10 Minute Tales

Jan 7 - Journey Through Space

She came to a window and paused, looking out to the stars beyond. They were beautiful... but so had the last five views been. She longed for a planet, to feel a gentle breeze, to hear the gentle pattern of rain on the roof, to be able to roam more than the same mile of corridors. The stationship she was on wasn't even due to arrive for another four years. Frowning, she turned back to pace the halls. Sally was part of the medical crew on the Terran Reformer Ursine, a behemoth of a ship armed with all manners of factory-size equipment. Its aim was to bury itself partway into whatever planet had been deemed suitable, then activate a series of complicated and highly expensive machines to shift the world over a matter of centuries - if not millennia - to better suit human habitation. She glanced aftwards. There was no promise that humans could follow them onto whatever planet they approached, they were travelling so fast they couldn't detect any signal Earth could broadcast. For all anybody could prove, they were alone.

"Why even bother?" She asked out loud, leaning on a wall and gently sliding down until she was sitting. As large as the Ursine's crew was, it paled to the reported population of home. This last-ditch attempt to flee the Earth's dying skeleton had effectively doomed their specie. She sat for a moment, solemn, then bunched her fists and stood up. It was precisely because the Ursine's population was so small that she couldn't give up. She, four others and a machine were assigned to maintaining the health of the entire crew, some two thousand strong. If she gave up, a single pathogen could wipe out the entire colony. "For want of a nail..." she muttered to herself, marching back towards the medical centre. Maybe she would go for another shift after all. The pay never hurt.