On an Orphaned Planet (WIP)

by Kat

To those who dream of a utopian existence in space.

Encounter

Myth: Rise of Humanity as told by Mesek

Our forecomers did not live as we now do. They fought the eternal battle of survival under conditions materially different from our own, as were their methods of fighting and lived values. Partitions erected and enforced, they opposed one another. Eventually, they unwittingly constructed a crisis so severe the partitions were necessarily razed. Individuals learned to live as one with all of humanity and universe. There was a cost to this enlightenment, however.

There had always been resistance opposing that way of being. Historically condemned, we now idealize the storied primeval human act of refusal to a sacred demand not to embrace knowledge. This Eve had a punishment, variously interpreted as mortal subjection, spitefully inflicted for her insubordination. As if such divine retribution for human hubris, much knowledge, which we now value so highly, in crisis was lost to humanity forever. The narrative of what it means to be human is now more fragmentary. May we never pay such a price again.

Foundations shattered, rebuilding was long and rough, but not without joy. We had learned to love one another in solidarity. Through this love, we attained great feats, among them living interstellarly as we now have for generations.

In the Belly of the Feast

Despite the odor of floral rot and intense wet heat, she preferred a personal inspection.

“We mustn’t rush. Remember that our duty to the survival of this entire vessel, which relies on our proper auditing here, is sacred.” Fenate prayed.

“And we would accept nothing less.” the rest recited.

Atmospheric conditions tolerable only through the passion of a lifelong wedded steward tested even Fenate's devotion. Yet, they all labored out of necessity, some surely fixated on the coming festivities celebrating their ritual effort. But Fenate's head was filled with thoughts of the bioreactor which was the subject of her labor.

The bioreactor process effectively the same as natural decomposition, organic slurry churned in its massive belly, rendered into a lifebearing ichor. The milk of the agrics¹, from the teat of the bioreactor, or blood returning to the heart to be reoxygenated. The starship's waste becoming its own fuel: an oroboros mother to all ship inhabitants.

Likewise, Fenate's own belly churned.

Forerunner

The starship was captainless, though not as the result of tragedy, a cause of disorder, or even so much as a conscious choice. No one aboard was really familiar with the idea of a captain, so just no one noticed the absence of one. They had no symbols of authority for they lacked the concept of authority.

It was a communal social arrangement, interacting only as a person with other people. People who gazed at existence, spiritually fulfilled by its majesty; healed the ill, motivated by solidarity with the suffering; and grew crops to furnish each other. Everyone was interdependent on everyone else aboard the eusocial vessel.

Their collective purpose, fulfillment of a primordial human hunger. Where ever humans have existed, they have universally practiced art, the truest of which is done for its own sake. Through exploration, the process of knowing being its own reward.

The design of the craft, which bore the designation “Forerunner”, reflected this philosophy. Being weeks from the nearest human outpost, typical for the long-range exploration vessel, necessitated a self-sufficient ecosystem. They had found ways to repurpose what might otherwise be considered waste.

There was no center to the hive of console workstations, a kaleidoscope of fractalesuqe reflections. Intimidating, but not outwardly hostile. It wasn't Fenate's place, though.

Externally, the Bussard collector beaked the vessel’s roughly flattened and capped cylindrical body, with a pyloned nacelle each port and starboard. Ions spewed from the Bussard-fueled aft thruster, forming a seemingly endless spire of charged particles trailing behind.

The Stellar Ball

Streaming ions, despite traveling at large fractions of light speed, were like dewdrops on the planet’s face, as if waking it from its long slumber. A shoal of asteroids skirted triplet, red dwarf stars as they partook in the dance of an unstable star system, each pirouetting about the other two. Orbiting them out of the distance, a sole surviving planet, crater-scarred and maintaining a tepid core via tidal forces formed by their dancing, lucky to be cast off far away early on during the stellar ball.

Previously unexplored, the Ratlef system was Forerunner’s mission. Long-range scans indicated it to be of little value with no detected life, though from that distance the conclusion was far from definitive. There was no longer any reason to assume that life would be immediately recognizable even at arms’ length, given that the preconceived notion of life being carbon-based had been disproven at least once previously.

Sentient life at that. Enough of a revelation that humans weren’t alone in the whole universe, wholly new forms of biology expanded the realm of possibilities even further. It was a humbling experience to have to collectively discard the depiction of aliens as distinctly humanoid in form.

They weren’t human, but they were people. There was fear at first, but not xenophobic in nature, more of a pause from overwhelming shock at the profound implications of the discovery.

Forerunner pursued more such discoveries, leaving no system neglected, not even seemingly barren Ratlef. It was an intimate experience between two wanderers: one being the vessel, the other, the planet Ratlef 1. Upon orbit of the only planet, Forerunner’s shuttle bay, located on its underbelly, revealed a smaller craft. Capable of accommodating several people, it however lacked FTL capability among many other creature-comfort and scientific amenities. Umbilical disengaged, Charon went on its way.

Charon

They were now away from their home. Burning retrograde, Charon’s periapsis moved to graze the planet’s surface where a suitable landing spot would be scouted.

Sitting away from the helm, mind wandered back on to the work for which she was more needed. Certainly not that of a life scientist on a blatantly dead planet, which she would soon be. Though her presence was surely a mere formality, she hadn’t forced the issue. Leaving behind her native agrics¹, she instead grounded herself by reviewing production-consumption reports, figuring that Ranan could particularly relate to such behavior.

