bad in reality however much he detested having to put up with the Navy butting in for progress and justification as to why it needed to be so expensive. Cedric maneuvered that rapid with the grace of a log, smashing into every rock that stood in the way. He knew it could have been better but him and his log came out of the rapids of politics scarred not broken. It was entirely worth it as he watched his life's and thousands of others life's work culminate before him.
"Sir, the final test sequences are finalizing." - scientist
"Start preparing the initiation of the quantum sink, and standby automatic catastrophe systems." - Cedric
"Yes, sir." - scientist
Just a few minutes until communication across the galaxy will be possible. It will be limited with the amount of data transmissible will only be in the petabytes a second but it will allow nearly every legal ship to have text transmissions a few paragraphs long a couple times a day. Communication across the galaxy will no more be like the letters of old being shuttled to and fro along the new pony express. Looking back at the scene of scientists and engineers work with a vigor Cedric hadn't seen in years he announced, "We are one step away from the summit of our life's work, who here is ready and willing to take the last step for us all into a new era of humanity?" The entire room seemed surprised at the offer, not expecting Cedric to let someone else take the last step, except for a few of his closest friends in the room who grinned at him knowingly. Slowly a hand raised, "I am", Cedric looked at the young man who raised his hand, Jeremy Cinder, a tall and lanky young man with a rather dark complexion with his hair cut military short. "Then get up to the command post and take the step, an era awaits." Cedric smiled. For a moment Jeremy had the look of a deer in headlights but soon found his resolve and strode up to the command post and started giving the orders to the entire team for the starting sequence.
Like music to Cedric's ears every operation and confirmation was responded to with some form of success. Finally, the most beautiful set words Cedric ever heard came. "Ignition of the quantum sink successful, stability has been reached", Jeremy trailed off in awe on the last few words but I didn't care as I smiled like an idiot and watched the screens in front of me as several of the receiver/transmitters successfully connected.
Then something happened, something momentous and unprecedented. Something that would indeed be the beginning of an era. Another relay existed, at least that's what the data indicated it was. However the power that was being indicated was so off the charts that no one knew what to make of it. People scrambled to set of data banks and search queries just for this. New scales were made just to put the anomaly in perspective. It didn't react like a relay would normally both transmitting and receiving data, this one was only receiving. Many people believed that this was somehow a naturally occurring quantum sink as the radius of where quantum signals were drawn into the well easily covered the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxies and much of the surrounding area. Cedric believed it to be intelligent life, or maybe the remnants of it.