“Good morning.” Gwen peeled her eyes away from the panoramic window and looked to her left. There, a girl about her age, maybe a little younger, was extending her a hand. She had dark brown hair and black eyes, with tanned skin and a smile that could very well cause a second Meltdown. “I’m Anisa, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you Anisa.” She answered, bewildered by the extreme politeness of the likely younger girl. She reached for her hand and shook it. “My name’s Gwen.”
“Are you heading for the stations or are you part of the first wave?” She asked.
“First wave.” Gwen said in a heartbeat. “My dad and I are on the ARK-6 headed to HD-164595 d.”
“Now that’s a mouthful, don’t you think?” Anisa said in an overly dramatic tone. She then sat down on the bench next to Gwen and continued talking. “My mum, dad, brother and I are on the ARK-5. It’s headed to HD-38973 c and I think that the higher-ups of the UEG should seriously consider renaming those planets. Their current names have no artistic sense whatsoever. Even Earth is much better, and it literally means dirt.”
“I’m sure many would agree.” Gwen said, then shook her head at the absurdity of this conversation and tried to veer it toward a saner topic. “You seem quite excited about spending over two centuries on a tin can.”
“Of course! And it will be a little over two centuries for those staying here on earth, but to us it will be about 185 years. Plus, we will be the first at many things, pioneering a new era for humanity.” Anisa started speaking faster, obviously excited about the topic. “The first immortals and the first to visit and study other life-bearing worlds.”
“Just imagine everything that has gone into this.” She started enumerating with her fingers. “The development and construction of the ARKs themselves, the hundreds of trans-mercurial solar plants producing thousands of tons of anti-matter non-stop for decades, the development of CROSS, the scouting missions, the deployment of the Galactic Relay Network… And all of this just to send eight ARKs. We will be part of an exclusive group of twenty-four thousand people, the first immortals to go to the stars.”
Just then a slightly taller boy approached us and patted Anisa’s head. He had the same dark brown hair, black eyes and tanned skin color, quite obviously her older brother. Gwen thought he must have been fifteen or so. “Pardon my younger sister, she just can’t help herself when she starts talking about the first wave. I’m Yousef by the way. You already saw our dad, he’s the one that gave that speech when we were crossing the Karman line.”
“She’s quite the space enthusiast isn’t she?” Gwen chuckled.
“Not really, that would be me. She’s picked up quite a few things from hearing me talk though.” He said, scratching his cheek in embarrassment. “She’s more into journalism I’d say.”
Anisa nodded enthusiastically at that. “One day I’ll write a book about the first wave based on everything I’ll see. That’s why I’m trying to meet as many people from the other ARKs as possible before boarding ours. So, what’s your story? Why did you join the first wave?”
That day Gwen ended up not sleeping. She spent most of the time talking with Anisa and Yousef about various topics, but mainly about the upcoming ARK missions. She also learned that they were from Oujnador, an arcology at the northernmost part of Africa that was barely spared from becoming a danger zone during the Meltdown. They got to know each other quite well as the days passed, talking and playing board games on the glass terminal. Before they knew it, they had reached Midpoint delta.
As the name implied, Midpoint delta was not the final destination of the elevator. It was just the station built at geostationary orbit of space elevator delta, where there was no gravity. It was the perfect spot for a spaceport, where spaceships could keep a constant distance to the station for easy transfer between both without wasting fuel. If one were to keep climbing the elevator, they would reach Endpoint delta, which was a low-gravity station dedicated to both scientific research and entertainment.
They were all silently looking outside through the window of the elevator, their hands gripping the rails to avoid flying up to the ceiling as the elevator started slowing down. Outside they could see two massive cylinders occupying most of the view, with ample space in-between them and a swarm of much smaller spaceships floating around them, small flies in comparison to the behemoths that were the ARKs. They were incredible beasts, with a diameter of five hundred meters and one and a half kilometers in length. The drums were slowly rotating at slightly over one rotation per minute, producing artificial gravity in their internal surface.
Soon their view was obstructed as the elevator entered Midpoint and finally docked with the space station. A mild depressurization momentarily clogged her ears and the doors opened to the spaceport itself. Dizziness invaded Gwen as they exited the elevator. The station was a vast open area with doors and boarding hatches in all directions. People were floating along the floor, ceiling and walls, following no direction or orientation in particular as they moved about. Some were even pirouetting across open air.
