Hello, my name is Kai, and this is Through the Eye of the Needle, performed by Lance Reddick.

The problem is that the universe is big, very, very big.

We all know it intellectually, at least.

If perhaps not with the same bone-deep certainty with which we know those things that we can

see touch or observe directly.

But when the experts tell us that the universe is big, we nod vigorously and say we understand

like rational individuals, even though the concept of a million miles is too big for us to truly

comprehend, let alone a million light years.

Those same experts compound the problem by telling us that the universe has a built-in

speed limit, the speed of light.

If this most ethereal of energy is, undbound by the creppings of salinity, cannot pierce

the heavens in a mortal lifetime, then what hope have we, sheathed as we are by the constraints

of flesh and mass?

None.

And so we are trapped, doomed to rot in the prison of physics.

It therefore makes sense that one in intelligent species is faced with distances so great

that a lifetime of travel at conventional speeds, even a thousand lifetimes, barely gets

you out of your own stellar neighborhood.

Then that species will inevitably go looking for shortcuts.

Those depressing certities which we so begrudgingly acknowledged previously will inevitably become

infected by the pathogen of doubt and that more dangerous contagion.

Hope.

...