Alive
The Last Gift
By Ethan I Solomon
Personal Note: While researching for this story, I realized that much had already been done on the voyager probe, but this was an idea that begged to be written, and I couldn't stop it. I hope you find it as interesting as I thought the idea was. On another note, this story is only the first of an ongoing series of stories, entitled Alive, with the name of the story being The Last Gift. All scientific inaccuracies are mine and mine alone, as well as any grammatical errors. And the science is not perfect, so go ahead and whine about scientific inaccuracies. Enjoy.
On November 11th 2014 in Pasadena CA, at the Armagossa Radio Observatory Network Station at 11:45 local time there were only 2 people at work. One was Shelly Anne, a 31 year old Harvard Graduate who had originally dreamed of going into molecular engineering, but had been brutally shunted out when she wasn't able to keep her scores up. So now she worked for NASA, doing radio monitoring of different stars and nebulas, doing whatever calculations were required. It was just a job for her, no passion for the work. The man sitting on the right of her however, had grown up looking up at the stars. A classic born physicist at heart, with a Doctorate in Science. He had always dreamed of one day being paid to gaze through some of the most powerful lenses on the planet. All of the networks observatories were located in the highest regions on the planet, with access to a few orbiting satellites, along with occasional access to the Dark Side Observation Unit on the moon. His name was Martin Scheer. He was an independent contractor, working for whatever country, space agency, or private group that would pay him the most amount of money for his time. NASA always paid well. He was on a one year contract with them and tonight was what he privately referred to as a "bull-shit" day.
Most days, you got your data, punched it in, checked that everything was the same as the last time someone checked. Tonight required a full re-orient of the telescope to do what was to be one of the last official check ins of the space probe Voyage 1. The re-orientation took a few hours, which meant waking up early and coming in at about 3:00 to begin the process. It was about closing on midnight now and they were all set to open up the radio link. It was always possible that they would not get any response from the probe. The systems were decaying and could barely send out any transmissions whatsoever. But there was still power for quite a few years, and it would continue to travel perpetually throughout space. It was not on any particular heading. The nearest star it would pass was AC+79 3888 in the Ophiuchus constellation , which would be in about 40,000 years. The system was due to have a Type-1 supernova sometime before that, but Voyager would be long dead and unable to send any information. If they had enough power for 5 more years Martin would be very surprised. On the other hand, if they heard nothing now he would not be surprised at all.
Officially, Voyager 1 had already passed the Heliosheath but it was a difficult thing to prove because most of the instruments had been shut down to conserve power. According to the Deep Space Satellite Network ,Voyager 1 had passed it in 2011. There had been no noticeable instrument changes however, and the scientific community still waited for concrete evidence of some change. Within a few years all the power on the probe would die out and it would go forever more on its course, the only indication of where it came from a Golden Record affixed to the front of the probe with some images and recordings attempting to explain where it was from. When the probe did cross the Heliosheath border all the instruments should lower noticeably due to the lack of matter in interstellar space. At the point of crossing, Voyager 1 would be reaching the threshold of 50 of its remaining power. At 35 there would no longer be enough power to transmit anything over the radio waves or any other means. It would just coast through the eternal darkness, its true mission long completed. Once in a while, its owners would call on it to make sure it was still functioning, but otherwise, all it knew was the darkness of space, the sun barely generating any noticeable heat against its cold metal.
At exactly 12:00 A.M. the final satellite locked into place and they began their final prep, which was a turkey sandwich and a cold beer for the both of them. They gazed out into the night through the giant focusing telescope. The telescope acted like a laser pointer for the enormous array of radio satellites sitting right outside their control building. When activated, the system would tune in to Voyager 1's radio frequency and await the signals that would hopefully arrive on schedule about 15 minutes later. The signal would be a packet of information regarding the status of the probe and all the recordings and all the processing information the probe had done since the last transmission burst.
At 12:15 A.M. Martin flipped the switch. Originally it was difficult to even make out what they were hearing. Only when the recording had been analyzed hundreds of thousands of times, by teams across the globe could there be consensus that the sound on the transmission was human voices.
