Colony One (5 page)

Everyone was feeling the effects from months of the freeze-dried diet. Passengers had been allowed to bring foodstuffs with them; however, those supplies were gone almost immediately. No one had thought to ration, since the orientation had explained food would be plentiful. It was a shocking disappointment that there were no other food options provided by World Corp for the journey outside of the freeze-dried meals, liquid supplements and seeds intended for growing food when they arrived. There wasn’t even a cafeteria – just a storage area on each deck that had to be self-regulated.  

“That’s not true,” Javier responded to Demetri’s claim. “It’s just that Ndale character smuggled on more food than anyone else and is selling it for anything that takes his fancy.”

“I bet he’s sharing with them,” Demetri insisted.

“He’s got to be. They look too plump.” Lucinda added.

“Stop it you two,” Javier warned. Demetri and Lucy had become close friends, to the point of being inseparable at times. While this was a good thing for the most part, they had a tendency to work each other up. “Weren’t you listening? We’re halfway to paradise. Don’t be such conspiracy theorists.”

“I can’t wait to build my house. Right on the river, where I can fish.”

“How do you know there will be a river?” Lucy teased as she often did. “Or even that there will be fish in it?”

“You’ll see,” Demetri grinned at her and Javier silently wagered that they would be the first couple to conceive a child on Colony Alpha.

“And what will you use to build your house?” She wanted to know.

“The ship, of course,” Demetri responded easily – the ship was designed to come apart to build structures on their new home.

“This ugly grey color?” Lucy blanched.

“I leave the decorating to you, woman.” Demetri laughed but the look on Lucy’s face made the jubilant noise soften, and then stop entirely. “I mean…” he stammered with flushed cheeks.

“Nope,” she held up a hand, “No take backs. You build, I decorate.”

ɸ ɸ ɸ

“I don’t know how you stay so perky,” Patrick said and rubbed his face with both hands. He had dark circles under his eyes and his normally pale skin was becoming translucent. “It’s so difficult to adjust to constant darkness. No morning, no sunset…” He said, staring out into the star-filled sky from the cockpit he and Skylar shared.

In stark contrast, Skylar’s skin was often flushed with excitement, making her look healthy and unaffected by low gravity or time disorientation. “Are you kidding?” She asked. “This is the best vacation ever!”

Patrick laughed, “I don’t think that word means what you think it means.” Having two pilots meant that they could only alternate shifts so much. And at times that needed course corrections or a check of the systems, both pilots were needed. Patrick was having a hard time adjusting to a sleep schedule and if he missed some shut-eye, it was difficult to make up. He found himself wondering more and more about the choices World Corp had made in their staffing and planning. He tried not to dwell on the thoughts – telling himself that he was simply unaccustomed to difficult work and stayed silent as to not be labeled an entitled trust fund kid.

“Maybe it would help if you spent more time with the rest of the colony,” Skylar suggested. “I was in the red section just the other day – they hosted a dance and even managed to pull off a live band!”

“Yea, I recall hearing strange noises throughout the ship.”

“It’s called music.”

“If you say so,” Patrick leaned back in his chair with a faint smile. “When I leave here, all I want to do is sleep, if I can.”

“You’ll adjust,” Skylar said with confidence.

He gave her a sideways glance, “You’ve been saying that for three months.”

“Even if you don’t,” she countered, “We’ll be on Colony Alpha before you know it. With your feet firmly back on the ground since you seem to like that so much.”

“And real food,” Patrick said with longing in his voice.

“I saw pumpkin seeds on the inventory list. Can you imagine? Real pumpkin pie!” Skylar exclaimed. “None of that synthetic stuff from back home.” The seeds were genetically replicated from the emergency stores back on earth. Since synthetic food could care for all nutritional needs and finding enough land or facilities to grow in was difficult, the seeds languished in storage, waiting for an effort such as this.

“Don’t tease me,” Patrick warned as his mouth watered. “It makes the rest of the trip seem like an eternity.”

“Colony Alpha is such a boring name,” Skylar changed topics abruptly, leaning back and propping her feet up on one of the consoles. She stared out the giant windscreen and decided, “That should be the first thing we do. Give our new home a good, proper name.”

“Like what?” His tone was dubious.

“Like… like,” She thought hard for a moment – “I don’t know. What would you name it?”

Patrick shrugged. “No idea. Though if the ‘Powers that Be’ back on Earth had named it, it’d probably be called iPlanet with a trademark symbol.”

That made Skylar laugh, which made Patrick laugh because of how infectious hers was. Despite his moments of exhaustion, Skylar somehow always managed to energize him again, if only for a short time.

“Next Gen OMNI,” She suggested when she got a hold of herself.

Patrick chuckled, “Exxon Prime.” He added.

“That’s a good one,” Skylar admitted. Their ship was fueled and partially sponsored by Exxon, making it all that more surprising as to the fact the ship wasn’t named after them. “It’s a
new
world,” she reminded him. “It would need an inspiring new name without any of the baggage of home.”

“Libero, then.” Patrick said.

“Like, the astrological sign?” Skylar asked.

Patrick shook his head and turned it to look at her directly, “No, Libero means freedom in Latin.”

“What’s Latin?”

“A dead language a people called the Romans used to speak.”

Skylar knit her eyebrows together in confusion, “First I’ve ever heard of them.”

“Most people haven’t. A lot of the histories were lost in the war of 2040.” The war of 2040 had been a religious one – so devastating that the winning world powers decided they should discard religion and all the limitations and backward thinking that came with it altogether – and focus on the future and the future alone. The Romans having such a large role in establishing Christianity were erased from history – made easier by the destruction of much of Europe and the Antiquities.

