Blog Entry #1 – April 22, 2025
You would think being a teenage galactic space explorer would be exciting, if not at least interesting. Well, it’s not either. In fact, it is kind of boring.
By now, if you are readying this, you are possibly wondering two things. First, who the hell am I, and how does a thirteen-year-old become a galactic explorer.
Question one answered: My name is Jason Degros.
Question two answered: I became a galactic space explorer by opening my closet door.
Let me elaborate on the answer to question two. I discovered a few months ago that if I open my closet door at a specific time of day, let’s say, 2:00 AM, it opens to another solar system. At first, I thought it was maybe a portal into another dimension. But, thanks to the Google I learned to look at star patterns to see if they match. Hell, I even found an app in the Android Store that allowed me to capture star patterns and compare them. Each shot I take gives me the “This star pattern is not in our database,” error. But I can still compare it to the last time I opened my closet door.
You might be asking your computer screen, “Hey, Jason, why did you think your closet door was a portal to other dimensions.
Short answer: Because whomever created the universe, God, some intelligent being, or a freak accident that started with a bang, they did not have much imagination. That kind of goes without saying when it comes to bangs, but come one God, get creative.
Let me explain. Okay, I open the door to my closet at a certain time, let’s say 3:23 AM. Yes, I know, I said 2:00 AM, but if you figure out where my house is, then you will probably break into my home at the designated time, stab me to death with a kitchen knife, and push me into the vacuum on the other side of my closet door. I don’t want that, so the actual time my closet door opens into a new solar system will remain a mystery.
Anyway, I open my door at the designated time, step through, and I am on a planet. This planet is a lot like earth, but not exactly. The air is breathable, obviously, since the space door does not come with a space suit. There are seasons. I have learned to take a backpack with extra clothes. Really, the only difference is the foliage and some of the wildlife I have encountered. Nothing dangerous, this isn’t a video game. If I step through the door and get mangled by a sabretooth tiger, game over. Here and there.
It’s things like insects, most of them are like nothing I have ever seen. Foliage, the trees, plants, grasses, are all different. What is not different is the sapient beings on these planets. They are not just humanoid, they are human.
I have visited just over a dozen planets in the last couple of months, and not even one offers any variety when it comes to the planet’s dominant species. They walk like us, talk like us, except the language, I cannot understand a word they are saying. My Android translation app is clueless as well. Skin colors are the same, hair growth and placement, as far as I can tell, are the same.
Millions of light years separate us, but humans are the only thing that inhabits the parts of the galaxy I have explored. The two biggest differences between them and us is language, and technological advancement.
That is why I thought my closet door opened into parallel universes, or dimension. My star map app suggest otherwise. I am not scientist. Shit, I am barely passing biology, but I would assume that if I was entering parallel universes, the star patterns would remain the same.
Comment below if you think I am full of shit on this last one.
That brings me back to the opening topic of this post. Galactic space exploration is boring. Sure, it is kind of interesting to see some of the differences in flying and four legged creatures, but I tend to be very conservative on this aspect of exploration. Reference the sabretooth tiger comment. And yes, it is kind of fun to see what technological level the humans on the latest planet are at. But they are all human, and I cannot talk to them.
I walked into a medieval battle once. Didn’t stick around. Swords, axes, and arrows flying about like an iron storm. Boy did my clothing look a bit out of place there. Everyone was wearing some sort of animal skin while I was covered in a cotton/polyester blend.
I should explain better how this works. I open the door at the appropriate time, which will remain unnamed, and I get a wide-angle view of the system to be explored. Not sure why, I suppose whoever designed my doorway to the galaxy wanted to offer an overview of the system. This is where I take my star map shot. Then I step through the door, and voilà, I am transported to the only habitable planet in the system. At least I assume it’s the only one.
The first time I did the step through the door into space thing, I tied a rope to my bed, then around my waist. I was certain I would step through the door and fall into space. I hoped I could use the rope to pull me back before I died of asphyxiation. Yes, I know there would be other problems besides a lack of air, save your comments.
It took me three our four tries before I got the balls to step through the door. I started with a hand, then an arm, then a leg, finally I stuck my upper body through the door, cheeks puffed as I held my breath, hands gripped firmly on the closet door frame, and suffered no instantaneous decompression, or flash freezing of my eyeballs. I was just hanging in space, as though it was my native environment.
I am guessing the gateway to the boring galaxy designers thought of everything.
As I sit here and write this, I am realizing. Maybe its better that all the sapient species on the other planets are human. Imagine me, a soft skinned, slow running, earth bound human stepping onto a planet that is eighty-percent active volcanoes ruled by dragons. It’s a pretty solid bet that that would be the last planet I visited.
That will wrap up this galactic explorer blog post. And yes, in case you are wondering, I am still going to explore boring planets.
Wouldn’t you?