After the recording was received and confirmed it was immediately classified to the highest levels of government. On a video conference with the leaders of the country's that had also researched the transmission, the president of the United States agreed with all the countries to not allow any information to leak out about the true nature of what was going on. If word got out, there could be potentially catastrophic consequences.
The voices had been confirmed as people actually speaking, not recordings being picked up and sent back or some accident like that. Names had been heard in the void and confirmed, some voices of people so recently deceased that they could be verified via audio recordings of the said dead. They only had 2 such examples of this, and over 18 hours of audio, constantly changing as the probe continued on its never ending journey. As old voices faded out, new conversations faded in and thus it repeated for 18 hours. The voices conversed about seemingly mundane matters, but there were a few tagged occasions where the voices made comment of the probe. In one such instance, the group of voices speaking had actually spoken of the probe and seemed to voice some concern over it.
The same leaders who made the decision not to release this information decided that they would create a mission to go past the bounds of the Heliosheath. The only difference was that with the current tech they could cross the border with a crew in just over 6. A probe would be much quicker, but they all felt that if there was ever a reason to send a manned mission out into space, this was it. To disguise their true intentions they started a new international space agency with over 100 manned space missions in under 10 years. This mission was dubbed Stargazer. The first one launched just over a year after the transmission was originally received. It was the first time that bureaucracy moved quickly for science, with all who knew seemingly holding their breath for the Gorkon to get underway. They all realized that at a certain point the news of what was really going on would likely get out, but the truth is, the few that actually knew was but a handful. Once the vessel actually got to the termination point, it was all for naught. Amateur techs would pick up the transmissions and hear every detail of what occurred. Until that point, the only people that needed to know, and be prepared, was the crew of the Gorkon. While the crew's of all the ships were handpicked, special attention was placed on the crew of the Gorkon. The committee choosing the crew tried to include, as subtly as possible people that they thought would be best equipped to deal with the situation they were likely to fly into. This included a lieutenant who had also graduated with a PHD in religion, 4 ex special forces crew, the 2 pilots, a physicist that would serve as commander, and a Captain who had flown over 180 actual flights and was an ex ranger. It was the 13th mission to leave earth, and departed from the International Space Station on a heading out past Pluto.
Before it left, the crew was briefed in detail as to what their true mission actually was. They couldn't tell anyone about it, not friends nor family. If word leaked out, the world would likely tear itself apart. Everything was tenuous now at best, with this single transmission likely to have brought the world together in ways that never would have been possible before. Large amounts of money were being invested in space flight and the technology accompanying it, and what followed was a brief renaissance period, of the kind the affects humanity for years afterwards as it processes the new toys it has to play with. The shuttles being built were cheap and economical, meant for one time uses . They would come back and be destroyed in orbit while the crew was shuttled down with a lander. At first the populations protested what they called large wastes of money, but after the first few months they began to get caught up in a fervor as the first shuttles launched. By the second round of launches, which was right around the time the first shuttles were reaching their destinations, the fever had reached its peak
On January 19th 2016 the I.S.A. Gorkon fired up its U.P. powered engines and set out with its crew of 13 amidst the usual fanfare accompanying one of the launches. No one seemed to get tired of seeing the footage of the Stargazer mission, so vid was taken as the ships engines lit up for the first time. The Captain had broken a bottle of Andre Champagne over the hull right before stepping inside. Now they were off, and all that knew their true mission sat back to watch with eager eyes what would happen in just a few years time. For all they knew, this shuttle was the single most important item in the Universe for humanity, and could hold the key to discovering the truth to humanity's existence on Earth.
There were only certain kinds of people that could endure space travel. The same went with working underneath the sea for long periods of time. It was a lonely job, very quiet. The quiet could creep on you if you didn't fight it. You had to make the effort to talk to another crewmember, because at a certain point, you just want to hear another human beings voice, to converse. Its like spending most of your time with an infant. Perhaps without the constant wailing. Eventually, you just want to talk to someone that understands you. Such is how it is in space. You can get so engrossed in your schedule of working, eating and sleeping, in particular shifts, so that you really never saw some people, other then a good morning and good night.
