The Men Who Sold the World
A Sci-Fi Comedy of Epic Proportions
Battlestar Galactica Meets Blazing Saddles
A science-fiction comedy of epic proportions, The Men Who Sold the World tells the story of Mick and Prévert, two con men who accidentally sell the solar system to evil aliens intent on destroying it. Hyperspaced to the galaxy's edge, penniless and with no return ticket, our unlikely heroes realize all too late they've put their homeworld in great danger. On their arduous journey back to Earth, they'll meet new friends willing to help them and new enemies determined to see them fail.
Pilot Episode Teaser
The pilot, "The Men Who Sold the World," is a double episode 99 pages long. Below is the teaser--the first three minutes of the show before the credits sequence. Scroll past the teaser to read character descriptions, a series synopsis, and background details.
The Men Who Sold the World
TEASER
FADE IN:
EXT. EDGE OF ASTEROID BELT - ETERNAL NIGHT
The starship Century spins silently through the vacuum of space.
Her stern is a black hemisphere the size of a small moon. One of
the skyscraper-like structures forming her aft projects what
looks like a small black hole.
Entering a field of planetary debris, she slows down and the
black hole closes. A small ion-pulse drive fires to life at her
stern, and gossamer wings unfold from the sides of the vessel.
Amid the asteroids: a few quick flashes of light.
INT. DEW ADLER'S SNIPER COCKPIT - CONTINUOUS
DEW ADLER watches the Century on the vidscreen of his Sniper
attack spacecraft. He loses sight of her amid the far-strewn
rubble, then smiles as she emerges from behind a large hunk of
former planet outside his window.
DEW
(whispering)
Black Wing Leader to Black Wing
Squadron. She's slowing down to
navigate the debris field...
Charge EMP cannon, set positions,
and prepare to move in on my
mark.
A series of "rogers" crackles over his radio.
EXT. ASTEROID BELT - CONTINUOUS
Twelve black deltoid ships dodge asteroids to spread out around
the massive vessel. Without leaving the field, they surround it
like a pack of jackals.
INT. DEW ADLER'S SNIPER COCKPIT - CONTINUOUS
Dew smiles even more broadly. He flips a switch on his panel.
DEW
Everything ready on the inside,
Gav?
COMMUNICATOR VOICE (V.O.)
Can't talk right now...
DEW
Roger that. We can wait a few
more minutes.
BLACK WING 3 (V.O.)
Wing Three to Wing Leader. I read
seven large vessels approaching,
mark one-five-three. The far side
of the debris field, sir.
DEW CHECKS HIS NAVIGATION HUD
and sees several large blips moving toward them.
BLACK WING 5 (V.O.)
Black Wing Five to Wing Leader,
that reading's confirmed. We got
ten Gorecki heavy battle-cruisers
on an intercept with the Century.
DEW
They must've picked up the same
transmission as Terran Defence
Headquarters.
BLACK WING 3 (V.O.)
Think they're after the
ambassador, sir?
OUT DEW'S WINDOW
the approaching Gorecki battlecruisers--enormous, spiky,
formless masses--come into view beyond the debris.
DEW
Sorry if you're otherwise
occupied, but we have a problem
here. Gav? Gav!... Dammit. Just-
all I need is confirmation that
the ambassador's aboard.
BLACK WING 5 (V.O.)
Sir, the Gorecki are gaining the
tactical advantage. They're
looping around to disable the
Century's FAL drive.
DEW
Son of a bitch!... Gav! Just yes
or no, goddammit!
A little bit of static is all that fills the long pause. Then...
COMMUNICATOR VOICE (V.O.)
(whispering)
Yes.
DEW GRIPS HIS CONTROL STICK
and sets his thumb over a large red button atop it.
DEW
Mark!
EXT. EDGE OF ASTEROID BELT - CONTINUOUS
The Snipers fire up their ion-pulse drives and zoom silently out
of the asteroid field to surround the Century.
FADE TO BLACK.
