Stellaris: People of the Stars

by Robert E. Hampson

  She closed her eyes and kissed him, hard.

  * * *

  “Sorry to wake you, Ms. Grant, but I couldn’t wait.”

  Benson Mgatha’s booming basso voice echoed through Robert’s bedroom. His voice was well known to anyone on the Moon.

  “One-way holo,” she directed. The familiar chocolate skin and shocking white curls of the charismatic architect of The Exodus mission zizzed to life in front of her. “Sorry, sir, I’m not decent.”

  In fact, she was completely naked, despite instinctively gathering some of the bed sheets to cover her chest. She glanced behind her and realized Robert’s bare chest would have been in view, as well.

  “That’s quite all right, Ms. Grant. I knew I’d be waking you. I take no offense.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “You’re welcome. I’ll come straight to the point. As you likely know, the crew roster for The Exodus has been filled since nearly the beginning of the project.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What you may not know is that occasionally substitutions must be made. It has been quite a long time, after all. Some of the crew elected not to participate after waiting so long with repeated launch rescheduling. Some are victims of accidents. You get the idea.”

  “Of course.”

  “I personally select their replacements. Replacements that impress me. Replacements like you.”

  Ginny blinked. “Me?”

  “Yes, you. I’ve watched your progress since the board first extended a fellowship to you. You have impressed me.”

  “Me?”

  The architect laughed heartily. “I was disappointed when I first heard of your resignation, but then I realized it was an opportunity that I felt would benefit us both.”

  Ginny opened her mouth, but only managed to croak.

  “How would you like to accompany me on the maiden voyage of The Exodus?”

  * * *

  “You know I have to do this.”

  Ginny stared into Robert’s eyes for the last time, memorizing the dark green circle around his brown irises. She ran her fingers lightly over his sandpapery cheeks, his silky hair. She breathed in his slightly tangy scent and closed her eyes, drawing close to his chest one last time.

  “I know. The stars call you; they always have.”

  She whispered, “That’s why I never wanted this to happen between us.” She looked up at him. “But I’m glad it did.”

  “So am I,” Robert choked. “So am I. I love you, Ginny. I always will; no matter where you are, no matter how far away. Remember that.”

  “I love you, too,” she whispered.

  Pulling away from his embrace was the hardest thing she ever did, but it was the right thing to do, and they both knew it. Robert could change, did change for her, she knew that. He’d never had the urge to go to space, never saw it as his destiny like she did. But he followed her to the Moon, anyway, and she knew he’d follow her to Proxima b if he could.

  But he couldn’t.

  He needed an invitation from the architect, and that was one thing she couldn’t give him.

  She would go alone.

  She had no problem leaving behind her estranged parents. They’d gone full-on Feffer with a vengeance, so much so that she’d stopped inquiring about them, for fear that one day the answer would be too heinous to consider.

  She had no problem leaving behind her coworkers and the few friends she’d made on the Moon. They all knew she’d leave eventually, and so did she, so Ginny hadn’t really formed close attachments.

  Except for Robert. That hurt, but this was her dream, her life, and he would never forgive her if she stayed. He knew she had to go and why, knew he had to let her go, no matter how much it hurt him. He’d carry those scars the rest of his life, but he wouldn’t hold her back. He loved her too much.

  “I have to go.”

  * * *

  Ginny stared out the viewport at Proxima Centauri b, far below the orbiting spacecraft. The swirls of ice blue and deep purple painting its surface were especially striking today. She’d made the voyage in The Exodus well over a year ago, one of the select pioneers chosen to try to establish a colony on Proxima b.

  They still hadn’t done it, but they were making progress, even in the face of the fierce stellar winds plaguing its twilight surface.

  They’d learned a lot about Pb—or Lead, as they’d dubbed it, as its initials were the chemical symbol—since they’d arrived nearly seven months after entering the wormhole. The Morris–Thorne prediction-model calculations turned out to be mostly correct for the size of the wormhole generated by the Jeffrey Gate, as had most of their prediction models.

  All except the one Ginny held in her arms. That wasn’t predicted. Two months into a wormhole was an exceptionally bad time to find out you’re pregnant, but she wasn’t about to terminate him, either.

  Two months after arriving at Lead, the first human ever to be born in another solar system arrived in the universe.

  Ginny named him Robert, after the father he would never know. She cried at his birth, but not from the pain of childbirth.

  Now, she held him to her chest and tickled his nose.

  “Look out there, Robert. That’s your world. Lead. You’re the first Leader. The very first. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  Robert cooed.

  “How old is he, now?” Benson Mgatha’s basso boomed behind her.

  Ginny spun around. “Benson! I didn’t know you’d come back from the surface yet.”

  “Just arrived.” He paused for a few seconds, and then added off-handedly, “Little Robert is almost six months old now, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. My little spaceman.” She tickled his chin.

  The architect wandered over to get a closer look. “He looks like his father.”