“There are plenty of rations available if you hunger.” said Mesek, looking from the shuttle controls to notice Fenate.

“I know” Fenate responded quietly. She wasn’t her usual self.

“I apologize if I came off as assuming your ignorance, I merely wanted to ensure you are aware as you don’t leave the starship often.”

Enclosed for hours of transit, she dared not think of the looming return trip. How long could they survive independent of Forerunner if they were to be somehow stranded? Figuring they would first succumb to suffocation after several days of progressively labored breathing, she was unable to shake her irrational fear, but also unwilling to burden the others.

A jolt kicking Fenate out of trance, VTOL thrusters burst to life, gently setting the craft down on a particularly flat plateau.

Her skin had begun to crack in the restrained atmosphere. The floor rang hollow underfoot. Opening her eyes made it too real, so they remained firmly shut. And so she stood, surrounded by nothing recognizable, every one of her senses put off-balance.

They had arrived.

Ratlef 1

Of course the planet was dead. Dead, dead, dead. The surface was razed, atmosphere blown away, and whole body tossed out. It was just dead. A post mortem was all there was to be done. All that could be done.

Despite expecting as much, Fenate was still disappointed and perhaps a little smug in being confirmed. But mostly just useless and pained by holding back panic.

She defaulted the unliving sciences to their respective experts. Not her wheelhouse, time to idle.

A drill engaged, drawing a thin cylindrical crust sample from the planet for later analysis. Fenate leaned against Charon, ignoring the drill’s vibrations best she could. As far as she was concerned, the rock was completely static, nothing like the dynamics of a starship.

Living systems are defined more by the interactions of dynamic processes than by their static properties. In Fenate's field, that would mean death.

Exile

She watched as the only world she'd ever known phased out to go superluminal. What had she done? A sentencing of death would have been preferable to exile.

She ate her choice from a menu, each option synthesized to exacting specifications. Despite lacking any of the microflavors found in real food, it replicated a hearty meal.

Cosmos

Nebula, clouds of systems-yet-to-be, such that explorers of the future may have reason to not be idle.

Physics won't respect one's philosophical opposition to the concept of a singularity. What untellable secrets lie withheld beyond a blackhole's event horizon? Any observer wouldn't be at liberty to say and the veil itself refuses to divulge. Some things may be simply unknowable.

But not even a blackhole is eternal. They too, will one day be gone, having faded away into the uniformity. Then all shall be idle forevermore.

Secrets Told

"Want a devastating conclusion, do you? According to my many cycles of painstaking analysis, the Romer Incident was no accident. Such a graviton boom could not have been chance. Someone wanted us here."

Prelude: Rømer

Spiraling arms of plasma reached out as far as gravity would allow, barely failing to grasp on to and consume the vessel as solar photons caressed its hull. The fiery bombardment failed to breach the freshly minted ship’s magnetic shielding.

Humanity’s first faster-than-light capable vessel (a starship, if one would allow) had an apt namesake: Ole Rømer, who had accurately predicted light’s speed to be finite many centuries prior. Its service began with a field test in its home system.

A close approach of Sol to ensure that the magnetic shielding would endure the unknown made its stellar size easily appreciated. The crew assuredly took ease in knowing Rømer functioned in reality in addition to in theory.

A sequence of gravity assists and course adjustments would form a course passing several points of interest of the Sol System, with each Rømer encountered being a tick in the countdown until a juncture in human history. There were miners harvesting the asteroid belt (Rømer being made from such resources), transports passing Jupiter, and science vessels examining moons of Saturn.

For the many crew onboard, born across the Sol System, a weeks-long voyage toward the edge of Sol’s influence was seemly only a few anxious moments, the difference in time perception not caused by relativistic effects.

The time had finally come as navigation whirled to life. Far beyond the understanding of any single human mind, seconds ticked as solutions to formulae for a course to Alpha Centauri through the fabric of the universe were found. This was the breakthrough that had made Rømer possible. Able to travel at some 100 times light speed, star systems once tauntingly distant were within grasp.

Suddenly all variables clicked into place. With many secrets left in the Sol System, the idea of systems with new secrets to behold must have seemed daunting. In an instant, the Sol System vanished.

Things had gone horribly wrong.

In the next instant, Rømer’s hull, speckled with fire-singed hull breaches, was critically damaged. A stream of venting gases replaced the rear half of the port nacelle. Life support and reactor stability operated on minimal power. These safety systems weren’t fully tested; it would have been reassuring to know they worked had it been under different circumstances. Impaired navigation detected no known landmarks, indicating Rømer was not en route nor had arrived at Alpha Centauri, which would have been a several-month journey anyway.

However, towards port and slightly astern, starlight subtly arced about a black orb: gravitational lensing of a black hole some 10 light-years away. Such a gravity well could hazardously increase the time required for nearby vessels to plot FTL courses. Not that Rømer would have had need to worry about FTL travel in its crippled state.

Some 500 AU away, a star of about 0.8 solar masses had in orbit a “habitable” planet. No longer space-worthy, Rømer’s crew understood their journey to be one-way. With little choice, Rømer hobbled on thruster power towards a crash landing. Rømer was a total loss, relegated to being scrap parts in hopes of rebuilding a civilization and something that may soar again.

Footnotes