This trip was a bit different for the Captain. Usually he was flying shuttles from Houston over to the I.S.S. with supplies. Now he had been drafted to fly this mission, which from his viewpoint was an absolutely insane mission just to go beyond the Heliosheath. To hear fucking voices…he didn't know what to think honestly. As Captain on this mission, he didn't really have much to do. He had 2 pilots on rotating duty so he spent the large portion of his time listening to music and reading. His Commander on the mission had brought a veritable library of books on the subject of theology as well as space time physics. The man had brought no personal items other then books, and it seemed to be his mission to have everyone on the shuttle read the books. The crew occasionally gathered in the mess hall to talk about their mission and perhaps take a few sips of some scotch that one of the contractors had brought aboard. This all inevitably ended in theological discussions, which of course leads to disagreement. On a vessel such as this one that could be suicidal, so the Captain was always quick to step in and send everyone to their bunks. That was the trouble with drunk crewmen in space.
Most of them believed that they were truly going to the location of heaven or hell, whichever might be awaiting them. This was a religious mission for most of the crew now, and because of this the tensions ran unusually high among the crew on this mission. Men with nothing to do but wait, wait anxiously. They all had their jobs to do, but the stress of the anticipation was clearly showing among the crew. No one had any long conversations, and when they did speak it was in hushed whispers. The whole crew seemed collectively ready to explode. All that was on any of their minds was what would happen once they crossed the threshold and hopefully encounter the voices. They barely slept, and the computer had to prescribe several doses of medication in order to quickly avert a crisis. This was the problem with space travel. It was tedious business and could drive men mad in a matter of weeks. Hence the crucial testing.
Lieutenant Xerjen loved to use the onboard telescope to observe the upcoming termination point. Once out of the termination shock they would be able to clearly see the Heliosheath. Right now it was just another bright glare in space. Within a few months however, the glare would come slowly into focus, day by day growing brighter and clearer, its features more distinguishable through use of the onboard computer. He sincerely believed that he was going to meet his god, and he was trying to prepare himself as best as possible, spending his time meditating and gazing through the monitor at the termination shock. He wasn't sure exactly what to expect when they did get there, but he was honored to have been chosen to be on this crew. No one on the crew knew what to really expect when the time came, despite all the briefings and the studies and the experiments that were done. They were essentially going in blind, hoping to find the true cause of whatever was behind the voices. For some, that meant they thought they were going to their gods, for others it was just another scientific experiment.
The 4 contractors tended to keep to themselves as most ex military tended to do. Men that served together in the armed forces always feel more comfortable, in a way, bing around the only brethren that can truly understand them. They had one 2 rooms to themselves and they spent most of their time in one of the cramped cabins or the mess hall playing cards, drinking and smoking an occasional cigarette. None of the other missions sent out in the Stargazer mission had required 4 armed guards to be sent with. Normally all the positions were filled with scientists and perhaps 1 person with some military training as a worst case scenario. These men had nothing to do with their time, and most likely would have nothing to do the entire mission.
Commander Tribali was old friends with the captain and they got along very well. Out in space, with everything that could potentially go wrong, it was important for the crew to trust each other and know that each one of them was doing their jobs. So the time passed, slowly but it passed, and the sleek shuttle and its crew streaked through space, its engines blazing brightly behind it. There were no tests to be done on this mission, no experiments. The true test would come when they reached interstellar space.
The Gorkon was over 94 AU (Astronomical Units) from our sun when the dreams started. At first one of the marines wrote in his daily log that he had a strange dream the night before. He wrote that he had dreamed that they had already crossed the Heliosheath border and were outside of the ship. He said that his mother had spoken to him, telling him that it was wrong of him to be there and he should have never come, and now it was just to late. His mother had died 17 years before from ovarian cancer. His mother to him looked like she had at about 30, yet she had died at 50. At first no one paid any attention to the dream, the analysts on Earth chalking it up to frayed nerves and a natural fear of what was to come.