END OF TEASER
Dramatis personae
Mick Spilich ("Mickey Moonshine") - A devilishly handsome Earthan rogue with a sly smile, Mick is easygoing, slick, and just charming enough to distract from his rather striking lack of good sense.
Donald Prévert ("Don") - Mick's incendiary French friend Don gives people plenty of reason to mispronounce his name as "prevert"—picture Serge Gainsbourg in space but with a dash of Pink Panther stereotyping. Don has a frightful temper, but he's a genius. And he's the only reason Mick is still alive.
Gavrillo Princip - An artificially intelligent apeman anarchist working with the Terran Defense League.
Dew Adler - Lieutenant in the Terran Defense League and leader of a squad of "Sniper" starfighters.
Gufi Nat-ambatu - Initially, the Earthan Ambassador; later, the leader of a tribe of feral businessmen on the red moon of Pamprin. It's a long story...
Belle Trixie and Trixie Belle - Two clone bombshells Mick and Don meet on Calgon. Their eagerness to go to grad school inspires a revolution on the pleasure planet that, incidentally, frees Earthans from their crippling Übernetz porn addiction.
Pluto Jones - Mick and Don's friend on the Black Market, and a man to whom they owe thousands of credits. After stealing the Ambassador's identity, he will wreak havoc across the galaxy.
Grimus - The leader of a band of mercenary soldiers who turned to piracy after the end of the Commerce Wars.
Rofl - Grimus's right hand, and a hacker extraordinaire.
Synopsis of Season 1
1.1 "The Men Who Sold the World"
1.2 "Calgon, Take Me Away!"
1.3 "A Blue-Green Smudge"
1.4 "Winning the Hearts of the People"
1.5 "The Prophet"
1.6 "Heist 2.0"
1.7 "Pluto Nat-ambatu"
1.8 "Back to Where We Started From"
1.9 "The Blond Bombshells"
1.10 "Of Arms and the Big Mac"
1.11 "The Earthan Expeditionary Force to Save Earth"
1.12 "Earthbounds, Unite"
1.13 "How It Feels to Be a Hero"
Episode 1.1, "The Men Who Sold the World," opens with our two unlikely heroes, Mick and Don, getting tossed into the brig aboard the Century. The only other occupant of their cell is an ape-like man who keeps muttering in his sleeve. Rumored to have aboard the Earthan Ambassador Gufi Nat-ambatu, the starship comes under attack by two enemies at once: a band of Gorecki warriors and the Terran Defence League. The the latter capture the ambassador first and use a gun-like device called an RRD to steal his retinal signature. They are interrupted by the Goreki, however, and in the ensuing firefight the RRD is sent skittering into nearby hallway, only to be recovered by Mick and Don, who mistake it for a gun.
Two TDL officers, Dew and Stitch, escape with a befuddled and blinded Gufi, and all three end up getting captured by a tribe of feral businessmen on a nearby moon. Mick and Don unwittingly steal the ambassador's private ship, pursued by both the Ecoterrorists and the Gorecki. Our heroes race to a distant planet to meet up with Pluto Jones, their friend on the black market. After agreeing to take their ship as payment on an old debt, Pluto ends up finding the RRD, which he will later use to his own advantage.
Eventually the Gorecki kidnap Mick and Don, and offer them a tremendous sum to purchase the Sol System. Thinking it's a good hussle, out heroes accept. When the Gorecki seal the deal with a retinal scan, the Earthans are shocked to find it goes through. The Gorecki suggest—with more than a hint of force—that Mick and Don hightail it to the pleasure planet Calgon at the end of the galaxy. Still thinking they have just pulled off the biggest scam of the millennium, Mick and Don fly in their amazing new faster-than-light vessel to Calgon.
Despite having arrived with "more money than God," they squander their newfound fortune in about a week and find themselves bored to death with the supposedly irresistible hedonism of Calgon. Then a news report on the recent sale of Earth leads to the realization that their "hustle" was the real deal. They also learn that the Gorecki are planning to mine Earth for gravitons and use the Sol system as a starship refueling station. Now Mick and Don must get back to Earth and stop the Gorecki—they'll have to figure out how along the way...
