SPOILER WARNING : (If you’ve read The Sundered, you’re good to go.
Otherwise, head back to the short stories for safer fare.
A burden no one can bear. That’s what this is. We were tasked with fixing the world, but it’s too late for that. So, failing that, we are tasked with preserving what remains. Easier said than done.
We inherited a complex legacy, a dead planet and technology nearly advanced enough to save us. It is too late to prevent disaster; this planet died before my birth, its magnetic field reversed and failing, its atmosphere useless for retaining life-giving oxygen or restraining deadly radiation. Nothing grows. Nothing lives outside our carefully preserved cage—the dubious gift from the Fey, rife with magic we can never use.
It’s an unsustainable situation. I keep this journal in hopes that someday, you, the future generation, will see what we have done, what we sacrificed, to give you life. In your gratitude, you may even go so far as to not screw it all up again.
“This will never work,” I say at the numbers flashing on my projection display.
I say it to nobody, and nobody replies. I am alone. The Silver Dawning is stunning; my deck, attached to the back of my room at the conference, overlooks glorious mountains, a lake sparkling in the distance, a blue sky. None of this I have seen in my own world, though I know what used to be there; we had beauty, once. We had life.
We ruined it. Through greed and shortsightedness, we ended our world. Now, there is only the warp and rise of dark terrain, crumbling silhouettes of trees, and darkness beyond. I have photos of what was, and what will never be here again.
I cannot let that loss distract me. We, as a species, are out of time. I know my father is wrong. I love him; but he thinks we can somehow reclaim Earth. I know we cannot. This is the only way to save us.
The challenges, future generation, are simple:
- Whom to bring. All of us remaining are technically human, but there has to be a higher standard than that, or… there could be problems. Impurities. I know my father’s fate can’t be repeated. Right now, compiled from Sanaeiiv and the few other tiny bases, we have a list of eighty-seven human beings proven to be genetically pure and possessed of minds and bodies worth reproducing. I hate this. Eighty-seven people? How is that viable? This is a nightmare.
- How to leave. Creating fuel for propulsion is no longer an easy thing. We have been working on it for years, and so far have reserved fuel for a handful of controlled launches controlled entries, one per vessel—assuming the new planet has similar gravity, air speed and pressure, and countless other factors. Once in space, our resonant cavity thruster drive is capable of taking us anywhere without fuel, which is good; unfortunately, that leads to the next problem.
- Where to go. I have no answer for this yet. Some two dozen planets seem able to support life, but we cannot know for certain—our bases in space are all dark, as far as we know, because we have no way to communicate with them. But we cannot afford to be wrong. With such limited fuel, we cannot leave again if we aim for the wrong world. And that leads to the final problem:
- Mortality is hell.
The difficulty, future generation, is age. Yes, there are several planets in reach, given our current technology. Unfortunately, by the time we reach them, we’ll all be dead. If the occupants of this ship remain awake and reproducing on the journey, then yes, someone might be alive by the time of atmospheric entry, but the weight and expense of materials required to feed and water humans for decades in a medically uncertain environment are prohibitive. Ergo, we must find a way to preserve ourselves for the duration of this journey.
Cryogenics is mythology. Even at their highest achievements, humans of the past never figured this out fully. Those few people who “came back” were monsters. (Theoretically, reduced to raw ID, and thus violent and feral. In reality, who knows?) Quantum stasis fields are too fragile. And it will take many years to reach whichever world we choose.
Do you see the problem, future generation? Do you see the challenge? For the record, I know that our Great Enemy has powers that could overcome these challenges, but as we cannot control magic without losing genetic purity, that’s right out. We have to do this entirely with human technology. There can be no wriggle room at all.
Yes, it has been suggested we invite one of Them along to preserve ourselves. Their natural lifespan would keep them well and functioning. I will walk myself right into hell before I bring the Enemy onboard. There must be another way.
We rely entirely on our Fey hosts. The moment they decide they’re done, that we’re too expensive, that starving us is funny, it’s over for us. We won’t even be able to breathe. The radiation will kill every single one of us within weeks. We are out of time.
