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Dr. Shari Akwende was a female subatomic engineer working for Aerospatiale Afrique Laboratories.

By 2214 The market needed an alternative to the then-current problem of contemporary antigravity vehicles; these negated gravity by projecting a field which suppressed the gravitic mass of every particle, consisting the occupants of the vehicle weightless.

Akwende was one of the researchers who assumed that, as generating graviton flux pulled things toward the generator, conversely, generating a sufficient constant antigraviton flux would push something away. The existence of gravitons (counterparts to the gravitons that carried the gravitic force, with half-lives as long as many microseconds) were only implied by the Grand Unified Theory.

She had conclusively determined that matter-antimatter collisions conducted in a suppressed gravity field would produce antigravitons. This made a significant advance, putting her years ahead of competition. But so far, her antigraviton generator had produced large enough flux, but no actual thrust. While trying to detect any thrust, Akwende discovered that the antigravitons tended to head towards the rough direction of Alpha Centauri (considering Earth's movement during the passage of time). Akwende triangulated the exact point where the antigravitons were heading by repeating the experiments on an early Plutonian flight. It was a small patch between the orbits of Pluto and Neptune.

Several decades later her discovery would bear fruit, and centuries later, the implications her "antigraviton flow" would be realized. It was discovered that the drift allowed to detect, locate and ultimately transit jump points and eventually make use of the Jump Drive, named Akwende Drive in her honor.

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