That's when they meet Trixie Belle and Belle Trixie, two beautiful clones who are also eager to get off the planet. The two couples split up to find a way to hire a ship, and Mick and Don are promptly captured by a pair of shady strangers. The episode ends in the Calgon megacasino with the arrival of a newly well-heeled Pluto-cum-imposter-ambassador.
In Episode 1.2, "Calgon, Take Me Away!" Mick and Don find out that their new captors are border agents of the Terran Defense League. After an argument on motives and a bit of confusion about the appearance of Pluto as the ambassador, the four of them realize that they share the same interest: saving the Sol System from the Gorecki. When they try to leave Calgon, however, they are taken as Oobporn slaves by the mafia that runs the planet. (Oobporn and junk food are the bonds of the Earthbond and the reason why they are almost all morbidly obese perverts who never leave their cell-like domiciles.) Trixie and Belle must then lead a feminist revolution on the planet to topple the mafia and release Mick, Don, and their new friends. All of them escape together with a G-man that the two girls have seduced. They manage to meet up again with Gav and another TDL agent, Dawson, before the G-man betrays them all.
Episode 1.3, "That Blue-Green Smudge," presents a history of Earth as told by Gavrillo Princip. He explains the details of how his people, an artificially intelligent race of apemen invented by mankind two centuries before, helped to save a dying Earth during the 26th century. Though they wanted nothing but to live in peace with their human ancestors, all the thanks they got was to be lynched and kicked off the planet. It was they who took revenge on the provincial Earthbounds by inventing the Übernetz (a.k.a. "the Oobernet" or "Oob") and getting humans almost universally addicted to porn and junk food. Now, working with a small group of sympathetic Off-Worlders, Gavrillo's people want to cleanse the Earth in preparation for their return.
In episode 1.4, "Winning the Hearts of the People," after joining forces with Gav and the Terran Defense League, Mick, Don, and the girls realize that they don't have enough resources to get back to Earth. Returning to their old ways, Mick and Don decide to reenact the heist they had planned for the Century—one that landed them in the brig awaiting lipocastration. But this time they are sure to get it right—so they say.
They successfully capture the armored freighter GCS Tub-o'-Guts, only to find out that the bank it serves is a deep space freezer for donated organs. Things get worse, though, when a group of pirates attacks. Explaining that the freighter is full of organs turns out to be no help—that's exactly what the pirates are after...
In episode 1.5, "The Prophet," the main action cuts returns to Gufi Nat-ambatu, Dew, and Stitch. After flying to a nearby desert planet, they have found themselves stranded with no supplies in a harsh and unfamiliar environment. Luckily, the tribe of feral businessmen—lost souls from the last Commerce War—seem to believe that Gufi is the prophet foretold in their scriptures, one who would fall from the sky and have eyes as white as eggs. Soon, Gufi finds himself the leader of a new people, but one that clearly will not stand for the self-indulgent gourmandizing he committed as the Earthan ambassador.
Returning to Mick and Don: After a narrow escape, Mick and Don lead their group on a second heist in episode 1.6, "Heist 2.0." This time, they plan to hit a planet called Analog—that is, the analog world of Earth's Oobthat where Earthan avatars enact their fantasies and go about their users' business. It looks exactly like Earth. "Then what's the difference?" ask Belle and Trixie. "Well, here we can get laid," Don explains. Once on the planet, the heist turns out to be harder to pull off than they had expected. The sudden lack of porn and gambling on the Oob has sent most Earthbounds to the streets, where the planet is being stripmined for gravitons. Many of the avatars of Analog are dormant, but militant Camgurls have taken control and are fighting for the last remants of a porn addicted audience. After struggling to win the sympathy of the Camgurls, Gav teaches them to install his own AI programming in the avatars. The group continues on to Earth with a new robot army.