She hadn’t even noticed the extremely gradual descent into zero-g during the past few days, but that chaotic mess had finally done it. She closed her eyes and took deep breaths, pushing out the disorientation as she’d done with her notification-induced stress countless times before.
“I know this can be a bit overwhelming at first, but we’ll soon be on the ARK, so don’t worry.” Her dad said while floating by her right side. “I’d try to enjoy it if I were you. Some people pay good credit to play zero-g sports on the upper deck of the station you know? You won’t find many places without gravity on the ARK unless you go near the central shaft.”
“Wait!” Gwen saw Yousef slowly floating toward her as she opened her eyes and clumsily turned around. “My sister and I would like to have your contact. I don’t think you ever gave it to us.”
“Right.” She said hesitatingly. After pausing for a second too long, she raised her left arm to her front, placing it right next to Yousef’s, and flicked her wrist towards his band. “Please don’t send text messages. Use video recordings only. I’ve got a thing against messages with… I guess you could say low contextual content.”
“Okay, got it.” He shrugged and then nodded in understanding. “Oh and about what your father was saying, you should definitely visit the central shaft during the evening. I’m sure someone on the ARK will be able to put a wingsuit together for you.”
Yousef smiled wryly and left off towards his family, Adam sighing in exasperation next to her. She… hadn’t quite gotten what he meant with the wingsuit. Looking at her dad though, she was sure she was in the out on something interesting. She’d have to figure that one out by herself at some point.
“Wingsuits?” She asked to no one in particular.
“Lets get going to the boarding area.” Her dad said, expertly dodging the matter.
They floated their way to their boarding hatch by following the railings, and after a half-hour wait they and a small group of fourteen other people were ready to embark. In the case of the ARK shuttles though, the protocol for doing so varied slightly from the usual. The passengers would enter one by one, using their bands to validate their identities, and then a UEG official would inject them with the CROSS, the person in question heading into the shuttle right afterward.
As Gwen’s turn arrived, right after that of her dad, she approached her band to the scanner and, after it lit up green, the official, a thirty-something dark-skinned woman, asked her to lift her sleeve. She was then shot with a large dose of a clear liquid and handed a small leaflet. A quite mundane process for something that, if the UEG was to be believed, would effectively turn her into an immortal or, at the very least, unaging.
“Have a safe trip.” The official said in a practiced tone.
After boarding the small shuttle, she quickly spotted her dad sitting on the last row of seats to the right, with a free spot right by his side. She quickly floated toward him, using the seats as handholds, and then sat down and buckled up. With that out of the way, she took a look at the front page of the leaflet she just got.
– Cell-based Resequencer and Operating Swarm System –
CROSS is a state-of-the-art informational and medical system capable of handling most medical issues in an automated, hands-off approach, in addition to serving as the most advanced computation and communications platform to date. It boasts a parallel computation ability dwarfing that of all conventional photonic processors on Earth put together and a combined redundant memory capacity of over 4 exabytes in a single swarm system. By turning your vascular system into an interferometric antenna, CROSS is capable of receiving and decoding the faintest of signals, with a gain rivaling that of modern high-end scientific equipment.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
“They sure know how to sell themselves.” Gwen muttered.
“The truly unbelievable part is that it’s actually true according to Aram’s tests.” Adam distractedly commented. “Hey look up.”
Looking through the small window overhead, Gwen could see the now small planet Earth, with the cable of the space elevator going toward it until it vanished into the distance. Over half of the world was currently dark, with small pale yellow dots illuminating various spots of its surface where the arcologies and few remaining small cities were located. Eastern Asia could be seen in the daytime side.
“We won’t be able to see it for much longer.” A woman said from her left, right across the corridor. Gwen looked to the side to be met with a diminutive Asian woman with black hair cut at shoulder length, dark brown eyes and pale skin. “We’ll be leaving Earth orbit in about a week.”
“My name’s Shi Liang.” She said, slightly nodding her head. “I’ll be acting as our main civil engineer at our destination, but for now I’ll be an apprentice engineer under your father’s direction. And I imagine you must be Gwen Wright. Your father talks a lot about you.”
