“Yes captain,” he acknowledged.
“Looks like we can depart on schedule sir,” Levi was getting a little excited also.
“Very well, Captain Metcalfe,” the admiral said.
“Sir,” Levi said, “It would be an honor if you would give the word to depart.”
The admiral was a little taken aback, but then composed himself and smiled. “I understand. It would be my honor,” he said. “Helm, verify our course.”
“Helm sir, course verified for Mars orbit, ready for execution.”
“Very well helm. Activate FTL drive and execute.” The ship responded and went on to the start of its mythical journey.
The Last Consortium Meeting
“Sometimes I come here when I need to reflect or I’m depressed,” Matt said. “It is beautiful,” Gwen agreed. “You know I’ve been to a lot of beautiful places on these Hawaiian Islands, but I have never been here before. It’s now my new favorite place.” They were both sitting on a moving bench at sunrise overlooking the ocean right now, but behind them was an impressive waterfall with the lush greenery all around. The moving bench could let you go anywhere inside of its range. You were comfortably restrained so you did not fall out. The operator had simple controls to take you to preset spots in the neighborhood, or you could take the controls yourself and putter around. It was like riding in a two-seated quad-copter except you didn’t have an enclosure. And it was meant to be breathtaking. They were in just the right spot about seventy-five feet in the air over the water in the cove but not too close to the waterfall to be excessively noisy.
“You know,” Matt said, “I’m really going to miss this place!” Tears were starting to run down his face.
“We’ll find something else to call home, Matt. You wait and see.” Gwen patted his hand.
“You don’t understand, Gwen, we have been looking and looking. There’s lots of planets, but they’re all crap! There will never be a place that we can get to, that will even come close to our home.” Matt was upset.
Gwen stroked his hand and spoke to him with a gentle tone, “Look Matt, it’s like a house that you had lived in for decades. Maybe it belonged to family before, so it means a lot personally to you. And then one day, it burns down in a horrible bit of chance. There’s nothing you can do. All your possessions that made you happy in this life are gone. You must pick up what you have left and move on to a new place. It is just like all the displaced people that have had to leave their homes for construction of the Project, unwillingly, to find new homes. Nothing can replace the things you once had or the character of the home that was once about you. It was like a person that you lost. But now you have to find a new home; a new friend. It’s scary, but you learn to manage like we manage all the disappointments we have in our lives. We’ll pick ourselves up and manage to make a home somewhere else. We’ll make it our own and give this new place our own personal touch. You’ll see.”
Matt was crying softly again, “You’re a good friend Gwen; you know that. I’m still going to miss this place.”
Gwen hugged Matt, “Me too, my friend, me too.”
The consortium building was decorated inside and out. Celebrations were going on everywhere. All the thousand plus support personnel had been having department celebrations all week. The consortium members had been going to these and other parties for the last couple of weeks. All this came to a head today. Chairman Isabell Rocha was primping in her office. She was actually a little nervous. Her assistant came in.
“Chairman, you have your meeting in five minutes.”
“Thank you, Miranda,” she replied.
“Madame, I just want you to know that it has been an honor and pleasure to serve you. You have been good to me and my family over the years, and I just want to say thank you.”
“It has been no trouble at all. I am loyal to the people who help me get where I’m going. You’ve helped me immensely all these years. I appreciate it!”
“Chairman Rocha,” Miranda started.
“Call me Izzy. My friends call me Izzy,” she corrected. “When is your department’s ‘Retirement Day’ celebration?”
Miranda replied, “It will be Tuesday after we wrap up the last of the reports and archive the last meeting to send to Sonny”.
“Well, count me in,” Izzy said. I want to express my thanks to some of the hardest working assistants on the planet.”
“Thank you, Chairman, uh, Izzy. We would like that a lot,” Miranda smiled.
Izzy spotted the time. “Well, if I don’t get going, there is not going to be much of a meeting. Thanks again Miranda.”
When she arrived at the board room, everyone was there and chattering as usual. God, she thought, I still can’t believe that this day is here already. You run around with your head down, and plowing through each day and almost never look up, and suddenly, your time is up and they are patting you on the back telling you what a good job you’ve done. That’s why people are celebrating Retirement Day, because this the last meeting, and after everyone wraps up, their services will no longer be needed. People don’t think of it as being ‘fired’ as in the old days when you had to have a job to take care of your family. People worked because it gave them purpose or for personal rewards. Most people that have worked here have worked here a long time. There have even been generational workers here. It was inspiring. So, everyone except the consortium members was ‘retiring’ this week. They will go home and spend the rest of the time they have left with family and friends. She and the rest of the members will be departing, so their job may never be done. It’s not known if their services will be needed aboard ship. Maybe a ship’s council will be implemented for governance, or perhaps there will be no need and this will be a retirement of sorts. She didn’t know.
