Stellaris: People of the Stars

by Robert E. Hampson

  These ships will make landfall on distant planets, with different challenges, and in turn choose different responses and solutions. Some consciously and with forethought, some instinctively, and some dictated by passive biological response. For all our differences in language and physical characteristics, Homo sapiens has remained remarkably homogenous, with even tribes and ethnicities separated for thousands of years from others able to reintegrate or at least communicate rather easily. That said, we are also remarkably different, in language, in culture, and especially in biology, with a thousand solutions to a thousand different environmental challenges upon our planet. Flung across a hundred stars, on a thousand planets as different from each other as they are from Earth, with fantastic yet plausible technologies, our children will change in ways that cannot be fully anticipated, some forced by their environments, some through random chance, and some through deliberate remolding of their own clay (see Todd McCaffrey’s story “At the Bottom of the White” and Brent Roeder’s story “Pageants of Humanity”).

  Reuniting will no doubt be challenging. They may find their microbiology or physiology initially incompatible. They may look at their sister colonists’ differently shaped and colored bodies and not recognize their own kinship. They may find the children born of parents from two different worlds unsuitable for either. But we look to the future with hope, that those who solved so many problems will solve these too.

  A FUTURE, IF YOU CAN KEEP IT

  The psychosocial challenges in our reach for the stars will be manifold. The unrelenting sameness of colony-ship travel will place immense demands on individuals’ resilience and optimism, while straining the ability of any crew to maintain cohesion over timescales measured in decades. Familiarity, after all, does breed contempt. Perhaps even more so when high-achieving individuals from different pathways and different perspectives are forced to work together. There will be unavoidable friction between individuals, which if grown to the level of groups or factions, could lead to total failure of the ship and thus the mission.

  The children born between the stars may not be able to adapt to new planets. And those born on new planets will find their early years marked by more demands, more stress, and sadly more death, yet also more opportunity and even meaning than those left behind. Imbuing them with the resilience and skills to handle this brave new world without depriving them of the innocence of youth will be a careful balancing act.

  Humans are not inherently communal—a shared goal is not enough to keep us acting in concert for very long. Yet humans maintain the most complex and persistent cooperative networks of any animal. We are at our best as individuals, working together, bonded by our journey, by the work and the experiences we share, and by the fact that none of us can reach the stars without the others. Reciprocal altruism has always been the way living creatures work best together, and that will be no different in the future.

  Almost two million years ago, a small tribe of Homo ergaster left Africa for unknown environs, and several small groups followed, in different directions, likely never seeing each other again. In doing so they opened up not only the rest of the planet to their descendants but created the fertile substrate for change in which Homo sapiens evolved. As the first colonizing crews leave the heliopause, perhaps they will create the spaces in which Homo stellaris will evolve.

  Exodus

  Daniel M. Hoyt

  Daniel M. Hoyt is a systems architect for rocket trajectory software, a professional SF/F author, and an expert on royalty calculations for indie presses. Since his first sale to Analog, Dan has appeared in other magazines and anthologies, notably Transhuman, all three of the Baen Suburban Fantasies edited by Esther Friesner, and Mike Brotherton’s groundbreaking Diamonds in the Sky. Dan has also edited two anthologies, Fate Fantastic and Better Off Undead. He is working on sequels to his debut space opera novel, Ninth Euclid’s Prince, and a collaboration with his wife, Sarah A. Hoyt. Someday, he may even update www.danielmhoyt.com.

  “When you said you wanted to go on your junior year abroad, we thought you meant France, not the Moon!” Virginia Grant’s mother, Helen, cried. Her normally youthful, sun-kissed complexion darkened, revealing her true age in a flash. Her husband, Aaron, nodded and puckered his lips as if he’d just bitten into a bitter lemon, but said nothing.

  Ginny sighed. “I said I was going on a lunar year abroad.”

  “But why?” Helen wiped away her tears dramatically to punctuate her distress. “Why the Moon?”

