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MidReal Story
Starbound Secrets: A Journey Beyond the Unknown
Anonymous
May 20
Scenario:A wacky generation ship with an uncertain destination.
Create my version of this story
The Odyssey was a generation ship, and we were the first generation.
We were born in space, and we would die in space.
The ship was our world, and we would never see another.
We had been traveling for twenty years, and we had another twenty to go.
Our parents had been the ones to leave Earth behind, to board the Odyssey and set out for a new planet.
They would never see it, but their children would.
That was what they told us, anyway.
I wasn’t so sure I believed them.
The Odyssey was a big ship—bigger than any of us could have imagined before we’d come aboard her—but it wasn’t that big.
And there were only a few hundred of us on board.
If there was room for thousands of people on the Odyssey, why hadn’t more people come?
Why hadn’t more people left Earth behind?
I’d asked my mother that once, when I was little.
I hadn’t really understood what she meant back then, but I did now.
And that was why the few hundred of us who were on board the Odyssey had been left behind.
We were the ones who hadn’t been loved.
We were the ones who hadn’t been wanted.
My mother had died when I was small, and I didn’t remember my father at all.
But I had friends.
I had my captain and my navigator, and we’d grown up together.
We stood on the bridge of the Odyssey, looking out at the stars that had brought us so far from everything we’d ever known.
Our parents had told us about them, about the places they’d come from and the things they’d seen.
But we’d grown up on the Odyssey, and we would die here, too.
Astrid poked her head out from under the control panel and glared at me.
“Don’t you have work to do?”
she demanded, her dark eyes flashing with annoyance.
I sighed and checked my wristcomp.
She was right.
The system was running fine, and I should be working on the next one.
“Fine,” I said with a mock-salute, and I turned to go just as Marcus came down the corridor toward me.
He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a stern face that always made him look a little angry, even when he wasn’t.
His hair was dark, like mine, and he kept it cropped short so that it wouldn’t get in his way when he was flying.
“Elara,” he said, a smile flickering over his face for just a moment before it disappeared again.
“Captain,” I corrected him with a grin.
I liked to remind him of that, to remind him that I wasn’t just one of his crew—I was one of his friends, too.
I wasn’t just a mechanic—I was also his mechanic, the one he trusted to see to his ship when no one else could.
Marcus rolled his eyes at me, but he didn’t say anything.
He knew how much it annoyed me when he didn’t call me by my name, and he did it anyway, just to get a rise out of me.
“I need to talk to you,” he said instead, looking around to make sure no one was listening in.
I glanced back at Astrid, who was already heading down to the next deck, before I turned back to him.
“Talk to me about what?”
I asked, but he didn’t answer me.
He just took my arm and started walking in the opposite direction, toward his quarters at the other end of the ship.
Marcus wasn’t just my captain—he was also my best friend—and if something was bothering him, then I wanted to know what it was.
“Is everything all right?”
I asked as we walked.
He didn’t answer that, either, but I could see the worry in his eyes, even though he wouldn’t look at me.
And they had left her behind forever—her oceans and her mountains and her forests—and said goodbye to the only home they’d ever known because she was dying and they knew that she couldn’t survive for much longer.
They were Earth’s children, but they weren’t her last children.
There were others who had been left behind for reasons of their own—orphans who hadn’t been loved enough to be brought along, children who hadn’t been wanted enough to be taken with them—and those children had become a new race, a new people, born in space and raised on board the Odyssey.
We were a generation who would never know Earth or anything like her—a generation who would never know what it was like to set foot on a planet or to feel the sun on our faces or to breathe fresh air that wasn’t recycled through a filter because there wasn’t enough of it to go around.
And we were a generation who would never know why our parents had left Earth behind or why they’d needed to say goodbye forever instead of just for a little while.
But we knew that it had been hard for them to do it—to leave their home and everything they’d ever known behind—and we knew that they’d cried for her as we sailed away into the darkness.
And maybe that was why they’d left Earth behind forever—because they’d known that if they’d stayed with her for much longer, then they wouldn’t have had the strength to leave at all.
Our parents had said goodbye to Earth forever because she was dying.
But we were still children, and we had been born when she was still alive.
She lived on in our stories and our lessons and our dreams.
We were taught about her by those who had known her best and loved her most, and she had become a place of wonder and mystery and magic.
We were told about her oceans and her mountains and her forests, about the animals who roamed her lands and the people who had built cities in her name.
We were told about what it felt like to stand beneath a waterfall or to swim in a river or to watch a rainbow stretch across the sky after a storm.
We knew that these things were real—that there were still places on Earth where you could see them for yourself.
And we knew that we would see them someday, too.
Our parents hadn’t said goodbye to Earth forever because we would never see her again.
They’d said goodbye to her forever so that we could see her again instead.
The Odyssey was a generation ship on an endless journey through the stars, and we were on board as part of a mission to find a new home for humanity after Earth’s resources became too depleted to sustain human life.
The idea of setting foot on an actual planet was still an abstract concept for us, something we could only experience vicariously through books or VR simulations.
Our life was defined by the walls of the Odyssey, not by what lay beyond them.
It had always been this way, ever since our parents had left Earth behind and set out on this long journey to find us somewhere new to live.
For them, it had been an act of selflessness—to leave behind everything they knew and loved so that their children could have a chance at life elsewhere.
After all, when they set out on the Odyssey, they’d always known that they would never return.
I wonder, sometimes, if they ever regretted that choice.
If they ever wished that they could go back and live their lives on Earth instead of spending them in the vast emptiness of space, far away from the only home they’d ever known.
I wonder if they ever wished that they hadn’t had to say goodbye to Earth forever or that they could have stayed with her and fought for the right to live there as well.
I wonder if they ever wished that they could have had everything—both Earth and the stars—and not just one or the other.
But I also think about what Earth would have been like, if we’d stayed or if we’d never left at all—if our parents had been forced to watch as she withered and died, taking humanity down with her as she went.
And I think that maybe, just maybe, this is how our parents felt too—that they loved Earth too much to watch as she died, but they loved Earth too much to leave her behind either.
And even though it hurt them to go, perhaps there was no other choice in the end.
The stories told by our parents always painted Earth in two starkly different lights—beautiful and flawed, perfect and broken, tragic and hopeful—and I suppose that maybe this is how we were meant to remember her.
They told us about the pollution and the overpopulation and the wars fought over dwindling resources, about the way that mankind had taken so much and given back so little in return.
They told us about how they’d poured all of their resources into trying to find a new home for us because they needed us to know that life didn’t have to be like this—that we could start again somewhere else and do better this time around.
They told us about how they’d said goodbye to Earth because they’d known that there was no other way to save her.
But they also told us that despite everything, Earth was still beautiful—that even in her darkest moments, she was capable of producing breathtaking moments of serenity and peace.
They told us about the sunsets that painted the sky in a thousand colors or the smell of rain on parched earth or the feeling of sand between their toes as they walked along the beach.
They told us about how life had always found a way to persevere, even in the face of insurmountable odds.
And maybe this was what they needed to remember too—that even though Earth was dying, she was still capable of producing moments of unimaginable beauty.
And maybe this is what they held onto as they set out on this long journey through space—that even though Earth was gone, she would never be forgotten.
That her memory would live on in all who traveled with her aboard the Odyssey.