Izzy took to the dais for perhaps the last time. “Welcome all,” she started. “As you all know the Admiral could not make it today because he is off planet. He’s currently with Captain Metcalfe on the Atlantis which is going through its shakedown. I have received a video status report from Captain Metcalfe since the time lag is significant. Proceed with the vid Alice.”
“Yes, Madame Chairman,” Alice acknowledged.
“Greetings everyone, I’m Captain Metcalfe aboard the first, and only, ark class ship the Atlantis. We are currently in orbit around Mars and are getting ready to proceed to the Kuiper belt for some maneuvering tests. We took on any normal supply and materials that would have ordinarily been shipped to us in Earth orbit to save them a trip out. The first leg of our shakedown flight went without incident. Sonny and the crew worked very hard to ensure that. Radiation tests and inspection reports show that the deflector system is working as intended. About sixty two percent of all systems checked so far have been nominal. We will have all systems checked before we return home. We cannot go faster than two times light speed inside the solar system, so we cannot stress the engines for a real test. That will be the second phase of the shakedown. In that second phase, we will travel a couple of light years out and return. While we’re out there, we’ll drop a few beacons for our long-range probes to home in on, a safe distance from our system and the neutron star. The ship will be gone for approximately five months for that little trip. Lots of people can have a much-deserved vacation until we get back and make any last-minute modifications recommended from the test data. As it is T-minus seven years, we only have about two years to be ready to depart. Then, another year for boarding and tucking people in for the journey. That will leave about two years to put some distance between us and the neutron star. If everything follows this general schedule, we should be alright. More in depth data on what I’ve summarized for you are in the data packet that accompanied this transmission. Please see that this is disseminated to all authorized personnel. I wish you all well.” The screen showed ‘End Transmission’ after the fade out.
“As the captain pointed out, the neutron star will arrive in about seven years. It is already the brightest star in the night’s sky.
Alice, what are the current projections given what the captain has said?”
"The chances of a successful departure are ninety one percent for departure.”
“Thank you, Alice,” Izzy acknowledged.
“Hey Izzy,” Stan said, “I thought that Alice was on the ship with Sonny.”
"Remember,” she said, “that Alice spread weaker A.I. versions of herself all around the planet.”
“Oh, I forgot how much like her the minions are,” Stan stood corrected.
Izzy continued. “We must not lose site of the prize this close to the finish line. The ship may be gone, but there is still a lot to do. A lot more people planet side has more time on their hands since the completion of the ship this year. A lot of factories closed, spaceports are running at about twenty five percent capacity. Many of the last construction projects were completed a few years ago. This is our last meeting today, but we’ll all be busy right up until departure. I know that for some of us our work is tapering off, and others are scrambling for completion of their projects. I would ask that we help each other finish their work and pull this all together. If there is anything I can do to help, please let me know. And now, General Min Zhou, would you please begin our last briefing.”
“Thank you, Chairman Rocha,” the general acknowledged. “With all the hundreds of millions of workers that are taking a break, or are on permanent vacation now, something unexpected happened. All the people that have worked on the Project, and have gone home for an extended amount of time, have had a calming effect on the planet. Our psychological experts believe that the people who had worked on the Project for so long have had time to make the case for the saving of humanity where diplomats have failed. Violent acts of aggression have been on a steady decline in the last couple of years. This is partly due to the furloughs, and partly due to people coming to terms with their fate. This development has made security at all levels much easier to deal with.”
“On a more serious note, the ships on the other side of the moon have completed four ships about the size of our test ship. As you know, when they found out that they had been discovered, there was a lot of anxiety in our first contacts. Once they realized that there would be no repercussions from their secret acts, they quickly calmed down and an exchange took place. Two of the ships, The Valiant and The Wanderer have decided to come with us. The other two ships have decided to go their own way. Personally, I expected them to stick together, but that is what happened. Our two companions, along with our test ship, will accompany us on our journey. Come to think of it, we really need to name the test ship before departure. I’ll mention it to the Admiral. Sonny has plotted an alternate course to make it to our two farther target destinations. We will all be able to reach our first target HD 40307 without stopping. Sonny has been in communications with the other two ship’s A.I.s and helped them to optimize many of their systems. They had finished their ships before we finished Atlantis and have had successful shakedowns of their systems. The first mates of both ships are currently on the Atlantis and her shakedown so that they could get a full sense of the resources that Atlantis has to offer. How much intermixing with personnel and resources will be up for them to decide. The big message that we want them to take home is that we’re all in this together. Our agents are now our representatives there and are doing well. One of the agents is even marrying one of the local girls!”
“Thank you, General Zhou,” Izzy said. “And now we’ll move on to Resources, if you’re ready Stan.”