  “You always hear what you want, not what I say, Mom. I’ve always wanted to go to space. I made no secret of this, ever. But that doesn’t fit with your perfect-daughter strawwoman.” Ginny hauled her heavy backpack off the floor at her feet, grunting. “I knew this would be a waste of time.” She plopped the backpack into her lap, waiting for the next phase of the argument: Dad logic.

  “Now listen here, young lady,” Aaron chimed in, as if on cue. “We didn’t pay all that money for you to get three degrees just to flush them down a toilet. We still don’t understand why you didn’t want a useful degree, like Sociology or Art History or even Political Science, but we supported your decision to go into STEM, didn’t we? Even when you added new more useless majors?”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  “What would you even do with biology in space?”

  “You’re kidding, right? You’ve seen all the documentaries on The Exodus, haven’t you? The colony starship they want to launch in two years?”

  Helen sniffed. “Of course, dear. Is that what this is all about? You want to get away from us so badly, you’re willing to go to, to, wherever it was, to…out there?”

  “Proxima Centauri b. That’s where The Exodus is going. And, no, Mom, I’m not trying to go with them. There’s still a lot of science fiction that needs to become actual science before the launch can happen. It will probably get delayed a few more times while the technology catches up to the vision. The passenger list has been filled for the better part of a decade, anyway, so I wouldn’t be able to go, even I wanted to.” Ginny struggled to her feet. “But I want to help. I want to be there for the launch, knowing I’d made a difference, done something that helped them get there. I’ve been working toward this since they announced the project when I was thirteen.” She spun on her heel and stomped to the door.

  “Now listen here, young lady,” her father called, but she didn’t hear anything more after slamming the door behind her.

  * * *

  Ginny chucked her backpack into her Tesla Model H Anniversary Edition and settled into the passenger compartment, scrabbling for a tissue. Salty streaks staining her face, she swiped at them and blew her nose into the now damp tissue. A mist of antibacterial orange burst from the roof-mounted vents, settling over her.

  “Would you like to go home, Ms. Grant?” The Tesla auto-navigator waited patiently for an answer.

  “Home, James.”

  Her Tesla ascended into the sky traffic smoothly, as always, while Ginny fumed.

  What did she have to do to get it across to her parents that she could never be happy staying on Earth, not after The Exodus had been announced? It was space, wasn’t it? It had been more than a century since the Golden Age of Science Fiction introduced humans to the possibility of space travel in an earnest, concrete way, and humanity embraced the concept with open arms. Ginny had embraced the concept, too, with more than just her arms. Her mind, her soul, her very being was imbued with the quest. Her parents just didn’t see it through their self-imposed blinders.

  That first announcement was it for her, the missing piece of the puzzle that was Ginny. She knew what she wanted to do with her life from that moment on. The Jacobsen–White variation of the Alcubierre warp drive appeared to work, at least on a model scale, stoking a fever for anything interstellar and laying the foundation for a legitimate star-colony program, a fever that burned hot even after the results of the JAWW drive testing was revealed to be inconclusive. The star-colony program didn’t fall apart, a
s the Fix Earth First organization predicted, it just retooled for the technology that could be used for an interstellar voyage—a relatively slow stroll to Alpha Centauri at one percent the speed of light, for a voyage of about 425 years. Two years later, The Exodus was announced, with those limits in mind—along with a widespread hope that those limits could be changed by the time of the actual launch.

  By then, Ginny was all-in for space, deftly shifting the focus of her classes science-ward, abandoning the arts curriculum her parents had been pushing on her since birth. Fervent Feffers—as the press dubbed members of the Fix Earth First Society—for longer than she’d been alive, the Grants had insisted that Ginny learn their worldview first, before any others, and understand the dangers humanity posed to the Earth. It wasn’t that Ginny didn’t agree with any of the Feffer propaganda—some of it was based in actual science, but some was no better than pseudoscience extrapolated from what amounted to shock-inducing projections from drug-induced visions by nonscientists. Ginny just couldn’t get on board with the Feffers’ stated goal, Fix Earth First. The Feffers were committed to opposing anything relating to space, because the Earth wasn’t yet perfect, by whatever measure the Feffers were using, and humanity had no right to go to space while the Earth was still in need of Feffer assistance.