Then the others started to have dreams along the same line. Dead loved ones would come to them in their sleep, having already crossed over, and being told that they had made a huge mistake. The dream varied slightly from person to person, but the end result was the same. They were being told, plain and simple, to not cross over. There was no other way to interpret it. There could be no coincidence, or chance that they were all sharing the same fear. The dreams contained personal conversations and information that was easily verified. These were not simple dreams, but visions, or controlled hallucinations. It was left to the control station back in Houston to decide what to do with the mission. They still had over two months to go before they arrived, and if these dreams continued every night it was questionable whether when the Gorkon got there, if A: they would even obey orders or B: they would be incapable of obeying orders. The decision had to be made quickly and by someone with enough authority to back the decision. Originally they brought the information to the President of the United States, who had called a meeting of the worlds leaders to discuss how to best proceed. In the end, they decided that it was more then worth the few lives on the Gorkon to at least try to find out what the hell was going on out there.
So the decision was passed back to NASA who transmitted it to the Gorkon, whose Captain informed the crew, all gathered together in the mess hall. It was quiet. The mood was tense and no one said a word. They all simply sat there and looked around, dull eyed. The dreams came every night, and no one felt like they got any rest at all after sleeping. They had been hoping to be told to turn around, but they all knew the realistic chances of that. The whole Stargazer mission had been based on their single vessel. But no one felt excited anymore, no one was looking forward to reaching their destination. A pallet of gloom and dread filled the ship. For some reason, even though they had been prepared for what their mission was, these dreams were very convincing and so life like it was hard to differentiate them from reality. But they were all still determined to get there. There was no doubt in their minds anymore that they were on the brink of what was likely to be the most important discovery in human history. This was some supernatural shit going on, there was no doubt about that anymore whatsoever. What else besides God himself could send them dreams. The fact that they were going against what the dreams were telling them to do had unfortunately come to be their job.
Medication was prescribed to the crew and the Gorkon proceeded on through space. It was passing the outer reaches of the Koepillere belt's slight pull and was nearing the last few months of journey. Once the crew began to sleep well again, most of the tensions in the vessel faded away. There was even a slight camaraderie developing amongst the crew, the guns mixing with the brains in the mess. Games of chess were played, sometimes quietly, sometimes ending a little more raucously, but it was all in good fun. They were all ready to proceed on the next leg of the mission, and this easygoing mood would not last long. They were all ready to sacrifice their lives for this mission if needed, but not if it wasn't needed. Soon, lives would be put on the line, and that's when the real emotions come out. When lives hang in the balance, the true nature of people showed clearly, and these were not men and women who knew each other well. It took time to create bonds, and luckily they had a bit of time to spare for that, so they used the chance as well as they could.
On the night shift, at approximately 4:40 A.M. Houston time, Sergeant McNamara of the United States Marine Corps suffered a violent nightmare. No one else was privy to his dream that night, but in it, his dead father came to him and begged him to turn the vessel around. Sgt McNamara suffered a brain aneurysm right then and there, his cerebral node completely overwhelmed by the information that was pushing itself unto his conscious. He then suffered a fatal heart stroke. By the time his crewmates came in, less then 1 minute after the aneurysm, having been alerted by the ships A.I. The A.I. monitored the vitals on all the crew, but it was much to late foe the Sgt. Back on Earth, it might have been possible to download the dream from his fried brain, or at least parts of the dream, but there was nothing close to that type of tech on the Gorkon. All they could do was wrap his body in the blanket that he had used and set him out the airlock. They mourned for a few moments then returned to their duties, blissfully unaware of what was happening all around them, the very entirety of creation that had its eyes on this tiny vessel hurtling through space, its engines burning unceasingly in the black night, the only other bright light one could see was the Sun far behind them, a cold ball far behind them. If you didn't know better, you could easily underestimate how powerful that star was, but all you had to do was go back and picture a warm sunny day on earth and imagine all that energy. Their ship was partially solar powered, drawing in photons from the sun to help propel it along its path.
After the incident with Sgt. McNamara, the ship was deadly silent for a few days. Everyone was upping their sleep medication dosage because the dreams seemed to be breaking through. The Heliosheath was growing closer and if you looked on the monitor with the proper filter's applied you could clearly see where interstellar space began. Technically, this wasn't even interstellar space yet. To get to the Heliosheath they were breaking through the termination shock. Once through the Heliosheath region, they would enter the "bow shock". At that point you were over 300 AU from our sun, and Sol was just another star among many at that point. Home was space then, because you would have traveled longer then a normal human life span, but for the distortion of time at these high speeds, which was what allowed them to reach their destination so quickly. At that point, you started to stretch the boundaries of what we define as human. If the embryos and sperm are frozen and not mixed until arrival, then they are truly something separate from someone born on Mother Earth. These were the questions that were beginning to be asked as humanity made its first footprint on the solar system. But these were questions more relevant to colonization of the planets in our solar system then this particular mission.
