Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel

by Michael D. O'Brien

  We exited the train onto a platform that stretched the full length of the ship. Despite the size of this promenade, it was crowded with media people and state dignitaries come to wave good-bye. Fortunately, badly dressed elderly gentlemen do not attract the eyes of roving reporters, and thus I was able to board without anyone recognizing me. There were ten wide gangways leading into the underbelly of this elegant whale. Our ramp was midway along the length of the body. Crossing over, we entered a spacious lobby and were met by crew members in dark blue uniforms. On the breast of each was a logo badge, three illuminated stars above the ship’s name. I noted in passing that the name was stitched on uniforms in a variety of alphabets; presumably, this had been predetermined according to the native language of each passenger and his assigned greeter. There were a lot of languages being used in the lobby. My official greeter’s badge was in the Roman alphabet, and he engaged me in Spanish.

  “Dr. de Hoyos, the captain and crew welcomes you aboard the Kosmos. It is an honor to meet you, sir.”

  “This thing sure is big”, I said, gazing about the lobby and shaking my head in amazement. He looked confused for a second or two, then conducted me via an elevator upward to Concourse B, the floor on which I would be living. We exited into a long, long hallway, eighteen feet wide, with countless numbered doors along both sides. My room was situated nearer to what I presumed was the stern, about a third of the way back, numbered B-124. My guide typed the access code onto a digital keypad embedded in the wall, informing me that it was my date of birth. I could change the code to anything I liked, he said; just check the procedure in the Manual, which I would find in my desk drawer. The door whispered open, disappearing sideways into the wall. With that, I entered my own little room, my home for the next nineteen years.

  Tomorrow is departure day.

  *

  Next morning:

  After the final passenger was locked inside, the ramp doors were closed and hermetically sealed, their joints practically invisible.

  As I said, the Kosmos rests on a cradle that is as long and as high as the ship itself. Both bird and nest must escape the force of gravity. The cradle will be powered by forty-eight anti-matter engines, with an assist from the anti-gravity devices that were developed in the decade after I won my second Nobel. Anti-gravity alone is not sufficient to overcome Earth’s pull on a ship this massive, but when it is combined with the thrust of anti-matter, we will be lifted without undue violence through the Earth’s atmosphere until we are free. The ascent will be felt as 1.5 times Earth’s gravity, and thus we will be subject to some temporary discomfort during the process. Once we are in orbit, the cradle’s engines and anti-gravity will be turned off, and the ship’s internal gravity simultaneously activated, restoring our sense of onboard normality at 1 EG, earth gravity. The cradle will then uncouple from the ship, and remain in permanent orbit as the axial skeleton for one of the new space stations scheduled to be built during the next two decades.

  After separation, the Kosmos will be maneuvered into position by stellar navigators, with bursts from its four anti-matter engines. Then we will begin to move forward into infinity, accelerating steadily throughout a five-month process that will take us to 56.7% of lightspeed, our maximum velocity. Apparently, we will begin the journey by passing through the plane of our solar system. Doubtless this is for the visual drama, to be broadcast back to Earth. Since Alpha Centauri and the Centaurus constellation are 60.8 degrees below our orbital plane, we must change course before we reach the orbit of Neptune, thus avoiding the rather congested Kuiper Belt—which, with eighty to a hundred thousand objects, each exceeding 100 km in diameter, is no small traffic hazard.

  The ship is vibrating. I hear the faint rumble of the engines.

  Day 3 of Voyage, outward bound:

  I will dispense with the standard day / month / year references, those signposts that we pounded into infinity as if into solid ground. Such references would be precise only “back there”. Of course, Einstein-Minkowski’s theory of the space-time continuum has been amply verified by numerous experiments during the past century. And thus the onboard clocks present two reliable readings side by side: (a) Earth time, Greenwich, calibrated to the hour of our departure, and (b) ship time. Lift-off was arbitrarily established as Day 1, 00:01 hours.