  “He does.” Ginny tickled him again and was rewarded with another coo and a yawn. It took a few moments before the words registered. “How do you know that? Robert wasn’t on Exodus projects.”

  Benson Mgatha grinned.

  “Maybe because he met me.” Robert’s voice—or at least what Ginny thought she remembered as his voice—came from the hallway.

  Ginny’s heart skipped several beats when Robert—her Robert, in the flesh—stepped into the room.

  She ran to him, careful not to jostle her little spaceman too much and wake him now that he was fast asleep.

  “How?” She looked between him and Benson. “Why?”

  The architect was still grinning. “We’re trying to establish a colony, remember? You just had a head start on the rest of us. You were unmistakably pregnant by the time we got here, so I sent for the child’s father, so that Lead’s very first colonist would have all the love and support he’d need. Morris and Thorne were right about little wormholes, too. Very fast, excellent for communications.”

  Ginny looked out at Lead, looked back at her baby sleeping in her arms, and finally at his smiling father.

  She was finally home.

  Afterword

  Les Johnson

  2 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,

  vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

  3 What does man gain by all the toil

  at which he toils under the sun?

  4 A generation goes, and a generation comes,

  but the earth remains forever.

  10 Is there a thing of which it is said,

  “See, this is new”?

  It has been already

  in the ages before us.

  11 There is no remembrance of former things,

  nor will there be any remembrance

  of later things yet to be

  among those who come after.

  —The Bible, Ecclesiastes 1:2–4, 10–11

  English Standard Version (ESV)

  Times change, and the individuals are different, but the universe and the human condition remain the same. At least, that’s how Solomon saw things as recorded in the Bible; and, based on our understanding of human histo
ry and the best prognostications of the future in much of contemporary science fiction, most of us make this implicit assumption. We have New York Times bestselling novels of the far future with protagonists much like ourselves dealing with and making sense of the world and worlds newly imagined. They may be humans augmented with technology or bioengineered to have nearly infinite lifespans, but by and large, they are still just human, like you and me, encountering their world(s) and making sense of them in much the same fashion as people have done since before the Ecclesiastes was written.

  Writers make this assumption because it is difficult to assume anything else. How many books have successfully described aliens that are truly alien versus those that are basically funny-looking humans, interpreting actions and situations in much the same way as you or me? It is difficult to think differently. How does one think like an alien that likely sees, hears, touches, senses and, most importantly, interprets their environment in ways very distinct and different from all other life on Earth? After all, how many sentient alien civilizations have we encountered and studied so far? (Hint: zero)

  As a scientist, science fiction reader, and writer, I am constantly thinking about the future and the scientific breakthroughs that are happening all around us that will shape it. I’ve read science fiction stories with spaceships traveling faster than light, about future civilizations where interstellar travel is commonplace, and stories that tackle the impact of the information technology revolution in which we become human/machine hybrids. The stories that thoughtfully deal with the downstream biological, sociological, psychological, and societal impacts from these changes are few and far between.

  When we imagine ourselves being on the bridge of a starship exploring new worlds, how do we envision our shipmates? In the United States fifty years ago, the culture imagined a mostly Caucasian human crew with a few people from different ethnic groups thrown in to make us feel better about our willingness to embrace a diverse human future. Just to shake things up, there was even a humanoid alien added to the crew. But he wasn’t really alien; he was just someone with a humanlike personality who happened to be raised on another planet.

  Today, we might envision that starship crew to be yet even more diverse, with those who were obvious minorities fifty years ago now thrust into more leadership positions, although there might still be the one-off humanoid alien to keep it interesting. In other words, we are likely to envision our starship crew as being mostly like ourselves, with our same hopes and fears, our same biological needs, and our same urgent awareness of an all-too-brief lifespan and mortality.

  Who are we missing? The person with bioengineered super strength and super abilities embodied in Timothy Zahn’s Cobras. The higher-IQ humans who don’t waste time with that sleep thing like those in Nancy Kress’s “Sleepless” series. Then there are those among the crew who have had their aging genes turned off, making them, barring an accident, immortal. (If you were immortal, would you risk your life on the edge of known space exploring the universe? I probably would not, and I suspect most of the species would also rather play it safe.)

  Our becoming Homo stellaris won’t be limited to biological augmentation. It is here that science fiction—and humanity—have been treading successfully for quite some time. We will correct our biological defects and augment our physical and mental abilities using computers and general mechanical technologies. We will have optical implants to give us better than 20/20 vision and aural implants to allow us to eavesdrop at will on anyone talking within half a mile of our location. We will have communication implants that will allow us to use future computers (or an evolved version of the internet) sublingually, allowing us instant access to the combined knowledge of all humanity without the need of some external device like cell phones and laptop computers. (I suspect we will, at least some of the time, use this ability to watch cat videos.) Implant-to-implant communication will enable a virtual form of mental telepathy, revolutionizing interpersonal communication. We will become cyborgs.

