by E. M. Peters
Javier looked down from where he had lifted his chin to listen to the announcement, “I wonder what she’s eating for dinner, because this freeze dried brick for food is not ‘great.’” He sat with several others at their community table for the evening meal.
“I hear they have better food over in the Purple section.” Demetri put in, using a syringe to stick himself with a liquid supplement. Without the supplement, malnourishment was a guarantee due to the limitations of the freeze-dried food.
Everyone was feeling the effects from months of the freeze-dried diet. Passengers had been allowed to bring foodstuffs with them; however, those supplies were gone almost immediately. No one had thought to ration, since the orientation had explained food would be plentiful. It was a shocking disappointment that there were no other food options provided by World Corp for the journey outside of the freeze-dried meals, liquid supplements and seeds intended for growing food when they arrived. There wasn’t even a cafeteria – just a storage area on each deck that had to be self-regulated.
“That’s not true,” Javier responded to Demetri’s claim. “It’s just that Ndale character smuggled on more food than anyone else and is selling it for anything that takes his fancy.”
“I bet he’s sharing with them,” Demetri insisted.
“He’s got to be. They look too plump.” Lucinda added.
“Stop it you two,” Javier warned. Demetri and Lucy had become close friends, to the point of being inseparable at times. While this was a good thing for the most part, they had a tendency to work each other up. “Weren’t you listening? We’re halfway to paradise. Don’t be such conspiracy theorists.”
“I can’t wait to build my house. Right on the river, where I can fish.”
“How do you know there will be a river?” Lucy teased as she often did. “Or even that there will be fish in it?”
“You’ll see,” Demetri grinned at her and Javier silently wagered that they would be the first couple to conceive a child on Colony Alpha.
“And what will you use to build your house?” She wanted to know.
“The ship, of course,” Demetri responded easily – the ship was designed to come apart to build structures on their new home.
“This ugly grey color?” Lucy blanched.
“I leave the decorating to you, woman.” Demetri laughed but the look on Lucy’s face made the jubilant noise soften, and then stop entirely. “I mean…” he stammered with flushed cheeks.
“Nope,” she held up a hand, “No take backs. You build, I decorate.”
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“I don’t know how you stay so perky,” Patrick said and rubbed his face with both hands. He had dark circles under his eyes and his normally pale skin was becoming translucent. “It’s so difficult to adjust to constant darkness. No morning, no sunset…” He said, staring out into the star-filled sky from the cockpit he and Skylar shared.
In stark contrast, Skylar’s skin was often flushed with excitement, making her look healthy and unaffected by low gravity or time disorientation. “Are you kidding?” She asked. “This is the best vacation ever!”
Patrick laughed, “I don’t think that word means what you think it means.” Having two pilots meant that they could only alternate shifts so much. And at times that needed course corrections or a check of the systems, both pilots were needed. Patrick was having a hard time adjusting to a sleep schedule and if he missed some shut-eye, it was difficult to make up. He found himself wondering more and more about the choices World Corp had made in their staffing and planning. He tried not to dwell on the thoughts – telling himself that he was simply unaccustomed to difficult work and stayed silent as to not be labeled an entitled trust fund kid.
“Maybe it would help if you spent more time with the rest of the colony,” Skylar suggested. “I was in the red section just the other day – they hosted a dance and even managed to pull off a live band!”
“Yea, I recall hearing strange noises throughout the ship.”
“It’s called music.”
“If you say so,” Patrick leaned back in his chair with a faint smile. “When I leave here, all I want to do is sleep, if I can.”
“You’ll adjust,” Skylar said with confidence.
He gave her a sideways glance, “You’ve been saying that for three months.”
“Even if you don’t,” she countered, “We’ll be on Colony Alpha before you know it. With your feet firmly back on the ground since you seem to like that so much.”
“And real food,” Patrick said with longing in his voice.
“I saw pumpkin seeds on the inventory list. Can you imagine? Real pumpkin pie!” Skylar exclaimed. “None of that synthetic stuff from back home.” The seeds were genetically replicated from the emergency stores back on earth. Since synthetic food could care for all nutritional needs and finding enough land or facilities to grow in was difficult, the seeds languished in storage, waiting for an effort such as this.
“Don’t tease me,” Patrick warned as his mouth watered. “It makes the rest of the trip seem like an eternity.”
“Colony Alpha is such a boring name,” Skylar changed topics abruptly, leaning back and propping her feet up on one of the consoles. She stared out the giant windscreen and decided, “That should be the first thing we do. Give our new home a good, proper name.”
“Like what?” His tone was dubious.
“Like… like,” She thought hard for a moment – “I don’t know. What would you name it?”
Patrick shrugged. “No idea. Though if the ‘Powers that Be’ back on Earth had named it, it’d probably be called iPlanet with a trademark symbol.”
That made Skylar laugh, which made Patrick laugh because of how infectious hers was. Despite his moments of exhaustion, Skylar somehow always managed to energize him again, if only for a short time.
