This Instance Earth
2021-01-18
The first of the "Goldilocks" fleet was launched with great fanfare by the One World Emergency Government. It was a last ditch effort and everyone knew it, but at least it was something.
The ship was an "Orion-class", which meant that its main means of propulsion was to pitch a small tactical nuclear weapon behind it, then detonate it. The massive reinforced-concrete and asteroid metal "pusher" plate at the ship's rear would shape the blast and drive it forward. Do this enough times, and you could reach almost a tenth of the speed of light.
The bombs were incredibly dirty -- they were hastily made from recycled ICBMs that nobody really had a good use for anymore -- but effective. And visible. It was good for morale too. People all over the world could follow the path of the ship out past Mars with the naked eye. Plus, it sparked some incredible auroras.
They were called "Goldilocks" ships because they were looking for planets similar to earth in the so-called "Goldilocks-zone" of distant solar systems. That is planets orbiting their star at a distance that wasn't too hot or too cool -- that is, potentially life supporting.
They carried tiny crews that spent most of their time in a kind of drug-assisted lowered metabolism coma. One of the things that nobody dwelled on too much was that half the crew were under the age of ten. The older and more experienced crew that handled the start of the journey were expected to impart what wisdom they could to the young ones between comas so that they could complete the journey.
The first ship was targeting Alpha Centauri A. Not only was it fairly close to Earth (4.4 light years, practically next door), it had recently been discovered to have a rocky water-bearing world about 1.05 astronomical units from the sun. Despite the ship's impressive cruise velocity, the journey would take around fifty or sixty years. Nobody expected the older half of the crew to make it. But the younger half, with the help of huge freezer banks of stored embryos, might possibly be able to restart the human race.
Because, frankly, it wasn't that great on Earth just then. The ships were part feel-good, part whistling-past-the-graveyard, part fancy tomb markers. A last big middle finger in the eye of the universe, to let it know that the human race had existed, and for a short time at least, had dreamed of flight.
Sixty four ships were built, 47 were launched and 42 of those made it out past the heliopause where contact was finally lost. And mankind could pat itself on the cancer-ridden back for a job well done before finally joining the dinosaurs, the tigers, the elephants and the whales.
But... Things didn't quite turn out that way. Even though the World Government was just supposed to be a caretaker organization until the inevitable end, ambition still lurked in the devestated souls of men. Five years after the last ship left its construction orbit, things were changing. Crop technology developed for the ships, but adapted to the wasted fields of Earth was sequestering atmospheric carbon and providing food. Ten years after the departure, the sky in many equitorial countries was blue again.
The great die-off had killed so many. Countries and cultures were riven and shattered. But somehow people came back together, and put their minds and hands to work. Which is why fifty three years after the Departure, Earth was a paradise.
The population was a great deal smaller, and the composition rather changed, but it was sustainable. Especially with the resources mined from the ruins of the great cities. A new kind of technology flourished -- literally. Living computers made of cellulose instead of rare earths and silicon seamlessly managed the pleasant lives of the new World Citizens.
Space flight was a relic of the nightmare times when the human race thought it was on the verge of extinction. Despite the ocassional mad astronomer, there was no enthusiasm for venturing beyond the globe. Especially now that it was so green, pleasant and uncrowded.
So when the spaceship came into view at the edge of the solar system, there was a certain amount of consternation.
It was travelling at an absolutely frightful pace -- about one fiftieth the speed of light. Periodically, there would be a bright bloom that overexposed the image sensors of the telescopes aimed at it, and it would slow down some more.
Some people suspected nearly at the beginning. And as the weeks wore on and records were sought, restored from backup or otherwise exhumed and searched, it was gradually confirmed. The first of the Goldilocks ships was coming home.
The popular imagination was aflame with explanations as to why they had returned. Each theory more outlandish than the last, aliens, wormholes, aliens /in/ wormholes and so on and so on.
At last, the ship was slow enough for orbital insertion. Jury-rigged ground stations, dishes made of giant sunflowers, force grown for the purpose, reached out, questing for telemetry. Contact was established.
The ship had been in flight to Alpha Centauri A for fifty-three years. The crew had been awakened in shifts, every week out of a hundred. Some of the original crew had died, but a few were still hanging on, beset by cancers, hallucinations and claustrophobia. However, their younger replacements were the ones who brought the ship into orbit and made the first contact with an incredulous Earth.
Over the next thirty years, more and more of the Goldilocks ships came in, but by that time, everyone knew what was going on.
There was only ever one Earth, one cradle for humanity. The target planets that had looked so attractive from afar were images, /instances/ of the singular Earth. And when each weary explorer slowed enough from their long journeys across the interstellar waste to put in at the glittering planet they saw orbiting a double star, a red giant, a yellow dwarf, a black hole, they found themselves orbiting Earth. Good old Earth, the one and only.
And, at last the riddles of the Fermi paradox and the great filter were solved. There is only us, on our only Earth. We have only the one chance and this is it.
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