Breaking away from the main action again, in episode 1.7, "Pluto Nat-ambatu," we return to Pluto Jones, who was last seen arriving on Calgon in the guise of ambassador. Having realized that he has carte blanche throughout the galaxy, Pluto ends up getting himself into a considerable amount of trouble. But when the mob turns angry and a group of Gorecki Warriors start to hunt him down, Pluto must accept the help of the two very fellows he once treated like dirt.
Having finally reached their starting point, in Episode 1.8, "Back to Where We Started From," our heroes sneak around the wreckage of the Century, which is being investigated by galactic authorities, and hide for a week on a small moon nearby. Once there, they are besieged by a tribe of angry locals. Mick and Don are dragged off to meet the tribesmen's medicine man, only to find a transformed Gufi Nat-ambatu leading them. Eventually, Mick and Don end up appeasing the tribesmen, and they guilt Gufi into returning to Earth to help them fix the damage that has been done. Reviewing the impressive forces they have amassed, Mick officially names their group "The Earthan Expeditionary Force to Save Earth," which Don says is the stupidest name he's ever heard.
With the help of the robots and Pluto, in episode 1.9, "The Blond Bombshells," the party manages to make improvements to their ships, allowing them to travel much faster toward Earth. However, Belle and Trixie have to take a small ship on a special spy mission to a space station set up by the Gorecki near the rim of the Terran system. They must disable a perimeter field and let the other ships in their group pass without detection. Suffice it to say, they fail miserably.
Just when all hope seems lost and Gorecki forces are pressing in to stop them, in episode 1.10, "Of Arms and the Big Mac," the pirates from episode 1.4 come to the rescue. After conferring on the matter, the pirates agree to help the Expeditionary Force. The leader of the pirates, Grimus, tells the story of the great Commerce Wars, and how he and his men, once victims of the schemes of Earthan venture capitalists, became ruthless mercenary warriors.
The Expeditionary Force fights its way successfully to the planet Earth. When they arrive in episode 1.11, "The Earthan Expeditionary Force to Save Earth," however, they find quite a different planet. Earth has already been massively mined by the Gorecki, and gravity on the surface is next to nothing. Freed from the bonds of Oobporn and junk food, fat, naked Earthbounds have taken to the streets, led by militant Camgurls. Mick and Don take control of the rebellion against the Gorecki and organize the Earthbounds to take back the planet.
Since there is so little gravity left on the planet, the battle that ensues in episode 1.12, "Earthbounds, Unite!" has everyone on all sides throwing large vehicles and parts of buildings at one another. Naturally, our heroes win, but their victory is bittersweet. The planet has begun to disintegrate, and the planetary government calls for a mass evacuation.
The plot thickens when we learn that the Gorecki were merely the middlemen for an even more menacing group of aliens from beyond the edge of the galaxy: the Andari. The new bosses arrive in Motherships the size of the moon in order to protect their investment.
Meanwhile, as the planet falls apart in episode 1.13, "How It Feels to Be Hero," Gufi Nat-ambatu reclaims his title and is reinstated—à la Marion Barry—as the Earthan ambassador. At once, he points the finger at Mick and Don, calling them the anarchist imposters responsible for turning Earth into a valueless piece of space debris. He negotiates with the Andari to arrange for the construction of the "New Ark" and deports the Earthbounds to another planet, no doubt to become Andari slaves. After establishing a new bureaucratic-police caste of formerly feral businessmen and instituting martial law, he has Mick and Don arrested on charges of treason (a misdemeanor) and destruction of property (the most heinous of capital crimes).
Mick and Don are taken to a prison on the moon, from which they gaze out upon a crippled Earth hobbling through the black of space. "Well," says Mick, "we just saved the crappiest piece of real estate in the galaxy."
"How's it feel to be a hero?" asks Don.
