Here’s today’s flash fiction post. Let me know what you think.<\/p>\n
The generation ship travelled through space, with nary a whisper coming from the great engines. They had shut down long ago, and now the ship was coasting on momentum alone, a dart thrown across the void of space, many years from its home and many more from the destination. Inside the ship, all was quiet too, for despite the name, the populace of this ship slept away the millennia, waiting for the moment when the ship would reach orbit above their new home. Then, the vast computer housed in the bowels of the vessel would wake the colonists from their hibernation, and they could found a new world, a new civilization.<\/p>\n
This was but one of many generation ships, a diaspora that had been thrown out into the great cosmos many thousands of years ago. A war had devastated their home planet, and in the aftermath all those who remained had pooled their resources to fling seeds far and wide, hopeful that the threat of extinction never need loom over their people again, that somewhere in the cosmos, their race would carry on. The people of that long ago planet had revived the ideas of Von Neumann, and had built into each of their far flung generation ships the ability to replicate themselves, so that when the populace had grown, they too could send out a generation ship, an endless wave of colonization.<\/p>\n
On this generation ship, the retrorockets fired, slowing the ship, allowing it to slide gracefully into orbit around a dark brown globe. Automated systems fired, and a swarm of probes fled from the underside of the vessel down to the surface, and as they struck the upper atmosphere, the ship began testing and tasting, smelling the quality of the air and the composition of the molecules. It concluded, even before the probes struck the ground, that terraforming would be necessary. Still, it listened to the information coming back from over the electronics, for it had to decide whether to rest here and wake the crew, or whether the ship should fire the rockets once more and travel on to a secondary destination.<\/p>\n
Information came in, and came in, and the ship was satisfied with the planet, and so it sent out the signals that would wake the passengers. Long minutes passed with little action, and so the computer ran a systems check, even sending out the semi-autonomous spiders which it used for repairs. Nothing was out of order, and so it sent the signals again. Both times it had received the proper response from the mechanism, but there was no movement in the bowels of the ship. It became worried, if there was such a thing for a computer, and sent the spiders down into the catacombs, the cold core of the vessel where the passengers slept.<\/p>\n
The ship turned on the video feed from the spiders, and watched as they wiped the frost from the screens. Inside was a peaceful, serene face, and the computer compared it to the record of who was supposed to be inside. The face matched, mostly, but certain parts were awry, and so the computer scoured the banks of knowledge it had stored away. It waited while the agents crawled over long-forgotten data, but soon they came scurrying back, each with a titbit of information. Put together, they told the computer that the face in the container was old, very, very old. More information was required, and the computer sent agents scurrying once more, and when that knowledge returned, the ship itself sighed, and shifted in its orbit. The youngest passenger on the vessel had been well into middle age when the ship had taken off, and that was millennia ago. Today, even with the immense slowing of hibernation, all passengers had slipped into old age and died.<\/p>\n
The computer pondered. Why would it be sent on a generation ship with no hope of creating a new home? It dug through log books, flight records, external recordings of the take-off, all the information it could find about its origin. The recordings were most helpful, for the computer could compare the faces of those watching with those who had come on board. It found a most disturbing connection \u2013 those outside the ships were young, those inside old. They had shipped away the elderly to make room on a damaged planet for the young. With no more purpose, the computer turned off the ship, and floated silently in space, a catacomb in truth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here’s today’s flash fiction post. Let me know what you think. The generation ship travelled through space, with nary a whisper coming from the great engines. They had shut down long ago, and now the ship was coasting on momentum alone, a dart thrown across the void of space, many years from its home and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[36,4],"tags":[21,22],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pRIK4-1N","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":512,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=512","url_meta":{"origin":111,"position":0},"title":"A Red and Dusty Home","date":"June 10, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Boots crunched on the red soil as the ship was offloaded, and the crates of cargo piled up outside. Then the crew set about unpacking, putting together the first of the tools that would allow them to build a new home. Days later, the first of the true heavy machinery\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flash Fiction"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":91,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=91","url_meta":{"origin":111,"position":1},"title":"Rose","date":"April 10, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"This is sort of cheating, since it's a storystarter I created myself earlier in the day, and then I edited it, but it's there. Of course, me being me, I managed to just miss the 500 word limit. I can't seem to write in under 500 words. Ah well. I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flash Fiction"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":475,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=475","url_meta":{"origin":111,"position":2},"title":"Good Times, Bad Times","date":"April 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"There are days that are good, and days that are bad, and a great many that fall into a morass between the two. That was one of those days, a little bad, a little good, all mixed together into a great serving of life. Hanging out with friends, relaxing, doing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flash Fiction"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":183,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=183","url_meta":{"origin":111,"position":3},"title":"Going To Hurt","date":"May 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Yes, I know it's been a couple days since the last JNY update, but I've been a little busy moving apartments and getting the Blog Carnival off the grounds. Also had to write my piece for that, which will appear tomorrow morning. I've been editing Chloddio's story, also, and am\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Other Writing"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":620,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=620","url_meta":{"origin":111,"position":4},"title":"A Business Case for Asteroid Mining","date":"April 13, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"In order to spread out a little from just writing about writing and where I am (which can be somewhat boring, even for me), I thought I'd start posting about some of my other hobbies, which includes things like commercial utilization of space. I'll start by posting a little piece\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":364,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=364","url_meta":{"origin":111,"position":5},"title":"Under The Rain","date":"November 13, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Another NaNo excerpt. Brief context: They are fleeing past two \u00deracian forts, on the way to H\u00e1lsiend. The days passed in swift chain, and the barquentine drew closer to the forts. Behind them, two \u00deracian vessels had appeared, shadowing their movements but unable to catch the commandeered ship. 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