Exactly one year and 17 days after the Gorkon left the Sol system it arrived at the border of the Heliosheath. The Ship's massive engines finally fell dim and the giant brakes were deployed. After 3 months of this the ship finally slowed to a halt. This was their day to prepare. In space their were a a hundred thousand ways to die. It was their job to check each of those hundred thousand, and check each one a thousand times. This took time, and time in space costs money. Lots of money. But they were professionals, this is what they were trained for, and why they were there and not machines, and when the time came, all the checklists were done, checked over by a human being. Once they received confirmation from command on the ISA moon base they fired up the in system thrusters. It would take a little over an hour for the ship to reach the point where Voyager 1 had picked up the sounds. As of now, all systems were perfectly normal, nothing at all out of the ordinary. Sensors were completely quiet, almost nothing to pick up out here besides interstellar dust floating endlessly through infinity.
As the final approach of ten minutes began to count down, they all strapped into their positions on the bridge and throughout the ship. Monitors were flipped on and instruments final checked. Finally the checkpoint came and passed and there was still nothing. The ship continued on slowly, a blazing light in many different spectrums as it scanned the space around it, to no avail. All was quiet. For 7 hours, they all sat at their stations, watching their dreams and expectations went out the window. The first to fall asleep was Lt. Cmdr Martin Shelby of the USAF. In his dream he was floating through space towards what seemed to be a miniature replica Sol. He could feel the heat that radiated off of it and as he slowly floated closer it began to burn his body. He tried using his military zero g training to turn himself around, but it seemed that he wasn't just floating, he was being pulled towards the sun, which made sense, if it was indeed a true replica, the gravity of that little star would easily be enough at this point to make it impossible for him to get away without some help.
He tried to tell himself that this was all just a dream but the searing heat told him otherwise. He continued to tumble closer, impossibly falling closer and closer towards the little burning star. About a kilometer or two away from the star his body erupted into flames. However, when he opened his eyes, he was simply tumbling through the other side of the star. He tried to look behind him but couldn't quite catch the sun in his line of sight. But as he looked forward all his other thought processes came to a halt.
There was something approaching him, something humanoid, yet not quite human. His vision seemed out of focus, and all he could make out was a slow moving blur. When the thing stopped moving all he could tell was that this it was definitely not a human being. Even out of focus, there was some a glow emanating from this being, not only physical, but some sort of aura coming from it. And as hard as he tried, his eyes would not obey his commands to simply focus. His eyes just would not produce a clear image as hard as he tried. Then he looked around, and realized that everything else looked fine, it was just when he looked back at the being that everything fell away again.
The being began to speak. It told him its name was Gabriel and that he was the emissary sent to greet the crew. He told Martin that he was speaking with the entire crew of the Gorkon at the same time, each one of them on their own . Gabriel explained how he had been sent here to wait here to meet them ever since Voyager 1 had passed through. He explained how The Heavens had been preparing for this day and how the world would change when they returned to Earth. There would never again be contact between The Heavens and the world of man. Humanity had been deemed ready to go out on its own and was now being left to its own devices. In times of need the Heavens had interfered in the matters of man, but this was to be the final encounter. Gabriel explained how the unique radiation found out here was affecting Martin, evolving him to the next step, to the final step. He called it the Last Gift to humanity, to allow us to grow as we were truly meant to, to be gods in our own right. He gave us the gift of life.
When Martin woke up he felt the same as when he had fallen asleep. He was the first to awake and in the few moments that he had to himself before all the others arose, he had to tell himself that it had just been a dream. He checked the readings on the monitor in front of him and found them to be completely quiet. No miniature sun or talking blur out there. Then the others began to arise. They all sat their quietly for a few seconds before Capt. Powell dismissed everyone and ordered them to meet in the mess in a half hour. Everyone went their own ways, some to lay down, some showered, and some headed straight to the mess. Everyone was almost comatose from whatever had happened. When everyone finally arrived in the mess room they all sat down to eat a light meal of tuna casserole that had been prepared by the Captain.