“That’s me.” I nodded, hesitating for a few seconds before continuing to speak. “I don’t mean to be rude, but is a civil engineer really qualified to work with the systems of one of the most advanced spaceships ever?”
Shi chuckled on hearing that, but composed herself quickly after and looked at Gwen with amusement. “Well, I’m a mechanical engineer too, it’s just that I have a PhD in civil engineering.” She let that settle in before continuing to speak. “Everyone on board of the ARKs, or at least every adult, is highly qualified personnel with at least two degrees and a PhD. Your father, for instance, is a mechanical engineer, but also has a PhD in high energy physics.”
“It wasn’t always like that though.” Shi continued to explain. “When the United Earth Government started the ARK program sixty years ago, they put the cart before the horse so to speak. They started by designing the ARKs, ramping up the production of anti-matter, deploying the GRN, developing CROSS…”
“But then thirty years ago they made a poll looking for candidates for the missions.” She paused for dramatic effect. “The result was that they’d probably find a thousand people at most that were willing to go, and many of those wouldn’t even have the minimum qualifications. A far cry from the twenty-four thousand actually required.”
“That’s why they improved the CROSS.” It was Gwen’s dad that continued the explanation. “Most people didn’t want to go on a journey only their far-removed descendants would see the end of, so they offered a different deal. Those that joined the mission would become the first biologically immortal humans.”
Just then a thud was heard throughout the ship, bringing Gwen back to reality. She looked through the port side windows and noticed that they were no longer anchored to the spaceport. What was more surprising though, was that they were already anchored to something else. She furrowed her brows.
“What…?” Gwen eloquently asked.
“Welcome to the ARK-6.” Shi chuckled.
“What… how?” Gwen expertly reformulated the question.
“Spaceport shuttles perform round-trips between destinations on the same orbit, that’s the case even when moving in-between Midpoint stations.” Adam started explaining. “Because of this the amount of thrust they need is really minimal. They use ionic thrusters, which are efficient, silent and low-powered. If you don’t pay attention, you won’t even notice that you’re moving.”
Gwen blinked a couple of times in bewilderment, but quickly snapped out of it as the shuttle’s hatch opened itself, leaving the passage to ARK-6 open. People started unbuckling themselves and floating away toward the hatch, orderly vacating the shuttle starting from the front. Although the shuttle would immediately head back and they’d be on their own from now on, everyone knew where to go and how to reach there. Most people had visited the ARK at least once during construction. Even her, being thirteen and officially not part of the working crew, had studied the basic schematics of the ARK with the help of her dad.
The shuttle was anchored to the bow of the ARK, directly against the central shaft. This was the spine where the anti-matter was stored, not that there was any right now. On account of being exactly at the central axis of the ship, it also was the only place where one could dock without the artificial gravity tearing the shuttle off the docking hatch.
Gwen, Adam, Shi and a dark skinned man in his mid-thirties were the last to leave the shuttle. As they entered the front-most part of the central shaft, they were greeted by a circular space, about three meters deep and five in diameter, where the shuttle’s crew was all waiting. With the last crew members in, the hatch they came through closed itself and shortly after they watched the shuttle depart.
Three hatches at equidistant points of the cylinder’s circumference opened at that point. As if on cue, the crew expertly split up between the three, with Adam and Gwen joining with Shi, the dark-skinned man and another woman, probably also European, in one of the hatches. The interior was actually quite familiar to Gwen: an elevator with a crystal front not unlike those of the arcology. Unlike the arcology though, the tinted glass was blocking most of the vision of the outside.
“And down we go, hold on to something.” Said the dark-skinned man.
They all took a rail and he pressed a button, the hatch closing and the elevator starting to move, gently dragging us all up to the hatch we had just entered through. The experience was a bit disorienting to Gwen. Slowly, the motion seemed to shift and she went from being pushed toward the hatch to floating in zero-g again. Then she was gently pushed to the opposite side and to the left, at which point the tinted glass started to clear up.