  In fact, many of us today are, technically speaking, already cyborgs. If you wear glasses or contacts, or have had cataract surgery, then you are partly cybernetic. If you are diabetic and require an insulin pump to keep you alive, then you are a first-generation cyborg. If you have a pacemaker or artificial heart valve, then you, also, are a cyborg. The fact is that many of us are already becoming transhuman and we don’t give it a second thought. Nor, I suspect, will the third or fourth generation of humans who have a computer or electromechanical implant, whether it be enhanced vision or hearing, or those communication implants mentioned earlier. To these future versions of ourselves, they will be as common and mundane as my eyeglasses are to me today.

  Let’s get back to our imagined starship. Would you imagine being on David Brin’s ship Streaker, with intelligent, genetically engineered or “uplifted” dolphins and chimpanzees? If so, then how would you envision working with them? Would the aquatic dolphins be modified to survive outside of a water tank, floating in the zero gravity of deep space along with the humans and chimpanzees? Or would you imagine them being in flooded segments of the ship where you only interact with them via technology? Getting yet more radical, and equally plausible, why not imagine interacting with them in a flooded ship using your gills instead of your lungs to breathe? There is no reason to only modify animals to fit in human environments when we can modify humans to live and work in the environments native to other species.

  In fact, with the current rate of discovery and innovation in the areas of biology and genetic engineering, it is extremely difficult to read stories of humans in the mid-term future (approximately one hundred years from now), let alone stories set more than two hundred years in the future, that don’t deal with fundamental changes in human biology and society. We are soon going to fundamentally alter what it means to be human—or a dolphin—or a chimpanzee. We will be tinkering with our own genome and those of the other animals that inhabit planet Earth with us. This will inevitably alter our social, civil, and political interactions as well. How will society adapt to these changes? When reading about interstellar exploration and wars, outer solar system exploration and colonization, and stories that postulate what life will be like on Earth in that time period without genetically modified humans or cyborgs, suspension of disbelief is the only option.

  We will extend our natural lifespan. Chimeras will abound: some intelligent, some not so much. Augmented humans will be our warriors and explorers. Creatures once human will live in the oceans of extrasolar planets, in the upper atmospheres of planetary gas giants, and on the surfaces of worlds much like Earth but with different atmospheric-gas constituents and ratios.

  Will these be horrific worlds with repression and slavery of new sentient, but low-intelligence species of our own creation? Perhaps. Will there be worlds in which we have tinkered and eliminated most forms of disease and genetic defects? Almost certainly. Will the evolutionary path of humans on Earth be forever altered and diverge rapidly from the augmented evolution we are already rapidly experiencing? Absolutely. Will these changes affect how we interact with one another and our politics? Yes.

  But, in the end, I suspect sentient beings, no matter their form, will be much like us. They will live, learn, love, search for meaning, and ultimately die.

  In other words, as we venture to the stars, people will remain the same—only not so much…

  Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop

  This anthology was inspired by the work of the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop, a group of people who believe that humanity not only can go to the stars one day, but naturally must. They, and participants from across the globe, understand that none alive today are likely to live to see that dream carried out. Nonetheless, they believe it to be a worthy-enough goal to begin the foundational work, and aim to bridge relationships between businesspeople, engineers, ethicists, politicians, military personnel, and artists so that it can become reality. The breadth of specialties here is no ac
cident. Questions surrounding interplanetary and interstellar efforts are as numerous and varied as the people who will eventually spend their lives in the void between planets and stars. Though TVIW was originally a regional organization (viz. the American Southeast), it is now internationally recognized, with its events attracting speakers and attendees coming from all over the world.

  Why does TVIW gather to discuss the challenges and opportunities of interstellar travel? What benefit do we glean from becoming a People of the Stars? We are compelled by our nature to think positively about the future of humanity in a beautiful yet extremely hostile universe. Life on Earth is wonderful and we should do what we can to protect and preserve it here, but there is more to explore. Among the billions of galaxies, stars, and planets, we sense a call to explore. That exploration cannot be haphazard or careless. It cannot unduly endanger the explorers nor the systems into which they travel. Our technological gains are contemptible if we only travel elsewhere to repeat the calamities visited on our own species in the past. That call must be careful, measured, and with the explicit intention of peaceful existence. To do this, we must push boundaries of biological, psychological, and sociological nature.

  TVIW was created to foster and assist the study, research, and experimentation necessary to make human interstellar travel a reality, with untold benefits to life on Earth. TVIW Symposia are opportunities for relaxed sharing of ideas in directions that will stimulate and encourage interstellar exploration. It was at TVIW 2016 that the Homo Stellaris working track was tasked with describing the foundation of a space-based society, the possible adaptations and changes such a society would experience, and the necessary precursors to build the societal will to undertake such missions. Visit TVIW on the web, http://www.tviw.us, for more information about the organization and its activities. While you are there, fill out our contact form. We’d like to hear from you and have you join us in the goal of becoming Homo stellaris, the People of the Stars.