In lieu of functioning governments, which had been wrecked by the havoc that was modern war, Corporations came together with all their money to privately fund the rebuilding of civilization. From physical rebuilding – entire cities had been razed, including New York City, Dubai, and Tokyo – to psychological rebuilding. Entire servers of history data were deleted and reformatted, effectively cutting off access to the world’s heritage since books had been largely abandoned a decade before.

No longer did corporations need to represent their interests in government – they were the government. Fundraising became obsolete as corporate profits went directly to world leaders and market competition was left in the past with religion. Instead of running a worldwide monopoly, the priority became creating a sustainable quality of life for all in an attempt to reduce the kindling for conflict.

New philosophies were instilled – those of atheism with an emphasis on science, progress and capitalism. The results were staggering in terms of technological advance – with moral barriers stemming from religion gone, so much had become possible.

Cities were rebuilt with new technology, producing bigger and better buildings, smart and forward thinking infrastructure, the most state of the art public transportation world-wide that connected the world’s population in ways few thought possible. Everything was faster, smarter and constantly improving.

Yet, the trade-off was privacy. Very quickly, the bio-stamp that only the wealthy could afford in the beginning was introduced as mandatory. Large subsidies had been provided to ensure compliance and the initiative was marketed as a peace-keeping effort, along with a quality of life improvement.

A bio-stamp was a paper thin film with tiny circuitry that was inserted just under the skin on the recipient’s dominant forearm. It was powered by the body’s natural electrical field and could hold as well as transmit data or work as a relay.  The stamp had several benefits – many of them lifesaving. They were originally designed as medical devices to read and monitor the body’s vital signs in high-risk patients and log them in an OMNI. Bio-stamps would notify a host of a heart attack hours before it happened, report blood sugar levels and even scan for cancer and chemical imbalances associated with dementia and depression. Life expectancy skyrocketed and with data contributed world-wide, breakthrough after breakthrough emerged until many of the diseases that plagued humankind were wiped out of existence. With its medical function depleted, other uses began to emerge – connecting humans to technology directly. It integrated flawlessly with all personal technology, making internet security impenetrable. Hacking personal data became something that only happened in past generations.

It was a flashpoint for human networking and soon, bio-stamps were used to capture every piece of data a human could produce, uniquely identifying them and allowing mass observation of the entire population of Earth. The stamps worked as tracking devices and, with the correct clearance, were easily accessed to gather information about people immediately – their age, origin, any criminal records, service records, drug screening, travel activity – and much, much more. In summary, the stamps represented a record of an entire life past the age of eight years old.

While the stamps were advantageous for most, the lion’s share of the benefits were largely collected by those who had instituted the framework – World Corp. Almost everyone on earth had a baseline level of comfort and security – that was essential, but with population booming and consumerism following, resources became scarce at a dizzying pace. Everyone could benefit from the available technology – every home had a viewer, for instance, but refrigerators were not always full nor the living space around the viewer plentiful.

Worse, the advanced level of automation developed over decades of research forced unemployment to intolerable levels. As a result, production zones were implemented – a place where unskilled labor projects were used to keep much of the population employed. Technology had outpaced social evolution and the class system that existed before the war entrenched itself even more as a result – laborers and military making up the majority, skilled tradesmen and women in the middle, and the corporate executives consisting of the smallest percentage.

The production zones supported major industries and revealed themselves to be a surprisingly successful investment, critical to the profit margin of the corporations of earth due to the low wages but enormous worker base. Population was still outpacing the capacity of production zones, though forcing the world’s leaders to look for other solutions – colonization and expansion.

“How do you know about it, then?” Skylar continued with some curiosity. “If all the histories were lost, how do you know about Romans?”

Patrick considered his response, “My family is a bit eccentric. And… wealthy. They could afford to keep their books during the purge by virtue of their stature. My tutor liked to use them for my sessions instead of the viewer.”

Skylar feigned outrage, “Criminals!” She asserted.

“Guilty as charged. My crime is knowing useless facts.”

“Not so useless,” Skylar disagreed. “I like Libero. What was the Roman word for Home?”

Patrick thought for a moment, “Lorem.”

“Yea,” Skylar nodded. “Now that has a much better ring to it than Colony Alpha.”

ɸ ɸ ɸ

“Don’t you think it’s a little odd?” Ndale asked Luca.

“What?”

“That it’s been three months and the Chinese girl has barely spoken two words to anyone.”

This again
, Luca thought as he sighed – for some reason Ndale had taken to creating wild theories about Jia and her silence. “That’s not why I’m here,” Luca pointed out. Ndale lay on his bunk, chewing thoughtfully on a piece of dried synthetic meat as Luca knelt near the foot of the bed. “I was asking you about the instant coffee. Got anymore?”

“Got anything to trade?” Ndale wondered.

Luca put on his best and most trustworthy face before asking, “Take store credit?”

“No,” Ndale didn’t even take a moment to consider it. “Tell you what, though,” he sat up from his bunk and gestured with the dried meat to Jia, who was folding paper by herself at one of the community tables. “You get me her story, and I’ll give you all the instant coffee I have left.”

Luca smiled widely, “Deal.” He said and stuck out his hand. Ndale shook it firmly and Luca turned to consider his task. He may not have been the most accomplished of his family, but his personality did lend itself to making friends. He’d made a lot of questionable friends in his time, but this was different. This was his new start. He would use his powers for good, he told himself.