It was 2245. For eleven years, Durus found itself hurtling through
interplanetary space, though since there weren’t any other planets in the
solar system, it was really just general 70 Ophiuchi space. Now the rogue
planet was crossing a threshold, all the way into what experts considered
interstellar space. They knew how far they had gone, because they knew how
fast they were going, and how far they were from the edge when the sun was
effectively destroyed, but they had lost most of their instruments since the
catastrophe. Of course, everyone was living underground now. The atmosphere
had long since been stripped away. Anyone who needed to go outside did so in
vacuum suits that they had to plan, fully engineer, and test before use over
the course of only a few months. The wind turbines above were still
operational, powering their bunkers using the torrential storms still
raging, but they required a hell of a lot more maintenance than they did
before. The extremely cold temperatures made it much more difficult for
these machines to keep going without constant tending. Fortunately, it
wasn’t impossible to accomplish this, as long as they kept a team up there
at all times. Children were now being taught almost exclusively only what
they needed to know to take up the burden when it became their time. They
didn’t learn much history or culture, but fortunately, they were at little
risk of falling victim to their old ways. Every second here was now pretty
much only about survival, and no one wanted to live past the destruction of
the population, so they all made sure to remain inclusive and fair. Many
crimes were punishable by a naked surface walk, so it was vanishingly rare.
It wasn’t nonexistent, but the government made every attempt to give the
people what they needed. There was no reason to steal a certain medication
for one’s dying daughter, for instance, because if she wasn’t given the
medication, it almost certainly meant it simply didn’t exist. As for that
government, the Solar Democratic Republic was still intact. It was composed
of the same number of leaders, in the same leadership positions, and they
continued to have their rounds of elections every five years, just as it had
been since the first Republic.
There were some great things about life underground that could have been
quite terrible without the proper planning. For example, food was not a
problem, and would probably never be. They knew how to grow produce under
less than ideal conditions. They also weren’t at much risk of losing their
oxygen, because scientists had been perfecting carbon scrubbing technology
since the Mage Protectorate. The real problem was available space. The
bunkers were designed to accommodate little more than the population at the
time of conception, and they were quickly approaching that limit. They still
didn’t know where they were going, or how long it would take for them to get
there, and more importantly, how getting there would even help their
situation anyway. This world wandered the interstellar void for at least
millions of years before humans stepped foot on it, and there was no reason
to believe it couldn’t do that again. They needed to buy some time for the
right people to come up with a solution, and halt nearly all population
growth until then. The Nexus replica was the obvious answer, but could it
transport everyone, and how would they power it? It would seem the turbines
were not enough for it, because they had already tried connecting it to the
grid, and came up short. Even the experts weren’t a hundred percent certain
how these machines were powered in the first place, but theirs didn’t seem
to be working right now. To give them the time they needed, the people
elected to invest heavily in stasis technology, which wasn’t something they
had needed until now. A team of researchers was already working on it, but
they needed more resources to complete it. It could take decades to figure
out fusion technology, just like it did on Earth, so it was worth it to use
stasis as a temporary solution. By 2252, nearly everyone was placed in their
pods. This had the added benefit of lowering their reliance on the turbines.
Now the only people awake were tasked with cracking fusion, or with
supporting those elite in various ways.
No comments :
Post a Comment