Background
Organizations
Terran Defense League - A group of ecoterrorists operating in exile from beneath the tempestuous and nigh impregnable skies of Terra 5 (Jupiter). Three days before the opening of episode 1.1, the Terran Defense League intercepted an encoded message sent by the Century to the Intergalactic Council. Although they were unable to decipher the entire message, it provided them with strong evidence that Ambassador Nat-ambatu was aboard the ship, en route to a secret meeting. The League strongly suspects that the meeting would decide the fate of several nearly extinct species on Earth.
The Intergalactic Zoning Governance - The IZG ("Ziggy") started as a small real estate investment firm on Andaris 4 several centuries ago. Its original name translates roughly as "Planet Acquiring Corporate Juggernaut" (PACJ), but this was changed as part of a PR makeover. True to its original name, it has grown to become the most powerful interplanetary agency on the Galactic Council in much the same way as a small hamburger joint in Des Plaines, Illinois, has expanded to become the largest food distribution corporation in the known universe: through market saturation, ruthless advertising, and by offering clients small toys.
With over a hundred million offices, PACJ soon purchased 51 percent of the known universe, which it has subsequently rented to every unscrupulous, murdering, exploitative corporation that asked for a lease. After the third Commerce War more than a century ago (at first encouraged by PACJ, which evenly supplied both sides and manipulated the battlefields in hopes of driving up land prices for soft drink companies), a war that laid waste to an absurd number of planets and reduced more than 10 percent of the company's holdings to ash covered "Popsi" billboards, PACJ took the Galactic Council up on its offer to make its holdings public, to dissolve the corporation, and to reconstitute the organization as an official agency of the Galactic Council—thus becoming the IZG.
Nominal ownership of territories was a small price to pay for the enormous power the move entitled them to, and in any case the agency receives even more money from tenants (since they now have more bureaucracy to support, they had to raise prices)—and dodging imminent bankruptcy is not bad either. Once it had become part of the Council, Ziggy realized how much of a bearing real estate had on intergalactic politics. Since its founding, the agency had been involved in numerous disputes. They were so influential that they had to form their own diplomatic corps, with numerous ambassadors and representatives.
One such ambassador, Gufi Nat-ambatu, will surely be elected Council President within the coming year. He has already complete de facto jurisdiction of the Terran system. And it is expected that he will give control of the Trade Alliance, not to mention the entire Terran military, to Ziggy. This has made him the target of many groups opposed to the consolidation of power and the abandonment of inter-Council checks and balances—and several alien civilizations who feared that a military controlled by a trade-and-land agency would be misused for land acquisition and trade manipulation. (It's not the current system is democratic, but it maintains an illusion of being democratic that these groups hope to preserve.)
Despite being unscrupulous and self-indulgent, Nat-ambatu does have good reason to cede the Terran system to Ziggy. By giving control to a relatively friendly organization, he would put the entire system in an intergalactic sound position while taking a defensive pose against potential invaders. The hope was that this move would herald a new ear of prosperity for those in the right positions, that the structure of the deal would prevent some of terrible and unprofitable mistakes of the past. There would be no repeats of The Cola Wars, The Burger Wars, or the dreaded Lipo-Castration Solution. From here on out, stability would bring peace and, more important, profit.
History
New Earth (Terra)
In the 27th century, Earth is no longer Earth, per se. During the 26th century, humans built a race of artificially intelligent robots (made to look like apes so that humans could feel better about their technological descendents being so much smarter than mankind) to repair the suffering planet Earth in what was later called "The Renovation Initiative." Essentially, the robots deconstructed and reconstructed the entire planet with nanotechnology, removing all pollutants from the soil, air, and water and providing it with natural resources that it had not had before the transformation (according to intergalactic law, Earth was in fact a synthetic planet). Humanity was enormously gracious, but they ultimately repaid the AI apes for their help by lynching them and driving them off the planet. Within two generations Earth was even worse than it had been. Even in the countryside, every day is like a summer afternoon on the smoke-choked streets of Katmandu—everyone wearing masks and scarves despite the heat and humidity, and applying copious amounts of 55 sunscreen to protect them beneath a sky that is more hole than ozone.
