Kill the patient... remove the cancer. The order was irrelevant for the case was terminal. Many knew this but few accepted it. Fewer still would operate and less than that would walk away. And yet we did. We leapt from the cradle to run across hope before we knew how to crawl. A leap of faith... an escape... to an unknown outcome that would certainly end in stone, then turn to dust. And yet we did, for the nearest sign of hope. A journey of ancestors that might never end at it's destination, but merely where it stops to drift in forgotten memories in the darkness of eternity.
When the final diagnosis was made not an individual could see the outcome. In the vision of understanding things may seems clear but understanding is relative and open to interpretation. To say the end was nigh was not untrue but how it would arrive was wholly unknown. Of course, under relative understanding it would come in the melting of spheres, when the guardian gave it's last breath it's legacy would shudder and collapse to be replaced by the beings of twilight. Perhaps an ironically appropriate end for the children of the sun, that they would roam the darkness on it's final dying breath in search of another source to guide them. However, would the end come in a final burst or a slow atrophy of essence, unrecognisable at journeys end? Would the direction be lost en route, then forgotten, to be replaced by new memories, and lost priorities? In the end would the cancer outgrow the patient?
How do we mourn the inevitable? In fore-warning came preparedness, but we weren't prepared. We hoped, thought and wished we were, but we were not. We are not. There was no provision in time and the sentence was passed and carried out in less than the fullness of time. And now we were without all that we had known. Contact with home had been lost for months now. The time delay was more than I cared to think about, not that it mattered much, there was no-one to talk to anymore. We were alone in time. Never had the background sounds of the ether been so silent to listening ears. There was no-one in earshot of our screams and if they were they could be of little benefit than to lift our hearts a little. Our only choice was to head for the nearest star, still no more than a brilliant point of light among many. Behind us home was like a new-born star, almost like a beckoning mother calling us home. But home was gone now. In a flash of light the dying sun had spurned existence and taken it's most loved children with it. A question bothered me now, 'who would mourn the sun?' It held a different significance now. Now it was a perverse beauty that marked a point of history that marked our eventual fate. Weather we accepted it or not was irrelevant, it would happen. I could see it happening, but more importantly, I could feel it happening.
Fewer than a respectable fraction had been granted a stay of execution. Some viewed us as the lucky ones. others viewed us as a last hope and others still looked on us with pity. Cast off to roam eternity was an end in itself, but relative understanding could see the inevitable outcome of a change of spirit, drive, and humanity. I envied the others as, for them, the mourning process was over, gone in a flash, not left to fade away. Ours was to continue into unknown time, forever plaguing our descendants with question of roots, 'where is home?' or 'where was home?'. I remember home, it was where my family lived and where I felt at peace, comfortable in my familiarity, but my family are dead now. By their standards it had happened long ago. But then, by their standards, nothing really mattered anymore anyway. By my standards also, nothing really mattered. All that was important seemed to have been ripped away form me, but with the duality of humanity came the wish to survive. Perhaps it was fear or perhaps it was guilt. Whichever it was I wasn't sure I wanted to know. It was a refusal to mourn. In that end fewer than 18 million survived. We were spread across the galaxy to find a new home. By any standards, and regardless of the outcome, our journey was of epic proportions. But great as it was it had been a drain on the planets resources. Indeed never before had so many resources been ploughed into one project. Even with all the skills and expertise our knowledge had taken us only so far and so resources were understandably tight, everything had very strict reasons for being as it was with little if any leniency given. We were our future and we had to be maintained, as we will have to be maintained, so mortgaging our very existence for the comforts of easy living was simply not given thought. Conditioning was necessary, as it is with all disciplines, and priorities must be altered, but this brought about the first change. I saw it come about slowly at first, then people seemed to move on with the more important tasks of everyday life, yet individuals stopped and realised what had happened. The greatest single catastrophe in the history of our home was to be pushed aside that we might proceed under our constraints. How do we mourn when we are conditioned to struggle through adversity with logic and reason? Elsewhere lies madness and an inevitable chaos of forgotten and fading memories, and in the end, destruction. This change brought another question to my mind, 'how do we mourn an uncounted loss, by how much we miss it?', I had forgotten home. As I gazed at the stars on my own terms I forgot my home, at that time did I miss it? No! I was moving on like most others on this journey. If I didn't miss it had I really lost it at all? At that moment had I ever had it? Home is a fading memory now, it would fade into ages hence, but it would fade and it would be forgotten. That would be the journeys end and all things would stop, but understanding is relative.
There were fifteen other colony ships visible outside the observation window. They were beautiful, long sleek ships, but immense. It was difficult to appreciate their size from here. They were dwarfed of course by their massive solar sails, each approximately 5km in diameter, and each glowing like a star. They would gather the solar radiation and use it to propel the ships through space. It's undying momentum would push us centuries, before we would begin to drift. In the event of the unsuspected we had the ability to manoeuvre ourselves with the more conventional rockets. If we could find a source of space born ice we could create enough power to move a small planet, in fact we could power the fusion reactors on most of the elements but water provided the best source for cold fusion. As it was we had a massive energy reserve but on such a long journey we all knew that it would be needed at a time beyond our comforts. Planet fall for instance would require a considerable amount of fuel, let alone escaping gravity once again. But that was far away now, we had aimed ourselves at the nearest star and would not near it for a good many years. It was not so much for the hope of finding home but simply for the use of it's energy. Our plan was to skip from system to system using each stars energy to move onto the next. Finding a place to make planet fall was a distant dream and many assumed we would eventually make a new home orbiting a distant sun by simply compiling our ships. But this would not be a sufficient end for humanity. It would undoubtedly mark an end but not one that we desired. Even if we didn't become extinct inside a stuffy ship, it would still be an end. Humanity required more. The shade of the sky might not in the end be important, but that there would be a sky was paramount.
