After the wars began—precipitated by a debate about what to do with the
people on this version of Earth who were already infected with the sterility
virus—a group of scientists figured that there was no way out of this. Now
that the virus existed on their planet, there was probably nothing stopping
it from getting out eventually. They could bomb the quarantined nation, and
they could send people to bunkers, but their fate would eventually catch up
to them. They decided that the only way to save the human race was to take
it off world. But they weren’t trying to save themselves. They did not have
the resources or technology necessary to send a significant enough
population to the stars. They would only be able to send frozen embryos, and
one individual young adult in stasis. There was also no guarantee that
revival from stasis would work, because even though they had tested the
technology in the short-term, they didn’t know if it would be able to last
for what was potentially thousands of years. There were no sufficiently
habitable planets within a reasonable distance from Earth. Neighboring
worlds were always too hot, or too massive, or not massive enough. A human
outpost could probably survive on these worlds, but again, this was a
long-term project, and the people who would grow up in the colony were not
liable to be able to advance fast enough in a harsh environment. Thanks to a
boost from the solar sails, the ship was capable of traveling at about ten
percent the speed of light. It would slow down over time as it hunted for
the right world to settle on. Since they didn’t know exactly where the ship
would be going, they called it Starcatcher. It was designed to use solar
power to jump from the current star to the next, and just keep doing that
until the right orbiting body presented itself.
There was no way to know whether their plan would work, let alone how long
it might take. They just had to send off the embryos, and hope that
Starcatcher found a new home eventually. As aforementioned, this could take
thousands of years. They could program the AI to gather the requisite data
for every planet they encountered, synthesize it well, and extrapolate a
survivability factor, but so many things could go wrong. Again, the
scientists would never know how the mission turned out. Even if Starcatcher
did manage to find a world just next door, the trip was still going to take
decades, and none of them was young enough to still be around. This was all
about faith. They were right to have it. Fifty-six thousand years later,
Starcatcher found a decent planet that was about 5500 light years away. It
had a nitrogen-rich environment with healthy levels of oxygen, 85% water on
the surface, and fairly reliable climate patterns. Things went pretty
smoothly, but not perfectly. The Governess, as she was called, woke up from
stasis, obviously still alive, but she wasn’t intact. She had trouble
remembering who she was, and what she was meant to do. Fortunately, she
didn’t try to mess with any of the embryos until her mind was better. It
just took some time for her to acclimate to the future, and remember her
purpose here. You may be wondering how it’s possible for a single woman to
raise the 147 babies needed for the initial population. She didn’t start
with that number. Experts had developed a complicated development plan for
her, which involved starting out slowly, having the older children help
raise the younger ones, and patiently doing this over the course of three
decades. Humanity was able to restart here, and they never had to worry
about the Ochivari again.
No comments :
Post a Comment