  Even so, I am dissatisfied with both measurements. Which of the two is real time? What, in other words, is time? What is objectively real in an arena where space has three dimensions and time has only one, and they are unified into a single phenomenon? This old mathematics-physics chestnut was cracked long ago, but now we will live it outside of paper and at over half the speed of light when we reach maximum velocity months from now. By that point, though our experience of time (in sensation and measurement) will be felt as normal, we will be about 20% slower than the passage of Earth time. Thus, for every year on Earth (365 days), only 301 days will pass on the Kosmos.

  *

  During the first two days, I could only goggle, gape, listen to my rapidly beating heart. Clichés came rushing to my mouth whenever other human eyes caught mine. We are all, I think, quite astonished. To live inside a dream. To languish in the warm arms of a myth. To tap-dance on an algorithm. Yet here we are.

  *

  We are accelerating in multiples of Earth gravity, which we do not feel, since the complex negotiation of onboard gravity with actual thrust gravity is flawless, the design extrapolated from Dr. Rodney Nihman’s magnificent work at the Royal Astrophysical Institute and his own research foundation Gravitas. Rod died twelve years ago, but not before seeing the small, prototype one-man ship accomplish exactly what his equations predicted. Without this component, the voyage would have been technically possible but humanly unendurable: if the ship’s internal gravity devices had never been invented—those magical mechanisms that sustain our own independent sense of normalcy—we would be reduced to unconsciousness in short order.

  *

  This is going to become a whopping great journal if I put everything on paper. They try to discourage hard copies here. The Manual encourages passengers to use digital memory files, since each cabin has its own minimalist personal computer (oddly named, “the max”). But I love the sound of my fountain pen scratching on paper. I brought along spare nibs and enough ink cartridges to last a lifetime. The two reams of paper, five hundred sheets each, ate a good way into my baggage allowance, though the allowance is ridiculously arbitrary. Weight is not really a problem; storage space in our “personal apartments” is the problem.

  They like to make us feel at home. This is evidence of foresight on the administration’s part, because they know we’re going to be spending a lot of time together, all six hundred-plus of us, like passengers on a cruise ship that does not reach its port of destination until nineteen years after raising the anchor. More like illegal emigrants locked into a metal shipping container. A comfortable container, mind you.

  My own apartment is presumably designed for upper-class passengers. Officially, we are all equal, all “crew”. It may be that some of us, including myself, are “more equal”, even though we are here for symbolic reasons only. I wonder where the trillionaires live and how they live. And do the grease monkeys in the engine room get a residence as nice as mine? There is no mechanical engine, no grease, but I suppose there are grades of service personnel. Do their swinging hammocks crowd together down in the hold?

  I like my little home. Well, I had better like it, because it’s all I’ve got to live in for a very long stretch to come. I am homesick for my cabin—my real cabin. Log walls, cedar shake roof, wood-burning stove (legal if owned as a historical artifact, illegal to actually use), my rock garden, the stream, an occasional wild trout. I ache when I think of the greenhouse, my cacti experiments, my chainsaw (also illegal). Alas, it was confiscated last year by the inspector who spotted evidence of crime in my back yard.

  “Looking for tapeworms?” I queried, hoping to throw him off track. “I don’t know what you mean
by tapeworms, Dr. de Hoyos”, he said, with a severe look. “But I recognize woodchips when I see them.”

  “Uh-huh. And you just happened to be passing by my remote abode with your band of merry eco-police.”

  “You have destroyed a tree without authorization, sir, and under Article 4978b3, you have committed an indictable—”

  “All right, all right, all right. The truth is, the chips are from a diseased pine, and I was trying to stop the progress of the pine-bark beetle before it infected the surrounding forest.”

  “Why didn’t you contact my department for authorized removal of the afflicted tree?”

  “I was concerned about the danger of disease spreading before the department responded.”

  He smirk-sneered at me—understandably, because it was a lame excuse. They always respond, instantaneously, rappelling down from their hovercraft in the most unlikely places. He warned me that unless the firewood was turned over to his response team, he would be forced to take me to court. I refused, arguing that the tree had grown in my own back yard; I had planted it when it was a sapling. Not convinced, he ordered a thorough search and confiscated the entire five cords of sweet dry pine I had split and stored in my garage. He also showed me the satellite photo of my off-the-chart heat emissions. I pleaded guilty. My two Nobels prevented imprisonment, but I had to pay a hefty fine.

