Chapter Text
Things get damaged, things get broken
I thought we'd manage
But words left unspoken left us so brittle
There was so little left to give
Precious, Depeche Mode
The year was 4078, and at long last, a one-world government had been formed.
Humans were finally forced to come together by the seemingly insoluble climate and population problems on Earth. The newly formed government was forced to make horrific decisions to try and save the human race, which was threatened with destruction as a result of the terrible mismanagement of its own resources. The population had grown far beyond what the Earth could support. Climate change had hampered their ability to feed themselves, and the extreme weather severely limited the habitable regions of the Earth. There were no more wars and no major diseases. Astonishing medical leaps had pushed the average life expectancy to well over 250 years. The population explosion of the second half of the 3000's had been seriously underestimated and there was simply no room for newborns.
New doctrine worldwide emergency laws had been enacted to contain the frightening pace of population growth. All children were sterilized at birth as a temporary means of slowing it down. Those who escaped the unflinching application of these new laws, being born before they came into effect, were forcefully sterilized. Legal authorization was required before anyone was allowed to bring new children into the world, but such authorization was rarely given, limited to people who could afford to bribe the final decision-makers, or of important government rank.
Any failures from the sterilization programs that resulted in accidental pregnancy were forced to abort. The punishment for hiding such pregnancies and carrying to term were harsh; resulting in heavy fines and prison sentences for both parents. Any child born without authorization would be confiscated for various scientific projects, that was the punishment for the first offense. Execution by lethal injection was reintroduced for an unthinkable second infraction.
The value of life for anyone other than the privileged elite diminished to the point that it could be readily sacrificed in the so-called best interests of the human race..
As time passed, more extreme measures had to be taken to ensure the survival of the human race. By the end of the third millennium, each and every aspect of human life was quantified and controlled— from what they wore, to what they ate, to where they lived. Everything was carefully portioned to ensure adequate distribution of the precious, finite resources.
But as Earth's resources continued to dwindle; it was realized that still MORE had to be done
Mass executions were scheduled to be performed on groups considered to be undesirable; the rebellious, the religious, the criminals, all who chafed at the extreme rules.
Each group was collected and presented with the choice— Leave or die.
An eccentric millionaire had funded a top secret program back in the twenty-first century through the now defunct NASA space program. He had foreseen what was to come. He had understood the enormity of the situation and taken action. In 2026, they sent off a thousand pods, each one aimed at a different planet, in a different solar system. Each pod had the stuff of life wrapped up inside and was programmed to land on an undeveloped world in hopes of terraforming it. The planets were selected carefully in hopes that they had the right mixture of minerals and gasses already present. Combined with the concentrated amino acids, genetic material, and accelerators in the pods, in a few thousand years, a somewhat, earth-like planet might evolve.
Might. That was the key word. The pods were not space age Noah's Arks, filled with the specific DNA of humans, horses, cats, and dogs. They were more like seeds being planted. All they would do is get the ball rolling— in the hope that in a thousand years, in two thousand years, when the first settlement ship touched down, they'd settle on a new world, with a breathable atmosphere and full of protein-based life. How that life developed was up to chaos, chance, and the particular balance of elements preexisting on the world in question.
It was hypothesized that about fourteen of the pods were successful. That fourteen planets possibly existed with an environment compatible for human life.
The so called ‘undesirables’ were essentially committing suicide and they knew it. There was no guarantee that the world their ship would land on would be compatible. There was no guarantee they wouldn’t burn to death on a planet too close to its sun or freeze in an unending winter, no guarantee that the current animal population wouldn’t annihilate them in seconds, Or that the bacteria and viruses they had no immunity to wouldn’t wipe them out at first breath.
They were given everything needed to set up a colony. The vessels which carried them were the size of cities and capable of sustaining life for hundreds of years; the time necessary to travel unimaginable distances measured in many light years while they slept the decades away. Due to the limitations of space travel and the time it took to get to the outlying planets, situated in far flung corners of the known galaxies; most of the passengers on these vessels were placed into cryosleep. It was an incredible technology capable of suspending the body’s autonomic functions while maintaining the health of each individual cell during stasis. They were essentially frozen for centuries.
What wasn't realized until it was too late was that these ships were the last hope of humankind.
A hundred years after the first shuttle was launched and two hundred years before the first shuttle would arrive on its planet; the star Alpha Centauri fell victim to a runaway nuclear fusion and went supernova. It lay a scant 4 light-years from Earth. Had the star simply collapsed and gone thermonuclear on its own, the Earth would have been spared. But Alpha Centauri wasn’t one star, it was a system of three stars. The largest of the two were a binary pair, orbiting a common center of gravity every 80 years. Alpha Centauri A was just a little more massive and brighter than the Sun, and Alpha Centauri B being slightly less massive than the Sun. The third member of the system was the faint red dwarf star, Proxima Centauri.
Alpha Centauri pulled in both of its companion stars as it died, due to the intense gravitation pull of a collapsing star. The additional mass exponentially increased the intensity of the supernova. As soon as the core of the star collapsed, the out of control thermonuclear fission reaction emitted a massive explosion. As soon as the blast reached the Earth’s solar system, the gaseous atmospheres of every planet inside burned off in seconds. Every living creature on earth was killed in one fell swoop by a freak interplanetary accident.
The only humans left alive were those still sleeping on the ships.
Fourteen of the ships were sent out. Four simply did not reach their planets and were lost to time and space. Two were burned up in entry and crash-landed on the surface. Six colonies perished in the first hundred years due to starvation, exposure or hostile alien life.
Of the fourteen, only two colonies of settlers survived. One ship was filled with a radical religious sect, the other with the most dangerous criminals known to mankind.