| |
Everyone who was selected to colonize a planet went through rigorous training. Physical, mental, emotional and academic. This on top of what they had gone through to even get on the ship—they had to ensure those colonizing were up to the task. It had always been considered an honor to be selected, and a privilege to participate in the training. It had been so since the first colony ship had left the Ship of Nations.
A few years after the secret to faster-than-light travel was discovered and implemented in small-scale research ships, the Ship of Nations was commissioned by H for H, with various other organizations contributing funds, materials and various workers. The drones and recon bots that were sent out using faster-than-light travel found something that surprised nearly everyone: there were far more habitable planets than expected. Even with faster-than-light travel, though, it would take decades, even centuries, to reach many of those planets.
But to H for H, and many others, it seemed like multiple chances for a fresh start. To begin human life again across the universe, in the hopes that at least some of the planets would not end up like Earth. H for H pulled the best people from any country they could, and recurved funding and aid from the wealthiest nations of the time: France, South Africa, China and Japan. The Canadians supplied what they could, which was mostly the design and outline of the political structure for those that would embark on the ship.
What seemed to be the most unique aspect of that political structure was that, even though many leaders from multiple nations would be living aboard, the ship itself would not be split into sectors based on nationality. Everyone agreed that this would be the best way to promote an environment of compromise, acceptance and understanding. The selected leaders from each nation served on the Board of Leaders. It totaled eleven in all, with leaders and people from countries of varying political and economic standings. They wanted every colonized planet to have a “healthy mix” of everything humanity had to offer. And many of the best came from the more struggling nations. Though they did stop the line at allowing criminals on the ship.
While the intricacies of that plan were worked out, the engineering of the ship was assigned to China and South Africa. It was estimated that the ship would carry one hundred thousand souls and they hoped the ship would stay active for at least five centuries. It had to be durable, self-sustaining and have the capacity to store and build hundreds of colony ships while in motion. And be able to travel at high speeds.
Leading up to the discovery of faster-than-light travel, there was a standard high school debate about what deserved our resources more: the exploration of space or Earth’s vast oceans? Within the schools, a student’s choice came down to what he or she was most interested in. In the real world it turned out that the ocean had to be explored first to gain the tech to explore space.
In the year 2103, renowned marine biologist Henry Flannigan found a section of the ocean that was deeper than any portion explored before. In a submarine made entirely of pressure-engineered glass, Flannigan and his partner, Matthew Lithen, slowly sank at an angle into what became known as Flannigan’s Trench. With bated breath, the world listened to him live-broadcast the descent on various platforms. The recording was still listened to during training on the Ship of Nations. It tended to get everyone excited about what they might discover on a new planet.
“We’re now deeper than any human has been before,” is the point when everyone started listening to the recording. “It’s so dark down here that I can barely tell our lights are on. They’re shining into nothing. I mean, there’s literally nothing down here for the lights to reflect off of. It appears empty, but I can’t shake the sense that something is moving just outside our realm of vision.”
It went silent for a painfully long thirty-one seconds.
“Oh crap!”
A few seconds of silence, then laughter.
“Ha! Did you see that, brother?”
“Hell yeah, brother.”
“Okay, okay. What we just saw must be the largest bioluminescent creature ever seen. It looked like... like a large floating lizard. Webbed feet. Translucent skin with soft green, glowing stripes. I’d say nearly ten feet long. Damn, that was a beautiful sight.”
For the next thirty minutes, the voices on the recording were calm. Periodically, Flannigan would say that it was still dark or wonder out loud if the creature would cross their path again.
“All right, we’re slowin’ it down. My sensors are telling me we’re coming up on some sort of formation. I honestly have no idea what to expect. Stand by while we figure it out.”
More silence. Sixty-seven seconds of it.
“Matthew, can you explain what we’re looking at?”
“All I can say is it looks like a... ship or something.”
“Yeah, yeah. But huge. It doesn’t look—hold on.”
Twenty-one seconds.