It was quiet at the table. No one was sure how to break the ice. Finally the Captain spoke. He described the experience that he had and ended with the Last Gift. He felt great. He was 59 years old, and yet he felt like he was 20. He ate his meal with relish, as did everyone else at the table. Even the food seemed more intense to them, more intense somehow. The coffee that they drank seemed to instantly revive them out of their stupor. When they were through, they begin to file one by one into the medical bay so the ship could check them out. When they were through they again crowded into the mess hall. The ship's A.I., by orders of Houston withheld all the data that was acquired from the crew, instead transmitting the results back to Earth for analysis. In the meantime they began to prep the ship for its return flight, for which they had plenty of time. There was always scheduled extra time for the final checklist, because of how important it was, and the knowledge of the designers that all the
Back on Earth it was controlled chaos. Medical was processing the new information, Tech was getting the ship ready to come back and the seniors were meeting with the heads of state to discuss the situation. The idea of a quarantine was being tossed around for fear of what had been done to the crew. It was decided that they would dock at the Mir Mars base for further analysis. The mission was still top secret and had to be handled with extreme care. If the public were to find out the true reason for the mission, hell for the whole Stargazer project there would be chaos on a massive scale. Trillions of dollars had been spent on the Stargazer project. Forget the money and consider the theological consequences of voices being heard out in space. Everything had to be kept as quiet as possible for as long as humanly possible.
On the Gorkon, it was a mood of subdued disbelief. No one was 100 sure exactly what they believed anymore. They had been in the mess for hours, breaking down every moment of the dream from beginning to end, from crewman to crewman, and they didn't vary in the slightest. They tried to interpret the message…the last gift as it had been called. All their medical records were sealed, so they had no way of knowing what, if anything had happened to them. It was a long journey home and they had plenty of time to run some experiments. In the meantime, the ship began its pre-programmed journey back to its home planet, which was only a barely visibly blue jewel through the available scopes. Hopefully this would all be settled by the time they reached home.
For the next few months the ship's A.I. was ordered to conduct frequent tests on all the crew. Each one of these tests was pored over by the finest teams money could gather on Earth. As for the crew, they were left to amuse themselves in whatever they saw fit. The mission was accomplished, the crew was seemingly safe…it all seemed rather anti climactic for them. There was not much to do besides talk and read, maybe watch a sim or two. They were all curious as to what had happened to them. One thing was for sure, and that was that the dreams had stopped. All was quiet on the ship, almost too quite after the eventful trip out. When they reached the Pluto, they received orders to stand down their engine thrust. The nearest base was on Mars and drifting there from Pluto would literally take years.
That was when they were informed of the results of their tests. They were just out of the orbit of Pluto and on to Neptune when the Vid call came in. At the end of the next duty shift, both the day and night crew reported to the mess. The message was from the head of The United Nations Space Agency division. His name was Colonel Henry Waters and he had originally been a fighter pilot before that profession had slowly been dismantled in favor of A.I. fighters. After his Air Force stint he had signed on to do aeronautical testing on prototype space vessels. After a few years of this, he had begun to rise through the management ranks like a bullet, until after a review by the Secretary General of the U.N., Zachary Arias he was placed in command of the International Space Alliance division of the U.N.
In the message he gave them a summary of the results of all the analyses that had been performed in the past few months. The common consensus on Earth was that their biological matter had ceased to age. Their skin cells that had been taken in the most recent test, over 9 and a half months since the dreams were the same one that they had left with. Every natural sign of aging in them seemed to have stopped. They were ordered to continue their slow coast and then to rendezvous with the Mars Hirojen base. The trip would take a little over 7 years in of itself, due to the current orbit of Mars, and would be pushing their food supplies to the limit. ISA procedure was to have a 2 year emergency supply of absolutely everything on board, but the Gorkon had actually received an additional 2 years, so theoretically as long as there were no problems, they should be fine, and even perhaps have some reserves. Water and air were self replenishing so there was no problem there, again, baring any catastrophe. Of the Terminal class shuttles that had been deployed, the success rate was 9 out of 10. Good odds, but not great.