  It’s interesting that they allowed an eco-criminal like me onto a ship like this. But I suppose they decided that banishing me from the voyage would have been a PR loss with too high a cost.

  As you can see, my good self, my very old self of the future, my ship’s cabin is fourteen feet long and about ten feet wide. (Digital photo attached.) Both outer and inner walls curve a few degrees, parallel double parentheses, but the end walls are flat. The walls, ceiling, and floor are made of some new material, neither metal nor plaster nor fiberglass, in an off-white hue that hints at early morning sunlight, which I presume is for soothing the ever-unstable human propensity to moods. When I draw my finger down a light strip beside the door, the ceiling and walls glow with whatever intensity I desire. There are three lamps for focused reading, round mini-spotlights that can be slid along the wall to any position one prefers. They think of everything!

  The bed is nowhere to be seen until you press a tiny, glowing button by the door, and a slab projects into the room. Touch another button, and a compartment rises from beneath the slab, containing pillows. The bed is dressed with linen sheets and a light wool blanket. Real linen and wool: no expense has been spared. Press another button, and a synthetic wood desktop pops out of the facing wall, a padded spinal-friendly seat automatically unfolds from beneath it. The desk is equipped with the inlaid max, symmetrically positioned beneath its wall screen (invisible when not in use), plus a single drawer for stationery materials, containing at present only a mini-printer and the resident’s guide, a wafer-thin e-book of 2,200 pages, titled The Manual, a kind of sacred scripture for the voyage.

  On another wall, inbuilt drawers contain clothing. More buttons—closet doors disappear into the walls, no sharp edges to hurt an old fellow during storms at sea. Note of interest: I brought along my jeans, smoke-cured checkered shirt, and bush jacket. My fang-proof cowboy boots were frowned upon at the security screening, but I got them through with a bit of haggling. Doubtless, everyone has brought enough clothing to last for decades, and apparently the holds are full of replacements if they should be needed. The closets are stocked with standard issue apparel such as socks and underwear made of syntho-fabric. I popped these offending items into the recycle bin on Concourse D. Hopefully, no one can trace them back to me; I hate being nagged.

  In addition to my 140 square feet of space, there is a bathroom. This cubicle contains a stainless-steel toilet, sink, and shower stall, efficiently designed for a smaller bio-mass than mine, and thus it is a little cramped. The bathroom cabinet contains some unusual we-care-about-you stuff, with a digital audio prompt encouraging me to make use of all the “optional” life enhancement technology:

  A HUMVS (holistic universal medical vital signs) stick-on patch, preferably affixed to the skin at the center of the chest, calibrated to send continuous messages to an automatic receiver in the medical clinic on my deck. Despite regular urgings from my G. P. in Santa Fe, I have always declined using the dang things, which I call humvees. Some people have them implanted in their bodies. I can’t for the life of me understand why healthy people would want to have an electronic parasite invade their interiors or cling to their exteriors. Parasites of any kind fill me with loathing. Also, I don’t want to obsess on my health, such as it is. If I’m going to die, it will probably be by choking on a squirrel bone or falling and hitting my head on a nice natural rock. Not that any of the above is logical. It’s just that I hate the . . . Oh shut up, Neil! Quit the crabbing!

  Another item in the cabinet was a mood sensor tab, which the voice advised me to wear affixed to the bone behind one of my ears. If you’re feeling low, or panicky, or really, really angry, the tab flashes appropriate colors (friends will notice and rush to your aid), and a tiny voice speaks up, urging you to proceed at once to the medical clinic on your floor.

  In addition to the aforementioned, I found a transparent envelope containing three “serenity” pills: “A sample for your pleasure and relaxation. Additional prescriptions available from your physician.”

