Reach for the Stars

But if there was one trait that homo sapiens and cockroaches have in common, it is that they are incredibly resilient to a fault. The modern homo sapiens, despite their tendency for self-inflicted harm from time to time, have an odd tendency to persevere in the bleakest of situations. Although this particular case was a bit excessive, it just proves that humanity can overcome basically anything.

Perhaps by a stroke of luck – or perhaps by divine sympathetic blessings by the Creator or the Devil – humanity miraculously used what little resources it had at its disposal and achieved an authentic defiance of fate. Through leaps of great sacrifice and heaps and bounds of contributions in the scientific community, humanity was able to turn back the clock on their impending doom. Terra was becoming increasingly inhospitable as a result of long term adversities of nuclear winter. With the single exception of Oceania, it was devoid of anything meaningful save for enormous landscaping scars – craters, ominously red atmosphere, concrete jungles. These served as a reminder of the inhumane sins of their forefathers.

Although it must be noted that Australia and most of Oceania had by far the largest contingent of people after the war, there were still outlying settlements around the world, mostly localized in nature and never with proportional growth. As soon as acidic rain subsided to safer levels, the majority of these first-to second-generation settlers would immigrate to the continent at the beginning of the 27th century.

“We must reach for the stars, grasp them, and use them as leverage to reach onward and onward!”

For the youth of now, this was a gregarious rallying cry that served as the beacon of light in a new modern Dark Age. The ever-increasing acceleration of technology in the fields of space travel made the reality of settling other planets possible. One of the most crowning achievements of this technological leap was the discovery of jump drives in 2609. In cooperation with the rest of Oceania, Australia pooled an extensible projection of manpower and capital into this titan project to see it through. According to records in later years, it is mused that their expenditure was, in the words of one particular Australian scientist “whopping great, but still not enough.” This comment can only make future historians question if there was an overcommitment to this program.

Regardless, by 2655 of the Gregorian calendar, this jump drive was deemed to be “exceptionally perfect.” Though in reality, it was anything but. It was still impossible to travel directly from one planetary system to another. Meaning, one would have to use excessive amounts of energy multiple times in order to shorten the light year distance between destinations, and never directly above a system or near its gravitational well. Archival documents imply that by warping directly on top of a large body or its gravitational field would cause entrapment possibly followed by a vessel destruction (certain demise) if there was no contraception for atmospheric reentry. As such, even with the “perfected” system it was only possible to warp finitely from point to point. The nominal means of travel was by propulsion systems, so warping was seen as a necessary supplement.

In addition, to properly utilize these new forms of interstellar travel, there was a communal effort of establishing an ever-so-evolving library of navigational routes mapped out between star systems. This was a necessary step. Warping at the right points of space in particular was a good measure in order to not have your vessel be graced with a terrible fate.

Most space-faring engines were powered by fusion reactors, which were fed helium-3 – a kind of gas that was depleted by mid 27th century Terra. As such, before deep space colonization could take off without issue, a constant supply of it was a pressing matter. A mining colony would be established on Luna, where helium-3 was still untapped. Over time, a stream of helium-3 would be shuttled back to the home world for further use.

Following a grander program to construct the first of many orbital satellites – colloquially referred to as O’Vertame Cylinders – which would become the dwellings for an indefinite amount of the pioneering space-faring generations. These cylinder-shaped stations, usually 6 km in diameter and 28 km long, were capable of becoming almost self-sufficient in agricultural industries and other means of habitual survival. These were colloquially called Clusters with each individual station called a Side with either a unique name or number to distinguish it from others. Their initial shortcomings, however, were the constant obligation of raw materials required to be self-sustainable in other forms of goods that they couldn’t artificially reproduce otherwise.

Later on, as Clusters became a relic of the Common Era surpassed by partially reformed worlds, they would be overpopulated and suffer from food crises as a result. An issue that would prompt the need for settling on planetary systems.

Humanity would not be shackled in these Sides forever. In later periods of time, a certain device would be conceived to terraform uninhabitable parts of alien worlds into hospitable, fertile lands. These would help solve food crises that would plague older, overcrowded O’Vertame Cylinder communities and also be a source of food for both of them, notwithstanding the terrestrial lovers and their forsaken descendants that chose to remain behind on Terra.

Man had learned how to light fire, operate cogs in a well oiled machine, and now crash missiles on other planets in a successful manner. Through channelized willpower and determination, the ambition of Man followed positively with no trailing plight.