Peace

After the war I decided to take time out to build a proper empire and consolidate my resources so I popped into hundreds of uninhabited systems and if they weren't suitable for colonization I salvaged their resources if they were I marked them on my ever growing galactic map. I began studying the technology I'd just acquired from those troublemakers and I made a few new improvements now my massive warship could jump about 50% what one of my smaller ships could and I tweaked the armor and shields both had an impressive 23% increase in effectiveness and efficiency. My technology had truly become the best in the known galaxy and I was going to parcel it out in bits and pieces first I assembled trade ships with decent statistics but I purposefully limited the speed and defenses of them and built a few hundred then I made everything from corvettes to battleships all for my use all to maintain security in my territory. Once my fleets were built I dispersed them to every System of any importance and then set up trade lines between the various races I had subjugated and rescued.

I declared myself emperor in perpetuity and gave each Race a choice to join my empire or not most just said yes and one the simians who ended up being named the oolong yeah I laughed at first until I realized they were dead serious. Trade soon became very profitable for the various races I even instituted a universal currency called the polygon or poly for short as I didn't want to use a name that might already be in use and every race had a name for polygons. I spent the most part of the next 100 years locked away trying to wring more out of less even getting to the point where I could create microscopic hard light circuits which I then replaced the electronics in most of my ships with reducing their mass size and speeding up their processing speed.

Each race outgrew their home world and stations and so I parceled out locations and transportation to the new colonies based on the most suitable for each and mean while my exploration continued in the form of thousands of small scout craft exploring the galaxy occasionally finding a new race that might be suitable for induction into the collective as I called it. The demand for warships from each of my member species forced me to allow them a limited amount of combat starships though they would have to develop the technology themselves as if they could develop something new it would only enhance my own technologies.

It wasn't long after I finally broke out of my tinkering break that I received a report that the galaxy had been explored and there was nothing that could even be considered a threat in it so I set about creating an intergalactic transport I wanted to explore even farther than before my wanderlust was strong and I would not be denied. I attempted 704 different methods of FTL travel most were some variation on a jump drive some were hyper drives and a few modifications that seemed promising however I could not make a ship travel fast enough that a journey through the void would not take hundreds of years so I went back to the drawing board and looked for something that might have been missed and stumbled upon wormhole drives they were a footnote in one of my databanks a little snippet of data and specifications little more than a untested idea someone once had that wasn't used because it required more energy than any other form of travel and wasn't instantaneous and required the pilot to navigate through it.

I spun up my processors and began building test vessels and drives 100 with 10 of each version that I built and began launching them a ship at a time and soon I ran into a problem my ai minions couldn't handle the piloting they didn't feel the way a organic could though I did come up with a algorithm that would successfully predict the flight path needed but only 61% of the time. The chance that I would kill myself in a wormhole was way too high for my liking so I tried sending more through the wormholes and after a couple thousand one managed to reach its destination a star 30 light years away and my algorithm was still only at 67% so I tried it with living pilots in simulators.

Of the 1000 I tested I found that they collectively had a significantly better chance to make the trip at 74% so I offered them the chance to earn big money on a gamble and pointed them at the target star of the 1000 only 57 decided to take the risk after I laid out the risks and certainty of death if they failed. All of my guinea pigs I me test pilots got into their ships all modified corvettes with a slot for me to hop in and I sent them on their way. My test pilots all surprised me in that every one successfully made the trip without issue so I asked for volunteers for a couple more tests and then I collated the data from each of their ships and once they had volunteered again I sent them on a much longer journey in fact I sent them from one side of the galaxy to the other. Of the 57 volunteers 55 made the trip unscathed and the other two exited with some minor damage to their ships which to me was a miracle so I asked them what they would have added to their ships if they could and universally they said they would have loved company of some kind.

So after collecting and studying the data I managed to improve my own algorithms by a surprising amount now I had a 87% chance of making it through a wormhole without a problem though my organic test pilots had a 100% chance to make it through a wormhole. I took some time to study my data and mesh it all into a cohesive whole I had time I didn't need to rush though the excitement to explore was building. I prepared a new batch of my ai test pilots and sent them into wormholes and found that of my new tests they had improved their chances to 98% after their flight tests I finally had enough data to be confident in the results of my attempt to travel to another galaxy.