George was exited. This was the last day on their four-day long voyage to Chernobyl. Of course, he thought as he hastily packed up his belongings, it would only be a week for them. For everyone else in the universe it would be around ten years. The discovery of near-light speed travel made things quicker, but only to those traveling. He had given up everything to come here, when he went home - if he went home - everyone he knew would be at least twenty years older than him.

A computerized voice shouted over the loudspeaker:

"All passengers and staff to stow belongings and report to the bridge. Decent from light speed in five minutes."

George locked his pack away and left his accommodations. It was a small room with only one small bunk, bolted to the floor along with a closet and a small bathroom. All in shades of metallic grey. George would've enjoyed a more spacious area and some variation is color, maybe a painting on the wall. He quickly changed his mind set when he found out where to workers and soldiers slept. Their barracks were cramped and stuffy and somehow even greyer than George's room.

He made his way to the bridge and strapped himself in to his designated chair around the other programmers. The seats were padded to reduce discomfort during reentry. He glanced at his crew. They looked as relieved as him to finally be there, to finally get off this cramped starship. Being to head programmer George had a team of around ten men, six of whom decided to come with him to Chernobyl. George was required to come, being the head programmer who needed to supervise everything in case something would go wrong, but the rest of his men weren't necessary. The fruit of their labor – what they had worked on for the Government for the last two years – was stored in several computer memory blocks in the cargo bay, encased in layers of Kevlar and some kind of industrial bubble wrap and specially designed to hold the several terabytes of code to run the life support, world generation and simulation code needed for this… George couldn't decide what to call it. An experiment maybe. Or a simulation. A proof of concept test, George finally decided. If this concept could be proved to work, then the entire jailing system on the Earth and the Union of Planets would be revolutionized.

The electronic clock on the wall neared the end of its count down. It hit zero and the blurring streaks of light from outside the reinforced windows began to slow down, turning into bright, burning stars. Ahead of them, the barren planet Chernobyl floated ominously in the void.