Hope Among The Stars ...
is hard to find and often fleeting
It happened so long ago now, it feels like a legend, or a children's story;
Once upon a time, on a night like any other, the great minds of our planet were pouring over the sky in search of answers, as they had done and would do countless times. At the peak of the northern sky they saw something, something that couldn't be seen with the eye. It was a hole in space, hungry and dark, small as a moon but massive beyond reckoning. Powerless to intervene, they watched the hole plunge into the sun, drinking of its solar blood before bursting free from the other side. Damage done, it disappeared back into the unknown as suddenly as it had arrived.
Injured, bleeding, the sun lashed out at us. Billions died or were seriously injured by the outpouring of radiation. Electronic systems around the globe failed or were destroyed, storms rocked every country on earth, forests and cities burned, mass panic gripped every human being, it was hell for weeks as we waited for the sun to die and take us with it, or relent and begin to heal. The same great minds that had watched powerless before argued among themselves about what would happen now, as if it would make any difference to the sun.
They would not emerge in agreement until after the sky returned to normal. The news was grim. Where our sun would have shone for a millennia, it now had only centuries, if that. No one wanted to believe it at first, not until months later when the sky turned red. Resigned to an inescapable fate, a plan was developed that the human race might outlive its home planet.
The project was called Pheonix; Representatives from every developed nation were involved, working together to build a roadmap of research and development, in fields ranging from medical science to astrophysics, scientific goals that would need to be met to ensure the greatest chance of success, societal stepping stones to cross. The last facet of the program to be developed was the lottery, introduced just a few decades before the launch date. Early participants were those already trained in required fields, but those selected at birth were more or less born into their roles, knowing little other than their rigorous training.
Ursa Minor was the last of fifteen deep space colony ships to be launched from earth before the sun went critical, passing Pluto as humanity's home planet was swallowed up by the sun. The crew was already in stasis, the computer initiating measures to follow a course selected before the first rivets and welds were ever put in place. Each on board has accepted that they may never wake again, knows what is at stake if they do, knows there is no home now to return to, that home is now something to be found and made anew.
No one can say if they will succeed or fail, only time will tell.