“It doesn’t look to be man-made. But it’s not natural, either. I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
After dozens more scientists analyzed and studied the object, they classified it as “alien tech.” It appeared to be a spaceship made with materials no one had seen before. After hundreds of hours of labor, three smaller ships were recovered, hauled to land, and subjected to every test imaginable.
On the first day, one of the scientists inadvertently hit a switch in one of the ships. The vessel flickered out of sight and was seen ten minutes later floating outside the South African Orbital Station. The scientist was still in it, alive and well.
Another hundreds of hours of research and experimentation later, the technology in those ships was successfully re-engineered. And humanity could travel faster and farther than ever before.
It soon became known as the tesseract engine. With a fast, high-pitched vibration, it would flash a vessel into the Fourth Dimension. For a moment, the passengers would catch a glimpse of their universe as seen from the Fourth Dimension—a view that disoriented most who saw it. They would simultaneously see in detail from where the vessel has left, where it was going and a paper-like version of the space between. Then they would move, and everything became bright and blurry. Soon, they arrived at their destination.
The way this was explained to those undergoing their academic training on the Ship of Nations was very simplified, but it helped passengers feel safer with the new form of travel.
“Imagine we are in a two-dimensional world,” the instructors would say. “There are flat trees, buildings, plants and even empty space that slow us down or block us in our attempt to travel. The tesseract engine pulls us out and above this flat world, into the Third Dimension, in which we can travel across that same distance far more quickly than we otherwise would be able to. In simplified terms, that is how we now accomplish faster-than-light travel. Except we are currently in a complex three-dimensional space, and the engine pulls us into an even more complex fourth.”
For those who cared to understand the Fourth Dimension on a deeper level, monthly lectures and discussions were held. Smith and his apprentice, Tashon, were fascinated by the Fourth and went as often as they could.
Each lecture began with a simple picture displayed on a wall.
“This is a square,” the facilitator, a heavy-set man with glasses, would begin. “A two-dimensional square.”
With a smile, he walked back and forth in front of his students.
“For our purposes here, we can think of ‘dimension’ as ‘direction.’ So, this is a two-directional sphere. Its line can move in two directions: north/south and east/west. Or a combination of these, such as northwest. Now look at this.”
“A three dimensional, or directional, square is a cube. It gains the extra dimension because it has a new direction to expand into. We call these up/down. But what would this cube look like if it had another direction added to it? We, who live in the Third Dimension, cannot not truly see one of these while we are in the Third. But we can draw a two-dimensional representation of it. Look.”
“A cube. Watch as we add representations of this fourth-dimensional direction. Which, by the way, we refer to as ana/kata.”
“The cube expands into what we call a tesseract, just as a square expands into a cube. Not only does being in the Fourth allow us to more easily maneuver around objects in the Third, it also provides us with a completely new direction in which to travel.
“While most refer to this as faster-than-light travel, that idea is only partially accurate. While in the Fourth Dimension, the ship only travels faster than the speed of light relative to the speed of light in the Third Dimension. In the Fourth Dimension, the ship, objects, waves and even light behave differently than in the Third Dimension. Technically, the ship travels just shy of light speed in connection to the speed of light in the Fourth Dimension. But when we drop out of the Fourth and back into the Third, the result is the same as if we had started in the Third Dimension and traveled faster than light while remaining in the Third.”
After their first time attending the lecture, Smith and Tashon went out to eat with Evalee and Sylvia in the ship’s entertainment sector.
“So the tesseract is the most basic fourth-dimensional shape,” Tashon was saying. “Yet we can barely even grasp the idea of it with our three-dimensional minds. Can you imagine what pyramids, or spheres, would look like?”
“Or living beings?” Evalee suggested.
Smith laughed. “That would be something to see. A human body, each part of it stretched out in a completely new direction.”
“But if there were beings living in the Fourth, wouldn’t we have seen evidence of that?” Sylvia questioned. “I mean, the ship has already traveled through the Fourth.”
“But only twice,” Smith pointed out. “And think of how many uninhabited and uninhabitable planets we’ve found. Far more emptiness than life.”
“True,” Tashon said. “And if Fourth beings do exist, would we want them to know that we do? I mean, wouldn’t they be able to destroy us if they wanted to? Like me taking an eraser to a drawing? Or a flame to a painting?”
