Just a oneshot fic describing this idea that was tickling the back of my brain. Hope you enjoy it.

Exodus

Somebody ought to be writing this down. That's what I keep thinking. Everyone around me is running around, working, talking to one another in these busy, high-pitched voices, saying the same things over and over... seems like grownups always do that. They get busy, even when they don't need to be busy, just to keep from thinking. But me, that's all I do. Think, watch, stay out of the way. Even when I try to do something useful, it's "Maura, that's too big for you, let your brother get it..." Useless. But since I'm so good at sitting back and watching, maybe this is something useful I can do.

My name is Maura Cohen, I'm fifteen years old, and it's the end of the world. That got your attention, didn't it?

The databanks on the Arc are full of the collected histories, literature, and profiles on every culture and world that's coming with us, but nobody's really writing down what's happening now. Everybody's pretending like this is just like any other colonization mission, because nobody wants to face facts. In just over a week, we will either be the last survivors of the Milky Way Galaxy, rocketing towards a new future in the great unknown, or we will be atomized mist in the vaccuum of space. Could go either way really.

So in what may be my last week as a fully-assembled group of atoms, I'm going to document all of this. Maybe my scribbled-up little notebook will end up in history books generations from now on some bright new world. Or maybe some alien archaeologist is reading this, 5,000,000,000,000 years in the future, studying our long-lost civilization. If that's the case: Hello, future aliens! Watch out for Reapers, don't atomize yourselves, and make sure you eat right. I want you guys living nice and long so that somebody, anybody, remembers that we were here.

(Here there is a gap for two pages of just doodles and bad poetry. Entry resumes in a different coloured pen.)

The tech for inter-galactic travel had been theorized and designed years ago, but never happened, because of, you know, the whole atomized mist in the vacuum of space thing. Some years back, when humanity began growing too fast and the competition for habitable worlds became fierce, the alliance began exploring the possibility of expanding outside of the known galaxy. Traveling past the outer edge of the galaxy without a mass relay was unthinkable science, but Mom says that's what it was like back then, when Mass Effect fields were new and everything seemed possible, science seemed completely limitless. Why not burn up a sun and use the energy to slingshot a colony ship through the void? We just discovered ME fields, let's go crazy!

The risks were deemed too high. There is a good chance that the amount of energy it would take would break the ship apart, no matter how strong the fields. There's no telling what that amount of highly charged mass effect energy might do to the people inside. Boom, explosion, atoms, like I said. There's no guarantee that when you finally slowed down you'd be anywhere near a habitable planet, you could get stranded and starve. There could be unfriendly species one galaxy over that'd just gut your ship while you were still woozy from the jump. And once you were there, it's probably not possible to hook up a new mass relay with our current tech, so you'd be stuck there, in a big empty galaxy, alone. Lots of 'ifs' there. Not a high chance of survival. The project was shelved until our tech became advanced enough to revisit it.

Fast forward to now, and these giant scary hand-monsters come out of the sky to kill us all. I guess the risks suddenly became acceptable.

(Here there is a crude drawing of a cluster of ships shaped like grasping hands, with chunky, crooked fingers gripping what looks like a planet. In the corner, there is a smaller ship with lines indicating it's moving quickly away)

They're calling them the Reapers, but I call them assholes. We don't know what they're doing, or why, they just kill. They don't want anything, they don't try to steal our resources or enslave us or eat us. They just kill. That's pretty much all they do. And they're really good at it.

The council is trying to fight them, but they're huge, and there's a million of them. Commander Shepard, that hero biotic who saved the Citadel a few years back is supposed to be leading the charge. They keep telling us this like we're gonna go, "Oh, sweet! Well, no big deal then, Shepard's on it! Let's go watch a vid." Yeah, nope. Shepard barely saved the Citadel before from one of them. There's a lot more now, and they're not playing around.

Not that our chances are that much better than Shepards, I guess. What with the whole atomized-mist thing. But I'd take the Arc over a fight with the Reapers any day.

My Mom is on the team reviving the research on Inter Galactic FTL, so naturally her family gets a first class ticket. Still not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but we had to leave all my friends back on Reagan V. I don't know if it's been hit yet. Mom says there would have been no way to bring them all. I'm still not speaking to her.

Since this is my personal account and I can say whatever I want, the whole thing is gross. It's just gross and wrong and I hate it. We left all my friends to fend for themselves on an edge world colony with barely any Alliance support, came to the Citadel, and now we're poaching refugees for the Arc. The Citadel is overflowing. When new refugees come in and there's nowhere to put them, they get brought in to us. An agent explains to them what's going on, and offers them a place on the Arc. If they accept, they get shipped off to the build site. If they refuse, their memories get wiped and they get released back into the camps, groggy and disoriented.