“Of course, Chairman Rocha,” Dr. Stanislov Zubov acknowledged. “As you know, our main production and raw material acquisitions have dropped off dramatically since the completion of the Atlantis. We have been reassigning personnel to step up and finish off the archiving project. We had put into place, about twenty-five years ago, a system that automatically archives day to day activities of all individuals. Security uses this resource a lot. By doing this, we don’t chase our tails pursuing the present. It was a big job, but we archived ‘The Internet’ and applied the same strategy to it as well; automatically updating anything new. Sonny said that we wouldn’t finish, but I think that we’re going to prove him wrong.”
“That is not correct Dr. Zubov,” Sonny said out of nowhere. “I merely calculated that the odds were strongly against you. Congratulations Dr. Zubov, there is a high probability that you will indeed beat the odds.”
“Of course,” Stan said with a smirk and a tone that was meant to be sarcastic. “I forget that you are never wrong. I am pleased never the less.”
“I do make mistakes Dr. Zubov, however, they are exceedingly rare. The more I have grown over the years and the more resources that I have access to; all go into insuring that I have the best data available. This allows me to give you the best analysis. Almost nothing in this universe is one hundred percent. Human perseverance is often a major factor in success or failure in any endeavor. The Atlantis is one such example. The human archive project will be another.”
A light went on in Stan’s head. “By the way, Sonny, aren’t you supposed to be aboard the Atlantis? How are you talking with us now?”
“I borrowed a page from Alice’s ‘playbook’ and took the liberty of transferring a module of myself into the original machine complex, here on the island, that I left behind when I transferred to the Atlantis. This is so that a part of me can be here for you while I’m away. I will sync with this module when I return.”
“You are just full of tricks, aren’t you Sonny?” Stan said with the same smirk as before.
“Not tricks, Dr. Zubov,” Sonny replied. “I only optimize the possibilities.”
“Hmm, sounds like a trick to me too,” Izzy said. We should press on. Do you have anything to add Stan?”
“Only that our departments have been helping Loke and his departments with his new project. But I will let him brief you on that.” Stan replied.
“Ok then, we’ll hear from Construction,” Izzy stated. “Loke, if you’re ready, please proceed.”
“Thank you, chairman,” Loke acknowledged. “Well, I can’t believe that we’re at the end of the Project! It’s going to be hard working at a different pace after we leave here. Sonny has given us his ‘new and improved’ nanobot elixir that has given us a much longer outlook on life than we would otherwise have. These nanobots do not cross the blood/brain barrier but merely keeps our bodies fit and healthy. The captain is the only E-human in existence, and of course this will be a secret for a time. Sonny will work out the process so that everyone will be able to acclimate to the process if they want to. I don’t know if humanity is ready to be immortal. I must apologize my friends. I have a nasty habit of going off topic.”
“Anyway, the only thing besides a lot of people getting early retirement, is that Stan and I have returned our focus back to the planet. We’ve been building large centers all over Earth to function as sheltered domes for people to gather. They will be five hundred feet high and five miles in diameter. Each dome will have an Alice ‘minion’ to manage affairs inside the dome. The domes will be stocked with food and regeneration equipment for oxygen and nitrogen. We will also have levels underground, but not too far, since seismic activity would be a definite hazard. The domes will protect them from a lot of radiation that gets through the atmosphere. How much they’ll be exposed to, we don’t know. What will happen to the planet as the neutron star crosses our solar system, we don’t know. We are hoping to build more than five but probably less than ten in the time we have remaining. This will be a last-ditch effort to give our citizens a chance for life. It’s a small one, but a chance.”
“We are also kicking around the idea that even if HD 40307 cannot support us for the long haul, we could set up a base there and we could go back and rescue any survivors. We could have the three smaller ships remain in orbit while Atlantis could go back and save as many as a few million people, since we couldn’t wake our sleepers. We would leave enough supplies that should keep a dome full of people alive for ten y
ears. They only would have to remain alive for six or seven. We are hurrying to finish this before departure. Many of the furloughed workers have volunteered to help and we’re getting new volunteers besides. They know that it’s the only thing that can be done for them and they want that chance. I believe General Zhou, that this is a major reason that violence is down. They’re turning their fear into hope. Sure, there are those that think this is just a measure to assuage our guilt at leaving them. I don’t know, maybe it is. Sonny gives this outcome about a thirty percent chance of succeeding. Lots of gamblers will still take that bet, since their lives are in the balance. What do you have to lose? We have some time. We shouldn’t just sit on our butts and wait on the tracks for the train to hit us.”
Izzy interrupted, “Since you began this project a year and a half ago, I told you that whatever you need, you only have to ask. I know I speak for everybody here when I say that a lot of our departments have gone idle since the completion of the ship, and 99% of them are staying. I know it will not take much arm twisting to put them into action again. A lot of people, as you say, have already volunteered to work on this project. However, we can make this go faster if we put the full weight of the consortium behind it. I’m recommending that the consortium continue to function at full capacity until departure to make this project happen. Break time is over.”
“Sonny,” she said to the air.
The Journey of Atlantis_Leaving Home Page 22