“But why would these beings be violent?” Evalee wondered. “Just because humans might do that, what makes you say these Fourth beings would?”
“Well,” Smith said. “Isn’t that how most living creatures would react if something... inferior to them trespassed into their land? Their home?”
Tashon nodded in agreement.
“But they are in a higher physical dimension,” Evalee retorted. “Perhaps they also have a higher sense of self-awareness. A higher moral code, a higher way of life.”
Smith smiled and looked at his wife. Her perspective never ceased to amaze him.
“Sylvia”—Tashon clapped a hand on the table—“What do you think?”
“If there are beings in the Fourth,” Sylvia said. “Then I hope Ev is right. But I think, if there are things alive in the Fourth, they can’t all be good. There’s no such thing as a perfect place.”
***
Once the research bots made successful trips using small tesseract engines, the experts from Japan and South Africa spent over two years making it work for a vessel as large as the Ship of Nations.
The ship was designed to bring human life to the surprising number of habitable planets that had been discovered with the advent of the tesseract engine. When it left Earth, its lower level hangars held ten colony ships, enough to settle five planets. It also held two dozen single passenger ships for mining and excavation.
Anytime they passed an asteroid field or a moon that was in close proximity, the small ships would fly out. The pilots would search for and extract any issuable materials. Eventually, they would have enough materials to build new colony ships as the hangars emptied out.
The planet Smith was on was the sixth to be colonized. The first to use a vessel designed, engineered and built on the Ship of Nations. Most didn’t even consider it a risk to fly the new colony ship. After all, it had been built on the most advanced space craft ever made by the greatest minds of all time. And yet it had gone down in flames.
Once the Ship of Nations was in motion, these hangars were on the bottom level, as the ship moved horizontally through the unknown. The level above held all the mechanics. Pipes and ducts that supplied oxygen, cooling and heating and any other gases or fuels they might need. At the very center sat the tesseract engine, surrounded by multiple walls made of pressurized steel alloy. The engine was built to be part of the ship. It wasn’t attached but was itself an appendage to the ship, with no seams, welds or bolts holding it in place. During their studies, the engineers noticed this in the found tesseract ships. After trials, they found that the engine had to be this way. For it to move a vessel the way they needed it to, the engine needed to be fully integrated into the structure. Otherwise, only the engine would end up at the intended destination.
The next level up was the farm sector that Smith knew so well. It had been placed there, just below the many levels of housing. Pipes from every kitchen and relief room in the ship ran to tanks that sat under the topsoil. As time went on, soil was created from the decomposed waste and then moved to the top so that crops could continue to grow. On the surface, this seemed like a filthy idea, but dozens of biochemicals flushed through the tanks to speed up the composting and ensure the best possible soil was used.
The housing sector covered the next eleven floors. Just as the Canadians had planned, no one group, nationality or race was combined. There was no “China Town” or “French District” or “Little Italy.” Every section of every floor had a “healthy mix” of human life. No one floor, no one housing unit was larger or of higher quality than another. The goal was to create a feeling of equality. A functioning society without greed or jealousy. But, as has been proven time and again, humans are often naturally greedy and jealous.
Even with these equalizing structures in place, everyone still had a role to play. Engineers were housed by educators, who were housed by ship security. No one group or person was intended to be higher than or lead another. Naturally, though, groups began to form. No one was forced to stay in a specific section or on a specific floor, so in many cases it turned into a hierarchy based on what one’s role on the ship was.
This created a culture that had only been partially expected. Originally, the security and control personnel were meant to keep an eye out for anything that could lead to protests, riots or violence. And then they were to stop it before it got to that point. No one wanted a civil war to break out aboard a thirty-story state-of-the-art ship that could shift between dimensions and travel faster than light.
After a couple years, though, those in security became the rulers of the housing and business sectors. Sure, the board was around, but they only concerned themselves with big decisions like what planets to colonize and when to jump to faster-than-light travel. For a few months, it became a violent society with security controlling everything and everyone. Since there was no clear leader within each section, security took it upon themselves to put themselves in complete control. They remained undiscovered for a time because one of their roles was the control and monitoring of all surveillance.
