When the Ansutahan refugees were successfully transported from the brink of
war in their home universe, they were relieved. They could finally stop
living in fear of the white monsters who roamed the majority of the
continents on their home planet. The Gatewood Collective was their home now,
at least for now...at least for most of them. Decades later, a portion of
the refugees, but mostly their descendants, would choose to begin a journey
to the other side of the galaxy. This was the largest exodus that the
Ansutahan humans had experienced so far, and probably the most ambitious,
but it was not the most far-fetched. A transgalactic journey was nothing
compared to what happened 15 years earlier—or only 10 years, for that
matter. One of the last major ventures that the leaders of Gatewood
endeavored to complete was Project Andromeda. While reaching the other side
of the Milky Way would take a couple hundred years at reframe speeds,
Andromeda would take thousands. If they only traveled at
relativistic speeds, any observer inside the ship would still only
experience a few thousand years, but millions of years would pass them by
before they arrived. Unlike Operation Extremus, Project Stargate was
designed to spread across the galaxy at such speeds, so that when they began
to send data back to the stellar neighborhood, people would understand how
it was possible that a ship had made it so far away. That was what they
thought the maximum speed was. Faster-than-light travel was relegated
to science fiction for them. For people living 3500 years from now
however, surely they would have long been introduced to FTL, and even other
forms of time travel. They probably wouldn’t freak out to learn that someone
was already exploring Andromeda. In fact, there was a strong chance that
humanity would have already reached it even faster.
So Kestral and Ishida came to the decision to make Project Andromeda travel
much faster than most people living in 2255 thought possible, under the
assumption that the truth would eventually come out, and be fine. They
constructed 11 small vessels. One would act as primary, while the others
were backups. This would give them a greater chance of succeeding, since so
many things could go wrong in transit. The original plan for Project
Stargate was for the ships to be entirely automated, with no organic
lifeforms on board, except for human DNA samples, which could one day be
used to seed life on other planets. One of the team members chose to go
against this mandate, and clone himself millions of times, so that a human
touch would be available to negotiate any crisis that might come up.
Inspired by this, Team Keshida decided to allow volunteers for Andromeda.
Anyone who wanted to make this trip, which would potentially be only
one-way, could submit an application. They figured that if no one applied,
then they would just revert back to the original plans. They received
thousands of requests, and had to narrow it down to 24 people. Two would be
in each of the backups, while four would be in the primary. They would
remain in stasis for the whole trip, and only be awakened if it was
absolutely necessary. They all had extensive knowledge that would help them
effect repairs, yet they received additional training to ensure that these
were undoubtedly the best candidates for the job. Once they were ready, the
ships launched, each one a month behind the last, until they were all gone.
Again, the ships were still automated, so now the only thing to do was wait,
and hope that everything worked out.
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