  Okay, then! Three tabs and three pills into the toilet bowl. Voice command—flush! Done. Now I can proceed with my life, fully exposed to the dangers, the uncertainties, the pains, and the beauties of human existence.

  Back in my main room, I found a few more things offered for my consideration:

  Transparent eye inserts, not unlike large contact lenses. These items, upon voice command, will trace luminous data across your field of vision, disappearing after a few seconds so you don’t stumble over furniture or bump into people. Need the date and time, need to know the room temperature, need your position on the ship, need directions to simply anything on board? Just ask, and it will send you an instantaneous reply. Three levels of communication choice: visual only, audio-visual, and subliminal. For the squeamish, there are traditional eyeglasses that perform the same functions, though the subliminal is not guaranteed to be 100 percent accurate, due to inconsistencies in human neuron receptivity. Uh, thanks, but I can live without either of them.

  Then there was the holography entertainment mask, so soft, so conforming to one’s face, with voice command for thousands of films and other entertainments. Lie down on your bed and relax. Don’t worry. Be happy.

  Ear inserts for practically infinite audio choices—educational, scientific, cultural, musical. I tried it out for a few minutes. Nice. However, though haunted by the feeling that I might be making a mistake, I pulled them out of my ears. Nah, I told myself, why not go all the way! If I want thoughts, I’ll think. If I want music, I’ll hum. And I can always get much of the aforementioned services with a little extra effort, via the traditional method, by accessing the max.

  There were other amenities, all of them so fascinating, so user friendly—and so very tiresome. I crushed the smaller items under my boot heel, and disposed of them down the toilet. The larger items went the way of the syntho-sox, into the communal, hopefully anonymous, recycle bin.

  We are supposed to wear grip slippers whenever we venture outside our rooms. I will comply with this because the floors do tend to be a bit slippy. Lack of foresight is evident in this detail. Why didn’t they install non-skid flooring? I would prefer to go barefoot in the hallways, but I have found from experience that exposing my feet in public spaces makes other people nervous. A Quasimodo lurching through the town square. Within my little cosmic homestead, however, I go barefoot. The floors and walls are set to body temperature—just like summer weather in my real home—though it can be lowered if I wish.

  Along with the copious voice memos that I hope to record in my max, I will keep a more slender paper record of my observations, t
houghts, ruminations of dubious quality, and useless asides, anything that strikes me along the way. I am interested in textures, nuances, surprises, more than the wonders of technology. If I should ever return from this trip, these will provide some amusement in my old age—my actual old age. I am now how old? Sixty-eight, I think. Just checked my personal profile in the archive, and yes, I am sixty-eight.

  If space / time theory is inaccurate, proving to be limited in ways we did not foresee, or alternatively, more complex with event-dimensions that we could not have guessed, these personal age measurements may become meaningless by Earth time. In any case, I am still free to play with imaginary scenarios. If I survive the voyage, I see myself returning to my little garden in the Santa Fe mountains only eighty-seven years old, by ship time, a relatively young old man. Thank heavens for modern medicine! That will give me a few good years to collate these notes into a book, and maybe a few bonus years, after that to slip into alzheim2, maybe a3. By then, it won’t matter to me at all.

  Day 4:

  Yesterday I made my first onboard notations, but must not omit mentioning a happy meeting that occurred on Day 1:

  On every deck, there is a large panorama room, at the fore and aft of the ship, eight “theaters” that offer a view of outer space. Irrationally, I presumed that the view from the topmost public deck would give me a higher perspective. After doggedly climbing the stairs to A, avoiding the elevators for the sake of my general state of fitness, I entered the chamber to find that a crowd of people were already present, gazing raptly at the receding planet Earth. The panorama wall was a hundred feet wide and twelve feet high, displaying a scene that was not so much what one would see through a window overlooking space but rather the absence of a window, the absence of anything that would prevent the entire contents of the ship being sucked out into the void. I knew that there was indeed a wall there, in fact several layers of walls, but the effect was disconcerting, a 3D digital luminization of data the onboard scanners were transmitting to the screen in a resolution of 1.7 megapixels per cubic centimeter.