This is being kept separate from the main short story thread because I don't want to enter it as a submission. I suck at creative writing - I create worlds, not stories - and because it's over 300 words long anyway. It's more like 2000 or so.
The theme of "The very last spaceship constructed in the Sol system" fits well with the origin of my personal universe, or more accurately, to where it diverges from our actual universe.
It happens that within this universe, the last spaceship constructed in our solar system was also the first to be constructed as well, and the only one to even visit the system for at least a half-dozen millennia (at least of human design). I guess it would be most reasonable to recount events beginning with the present day.
2014. 7.2 billion people alive. Man, that cruel and degenerate beast, that cancer and infestation of the planet, continued to breed despite the increasingly apparent and serious problems associated with overpopulation; pollution, environmental degradation, poorer qualities of life, the hundreds of billions of animals that were raised in factory-farm conditions and slaughtered for the inexorably growing appetite of our species.
By 2025, the world population had surpassed the 8 billion milestone. America's economy, heavily reliant on the supply of cheap oil, had been able to maintain reasonable economic growth over the previous decade by meeting its demands through its own domestic production of the commodity. With a growing population and depleting reserves, America's dependency on oil imported from the Middle East and Canada began increasing. The cost of living for the average American began increasing in correspondence. China had continued to experience relatively healthy growth throughout the entire period, and it was quickly catching up with America in terms of economic might.
By 2042, the world population now stood at 9 billion. No major breakthroughs had occurred in the development of a renewable energy source, such as fusion power, that could provide for the world. America's economy had stagnated, and the Chinese were now the dominant economic superpower in the world. America's stagnation had depressed the growth of its major trading partner, the EU. Germany and the United Kingdom's economies suffered moderate recessions while Spain and Greece were again on the verge of economic collapse. India's infrastructure was being put under intense strain from its swelling population, but surprisingly it was one of the only two countries that were still actively maintaining a space programme at this point, the other being China. Anandha Ramakrishnan, India's president at the time, promulgated an ordinance to make it legal for the government to forbid particular people from having children as it saw fit. This was a controversial law and made Ramakrishnan unpopular with the public, but the law was passed and the population growth of the country decreased marginally. In 2045, under severe pressure to address the worsening economic problems of his country, Ramakrishnan tried to propose an alternative version of the law restricting anyone without a permit from having children. This was strongly opposed by the Lob Sabha. Ramakrishnan lost any remaining popularity he had with the public and was elected out of power, and the laws on having children he had previously passed were overturned. Population growth within India jumped back up.
In 2048, India's economy rapidly collapsed, with a population at this point of over 1.8 billion citizens. The country no longer had the ability to support its populace, and it fell into anarchy. Riots broke out in the streets and people were killing each other before the United States decided to intervene, sending in forces to suppress the conflict. Ultimately this failed, however, and little support arrived from other countries as most were trying to keep themselves afloat in a slowly crumbling global economy.
2058 saw the world's population surpass 10 billion. Important resources such as oil were becoming incredibly scarce. While the less developed countries such as Africa were largely able to switch to using biofuel to meet their needs, the more economically developed countries were affected considerably more so by the rising oil prices, the United States especially. Being a geographically large country, the majority of US citizens relied on the use of cars to travel between home, work and other locations, rather than public transport. The rising oil prices meant that many Americans were unable to make their daily commute to work. Unemployment rates increased, and along with them the crime rates. With an incarceration per capita rate that had not diminished since before the turn of the millennium, prisons were becoming rapidly overpopulated and the severity of punishment for many additional types of crime were increased to a death sentence. Law enforcement met an increasingly out-of-control population with increased brutality, prompting many people across different states to take to the streets in protest, often violent ones. Faith in Congress fell to an all-time low, and the president at the time, John Bates, was assassinated along with his wife and children. Arable land to grow crops on was becoming increasingly precious as well, and rising food prices saw riots breaking out across Egypt, Libya, Syria, Uganda, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
It was clear to most at this point that the global economy was drawing closer towards almost-certain collapse, although no government or organisation was willing to publicly admit it. China, being one of the only countries with an economy that could be regarded as somewhat stable, recognised the inevitable and planned for it. In 2061, the government initiated a top-secret project that began with the excavation of a huge volume of space underneath the Badain Jaran desert. The most brilliant scientists, engineers and researchers from within the country were visited by government officials and given a choice: "Do you wish to help in the preservation of our species?". Those that responded in the affirmative were escorted to the project site and led underground to within the developing facility, and here they would work and live at all times. It was imperative that no one that had agreed to work on this project would ever leave the site. Government supply trucks drove food, supplies and materials to the facility, and there was considerable rumour and speculation among the public on what was happening beneath the desert floor. It wasn't long before other countries became aware of China's secret project, but despite their curiosity there was little they could do to force China to an answer on the matter. This did little to ameliorate the growing international hostility and tension between nations.