The Arc is top secret. Mom says if everybody knew we were making it, they would give up hope for the galaxy. Or they would riot, and everybody would want to get on. Chaos. So we're just picking randomly from the desperate masses, give them five seconds to decide if they want to brave the reapers or get shot off into space in some experimental long shot and leave everybody they've ever known. And that's how we decide who lives or dies. It just feels wrong.

(There is about a paragraph underneath here that's been scratched out furiously, so as to make it completely obcured. The entry continues on a new page, again in a new colour.)

The Arc is a council initiative, so all the council races are involved: Humans, Turians, Salarians, and Asari. Elcor, Volus, Batarian, Vorcha? No dice. We don't have the resources. I guess if you're not a council species, you don't matter.

Problem is turians can't live on a planet terraformed for human life, they'd need a separate planet, so I guess we're just hoping to land in a solar system with two options? They're including enough fuel to explore several nearby solar systems, but there's no guarantee. What if we only find one habitable planet? Who decides who gets it?

The ship is designed with two sections. If we find a habitable planet, the levo-section is designed to break away and fall to the ground like a meteor. It contains the lab, the DNA for cloning all the necessary species, and can function as a temporary base. Turian tech isn't built for this kind of operation; in fact, none of the council races are prepared for ships to independently support life for this long without refuelling, except for the Quarians. So they've been invited to join, so that the Council can use their tech and borrow the unique Flotilla ships, which have been modified to latch on to the arc. One more species makes it on. Two by two. Quarians and Turians will share the first world.

The dextro-ship will then, theoretically, continue on to the next habitable planet and set up there. Its life support is solar powered, so in theory we can live in the ship for years until the terraforming is complete. In theory. If the solar panels break down, if the sun on the new world doesn't fall within necessary parameters, if there are unforseen complications we will have nowhere to evacuate to. What then?

Are you catching the theme here? What if? A million things can go wrong, and that's assuming we even make it there. What if, what if, what if? Best case scenario, we find two sister planets and form a big happy interspecies family. Worst case, we all die in an adverse terraforming event. Reapers aren't looking so bad anymore. At least it'd be quick.

(There is a drawing of a solar system containing two planets and a massive sun. One of the planets is labelled, "Human, Asari, Salarian." The other, "Turian, Quarian")

I feel sick all the time, I feel almost giddy with the anxiety, and unlike these braindead adults I can't just bury myself in work and pretend nothing is happening. I keep asking Mom about all the "What Ifs" and she keeps telling me to go find something to do. So I did. I'm writing down all the "what-ifs" in my notebook and hating her.

But I almost hate myself more. Sure, it was Mom's project, but I'm going along with it. I can protest about all the pilgrims and refugees getting rushed into this risky suicide mission and get mad at her, but I'm here, aren't I? I want to live. It's that simple. I want to live.

All of us do. It's all we can do, right now, huddled in the dorms while we wait for the ship to be ready. We sit and we hope to live, and we try not to think about all the people we're abandoning, countless worlds and species and colonies and families. No room for all of them. Somebody has to live.

Who knows. Maybe Shepard will figure it all out after all. Maybe the joke's on us. Man, if Shepard saves the Universe and everybody lives, and I end up an atomized mist in the vaccuum of space, I am going to be pissed. But maybe the reapers are unstoppable like everybody keeps saying, and I'm getting a one-in-a-million shot. Maybe this is the last chance for our species. Who knows? What if?

It's been four days since I started writing this account. Four more days and we convert the energy of a sun into a massive slingshot and fling ourselves wildly off into the void and hope we hit something livable. And that, my friends, is the good option.

I'm too nervous to write anymore. If you're still reading this, alien archaeologist, my name is Maura Cohen. I'm from a colony called Reagan V. I have one older brother, Ian. He's a jerk, but he's okay. My Mom's name is Sarah. I don't really hate her, I'm just mad at her. I don't hate anyone. I just want to live.

So just... remember me, Okay? I have brown hair. I'm good at science and terrible at French. I hate spicy food, and I didn't learn to swim until I was 13. In four days I might be atoms. So translate this into alien-ese, read it to your kids, and remember me. Please. Just remember me.

- Exerpt taken from Chapter One, "The Milky Way Exodus," from the first edition of The Discovery of Galactica Nova Principium: History and Critical Reading, published 2290 CE.