Gwen got transfixed by the view outside, barely noticing that the gravity kept shifting and becoming stronger until she was standing upright and aligned to the ground. In front of her was a vast cylinder. A town went around the one and a half kilometers of the cylinder’s circumference and spanned barely two hundred meters in width, dividing the cylinder’s surface in two. To either side were plains, small rolling hills and forested areas covering the interior walls.
At the opposite end, a slab of machinery capped the cylinder, with concentric walkways placed at regular intervals all across its surface. Large complex panes were located all across it. She knew from the schematics that this was the main engineering area, where the generators and engines could be accessed for maintenance and repair. Along the cylinder’s axis, covering the central shaft, a bright warm light shone down on the town and forests below.
“Impressive isn’t it?” Adam asked her, still looking through the window. “Based on the light, it’s currently noon in the ship. The central lamp will change its temperature and brightness during the day. There are also simulated seasons and weather patterns. These will all gradually change to match those of HD-164595 d as the journey progresses.”
“Very.” Gwen said, still speechless by the view. “I had read about it and even watched some documentaries with recordings of the biosphere, but the real thing is much better. The sense of depth is breath-taking.”
“It is isn’t it?” Her dad chuckled, then turned to look at Shi and nodded to her. “Miss Liang, I would like to meet the engineering crew that is already on board to run some final checks and familiarize ourselves with the whole ship before departing in five days. Lets meet with everyone at the base of the main radiant in three hours.”
“Of course.” She nodded in acknowledgement.
Just then the elevator reached the walls of the cylinder and the crystal front opened. They were welcome by a forest of young trees as they walked out, small birds chirping from some of the branches and a soft breeze flowing to the left, contrary to the rotation of the drum. Then they all started walking toward the town, which was a good twenty minute walk through the forest from where they stood.
Gwen took the opportunity to study the environment. She was fascinated by the idea of a closed ecosystem that could, theoretically at least, last forever. All kinds of measures had been taken to reduce its weight, such as selecting fibrous plant variants with a low density and shallow root systems, allowing for a thinner layer of soil. At the end of the day though, the UEG decided that the astronomical costs of shipping a full ecosystem were well worth it.
What they couldn’t cut many corners with, was the fauna. Plants needed insects, but those without predators would run out of control. So birds and other small critters were added, both insectivores and herbivores, which in turn needed other predators to keep in check. At the top of the food chain were the eagles, which had to be kept in check by the town were they to reproduce too much.
“That’s an awfully long walk, but at least the UEG had some sense.” Said Shi as they were nearing the town. “We’d all go batshit crazy were we to spend two centuries in a can without any nature around.”
“We’ll probably go coo-coo anyway. Hell, some think we’re already crazy for joining the mission.” Commented the dark-skinned man.
“That’s not the point.” Gwen chipped in. “When we reach our destination, it’s possible that we can’t digest most of the native food there, if any at all. Our bodies would not have evolved to do so.”
“So? We’ll just grow the same food we’ll be growing on the ARK.” Shi commented.
“Yes and no.” Gwen continued. “We’ll eat the same things, but we can’t just plant corn on an alien planet and expect it to grow. Plants from our planet evolved to grow under specific conditions, which include a certain micro-fauna, soil nutrients, sometimes other neighboring plants. It’s almost impossible to store and then do a genetic re-sequencing of the whole ecosystem, so we’re shipping it in.”
“Of course, we’re still carrying the whole Earth Genomics database with us, but that’s just for synthesizing specific organisms here and there as needed, using this biosphere as a base we can adapt to the circumstances.” Gwen concluded.
“You seem to be quite into biology.” Said the dark-skinned man with amusement.
“I am, I’m actually trying to apprentice under Dr. Hawa Simao.” Gwen said, puffing up her chest. In the ARKs, since there were no higher education institutions, an apprenticeship system had been introduced for those that were joining at a young age. This had the added benefit of including lots of hands-on experience with the ship’s systems, whether it was engineering, aeroponics, programming, or whatever you’d have.
“Oh! Then you must be Gwendolen right?” The man suddenly halted and clapped his hands. “You are the brat that has been pestering my wife for the past three months and won’t take a no for an answer.” He burst out laughing uncontrollably for a good ten seconds, then recomposed himself and continued with a smile. “Sorry, sorry. I’m Hawa’s husband, Akin Simao.”