Commercial Ventures
Earthans' contribution to intergalactic culture includes countless mega-chains, but their greatest influence has proven to be Terran language. Many extraterrestrials find humans' crude noises to be highly useful for everyday interracial conversations. As the dominant Terran language, English is the most popular—but intergalactic common speak is a mélange of many tongues. These sounds are easily reproduced, either by an individual or by a device that can be carried (so that the highly developed species can communicate with subcreatures incapable of telepathic communication). Moreover, the general human semiotic system, the way in which mankind codifies and symbolizes his surroundings through signs, is easily transmitted across great distances via radio or other long-range waves.
The expressions of human language are for many non-Earthan races as subtle and as variegated as tom-tom beats or animal grunts, but almost every race finds this manner of communication enormously effective in two particular areas: business and advertising. By the 27th century, human business verbiage and ad speak have been refined to near perfection. Terms such as "New and Improved!" and the ever popular "Now with Rhinoplasty" have brought about great changes in the structure of space-time.
Sponsorship
Traveling in hyperspace is much more expensive than the average Earthan can afford. Thus, only affluent or famous travel in faster-than-light vehicles and the vast majority of Off-Worlders stay within the Terran system. (However, a good many Off-Worlders are venture capitalists, and thus they are more well-heeled than Earthbounds—see the History of Earthan Economics below.) To fund their travels, one must have especially good corporate sponsors (just about everyone has sponsors, but Off-Worlders get better contracts). For this reason, almost any Earthan one sees in space are, like racecar drivers, covered from head to toe with ads.
There are exceptions, however. Government representatives are unsponsored. This is not because they are above pandering to corporate interests but rather because The Government® itself is the largest, most vested corporation in the Terran system, and they don't like competitors' ads on their men. Also, anyone who has ever been convicted of a felony does not have sponsorship. This has proven convenient for many ambassadors.
Names
Names such as Mickey, Donald, and Goofy are quite common among Earthans. Walt Disney and all the franchises derived from his original characters are considered almost holy to Terran peoples. Using Mickey is comparable to the old Terran use of Jesus or Mohammed, or the Noricans' use of Jeeporax.
Earthan Economic History
With considerable coaching from a host of alien races (some of whom regret having lent a hand), humans have been traversing the vast emptiness of the universe for three centuries in search of—among other more mundane things like cheap starship fuel—a meaning for their existence.
Failing that, they have since sought at the very least to fill the empty void of their seemingly senseless universe with a innumerable chain restaurants, hologram rental stores, overpriced coffee shops, and discount outlets intent on underselling similar alien-owned stores until they had driven all competition out of a quadrant. Soon the multitudes of noble cosmologists, philosophers, scientists, and other visionaries of the 25th century had yielded resignedly to the 26th and 27th centuries' droves of sniveling venture capitalists, power hungry industry moguls, dim-witted marketing executives (pardon the redundancy), unscrupulous franchisers, unprincipled opportunists, and interstellar snake-oil salesmen who departed from their native soil determined to conquer the last great market available to them—space.
Suffice it to say, the past two centuries have been an unprecedented economic boom for Earthlings. Once they discovered that every alien from the Aracks to the Zolanians (unfortunate victims of this selfsame expansion) were avid consumers of junkfood, expensive sneakers, and superbly marketed musical inanities, every business big and small on Earth has seen a golden opportunity to strike it rich. Earth cast its commercial net across the stars and caught the market interest of hundreds of extraterrestrial races as easily as a school of tuna (with the occasional dolphin or two). By the beginning of the 27th century, Off-Worlders were vastly more populous than Earthbounds, a fact that led the Intergalactic Council to deem humans "Interstellar Beings" in the year 2625. It should also be noted that by this point Earthans are one of the most detested races in the universe, a fact that inexplicably has not affected their success in the least.
Technology
Space Travel
A few rules regarding spaceships and space travel:
1) There is no sound in a vacuum. Ever.
2) Artificial gravity doesn't always work—especially if you have run out of gravitons.