  During Ginny’s formative years, along with the Feffer agenda, she’d managed to study history. Apparently, the Feffers had reached different conclusions than she, since she saw the imperial expansion of civilizations like Rome and China as the cures for their sicknesses, rather than the causes. Expansion brought new knowledge, new ways of thought, new technologies, new techniques for coping with the problems they experienced at home. If humanity wasn’t getting along well with Earth, then it was time to expand beyond Earth’s boundaries, think outside the dome, and maybe figure out how to fix that broken relationship.

  For Ginny, the only answer for the questions raised by Feffers was the stars.

  “Arriving home, Miss Grant.”

  Ginny sighed. At least the journey home from her parents didn’t take 425 years.

  * * *

  “Ginny, you okay?” Robert asked over the v-comm while munching on an unnaturally bright orange bioengineered carrot. Worry lines creased his upraised brow, his soft chocolate brown eyes opened wide with alarm. He’d known Ginny since she was an eight-year-old know-it-all, and nothing could ever ruin their fierce friendship.

  Ginny brushed aside long wisps of strawberry blonde bangs and forced a smile. “I’m okay, Rob, really. I just had a little argument with Mom and Dad.”

  Robert grinned. “So, Tuesday.”

  “Pretty much, just ten times worse. Mom broke down in crocodile tears, and I left. I just got home.”

  “What happened? Did you tell them you’re adding an aeronautical engineering minor?”

  Ginny smirked around her sniffles. “Not yet. I told them I applied for a fellowship on the Moon.”

  Robert whistled. “That must have been fun. No wonder they lost their minds. I take it the Feffers would prefer you stay closer to home? Canada? England? Australia?”

  “France, to be exact.” She sighed. “At least they figured I’d go somewhere English isn’t spoken. At least not English as we know it.”

  Robert shook his head. “Yeah, Moonish is trippy. It’s like a mashup of tech acronyms, Latin and some Greek, all glued together with English syntactical construction. Gyrizo lavi PVC valvae.”

  “Anglicus triumphos, filha da puta!”

  “Wait, was that Portuguese? No fair, you brat!” Robert blinked as the words sank in. “What did you say about my mother?”

  Ginny giggled. “I was thinking of my mother, actually.”

  “Well, that’s all right then.” He waggled a finger at her mock-menacingly. “But don’t say anything like that again, young lady, or I’ll take you over my knee and spank you.”

  “You wish.” Ginny immediately wished she’d kept her mouth shut; the conversation stopped abruptly after the mildly salacious exchange. Ginny knew Robert liked her, but he didn’t share her passion for space, so a romantic relationship was out of the question. She mentally kicked herself for encouraging his inappropriate thoughts.

  Robert cleared his throat. “Seriously, Gin, you’re actually going?”

  “I hope so. I’ll find out next week.”

  “You know I’ll miss you.”

  “Yeah, of course I do. I’ll miss you, too. You’re my bestest friend; always will be, even if I’m on the Moon without you.”

  “I’ll only be a v-call away, Rob. You know that.”

  “I know. Still—”

  “And I might not even get in,” Ginny added quickly, before he could dig another romantic hole for himself.

  “You’ll get in, Red, you know you will.” Robert ticked off her majors on his fingers. “Biology, chemistry, physics, and now aero engineering.” He paused. “I feel like such a slacker with just mechanical and electrical engineering. Why wouldn’t they want you? They still need to figure out cryonics for a voyage that long, and your skillset is perfect for that. If anyone can figure it out, it’s you.”

  “I’m still just a student, Rob. There’s probably some Nobel laureate out there that will figure it out before I ever get a chance even to work on it.”

  “You’ll get it, I promise. I believe in you, even if you don’t.”

