The Loneliness of Distant Beings

Chapter Three

Graduation day. We have to wear full-dress for it, and this is the first time I've ever had to do that so mine is brand-new, packet-fresh, shirt and tie and grey blazer that buttons all the way up and this weird round hat thing that has the same little Ventura emblem on the front of it that our usual clothes do, but this time it is silvery and metal and cold rather than just stitched in. I look at myself in the mirror for a while, thinking about it all, trying to get it to sink in. By the end of this day I will not be in Education any more. By the end of this day I will be in Service, two years, mandatory, before I specialise. Working eight-hour shifts five days a week. By the end of this day I will know who I will have to spend my life with, have genetically engineered children with, pretend to love.

Captain Katerina Lomax, aka Captain Kat, aka the master of all she surveys and the one who runs the show now that the old captain, Captain Lee, has been dead some four years, takes the stage in her navy-blue full-dress Command uniform. Despite being only in her mid-thirties and having two weird kids and a dead husband she has spent her life climbing up every level until she seems to have found herself exactly where she wants to be, that is to say, the top. She's this tall, insanely hot blonde, so you don't have to spend too long wondering how it is that all these doors have opened to her but, whatever, she has definitely made it her mission to maximise on the opportunities there were. My sister, for one, thinks she's pretty much the Lord God Almighty, but has never really been able to justify this opinion or shake me from mine that she's actually just kind of scary and possibly not all that sane. Anyway, here Dad is next to me, Pan on his far side with Cain, and Dad's taking my hand as we sit in the absolute ice-chill of the drill hall and watch the captain approach the podium.

'As you know, this year marks eighty-four years since the Ventura left Earth, and a projected two hundred and sixty-two remain until we reach our destination. We were the sacrifice the people of Earth were prepared to make to find out what may or may not exist in Epsilon Eridani. Yes, you heard me, I said sacrifice. I'm not denying, and I never will, that we have had to make huge sacrifices in the name of this mission.

'When Ventura Communications Incorporated first became sponsors of NASA and the European Space Agency's joint SETI programme they could have no idea where it would take them. The coded message they discovered, originating in the region of the star system Epsilon Eridani, was just the beginning. When our mission was first conceived, there was a series of problems that needed to be solved. First were the ships: powerful, nuclear-fusion-fuelled, self-sufficient. The ability to generate artificial gravity. The capacity to synthesise virtually any food from a basis of fish and egg proteins and to filter water and air ad infinitum meant that the only weak link left in the chain was us, was our mortality. Once it became clear that the journey could never be covered within a lifetime, the concept of the multi-generational crew was born.

'We are one of the interstellar generations. We've never seen Earth; we'll never see where we're going. This ship, eighty-four years into a seven-hundred-year journey, will be all we ever know. All our children ever know. It was all our parents ever knew. Our descendants will be the ones to reach the destination, and their ancestors will one day return to Earth, carrying the most exciting news humanity has ever received. But in the meantime it is important that we remember who we are, that we carry with us the culture, the morals, the ideals of home. That we are of Earth, even if we've never seen it.

'For this reason the Education you are now finishing is absolutely vital to this mission, and I know that each and every one of you has done your best and appreciated every moment. Now it is your turn to take your place among your crew, to give back, to contribute to your society and become as productive a member of it as you can be, and step one of this is your Service. Two years in which you will serve in Maintenance, Production, Domestic and other divisions and during which time you will prove reliable, adaptable and hardworking, and hopefully discover your calling.