I suppose the good news is that if we fail, soon enough, it will no longer matter.
Some days, it is harder to hope.
These hours were… rough. I sit here on this balcony, enjoying the set of two suns, the rise of several moons, the stars invisible from my own world, wondering again where we are, wondering how far we’ll have to go to avoid magic. Are the Fey aliens? They say they are not; apparently, their world is a “parallel” reflection of ours.
This is not my field, and I know nothing about it, but Trello (who helped build the portals) says it is true, so… I suppose our goal is to leave Earth natives behind.
If we do not find a way, we will all die.
My mind wanders to morbid things, future generation. My life is so fragile; and if you’re not careful, you may end up just as foolish. You may destroy your new world as we did this one. I must cling with religious fervor to the belief that you won’t, for if I truly thought you would ruin yourselves again three or six or twelve generations after all this effort, I’d just quit right now.
I must hope. I must.
For you, future generation.
It is all for you.
We have found it! WE HAVE FOUND IT!
Kim Yoon has finally overcome the barrier of oxygenation and free radicals, of a body that must live and breathe without aging. She’s designed a capsule, one that applies electromagnetic pulses to her unique cocktail of gasses and inert elements to slow our bodies’ aging.
Mitochondrial degeneration ceases completely. Unfortunately, this requires a level of inertness barely avoiding active-brain damage and cardio-vascular failure. Good news: I solved that. I have found a way—reliably—to control our Alpha and Theta waves and, in essence, put our brains on pause. This is as close to stopping time as any human has ever come. With Yoon’s work and mine together, we can preserve our small band of survivors as long as needed to reach our new home world.
There is so much to do. We have one year left before the next magnetic shift and the final failure of our infrastructure. If you read this, future generation, know how close we came to our demise. What history should we bring? What things do we need you never to know? What disasters can we prevent later by careful censorship now?
Sykes made the joke today that the new planet might be inhabited by elves or dragons or fairies. For the record, that wasn’t funny.
This is our chance. We will start the human race over with the best of chances, with careful knowledge, with perfect tools. Never again will we face extinction!
We call this Launch Day, March 1st, though I doubt that date will ever matter again.
Time as we know it has no more meaning. The planet we chose does not have three hundred and sixty-five days for its year, but three hundred and forty-two. It is a much smaller planet, mostly covered with water. The gravity seems similar; radiation, oxygen, and the presence of growing vegetation indicate it could be survivable. It has three moons, which is interesting, but irrelevant. Preliminary probes even suggested native life—something to hunt and eat, possibly. There is no technology. It is Eden.
There is still so much we don’t know. So much we have no way of knowing. It does not matter. This is Launch Day.
We have narrowed it down to two hundred and forty-six humans, fifty-three of whom will be on my own ship. Only we are healthy enough, genetically pure enough, and—crucially—young enough to do this. We will all have aged by the time we arrive; I am, future generation, currently twelve years old, and I should be physically somewhere between seventeen to twenty when we arrive.
This is everything. We fifty-three are the future of the human race.
This will be my final entry before arrival. I know my father will not see this, but I state it because this kind of relationship is the core of humanity: I love you, dad. Goodbye.
Anyway. Our launch was smooth. The EMdrive is working; we should arrive at our goal in seventy-five years, approximately. We are shielded from radiation sufficiently. We have enough fuel to land. Yoon’s pods are complete. It’s incredible: we can actually see cellular degeneration slow. First projections still hold: we will age, physically, but only by a few years.
Hopefully, we will be mentally competent at the end. We have no time to test this. Not for the decades it would take.
This will work. Yoon has put everyone else to sleep, and I am next. Future generation, we have done this for you. We have cracked the bounds of human ability and understanding for you. We have left our histories and families and everything behind for you. We have recreated the history of man so you will move forward without misunderstandings and problems, without the confusion of religions and warring passions and foolish fights over natural resources.
We have done it all for you. And I misspoke: we fifty-three are not the future of the human race.You are. We will overcome whatever we find there. All for you.
You are the future, but we are your hope.
We are the Hope of Humanity, and we will survive.