3) Spaceships coming from two entirely different directions never meet on the same spatial plane, nor is there any reason for them to orient themselves to one another once they meet.
4) With the exception of ships that need to enter an atmosphere (such as the pumpkin seeds "Snipers" flown by the Terran Defense League), a ship does not have to be aerodynamic. It can look like a floating city block or sprawling mass of tubes, etc. (See next section.)
The Century (and other Corinthian-class vessels)
The F.M.S. Century (the ship on which episode 1.1 opens) resembles a dislocated portion of cityscape—or perhaps one of the last intact bits of a destroyed planet. All Corinthian-class ships like her are designed to resemble a small city or remnant chunk of a blasted world. Her stern is a black hemisphere, like the dark side of a small moon, from which extends an assortment of skyscraper-like structures forming the aft of the ship. Each of these horizontal buildings comprises hundred of decks, and the towers are interconnected by an infrastructure of halls and bridges, conveyor paths and escalators, multidirectional elevators and quantum trains. As many as ten thousand Terrans work, sleep, eat, drink, and raise families aboard each starcruiser, making it for all intents and purposes a true interstellar city.
The Century is owned by the sneaker manufacturer "Swoop," and though normally a member the Federated Merchants fleet, it was recently lent as a political favor to the Intergalactic Zoning Governance.
Snipers
These deltoid single-pilot fighters are the preferred by the Terran Defense League. They are fast and maneuverable in space, and they are aerodynamic enough to fly in a planetary atmosphere. They are also commonly used aboard large starships as defense fighters.
Ship Propulsion
Standard Earthan ships, used for traveling within the Terran system, use ion-pulse or laser-drive engines. Smaller ships use solar sails and conventional jet propulsion.
Fast-as-light drives convert energy to matter, projecting in front of the ship a variable of matter with a mass greater than that of the ship. The ship is therefore drawn by gravity (some drives have graviton enhancement to increase acceleration, but this does not affect the ultimate velocity of the vessel) toward the mass. The mass in space more or less flickers on and off such that is it always pulling the ship anew, and the mass and relative distance of the projection increases with every pulse. The speed of the ship can accelerate up to the speed of light.
Faster-than-light drives do the same thing as fast-as-light drives, only the last pulse of the mass generator creates a zipper-like rift in space-time. This rift, more or less a tiny black hole that slips forward in space, drags the ship in its wake faster than light, and its length depending on the amount of energy used to create it. Since it travels considerably faster than light, the ship never catches up to it, but it does enable the ship to break the light barrier. No human ships have this capability, as it is far too advanced, but wealthy and well-sponsored humans can charter ships that use the technology.
All ships that use fast-as-light or faster-than-light drives look like they are moving toward their sources of propulsion, which resemble either a bright light or a tiny black hole.
Graviton Mining and Starship Fuel Refining
Gravitons, the theoretical subatomic particle responsible for gravity, are an important commodity in the 27th century. Their most common use is in the Antigee Generator, which creates artificial gravity aboard most starships. They are also used in G-cannon (a large pulse weapon aboard a starship that can be fired directly on another ship or fired into space to puncture space-time), G-mines (which can be placed in space to create gravity wells and trap enemy ships), and G-gats (which hold a person in place until the gravitons have dispersed).
A star system is a great place to mine gravitons. Not only are they in great supply between a star and its planets, they are also abundant around each planet. The Zyvera and Gorecki have long cornered the market in commercial gravitons, whose trade is governed by Ziggy according to intergalactic treaties. But the Gorecki are especially adept at graviton mining, and they have combined it effectively with starship fuel refining.
The process is relatively simple: First mine the gravitons in and around each planet, then collect the gravitons between them and their star. Once gravity throughout the system is diminished, moving and working with the planetary material is much easier. The planets are broken down and used to build a Dyson Sphere–like shell around the system's star. This shell is then drains the energy of the sun till it burns out, and the solar power is converted to energy for starships. One system can supply a fleet of Centurion-class vessels with power and gravity for months.