Decades passed, and with it saw the continued diminishing of the Earth's resources, the rising tensions between nations, and the onset of numerous small battles and wars. America and much of Europe were forced into the position of invading the weaker countries within the Middle East to seize enough oil to support their populations. Crime rates in many countries had escalated beyond any hope of control; many countries were now in a state of anarchy. India itself had become unrecognisable, with its major cities like New Delhi and Mumbai being reduced to desolate wastelands, the skeletons of ruined buildings rising out of the ground like gravestones. Most of those who hadn't been killed had already fled to find refuge in neighbouring countries. China had patiently continued the development of its project over this time, sometimes extracting notable individuals from other countries to aid in their progress. Still, after all this time no light had been shone on what they were up to, and it had become a growing concern among the other nations.
In 2106, the world population teetering on the cusp of the 11 billion mark, people dying of starvation or massacre about as often as they were being born, the poorer nations of the world had all collapsed into anarchy and the more powerful ones had scavenged what they could. Like vultures who had exhausted their supply of carrion, they now kept close and wary eyes on each other. International tensions peaked. Nuclear missiles and their more recently-developed antimatter cousins were readied, every country preparing for an imminent attack from any other. After 45 years of development, China's project had at last reached completion. There underneath the Badain Jaran sands lay Baolei, the first interstellar-capable starship that humanity ever built and would ever build for thousands of years hence. On November 20th 2106, the Chinese government sent out a fleet of helicopters and planes around the world to collect the best and brightest they could find and allocated them to their cabins upon the spacecraft. Then it finally happened. On November 24th 2016, "Exodus Day", the main engines of the craft were fired up, the sands of the desert parted and the ship ignited into space. American satellites monitoring the region reported back an "intense energy signature", which the paranoid men of the US Department of Defense interpreted as a kind of weapon. They immediately launched a flurry of missiles towards Badain Jaran, Shanghai and Beijing. Russia was next to fire, spotting these missiles and hastily launching its own towards America. The United Kingdom and France followed, and it wasn't long before every other nation with ICBMs was contributing its own share. Baolei left behind the world as it drowned itself in a sea of fire and radiation. It flew out of the Sol system and made its way to its first way-point, Alpha Centauri. Baolei's mission was simple: find a new home for humanity and save it from extinction.
Baolei was a work of art and technological ingenuity. It could support a population of 2000 people, and careful population control ensured that this limit was not surpassed. The Chinese had, in the later stages of the ship's development, eventually managed to crack sustainable fusion power. The world was too far gone for sharing or revealing this technology to have done any good, but it became the basis by which the ship produced power. Fusion was also utilised within the ship's propulsion drive for intra-system travel, although Baolei relied on an interesting method of traversing the void between the stars. At each system the ship arrived at, it would deploy a satellite in orbit of the local star that collected its light and beamed it as an extremely highly-focused collimated ray towards solar sails that extended from Baolei's hull and that of another satellite that began the trip alongside it. The pressure of the light from these suns would accelerate Baolei towards another solar system at considerable fractions of the speed of light, and the other satellite faster still; this other satellite would reach the next system, decelerate itself and beam light back to Baolei as it was still in mid-transit to slow it down. Altogether, it took decades for the vessel to travel between star systems. Hundreds of generations were born, lived and died on Baolei. The vessel would spend a little time in each system harvesting resources from asteroids and moons before departing for another one. Food and air were provided for by plants grown aboard the vessel, carbon dioxide and waste being recycled.
Though undoubtedly a momentous technical achievement, Baolei was not perfect; as the centuries of searching passed, it began to show its age. Systems were beginning to fail, the ship itself beginning to crumble, and along with it the hope of its inhabitants for the future survival of the species, ebbing and only somewhat renewing with the data that flitted across the screens from the long-range sensors. But there was a little piece of data that came back from sensors one day that seemed unusually promising; a terrestrial planet only slightly larger than Earth had been spotted in a distant system, and what's more, it seemed to occupy its star's habitable zone. The ship set a course towards it, moving from star system to star system. Every step closer to this alluring distant world yielded more information on it; made it more promising; made the ship's inhabitants more hopeful and more anxious.
In 3208, as Baolei was nearing the end of its life, it arrived within the system and coasted towards the planet. And what a beautiful planet it was. It was like a virgin Earth, an untainted garden of Eden. Oceans of pristine blue mixed with temperate forests along the equator and pure white lands of ice and snow along its polar caps. Humanity set foot upon soil for the first time in over 1100 years and given the opportunity to make a new start once again. The planet was named Ex Miracula, "Out of a Miracle". This was contracted to Exmira, and then the planet was officially christened as Miranda.
And that's where I stop recounting events.
Post
Thu Jan 16, 2014 4:16 pm
#1
Baolei (The Starship That Could)
Last edited by ThymineC on Sun Jan 19, 2014 7:31 am, edited 1 time in total.