The course was set, and the flight was progressing smoothly. All crew members entered cryosleep, and absolute silence descended upon the starship, except for the gentle hum of computers and all the systems of this enormous vessel.
Unpleasant Situation
For the first six hundred and thirty-two years of the journey, everything went smoothly without any emergencies. Leo, Emmy, and Ron each completed two watches. Their watch lasted two Earth weeks at each awakening. The first week was dedicated to fulfilling all tasks related to flight control. The second was for leisure and relaxation. Ron played «Figures» and read a lot, Emmy drew and wrote short stories, while Leo favored computer games, watching movies, and talking to robots for entertainment. During the relaxation week, between cryo-freezes, their bodies had to adapt to being mobile again.
What project leaders feared the most occurred in the six hundred thirty-third year: the crew flew near a star (or rather, at a relatively short distance from it) and the star exploded and released an enormous amount of energy.
Despite their flight trajectory being well away from the star, they failed to evade it, resulting in the emergency awakening of two crew members. Ron and Emmy immediately began course corrections after waking up from cryosleep. But imagine their disappointment when they found out they could not avoid passing through the asteroid belt of this star system. They sealed off all the compartments and positioned themselves at the heart of the spacecraft, the flight control center. Their speed was so high that manual maneuvers within the asteroid belt proved useless, leaving them to hope and pray that no section suffered severe damage. The belt wasn’t very wide, it only took them six seconds to fly through it at this speed. Yet those six seconds were enough to cause critical damage to one of the sections (fortunately, the large compartments were isolated and sealed off from each other as needed). Many sections also suffered micro-damage from asteroid impacts, which Ron and Emmy dealt with first. Once they fixed everything there, they had to restore the critically damaged section ahead, quite a time-consuming task.
This room contained some of the embryos of animals and birds taken from Mephius to breed on Earth. Unfortunately, all of them were dead. So, this planet, in case it becomes the resource-producing rather than central, will never have the chance to know of the existence of those amazing creatures.
While restoring the section, Ron had to go on a spacewalk in order to place a robot equipped with a 3D printer technology. This robot sealed the breach in the spacecraft’s hull. Once the job was complete, Emmy suggested to Ron that they investigate how the disappearance of these animal and bird species would impact the evolution of fauna on the new planet.
«Great idea, Emmy,» he said. «We have five more days until cryofreeze, so we can run computer simulations, removing these animal species from the list and explore all possible scenarios. Perhaps we’ll need to eliminate a few more species to maintain balance in the future animal ecosystem. Losing just eight percent of all animal species aboard seems like an easy fix.»
«I suspect that after running the computer simulations, we may need to part with another five to seven percent, which would cause significant damage to Earth’s wildlife. It’s a shame it had happened.» – lamented Emmy.
It happened as Emmy predicted: computer simulations revealed that it is necessary to remove six percent more of the total animal population to keep balance in the future animal ecosystem.
It was July twenty-eighth. According to the schedule, Emmy and Ron were set to enter cryosleep on August third, but Emmy approached Ron with a proposal.
«I know we have to follow protocol and stick to the daily schedule, but would you consider pushing the cryosleep to August sixth?» she asked. «And on the fifth, let’s have a little party to celebrate my birthday, okay? Since this misfortune with asteroid belt happened just before my birthday, I’d really like to take advantage of the situation. It might be my only birthday in deep space when I’m conscious.»
Ron thought to himself that Emmy was too emotional about a routine event, but he didn’t say this directly and agreed to postpone the stasis date to August sixth.
«Yeah, let’s celebrate and ease the tension caused by this thing with asteroids as well,» he said and wondered. – «How old are you going to be?»
«In fact, if we count the time of the stasis, I’ll turn six hundred fifty-three, but if we only count the years I’ve actually lived, not slept, I’ll turn twenty,» Emmy answered. – «Thank you that you agreed to postpone the date of entering cryosleep. It means a lot to me to celebrate my birthday in such circumstances. And I’m sure you won’t regret being a guest at my celebration.»
The day had finally come. Emmy made a birthday cake herself, following the recipe she had found in archives. They dated back to the times when people cooked the food themselves, unlike now, when robots took this job over. And I must note, this was many millennia ago. Yes, she liked doing everything by hand: drawing, writing articles and stories, cooking tasty food – in general, anything where she could use her imagination.
Emmy and Ron sat down at the table to have a cup of tea and a cake. That’s where the engaging conversation popped up.
«I’ve been thinking a lot about our mission on Earth and I want to share my thoughts with you,» began the birthday girl. – «Our task is to create a home for the entire race. In order to achieve this goal, scientists created a human embryo that slightly differs from us now – actually, significantly differs. So… I don’t really understand why they didn’t just create an identical embryo similar to us, so that a human on Earth could live for five hundred years, instead of just about a hundred? This human won’t be exposed to the various diseases, they’ll retain memories well and assimilate the information quickly. And the most important question: why can’t we interfere in their development? In fact, we created them and we are responsible for them! Just imagine what we could achieve by working together if we gave the Earth humans all the information we possess.»
«You know perfectly well that we cannot discuss or change any of these matters,» Ron said. «We must strictly stick to the plan. But… because it’s your birthday, I can hint at something that might answer your questions. However, I must ask you to approach this with cold, logical thinking and keep this conversation between us. Do not bring up this topic in discussions with other crew members.»
«Yes, I’d love to hear it, and I promise I’ll never come back to this topic,» Emmy replied.
«Excellent. In that case, I’ll share what I know, and I’m somehow sure that other crew members won’t approach me with thoughts similar to yours, so I won’t have to repeat myself,» Ron said. «Imagine that our Earth wins the race to become the planet for relocation. In this case, a couple of thousand years after it is chosen as the central hub, billions of people from our home planet Mephius will arrive. And there’s not much space on Earth. I think that says it all.»
«That’s extremely inhumane – to destroy the entire population of Earth. Moreover, we are those who created it!» Emmy exclaimed in obvious bewilderment. «Our creators would never approve of such an idea. I’m sure there is a compromise we can find.»
«There’ll be no need to destroy anybody; I should have added that right away so as not to mislead you,» Ron reassured his colleague. «There are many humane ways to achieve this. In this case, I think a virus that prevents women from having children will be used. All the people on Earth will peacefully live out their lives and free the planet before our arrival.»
After