“Next Gen OMNI,” She suggested when she got a hold of herself.
Patrick chuckled, “Exxon Prime.” He added.
“That’s a good one,” Skylar admitted. Their ship was fueled and partially sponsored by Exxon, making it all that more surprising as to the fact the ship wasn’t named after them. “It’s a new world,” she reminded him. “It would need an inspiring new name without any of the baggage of home.”
“Libero, then.” Patrick said.
“Like, the astrological sign?” Skylar asked.
Patrick shook his head and turned it to look at her directly, “No, Libero means freedom in Latin.”
“What’s Latin?”
“A dead language a people called the Romans used to speak.”
Skylar knit her eyebrows together in confusion, “First I’ve ever heard of them.”
“Most people haven’t. A lot of the histories were lost in the war of 2040.” The war of 2040 had been a religious one – so devastating that the winning world powers decided they should discard religion and all the limitations and backward thinking that came with it altogether – and focus on the future and the future alone. The Romans having such a large role in establishing Christianity were erased from history – made easier by the destruction of much of Europe and the Antiquities.
In lieu of functioning governments, which had been wrecked by the havoc that was modern war, Corporations came together with all their money to privately fund the rebuilding of civilization. From physical rebuilding – entire cities had been razed, including New York City, Dubai, and Tokyo – to psychological rebuilding. Entire servers of history data were deleted and reformatted, effectively cutting off access to the world’s heritage since books had been largely abandoned a decade before.
No longer did corporations need to represent their interests in government – they were the government. Fundraising became obsolete as corporate profits went directly to world leaders and market competition was left in the past with religion. Instead of running a worldwide monopoly, the priority became creating a sustainable quality of life for all in an attempt to reduce the kindling for conflict.
; New philosophies were instilled – those of atheism with an emphasis on science, progress and capitalism. The results were staggering in terms of technological advance – with moral barriers stemming from religion gone, so much had become possible.
Cities were rebuilt with new technology, producing bigger and better buildings, smart and forward thinking infrastructure, the most state of the art public transportation world-wide that connected the world’s population in ways few thought possible. Everything was faster, smarter and constantly improving.
Yet, the trade-off was privacy. Very quickly, the bio-stamp that only the wealthy could afford in the beginning was introduced as mandatory. Large subsidies had been provided to ensure compliance and the initiative was marketed as a peace-keeping effort, along with a quality of life improvement.
A bio-stamp was a paper thin film with tiny circuitry that was inserted just under the skin on the recipient’s dominant forearm. It was powered by the body’s natural electrical field and could hold as well as transmit data or work as a relay. The stamp had several benefits – many of them lifesaving. They were originally designed as medical devices to read and monitor the body’s vital signs in high-risk patients and log them in an OMNI. Bio-stamps would notify a host of a heart attack hours before it happened, report blood sugar levels and even scan for cancer and chemical imbalances associated with dementia and depression. Life expectancy skyrocketed and with data contributed world-wide, breakthrough after breakthrough emerged until many of the diseases that plagued humankind were wiped out of existence. With its medical function depleted, other uses began to emerge – connecting humans to technology directly. It integrated flawlessly with all personal technology, making internet security impenetrable. Hacking personal data became something that only happened in past generations.
It was a flashpoint for human networking and soon, bio-stamps were used to capture every piece of data a human could produce, uniquely identifying them and allowing mass observation of the entire population of Earth. The stamps worked as tracking devices and, with the correct clearance, were easily accessed to gather information about people immediately – their age, origin, any criminal records, service records, drug screening, travel activity – and much, much more. In summary, the stamps represented a record of an entire life past the age of eight years old.
While the stamps were advantageous for most, the lion’s share of the benefits were largely collected by those who had instituted the framework – World Corp. Almost everyone on earth had a baseline level of comfort and security – that was essential, but with population booming and consumerism following, resources became scarce at a dizzying pace. Everyone could benefit from the available technology – every home had a viewer, for instance, but refrigerators were not always full nor the living space around the viewer plentiful.
Worse, the advanced level of automation developed over decades of research forced unemployment to intolerable levels. As a result, production zones were implemented – a place where unskilled labor projects were used to keep much of the population employed. Technology had outpaced social evolution and the class system that existed before the war entrenched itself even more as a result – laborers and military making up the majority, skilled tradesmen and women in the middle, and the corporate executives consisting of the smallest percentage.
The production zones supported major industries and revealed themselves to be a surprisingly successful investment, critical to the profit margin of the corporations of earth due to the low wages but enormous worker base. Population was still outpacing the capacity of production zones, though forcing the world’s leaders to look for other solutions – colonization and expansion.
“How do you know about it, then?” Skylar continued with some curiosity. “If all the histories were lost, how do you know about Romans?”
Patrick considered his response, “My family is a bit eccentric. And… wealthy. They could afford to keep their books during the purge by virtue of their stature. My tutor liked to use them for my sessions instead of the viewer.”
Skylar feigned outrage, “Criminals!” She asserted.