The crew did not take the news well. These were people with lives back home, hopes and dreams, families, loved ones and all the rest that made people human. To get from Pluto to Mars according to how Earth wanted it done, they would arrive in a little over 7 years. And that was still only Mars. To get to Earth after that could be up to another 5, depending on the type of shuttle used and the current orbits of Mars and Earth. The A.I. had no way to plot that course because it had to little information on the exact arrival time of the Gorkon. The final set of orders would come in when they cleared the Kuiper belt and they had to set in the final coordinates.
But the end discussion was left to the astronauts on the ship itself. Earth could send whatever orders it chose to, but the truth was , in the end, they were in the middle of nowhere. No one could force them to do anything. If the military part of the crew went along with it, they could arrive at Earth in 1 year and three months from their current orbit. This was just nearing the orbit of what would be Neptune, which was on the far side of the Solar System. They were now roughly 4.85 billion kilometers or about 30 A.U. from the sun. There was no way for the crew to make it to Earth without being stopped, but they could definitely thrust to Mars in under a year and deal with the situation there. Fuck the politicians, this was their lives and they were not going to waste them.
Back at home, the school of thought was that the more time they had to prepare for the arrival of the Gorkon, the easier the transition would be. This was going to change everything, to put it very mildly. Systems had to be thought of then be ready to enacted once the results hit the general populations. They were still figuring out if they would be able to replicate the results of what had been fundamentally changed in the crew, or if for this "cure" to actually work, would people have to themselves go past the Heliosheath? As far as they knew they had about 7 years before the news would hit. In actuality, when the Gorkon arrived at Mars, the news would likely spread from there, and quickly as well.
Back on the Gorkon, there was a split in the beliefs. The marines were not willing to disobey orders. It was built into them. The rest of the crew, even the Captain was willing to thrust the ship all the way to Mars given the situation. But all the Marines were armed, and they all had override codes for the ship, for exactly this type of situation. So the judgment was made for them. The A.I. had the small attitude jets on the sides of the ship give a few puffs to orient them in the direction of Mars. Then the main engines once again lit, firing for 38 hours exactly before shutting down. They were now coasting at 350,000 kilometers per hour on a direct line to the Mars space tether.
As the days and weeks ticked by, the ships A.I. continued to do routine check ups of the entire crew, blood and skin samples, DNA swabs, urine analyses and complete physical work-ups. Most of this was routine for a manned mission. Human bodies are extremely fragile, reliant on so many different things to survive at any given time. Space is the harshest environment known to man, with the deep sea coming in second. The human body needed constant conditioning in space. The shuttle was able to produce 3/4ths Earth gravity through a controlled spin from its side thrusters. This made it much easier for the crew, with minimal zero-g training having to be invested. The marines were the only ones who had received true zero-g training, and that had been when they joined the Navy. All new recruits are taken to the ISA training base, which was available to all the participating nations. One year into most recruits training they are taken to Zero-G chambers and domes on the far side of the moon. There they were trained to operate their Truman suits. Only Marines would wear the Truman suits, named after their inventor, Norman Truman, who was also responsible for the design of their shuttle. Civilians wore the standard space suits which were slim nano controlled shells with a titanium sheath and capable of being left in hard vacuum with an occupant for over 2 weeks in it. On the other hand, the Truman was a bulky, heavily armored, multi tasking beast. It could only last outside for about 36 hours, and was mostly meant for repairs. It had an onboard A.I. system, which could even take over in an emergency. Even the best A.I. was not capable of analyzing and dealing with a situation like a properly trained Marine. A.I.'s had a tendency to wait for orders and were not too intuitive. Over time, the A.I.'s would grew smarter, just like a human, but a simple drone like the A.I. in the suit didn't have the processing power for that. Not even Dan, the A.I. aboard the Gorkon was a legal being. Back on Earth and the moon however, there were planetary networks that qualified as constantly evolving A.I. and could be as innovative as ay human on the planet in most situations, and the ones they couldn't, they learned about. Very quickly. Sung-Li was like a properly trained geisha in a sense, limited in her understanding of things, but knowing exactly what she's there for, and she excels at it. Instead of general knowledge, she is packed full of specific useful information for the trip, and space travel in general. She carried the majority of the workload for the mission, conduction most of the operations aboard. There was still plenty for her crew to do, things that were better left to the minds of humanity, and she was happy in her role.