  Ginny blushed. “Thanks, Rob. You always make me feel better after an argument with my parents.”

  “That’s what…friends are for, Gin. You can always count on me.”

  The slight pause and emphasis on the word “friends” wasn’t lost on Ginny, but she stuck to her no-romance rule. “I know, Rob. Gotta go now.” She broke the v-comm before Rob could see her tear up.

  * * *

  An excruciatingly five-day wait later, Ginny had an answer on the fellowship. When her v-mail announced the v-message, she stopped julienning some bio-carrots so abruptly she nearly slashed her hand. Shaking, she swallowed back bile, dropped everything onto the cutting board and dug her fingernails into her palms.

  “Read vee mail from Lunar Fellows.”

  “Congratulations, Virginia Grant. You have been accepted for the Preparation Team on Lunar Base C, pending skills and language assessments and completion of physical preparation courses. If you wish to accept, please respond to the Prep Team within the next three days. Again, congratulations, neosyllektos.”

  Ginny took a deep breath and tried hard to calm her nerves. “Call Mom.”

  The v-comm zizzed to life, and a hologram of her mother’s upper body and head appeared over the island stove.

  “Hello, dear,” Helen sniffed. “Are you done ignoring us now? We’ve left several messages.”

  “I got in, Mom. I’m going to the Moon.”

  Helen’s mouth formed an “O” and her face crumpled, as if she’d just been stabbed in the back. “Right now?”

  “No, Mom, not right now. Next summer. I have to train all school year so I can pass the physical exams. I could do the Moonish exam tomorrow, if I needed to; I’ve been studying it for five years already. And I know I’ll pass the skills assessment.” Ginny smiled. “Especially with my new classes in aerospace engineering.”

  “Your what?” Helen looked thunderstruck. “Aaron!” she called off-screen. “AARON!” She looked back at her daughter murderously. “You added more useless STEM classes? Without even telling us? AARON!”

  Her father’s holo-torso muscled into view, partially pushing his wife’s view out of the v-field. “What’s this I hear about more STEM, young lady? Why? When does it stop?”

  “I needed to add them, Dad. I’ll need them on the Moon.”

  “Good lord, that nonsense again?”

  “Yes, Dad. The Moon nonsense. It’s real; I’ve been accepted.”

  Aaron Grant opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He closed it again and opened it once more, with the same result. He closed his mouth and pivoted to his wife, muttering just one word.
“Helen?”

  “And she’s taking more STEM classes!”

  “I don’t care about that. She’s going away! Forever! And you’re worried about some classes?”

  “I’m not going away forever, Dad. It’s just a year. Lunar year abroad, remember?”

  Her mother’s lips compressed into a straight line. “It might as well be forever.”

  Ginny rolled her eyes. “It’s just a year. And I’ll have my degrees when I’m done. It’s kind of a work-study thing; they’ll pay me enough to cover school expenses and the work credits will fulfill my senior study requirements. I’ve checked into it all.”

  Aaron’s forced smile held no mirth. “And you’ll never come back to us after that.”

  It wasn’t a question, and Ginny realized with a start that he was probably right. Once she set foot on the Moon, she might not come back to Earth again, if it all worked out. If she did good work, if they liked her, if she got any job offers on the Moon after she graduated, if she managed to realize her dream to be a small part of The Exodus launch.

  That was a lot of ifs, though, and Ginny knew it.

  “It’s not forever,” she rasped through dry lips after too long a silence, but her father had already zizzed away into nothingness by then.

  * * *

  “I’m impressed, Ms. Grant; frankly, I didn’t expect favorable results.” Ginny’s team’s boss, Harold Juniper, a mousy man with no facial hair except a bushy gray moustache, regarded her from behind thick glasses as he sipped on a can of fizzy water.

  “I’m glad we exceeded your expectations, Mr. Juniper. However, I would like to point out that the cryobiosis techniques our team developed only kind of imitate suspended animation, and only for a relatively short time. We can only use it reliably for a day or two. But it’s promising.”