I have often wondered how strong was our bond with the Earth. It is a question that has rarely worried me. I have felt concern at times that we didn't understand how much we depended on it while we slowly destroyed it. Ironic though it was that in the end it was as near perfect as we have ever seen it. But through the many, near and far, disasters that plagued us it had never truly caused me to worry. It was not fashionable to be concerned with the apocalypse. Everyone had their idea how it would come about, most were wrong. As it turned out, we where not responsible for how it ended, although many felt that they were. I think in the end we all felt responsible for not heeding the warnings, but if we had how would we have helped the situation? Upon pondering this most of us agreed that it was out of our hands, but if we had taken more time to realise it we might have saved more. On this, the greatest of journeys, humanity had the equivalent population of a medium sized country. It was indeed a massive undertaking to take even that many, but still people concerned themselves with the 'what ifs' and 'maybes' of more time to save the rest. In reality we would probably have ended up with similar numbers, to take this few required over 1,000 ships. It was the greatest fleet in our history. We had exactly 1,000 Colony ships, each roughly a mile long and each carrying 18,000 passengers. The required quantities of resources had been unimaginable. The strip mining of the planet Earth would not have been suitable to provide enough of the materials used to build the fleet. Even if sufficient quantities existed then there would have been the added costs of heaving it off the planet. As it happened the Great Asteroid belt had been heavily drawn upon to provide resources for the fleet. This also made the orbit of Mars the largest ship yard ever in the history of the species! It was a glorious sight to watch the fleet. Since we left I have spent hours upon hours just watching them. They all seem motionless, absolutely still, of course we now had a velocity greater than any human had ever experienced but the enormity of space put our journey back in scale. As we now hurtled through space our combined fleet now covered a circle roughly 600km in diameter, like a massive flying saucer. In the early days we obscured our waking hours with a plan to create a 600km diameter smiley face by painting the fronts of the sails. Of course, that would never happen, but the diversion was much needed.
The final colony ship fled the system almost a full three years before we expected the sun to die. As the shockwave began to ripple it's way behind us, we had already travelled three times the distance across our system and as our acceleration increased, spurred on by the wave, we almost doubled our haste to leave it all behind us, and now we have. The greatest philosophical question that now plagued the minds of the many was how to quantify our journey, by how far we had travelled or how far was left to go. We left roughly 5 traveller's years ago. Soon we would begin the hibernation rotations. This would inevitably become our new measurement of time. We would not all witness the journey between the stars. Such was the emergent way of thinking that we should spare ourselves as much time as possible. Of course, we all knew this was the most logical course of action., it would take us centuries to travel from one system to another, sometimes less and sometimes more, such was space, so to ensure a long life and continued scientific advancement most of us would spend 14 years out of every 20 in hibernation. A select group of 500 would be given the duty of caretakers, as they would come to be known, theirs would be the night shift. They would rotate in hibernation at intervals of 6 years for a period of 6 years. The main body of the crew would sleep for 50 years in transit, again in rotation, however, these would be fixed shifts to allow for some familiarity when they awoke. But for the rest it was 14 years sleep in every 20.
The inevitable outcome of this was quite an obvious class distinction. The caretakers saw time passing in more real terms. They would see generations change while others slept. The waking life span of an individual was typically 108 years, which meant a life of roughly 220 years for the healthy. But the distinctions would grow. The life span of the sleeping crew would give them a similar waking lifespan but while witnessing only 20 years out of every 80 they could expect to be alive in about 380 years. They would see others come and go while others remained the same. Everyone would progress at different rates gaining knowledge at one time that might be obsolete in another. The resultant mental changes were both obvious and easy to predict, however, they would enable the journey to be undertaken efficiently and everyone understood and accepted it. But what was worth knowing was how deeply it would effect us. We had already changed emotionally and were willing to alter our thinking further to achieve our goals. We had even altered our life cycle, but how much were we willing to change. Would it be such an unthinkable proposition to our physical form. In what was equivalent to lunar gravity there was less strain on the body, and so growth progressed unheeded so that a child would generally reach 5' tall by the age of 7 and an adult would have a stretched slender appearance. Already supplements were needed to maintain strong bones, but at some point would this too become an obsolete or wholly unrecognisable feature of the species? It had been proposed many times that the inertia of our speed be aloud to gives us a more familiar gravity. But that would bring back all the usual strain on our bodies and so reduce life expectancy and besides some things were always more fun in reduced gravity.
As I watched from the observation deck I pondered my fate and the fate of the others. Momentarily we would leave for our sleep chambers. People were saying their farewells, just like before, at least there would be a morning after for us now. I would sleep 3 times before I saw some of them again, but I had said my farewells once before and never again would they be repeated, what was important was no longer relevant and what was worth knowing was not worth saying, this way lay the madness of reality, the other lay the insanity of chaos and my path had already been chosen. When I woke again things would be very different and I would grow accustom to it, this was the way of things to come. This was the journey's end.