Episode 2

In 22010, there isn't much that humans haven't achieved, not much that we have not conquered or destroyed. No lastfrontier of science because that was ages ago, literally. But one thing hasn't changed--things live, and things die. And well, if the Earth is a living body, then humans were the cancer that it couldn't find a cure for. And so, it's dying.

But not before the universe put up a pretty good fight. How do you fight cancer? Well, radiation of course.

When the first wave of gamma rays hit from Eta Carinae, people weren't ready, though they thought they were. Billions died, millions more were diagnosed with diseases that all culminated in fatalities. Plants withered, birds and animals littered the streets by the hundred thousands, what few scientists remained not so much as crossed off species from the list but ripped out entire pages and burned them. The world population was cut down by more than half, almost overnight, and the results were nothing short of devastating. In the years that followed, that half was once again halved by the aftershocks of the radiation, and then halved again by the fallout, reducing the world population to barely an eighth of what it used to be.

Everyone thought it was finally time for humans to go.

But cancer isn't that easily cured. And neither is humanity.

We might call it resilience, the world might call it pestilence. Either way, the people who did survive came up with plans, answers, ways, as we always have, and life carried on, under clothes made to deflect gamma rays. Mechanics and scientists even developed a way to turn that radiation into usable energy and civilization thrived again.

Up above the world so high.

And that was when we really started looking up towards the stars. That was when people started to realize that our time here really is coming to an end, and that if we don't get out, the world will die, and we would die right with it. Some people might call it a noble way to go but most people just wanted out, nobility go screw itself in the backseat.

So, the World Council came up with a plan, a desperate, crazy plan, but a plan nonetheless--send 42 ships off into space, towards the known civilizations in our galaxy and hope against hope and against hope that some of them make it. Of course, there are safer civilizations, the ones that people have made contact with, weak as the radio signals were, strange as the messages were, long as it took to decode, but contactwas made. And, given the significantly lowered population of the world, it wouldn't be a far shot from splitting what remained of the world into 42 different ships and sending them off. And that's exactly what happened.

Only, it’s more complicated than that. It's always more complicated than that. How do you decide who gets to go first? Who gets to go to the "safer" civilizations, and who gets sent on a joyride towards the edge of our galaxy without knowing if the ship will ever reach the civilization we've never made contact with?

Rewind 20 thousand years, give or take a century or so and a ship named the Titanic sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

And, while history doesn't repeat but it sure as hell does rhyme.

The rich and influential go first, go to the safest. The lesser fortunate go last. So it's been for all of humanity, and so it shall be till the end of the world's days. Literally. Oh the beauties of social hierarchy.

A ship goes out about every half year or so, because that's how long it takes to recharge the power plant with enough energy to launch a ship into space far enough for it to reach wherever it needs to go; the second to last ship left about six months ago.

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