But, as always seems to happen, a few of them flew too close to the sun. They tried to take out the board. To take control of the entire ship. They failed, and the board discovered what the security personnel had been doing. All who were involved were loaded into the first colony ship and sent to a planet that was barely habitable. They would live, but in extreme conditions.
It was then that the board decided having leaders and a hierarchy of power might not be a bad idea. People could be evil, but a position in and of itself could not. The difficult part was finding people who would be effective leaders. From then on, every occupation would have its own chief. And each chief went through a rigorous interview process before obtaining the title. In time, chiefs became some of the most respected individuals on the ship.
There were multiple chiefs throughout the ship: engineering, farming, communications, safety, food preparation and delivery, maintenance, mining, piloting, education, tesseract engine, physical health, emotional health and entertainment. Chiefs were given the responsibility to lead each sector. To delegate, control and police as they saw fit. If one chief did something another had issue with, it was brought up with the board. This rarely happened, as most chiefs respected each other’s positions. The only chief to consistently receive complaints was the entertainment chief.
Many chiefs and citizens on the Ship of Nations were concerned that every Chief of Entertainment allowed prostitution. Every couple of years, the topic would land on the board’s lap. Brothels were not discussed in the planning of the ship, whether for or against. Any unforeseen instance such as this was to be reviewed by the board and put to a vote. Of the eleven board members, five had home countries with legalized prostitution and five did not. The eleventh had legalized prostitution only in certain areas. For a vote to win, at least eight of the board had to agree. Since that never happened, the issue of prostitution would be put to the side until someone else brought forth a complaint.
But overall, the implementation of occupation chiefs was successful. It set forth an acceptable hierarchy that most citizens respected, and those who did not respect it tolerated it. Then, of course, there were those who directly went against it. Anyone who did so in a way that caused anyone harm was put in isolation for at least two days, all the way up to a decade, depending on the crime. As far as anyone knew, no one had ever been murdered. But if someone did murder, and was caught, all agreed that the murderer would be sent out an airlock.
Above all the housing, business, and occupation sectors was the top floor—the only one with windows and a view of the deep dark of outer space. It was always open to citizens, except for an hour before the Tesseract Engine would be engaged until an hour after the ship dropped back into the Third Dimension. This had also been implemented after the ship began its journey.
The first time that the Tesseract Engine was engaged, nearly everyone aboard the Ship of Nations crammed themselves on the top floor, anxious to see what it would look like. As expected, the engine performed flawlessly. But more than half of those who witnessed the shift to the Fourth suffered extreme vertigo. This caused vomiting and falling, which led to multiple head injuries. Since then, any citizen not directly involved with the operation of the engine was confined to their living quarters during Tesseract travel.
This was the history of the ship that chosen colonizers received at the beginning of their training. After that, they spent mornings undergoing intense physical training. During the afternoons, and often into the nights, they studied, analyzed and discussed the colonization plan, with little talk of what to do in the event of a crash landing. All they were told to do in such a situation was to stay as close to training as possible. Do not deviate from their given colonization plan unless necessary.
Each colonization plan was the same as the previous, with minor changes based on what they knew of the planet. On the first three colonizations, everyone wore full protective suits for at least seventy-two hours. No one knew how breathable the oxygen was, and they were each sent with ninety-six hours’ worth. Plenty of time to get their domes set up, pressurized and oxygenated. Other than a few close calls, those first three went surprisingly well.
The fourth group to leave was sent out with protective suits that doubled as wet suits. Their preliminary tests showed that it rained often and at times 90 percent of the surface was covered in water. During the dry season, it dropped to 72 percent. This was the colony that suffered devastating hurricanes that destroyed more than half of their domes.
According to the video updates that were sent, the fifth group of colonizers to leave had the most success. They were the first ones to go an entire year with no casualties, despite a drought that limited their edible crops. To counteract that, they learned to hunt local wildlife.
Then there was the ship Smith and his family had been on. The first to not arrive safely. The first that ever had to question whether following protocol was the best move.
