Stepping off the embarkation ramp onto the deck of the Queen's Lament, an interstellar ARC ship with the dubious honour of being the one hundred thousandth ship to be sent out into the firmament with two million more souls aboard. It was getting close to the last ship that would ever leave Earth. If you can call what will be left Earth.
We had really screwed that planet up, and the Queen's Lament was about to follow millions of other humans out into the universe to find other planets. I would sleep for a thousand years or more in this half-finished hulk that would take us to a new world out into the Milky Way.
Looking at the deck, it was a standard composite material grating, the same kind you see everywhere. A clanking sound to my right caught my attention, and I looked down to see a construction bot. I walked over to look at the thing. I had seen a million of these in my life, but I was always attracted to them. My family told stories of things called pigeons, animals from centuries gone. That people would feed and watch like these machines. I imagine the pigeons also gave some comfort to see and touch.
The bots had a prominent square body on 8 legs. Much like the spiders you would see on the net, the old recreated one from the early internet a few hundred years ago. The spiders had once crawled planetside, and the bot's yellow and black markings gave me the feeling that they were much like them. It was set to its task and was making or finishing the decking, and it was, for the most part, cute.
I looked over the top to the bot and into space. The transparent wall of the ship reflected my face on the background of the brown, almost waterless Earth. My brown hair, shaved at the sides, was typical for the style of the day. And the port that would plug my brain into the system had been fitted only a few weeks back. The red skin around was still a little puffy. My tan skin and blue eyes also reflected on the background where the last of the ocean had been. Before, we had dredged and scoured the Earth for all the metals and valuable materials to make fuels and other parts for the ARC ships. To think, Earth was once more water than even the underground oceans of Mars.
Looking down on the Earth, I was lost in my own mental world as my little maker friend sparked and clanged away with some tools and metal. I had made a good life on Earth, but living in underground domes was also challenging. We worked and played, but it was a life that seemed hollow without a real purpose. Most of the people had left already, and it was only us, the ruling classes, who would come after the workers created the infrastructure of the new worlds so that we could set up the governing structures, companies, laws, taxes and so forth. Another maker bot crossed my line of sight on the outside of the ship and started to close in the space from the outside, and I stared at him just stared.
"Don't worry; the ship will be finished en route, and by the time we leave the solar system in two years, it will be sleek and shiny. The ion drive will just be spinning up, and we will start to accelerate and continue to near light speed in a few hundred years, all nice and safe." A voice said from behind me, and I turned to look directly into the eyes of a 164 cm tall; I knew this because it was my height too: shaved head woman with dark brown eyes and a smile broad and friendly.
"Why hello," I replied and offered my elbow in greeting; in turn, the woman looked me over, and we bumped her elbows.
"I am Louise, your cabin keeper. Let us get you settled in, shall we? I will just scan your implant and see where we going to put you for your little nap." Louise said, holding up her left hand next to my right ear.
"I am in Section C, row 1500, block 42, sleeper capsule 789." I blurted out. Louise blinked a couple of times as she read the information on her internal hud, which would undoubtedly show the same data.
"That is right, you are indeed. Most people don't bother to remember that sort of information. If you will come with me, and together, we will get you tucked in and ready for the journey." Louise said, and she walked off to the right with a slight turn and waived to follow.
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"I am a data guy, I remember lots of things, and I have an ordered mind," I said. Why did I say that! It seemed that stupid was my theme for today. I looked at the ground momentarily and followed her in a ship's suit that hugged her rear end quite nicely.
"It is not too far of a walk, Walter," Louise said.
"Yes, that is my name, Walter Richardson, but you knew that, didn't you," I said, keeping up the day's theme and feeling that stupid is not so bad.
"How long have you been on the Queen, Louise?" I continued the conversation
"Almost two years now," Louise replied as we reached a lift, and she punched the left button. "We will set up the generational ship while the bulk of you sleep; I plan to be working for another 75 years; I will sleep for 25 years, then wake again. So don't worry, we will look after the sleepers for the whole journey." Louise continued.
"It is a great service that you and your people are doing for us. We owe a lot to the boi enhanced," I said.
"We see it as an opportunity to create a new civilisation of space-born humans who knows what we will be like in a thousand or so years. maybe we will have three boobs." She said and broke out laughing. I smiled in return.
"Well, the truth be known, the modelling has shown that physically we won't be that different than now," I said. Louise gave me a smile in return.
"So you're a data guy?" She said as the lift arrived, and we both stepped in and turned towards the door, crossing my hands in front of me.
The two people, one a sleeper like me and the other a cabin keeper, already in the lift, were having a better conversation than I was having with Louise. The sleeper, like me, had a shaved head and was, by the look of them, from one of the areas around the French land bridge that reappeared with old England as the oceans were emptied out. They had that clipped way of talking that produced a lyrical conversation.
"Have you decided what reality you will put your mind into?" the Cabin keeper asked.
"I am still torn, to stay with my choice and to remain aware that we are sleeping and send my consciousness to one of the science worlds and work on one of the physics or quantum disciplines. Could you imagine the science that a thousand years of research could produce?" The sleeper responded.
"True theoretical sciences are useful, and you could do that. Or we could put you in one of the other universal quantum computer-controlled worlds like Solerium, and you could be a creature of myth and legend. Or we can swap you from one to the other or one of the historical worlds you could relive the French Revolution or the third revolution of America. It is up to you, but you will need to start somewhere. Your body will stop in status, but we cannot shut off your mind, and the last thing you want to is to be aware for the next thousand years." the cabin keeper said.
As the lift slowed and the doors opened, two travel companions left, and then we were on our way again, and I began to wonder if my choice for my mind was correct. Quantum computing has changed the universe. Our discovery allowed humanity to live these fantastic lives for even more than our average two-hundred-year lifespan. We were able to colonise much of our solar system and a bit beyond what we could feed Earth but not save it. And now we have these virtual worlds where we can live out our lives and for thousands of years be many people with extraordinary powers and skills or live through history or be a student and a scientist.
"Well, here we are," Louise said as the doors opened, gesturing for me to leave.
"It is just on your left, about two hundred meters," Louise instructed.
Stepping out of the lift, I looked up, and the ship twisted in my vision. I grabbed Louise's arm. The grandeur and scope of the sleeping pod took my breath away from me, thousand upon thousand of them on top of each other, row upon row of pods.
"Now then, I got you. It is a bit much for people the first time they see this. That is why we take almost three years to fill all the pods. But don't worry, I will look after you, as will all these people?" Louise said, tilting her head around and looking at hundreds of people all in ship suits attending the pods.
I didn't see the people at first, not until I lowered my head from the vast towers of sleeper pods to the deck where the cabin keeper tended to the capsules, keeping people safe and alive to see a new world. Knowing they would not. To me, their life has a nobility about it. A life of service.