“Guilty as charged. My crime is knowing useless facts.”
“Not so useless,” Skylar disagreed. “I like Libero. What was the Roman word for Home?”
Patrick thought for a moment, “Lorem.”
“Yea,” Skylar nodded. “Now that has a much better ring to it than Colony Alpha.”
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“Don’t you think it’s a little odd?” Ndale asked Luca.
“What?”
“That it’s been three months and the Chinese girl has barely spoken two words to anyone.”
This again, Luca thought as he sighed – for some reason Ndale had taken to creating wild theories about Jia and her silence. “That’s not why I’m here,” Luca pointed out. Ndale lay on his bunk, chewing thoughtfully on a piece of dried synthetic meat as Luca knelt near the foot of the bed. “I was asking you about the instant coffee. Got anymore?”
“Got anything to trade?” Ndale wondered.
Luca put on his best and most trustworthy face before asking, “Take store credit?”
“No,” Ndale didn’t even take a moment to consider it. “Tell you what, though,” he sat up from his bunk and gestured with the dried meat to Jia, who was folding paper by herself at one of the community tables. “You get me her story, and I’ll give you all the instant coffee I have left.”
Luca smiled widely, “Deal.” He said and stuck out his hand. Ndale shook it firmly and Luca turned to consider his task. He may not have been the most accomplished of his family, but his personality did lend itself to making friends. He’d made a lot of questionable friends in his time, but this was different. This was his new start. He would use his powers for good, he told himself.
In the end, he went with the most direct approach. He casually made his way over to the table, pulled out his hand-held and gestured to the seat across from Jia, “Can I sit here?”
Jia looked up mid-fold and nodded after a moment of consideration. He sat and placed his glass device on the table, opened an application and started reading it with feigned interest. After a few minutes of silence between them, he looked up and took notice of the craft she was working on.
“Huh. Paper. You don’t see much of that these days.” Luca observed. She had been using the same piece to fold over many times, making some sort of creature shape with paper. Luca finally recognized it as a frog. All frogs had been extinct on Earth for a long time, but they were still in the database to search and learn about. “Did you bring it with you?”
Jia nodded again.
“Some sort of family tradition?”
She shook her head.
“Where did you learn to do that?” Luca was determined to get a verbal response out of her.
“Grade school,” She answered simply.
“Pretty fancy grade school to have paper!” Luca exclaimed. The fact she had gone to a school at all was impressive. Most children learned at home on the viewer, with confederation curriculum. Glass technology was so pervasive that no home – not even the poorest – went without a viewer. Another thing had surprised Luca – Jia was educated. Children were not sent to grade school just to stop there – it was often a track for graduate school, at minimum. On this point he had, along with many others, assumed Jia was just a simple girl. “So what did you do back at Earth?” He wondered aloud.
“If I tell you, will you share the coffee with me?” She asked, her gaze lifting from her project to give Luca a poignant look.
His cheeks flushed instantly. “S-sure,” he stammered, feeling like he had just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He should have known the woman was a good listener in the absence of speaking herself.
“I worked at a research lab.”
“Doing what?”
“Research,” she answered tersely but cracked the first smile Luca had seen throughout the entire journey thus far.
He smi
led back, “I’m not sure if that will be enough to score us some coffee.”
“We’ll just have to risk it, then.” She said and turned her attention back to the frog and with careful precision, unfolded the paper creature.
Luca stayed a moment longer to see if she might have a change of heart but she remained silent, retreating back into herself as she had grown so known for doing. Finally, he left her to her devices. In his wake, Jia let her hands fold the paper from muscle memory as her mind reluctantly traveled back to the research lab.
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Jia had worked on the Colony One project since the very beginning – from the discovery of a habitable planet to the logistics and planning to get there. Manned space travel was already in practice – all they needed now was a level of certainty and a new class of ship to make the colonization concept a reality.
When their sponsor, World Corp, had learned of the initial discovery, they spared no expense in the research to find a way to travel there. It was a dream job for Jia – fulfilling in every way. The idea of being able to help establish a colony on a planet even better than Earth was one that kept her spirits high every day. Much of Earth’s population was buzzing with excitement and hope at what salvation planets Alpha and Beta could bring – and she could be a part of making it a reality.
For a year, her team worked on various phases of the project and Jia had expected at least half a decade would go by before they could confidently recommend sending fully equipped colonies to the planets that had been discovered. So, just one year into the project, it was beyond shocking to her when she discovered that World Corp was going forward with the construction of Colony One.
Instinctively, she sought an audience with the research director of her program. They had known each other for years – he being only a few years her senior. They attended many of the same schools, had a similar work ethic and the same thirst for knowledge. She felt no hesitation in going to him.
Dr. Ts’ai was a tall man with a thin frame and hair cropped short. He was beginning to see the first few grey hairs peppering his smooth, black hair. She had found him in his office, sitting at his desk, eyes darting from side to side as he worked. He locked the interface when she asked him for a moment of his time.