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MidReal Story
Last Voyage
Anonymous
Jul 16
Scenario:Alone in the interstellar space, destined to discover new worlds as being the last hope of a diminishing humanity...
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“I can’t believe we’re actually doing this.” I shook with excitement and fear wrapped around my heart, a knot that twisted with every beat.
I was finally going to get my chance to explore — really explore — and I didn’t know if I should dance with joy or tremble with dread.
“After all the years of planning, of setbacks and delays, it doesn’t seem real.” Dr.
Alexander Stone, my mentor, the man who’d saved me from myself and my own stupidity, stood beside me with his hands clasped behind his back and a far-off look in his eyes.
He was a scientist of the old school, a man who’d spent decades studying and learning, and now that it was time to put that knowledge to work, he was like a kid in a candy store.
Today was the day that we would embark on a journey that had taken hundreds of years to plan.
Humanity was sending us out into the great beyond in search of a new planet.
We were on the brink of collapse, our population having grown to the point that we were running out of resources.
Climate change had destroyed huge swaths of land, and our world was no longer able to support us.
But we weren’t going out just for exploration’s sake.
We were searching for a new home, because Earth was dying and our only chance for survival was to find another planet.
Dr.
Stone had spent much of his adult life searching for an answer to our dilemma, and when it became clear that Earth was dying, he’d turned his attention toward finding us a new place to live.
He believed that someone, somewhere out there in the universe, would take pity on us and help us survive.
And so that’s what we planned to do — head out into the great unknown and hope against hope that we found something out there that would keep humanity alive.
The Ulysses had been built as the latest in a long line of ships designed to save humanity from itself.
It was not the first ship to leave Earth — not by a long shot — nor would it be the last.
But it was the best built, designed to travel farther than any other ship built before it and for longer as well.
It was also one of two ships being launched toward the same distant star.
The other ship, named Odyssey, would be traveling slightly off course, but both of us were racing toward our goal in the hopes that one of us would get there first.
We were also not alone.
While there were only twenty-eight of us aboard Ulysses, we were one of dozens of ships launched during this same time frame.
There were thousands of crew members out there, all working toward the same goal — finding humanity a new home.
It wasn’t just a pipe dream, either.
The scientists who’d worked on this problem had long since learned how to make people live forever — or at least until we found another planet.
Now it was up to us to succeed in our mission or die trying.
I still couldn’t believe how huge the Ulysses was — or how complex.
I’d expected a spaceship, something like the ones I’d seen in movies.
Something sleek and sexy — not three kilometers long and almost as wide in some places.
The Ulysses had so many different sections that it looked like someone had taken several different ships and jammed them together in an unholy marriage of engineering and design.
We had living quarters and research labs — two things I’d expected — but we also had a military annex and an entertainment sector.
The ship had been designed to be fully self-sufficient, able to house our crew — which included scientists, engineers, and military personnel — for years as we traveled out into interstellar space in search of signs of life.
Our journey would take us through the Taurus Dark Cloud — an area of space so dense with gas and dust that it blocked the light from billions of stars — before we even entered the system where we would start looking for life.
And we wouldn’t stop there.
We’d be exploring multiple star systems as part of our mission, and the Ulysses had been designed to make that possible, with technology so advanced that I hardly knew what to do with myself when I was in some of the labs and rooms on board.
Even now, I had no idea how they’d managed to get all of this stuff onto one ship, let alone how it managed to stay in space with everything that had been crammed onto it, but I supposed that was above my pay grade.
There was also an entire hydroponics deck, complete with labs and greenhouses, where food would be grown for us to eat during our exploration of this new system.
I wondered if we’d have steak or something else fancy to celebrate our departure, but I didn’t ask for fear that it would make me sound like an idiot in front of my superiors.
I’d worked too hard for too long just to get here to blow it now by asking stupid questions.
As we stood there, watching the crew on the ground below us finish up their last-minute preparations, I felt my heart begin to race with excitement and fear all over again, and I knew that there was no way to calm myself down until we were underway and I could finally start doing what I’d spent my whole life training to do — explore and learn new things.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, or even what we might find, but I was definitely looking forward to finding out.
I was one of the first people on board, which wasn’t really a surprise given the fact that I was an explorer and therefore had more experience with new situations than just about anybody else on the entire ship.
I’d never been on a ship as large as the Ulysses before, but it didn’t really matter — a ship was a ship, and the procedures for boarding them were all basically the same, no matter how big they might be or where they might be going.
At least, that was what I’d always been told, and so far, it seemed to be true.
“Nova.” Dr.Stone nodded at me as he approached, his grey hair sticking out every which way from his head, and his glasses perched precariously on the edge of his nose like they might fall off at any moment.
“You’re the last one here.”
“Yes, sir.” My heart skipped a beat when he said my name — it always did — and I felt a thrill of excitement run through my veins at the thought of having been called up here to be part of this crew.
It was an honor, and a responsibility, that was not lost on me, and there was no way that I planned on letting him or anybody else down because I had failed to take it seriously enough.
“Are we ready?”
“I think so.” Dr.Stone nodded at me again and handed me a sealed envelope that I knew contained orders and instructions for me to follow as soon as we arrived in the new system.
I’d been told that I wasn’t to open it until we were actually underway and there was nothing else to be done but to go about the business of finding a new home for humanity, but I didn’t think I’d need any such reminder.
After all, there was no way that I planned to let myself forget about the mission that had been entrusted to me — not after I’d worked so hard to get here in the first place.
“Then let’s do this.” Dr.Stone turned and walked onto the ship without another word, and I fell into step beside him as we made our way through the corridors to our shared quarters, which were just off of the bridge itself.
Despite its size, it didn’t take us long to board and find our way to our rooms — it was only a matter of minutes before we heard the call for final boarding and then felt the ship shake and shudder as it lifted off and headed for space.
When I looked out of the small window in my room and saw Earth disappear from my view, I felt both like crying and laughing at the same time — like crying because I was leaving everything I had ever known behind and might never be able to return to it again, but like laughing because I was so excited about going into space and seeing something new for the first time in what felt like forever.
I had no idea how long it would take us to get there, but even if it took a hundred years, I wasn’t sure it would be enough time for me to see everything there was to see or do everything there was to do.
