Isolation

Chapter One

We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast? Instead of all that, what if it's one little room, like a bathhouse in the country, black and grimy and spiders in every corner, and that's all eternity is?

--Crime and Punishment

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Subject: Rachel Ayoade

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Sex : Female

Age : 27

Nationality : Nigerian-British

Occupation : Sociologist

Status : Within Sember Limits

Request to set Hiberpod to awaken mode.........

Accepted

Beep

I'm awake

Adjusted for time dilation it must be the year 3100 or even further by now on earth. We have been in a state of suspended animation for the better part of a few thousand years since launch. My body is being sprayed with a light mist whose purpose is to clean out any excess suspended hibernation fluid.

I can't wait to see what everything looks like. Especially the Paradiso, a new home for humanity. After all the heartache and the well-wishes of the people back home, it's over. We're here.

Tentatively named g-3478-A, unofficially named Paradiso. A bit of a cheeky joke on part of our ship's ecologist, Jerome Niven, when we caught first sight of the planet. Jerome, whose other main love was literature, named the planets of the system after the parts of the divine comedy by Dante. Paradiso got its name from being the most likely inhabitable planet in the system with an easily breathable atmosphere and an ocean of liquid water, things necessary for long term habitation.

Before we set out for launch we had observed signs of life on Paradiso from the colony at Proxima Centauri. The science team observed that the planet had liquid water and showed a breathable atmosphere on our readings. It wasn't long before we get corporate sponsors from the Nox Corporation, an organization with close ties to the planetary government.

A new home for humanity. Jerome would often talk about literature he liked before the ship was ready to take control from us and activate its autopilot. One thing that really stuck out to me was his quotation of The Gods of Pegana by Lord Dunsany. In it the main God, Mana-Yood-Sushai was the creator of all the other gods that lived. Fate and Chance played a game and made bets as to who would go to Mana-Yood-Sushai and decide the gods he would create.

No one knew if it were fate or chance.

In my view it isn't mankind's destiny to conquer the stars as much as it is mankind's destiny to wallow in muck in caves, huddling around small fires for even the smallest bit of warmth as cold surrounds us.

We as explorers left the comforts of our home star to explore and make our own the stars that wait for us in the deep empty cold of space.

I walked around the cabin, occasionally taking a look at the hibernation pods of the other astronauts. Jerome ever the hopeless romantic would smile, becoming pleasure incarnate as he looks upon the next home nest for humanity. I look at the window, open the shutter, and look out at the future of humanity.