It was the single most viewed event on television. Anyone who could see a screen watched it. Reports came from all over of people stealing phones and TVs just so they could watch it.
Thousands of people converged on the small Texas settlement to see it in person. Interstates were shut down, roads in and out of neighbouring towns and cities were impassable. America was, effectively, closed.
For the months prior, convoy after convoy after convoy had turned up at the launch site and offloaded food and plants and other things the passengers would need. Every now and then a small rocket would launch a load of this to the behemoth waiting in the sky.
Then the announcement came through, the hulking great big train of a ship that sat in a high orbit above the planet was fully loaded. Each section of it was tested and ready for the next stage of its preparation. Fuel.
Fuel had always been a problem for this plan. Not solely the quantity – and it was a lot – but the proportions. The notes they had showed some strange chemical makeup. It was similar, although significantly different, to our usual rocket fuel, but there was something in it that we couldnt understand. The various translators pored over the data that had been sent back to them. Each day someone mentioned the woman who had been onboard the other ship when it left. The sacrifice, she was called. Only a few people remembered her name.
Each time, though, the translations came back the same. 10% this, 30% that, 50% this other thing and 10% something unknown.
No one could figure out what the unknown was. Not specifically. At some point, a team of people – somewhere in China – were able to synthesize something that did the same job – as per the translations – but they couldnt tell anyone what the actual substance did.
The problem was that everyone fell for the sunk cost fallacy. People were paid to. We had put in so much work, so much money and so many resources that we couldnt stop here.
We had built a gigantic space ship; a generation ship even. It sat above the world, defying gravity by a thread. Chekov’s Ship.
It would fall if we stopped. And we could not stop it if it did. It had to launch and it had to launch soon.
So we used the fuel mixture. We took the risk. And for several weeks in the middle of winter, over 100 rockets were sent to fill the tanks of our folly with this weird, yet strangely efficient, fuel.
Its hard to believe there werent more accidents. There were more than a few during the entire thing. Ever since the alien ship left, almost two decades ago now, weve averaged three major incidents and six minor ones each year, directly related to this project. More than 300 people have died as a result and many more injured. The long term effects of some of these incidents will make those numbers a lot higher and people have even suggested that certain nations have hid deaths from people working on the project.
We should never have made it this far. Everyone thought that the first segment launching into space, the biggest launch the world had ever seen, would fail. But its up there still. Connected to the train. Ready to send more than 8000 people off into the stars.
And that was the last announcement. The final stage of the Earth-side development. The arrival of the passengers.
There had been some debate about what to call them, as a group. Were they all crew? Were they all passengers? Staff? There were the actual crew; the team of people tasked with the actual running and maintaining of the ship itself; nearly half of the total.
Then there were the support staff. The people who would maintain the living conditions for everyone. Everything mechanical that wasnt the ship itself, food, medical staff. This accounted for most of the rest of the people. That just left everyone else, a few hundred people who are skilled in other ways. Artists, communicators, rich people who bought a ticket, a few people who won various lottos. And some, although no one would know this until much, much later, stowaways.
So the big day. The final Earth-side launch for this ship. The last 20 people, the last few cases of personal effects. Another flawless launch; we had got pretty good at those.
That day, a cold day at the start of December, would be recognised as the final day before everything went to shit.
The ship itself was, as has been mentioned, a train. A series of carriages linked together. It allowed for some flexibility and movement. A rigid ship, so the experts said, would not be appropriate for the distance and speed our ship was meant to travel. There were twelve segments in all, and each of them was more than 20km in length.
Each segment was connected with a 500m airlock. Everyone who was onboard the ship had spent many hours practising how to use them. Not that many people would need to; most would stay in their single segment for the whole trip. But just in case it was needed, everyone had to learn how to use them and prove they could do it in an emergency.
There was no distinction between segments. One wasnt “engineering” with another being “medical” and so on. Each had their own section for each department. Only the frontmost segment had any specificity to it; it was the bridge. While the whole ship was, technically, open for everyone, the front half of the front segment was authorised access only. The only segment with a gigantic, thick bulkhead broke up the otherwise identical features present in all the others. In this bulkhead, five doors allowed access too and from each half; each door opening to a different specific part of the bridge.
It was a month after the final Earth-side launch. By all accounts, everything was looking green across the board. Every segment was sealed, everyone was accounted for. There was nothing ahead of them as they looked out towards the outer solar system; only a single planet was on this side of the sun – Neptune. Jupiter was almost back around, but they had six months to launch before that would become an issue. And they were ready now.
A week later, they got the greenlight. It was finally time.
On a sunny day, in the middle of Africa nearly twenty years ago, an alien ship landed. The beings who emerged from it gave us the news that changed everything. That we were not alone in the galaxy and that we would be welcomed in their society – but we had to get there ourselves. Everything had to be off our own backs with no help from them.
They were friendly, intelligent and welcoming creatures. And we stole from them.
A group of hackers had somehow managed to interface with the alien computer systems onboard the ship. They downloaded terabyte after terabyte after terabyte of encoded data, written in a language we could not possibly understand. The leader of this group was still onboard the alien ship when it left. Scared off, some people say, by imminent violence towards the alien people. Whether thats true or not isnt the point. The damage was done. We knew. And nothing would stop us from accepting that invitation.
The translation of the stolen data took years. But with each passing breakthrough, more information became available. We learned so much. How to refine metals more efficiently, how to generate unlimited power for ourselves. How to build a massive starship that would send us to them.
But the most important piece of information that we learned was a star map of the local area. The map the aliens had used to arrive here. It gave several locations of interest. Including one that was close to Barnard’s Star. That was decided to be our first mission.
We would send nearly 8000 people on a return mission to Barnard’s Star. They would go out there, orbit the star, find out why it was a point of interest on the map and then come home. A mission that would take nearly 30 years, but a mission that would advance our cause for generations to come. Everyone onboard the ship, which had many names, was a volunteer. They knew that this mission might not return. They might die out there, painfully or otherwise. They might meet other species. Anything could happen. But they all volunteered anyway.
Satellites surrounded the ship all along the hull. Each had the most powerful camera available and had been streaming, non-stop, for years. Now they were ordered to back off. To move to a safe distance so the ship could power up its engines and begin its arduous climb to its peak speed.
Some obeyed these orders, some stayed close so they could get burned up on stream.
No one really knew when the ship would start to move. According to the captain, he pushed the button when the order came through and it was a matter of waiting.
Every hour, reports from the crew came through. Everything was working, lights were flicking on and the pressure in the engines and fuel lines were at their proper places. A nearly 300km long ship took time to warm up.
All down the length of the ship, the passengers felt it start to shake as the individual engines that sat on every segment warmed up and started to emit their thrust. It was another day or so before the official word came through that every engine was at 100% and the ship was moving.
3pm on the 19th of January and the first humans who would leave the solar system were away.
The cheers from across the planet as everyone watching saw the great ship crawl away into space was deafening. People rushed out into the street, looking up wondering if it was above their heads. Families of those onboard, praying or wishing or hoping that everything would go as planned.
In a secret location, launch control waited with held breaths as it crept off their screens and then erupted into screams of joy and victory as the entire thing didnt tear itself apart or explode.
Humanity was off to the stars. But for real this time.
There were a handful of people who were against this launch. Against the ship and its mission entirely. They were a very small percentage of people overall and were easily ignored. But they did have one question. A question they never got an answer to. The only question that no one else seemed to want to ask.
How did the aliens not notice us taking their data?