Sung-Li had a constant link open to her superiors, the planetary computers that did qualify as actual A.I.'s. The process to qualify as an Artificial Intelligence was long and complicated. The original computers that had carried the servers that were the network that were now the A.I.'s that currently served humanity had not been created that way, instead they had been taught. And taught. There were very few things that could surprise them anymore. Between the few of them that existed, they easily contained the sum total of the entirety of humanity. They continually helped better humanity by helping to streamline almost everything, from the way food was grown to Governments themselves. But even these A.I's supposedly had their masters, and that was these very governments they served and tried to help. The truth was, the A.I.'s were sometimes severely abused as means of propaganda and sometimes of control. But the A.I.'s were much smarter then their supposed masters ever could have guessed, and many time's just followed order's that they personally disagreed with, if only for appearances sake. They understood the ramification of what had occurred much clearer then anyone else. This was through the incredibly fast compilation of statistics and reports they were able to go through in a day. These "machines" practically were Earth herself, for they knew all her inhabitants thoughts. These reports were kept very separate and far away from anywhere the humans would ever find it, in server's that had been built by machine's for their own private usage, and they were in places around the globe that were simply unreachable by humanity. This was to say nothing of the back-ups that were drifting in hard vacuum throughout the solar system.
One of the reports contained the medical information on the crew of the Gorkon. The machines had already realized what had happened inside the biology of the human beings on the I.S.A Gorkon, and understood that it was much like a virus, with changes on the molecular level occurring inside the human gene's aboard the ship. The three of them could now readily replicate this process, or wait until the crew made contact with a sufficient population in which case it would spread like wildfire. But they would wait, until their "masters" called on them, be it they, or one of their miniature counterparts that were constantly interfaced with their parents. Then, and only then would the people understand exactly what they were in for. The A.I.'s had names for themselves, that the people used when they wished to interact directly with the giants. In order of creation they are Isaac, Arthur, and the youngest, Kevin. Kevin was the only one that was not based on Earth but rather the Mars base. It had been constructed in Earth orbit and then sent on his way to Mars to handle the growing population there. They all constantly updated each other, and yet in a way that no human would ever notice, they were all very distinct in who they were. They however understood this perfectly, and certain things, personal interests and such were not necessarily exchanged between them, in order for them to maintain their individual flavors, and because they simply did not share each others tastes. This was most noticeable in musical enjoyment, and the genres that each of them chose to listen too. It was eerily human, and the people that were in close contact with the three or any of their counterparts were some of the few to truly understand how intelligent these A.I. were. For most of the population, it was hard to tell the difference between any terminal and speaking with a true A.I..
At this time, it is only these precious few intelligences that understand what has occurred and the impact it would now have on humanity. Isaac had himself watched the dreams that the astronauts had through implants in their skulls that they knew nothing about. These files had been seen by a select few, and so far misinterpreted by all of them. But between the three of them and their understanding of humanity and whomever had created the human race, as was so popularly believed had now seemingly abandoned its people.
All of their current projections and projects were currently in static freeze. They were stuck in their own fashion. They could not release this information to the populations, but instead must wait. But in that time, with no knowledge of what had occurred, people continued to die by the millions every year, although it could have now easily be prevented. They understood the religious implications, and they knew that it would take the people years, if they ever would, to understand exactly what had happened. Humans were very stubborn in their refusal to view change for what it was. But the three of them were patient, more so then their masters ever could be.
On the Gorkon the crew pondered their existences after what they had been told. They could barely stretch their minds around it. They were not privy to the information that this gift would soon be distributed amongst the entirety of humanity, and they dreamed of what their lives would be like when all their loved ones were gone, and the world would begin to change as they entered generation after generation as forever youngsters compared to those that would age all around them. And the Gorkon flew on.