Entity [ONC 2024]

1

No-one can truly understand the vastness of space until they experience it first-hand. Looking up through the haze of an atmosphere can't begin to give an iota of comprehension of the distances involved. Education can allow you to know, in an abstract sense, that there are millions of miles between the Earth and its planetary neighbours, but knowledge can only go so far. It's too big. Too empty. Too oppressive.

Even in Low Earth Orbit, where one can look out to unobscured stars and feel the drop in your gut that we are, essentially, alone in a galaxy a hundred thousand light years across. One galaxy among billions. Within each galaxy, billions of stars. Around many of those stars, planets of their own. Innumerable. Unfathomable. Numbers that can only bring shakes of the head and attempts to reconcile the fact that everyone that has ever lived, everyone anyone had ever known, everyone that will ever live, had lived and died, or would die, on that one, tiny planet orbiting an average star.

Samantha Porter never understood it until she saw it. From the moment her eyes rested upon the inky black after lift-off, she knew, deep inside, how utterly insignificant she was. It could send people mad. No briefings could prepare someone for that. And, for her and few others, that was only the beginning of the journey. A journey that would take years out of her life, but could set her up in comfort for the rest of it.

In only her second rotation, she had seen enough empty space to last that entire lifetime. Travelling beyond Neptune, to the Kuiper Belt in search of materials for Earth's conquest of space. Though that was as misleading a statement as she could imagine. They weren't conquering space, they weren't even conquering the Solar System. They were clawing out footholds. Tiny, insignificant colonies no further than Jupiter. Not even colonies. Outposts. An invasion of space by the few.

"Where's the captain?" Porter tugged herself along the rail, pulling herself up to what they laughingly called 'The Bridge'. "He's been avoiding his scheduled check-up. Again. How can he hide in this thing so well?"

"It's his fifth rotation on this boat. He knows all the places." Dinari Ndara, navigator. Believes himself funnier than he actually was. He lifted a hand to his lips, as though smoking. "He's contemplating eternity in the rotunda. He likes the feeling of weight."

They all did. Low gravity had a way of diminishing a person, body and soul, and they all took the opportunity to spend time in the rotating middle section of the ship to get even the tiniest sense of something pushing them to the floor. It wasn't the same, not unless the rotunda quadrupled in size, at least, but space was precious on these ships.

"Alright, while I'm here. Roll up your sleeve." As medical officer, it was Porter's duty to maintain the well-being of the crew. None appreciated it. "How's your diet?"

"The same as every day. Reconstituted muck that has all the nutrition a growing boy could need." Reluctant, he lifted the sleeve of his coveralls. "Be gentle."

"I don't know how." The medical cuff snapped around Ndara's arm, taking his blood pressure and taking a blood sample. She checked the display. "You're low in iron again. Take the supplements!"

"I hate the supplements! They taste like shit." As she removed the cuff, Ndara snapped his sleeve down. "Maybe if you fed them to me? Like grapes?"

"I don't date dicks. Or assholes. Or morons. You, unfortunately are all three." Bracing her feet against the wall, she prepared to boost herself to the other side of the bridge. "And you're a pervert."

"I am not a moron!" Ndara waved an indignant finger, then shrugged, grinning. "The others I cannot deny."

"If you two have stopped flirting, I think I may have something here." Ula Chen, Operations. She had already rolled up her sleeve before Porter even floated across to her. "GAIA, isolate grid Two-Eight-One-Four and magnify."