Short stories. Never ending voyage.

Never Ending Voyage.

By Colin J Platt.

OK last entry in the report log that everyone has to abide by. One

more day, that’s all! Just one more day to spend on this out of date,

decrepit, old museum piece of a space ship. Yes, you heard, I don’t

care who reads this later. Boy, I’m excited, all my life I have been

here. Twenty five years; that’s a generation! The hologram room was OK

at first then it started to malfunction; there would be jungle mixed

with cities! The graphics were OK, but the rapid response fabrication

machines took too long to reproduce stuff like trees shrubs and grass,

also the room was limited; I knew the room backwards, I would think

this is the place where I shot the alien yesterday, now I’m trekking

in the mountains. It’s boredom you see. The day we reenacted the

Battle of the Bulge was a laugh, our crew managed to manufacture an M5

Tank, of course the room wasn’t big enough plus some stupid idiot

loaded the gun with some real ammo, it was supposed to be a joke but

Roberts managed to blow his arms off! The culprit was never caught,

but we knew who it was. Roberts was OK as he was rushed into robotic

surgery straight away, he had new arms in thirty five minutes.

I can’t wait to see the new world we are approaching. There is bound

to be top of the range technology. The communications from Minior

have been nonexistent for twelve years, but that is probably because

they have a superior system. Don’t forget, we have been travelling in

Hyperdrive for 297 years, that is a long time to wait, and our

communications system is very old hat, we haven’t had any messages

from Earth for more than 220 years I suppose Earth blew itself up or

poisoned itself to death, all the information we have of it is too

terrible to read. The reason we set off in the first place was

to get away from the place. I suppose I’m lucky. My ancestors had the

money to fund this journey. It will be fifteen thousand years since we

left Earth with time dilation, so it is a pretty sure thing that Earth

is dead.

I never got my head around the danger that people of Earth put

themselves through, day after day! I mean, imagine trying to get from

one side of the world to the other by public transport; records say

that it would take more than two hours! And that is without the local

shuttle service to get them to the place of destination. God knows how

they managed to survive before W.P.T. (World Public Transport.)

All I know is, I am excited. I wish my parents could be here but they

had to be put in long-term storage to conserve the resources. All

people over 40 have to go into storage, but they will be brought back

as soon as we reach Minior, also, everyone who started the journey all

those years ago are still alive and safely in storage; even the ones

with incurable diseases are in there waiting to be regenerated. I

can’t wait to meet my great ancestors; imagine talking to someone who

was around when the ship was built!

Word has it that Minior’s technology is top-notch. There is supposed

to be an actual war-game where you can transfer your consciousness

into a robot and blow the shit out of people; of course, the people

are robots. I can’t wait; the technology is bound to be even

better than that, as it is years since we contacted Minior. The

troubling thing is, we haven’t had any escort ships to bring us into

orbit? I wish we had better sensors, but they are also outdated. When

we lost contact with Earth our technology ground to a halt. And then

when we lost contact with Minior things really went downhill, they

said they would update our ship from deep space but it never happened.

It’s a good job that updated star records were sent to us from Minior

before the communications blackout, it diverted us away from a red

giant star that had extreme gravity fallout, we would have been

flattened!

Minior is a world similar to Earth with people who are like us, with

just minor differences; we will be able to mate with them, imagine

that! Just 14 years since they contacted us, giving us hope and a

future. No one thought that we would ever be contacted. The trip was

just a drastic attempt to get away from a doomed planet.

My friend Danny would have been elated; he was my age when he died

just two years ago, it was another accident in the hologram room. We

were playing a game which involved a monster called a Trench beast

when Danny had a heart attack. But he will also be brought back, as we

are confident that the Minior’s will have the technology. I can’t wait

to meet Danny again, we were like brothers.

‘Marty, will you please hurry up, your lunch is ready.’

‘OK, Mum, I won’t be long.’

That is just the robot; it has been programmed to act like my mother

while she is in storage. The robots are OK, but they don’t look real

enough, also they can be scary sometimes, like when I wake up and one

is standing at the side of the bed. They are programmed to monitor us,

but why can’t they give us some private time? I complain about it all

the time, but the elders won’t change things, I would change a lot of

things if I was an Elder, like the sex drug they give us to keep our

sex drive down, I suppose it is one reason why I like to go to the

hologram room and blow the crap out of robots. But I won’t get the

chance to be an Elder as we will be on Minion! Yes, I know I am

supposed to keep the log data sensible and reviewable but I don’t

care, let me vent my anger out in the ship for once. Danny and I used

to make small explosive devices from the fabrication machines and put

them into the robots access panels with a time fuse, if we put it in

the back panel his head would blow off!

God, I can’t wait to walk on solid ground for the first time in my

life, I wonder what real grass feels like? Or the real smell of wild

flowers and rain on my face. There are so many things I want to

experience without being monitored. Imagine walking somewhere without

being watched, and talking to someone without it being recorded! I was

told by Danny that people used to be able to go anywhere and do almost

anything they wanted before the World Government came along, but it is

probably a myth, and we can only get bits of information on pre world

government times. I know we will probably have to have another implant

chip in our necks but I don’t care, let me get off this ship.

‘Will all personnel please make their way to the great hall?

This is it, the last meeting before the great exodus. I wonder if

there will be snow. The hologram room never did get snow right; we

couldn’t roll it into a ball because it was dry, they said wet snow

would do harm to the actual room.

I am now going to exit the log.

OK, here we are in the Great Hall. I can see the Elder-Leader

standing in his usual spot looking high and mighty, what a fool. I

remember Danny and I going to his quarters one night and putting an

explosive device in his robot, we made sure it was an extra strong

explosive compound, it blew his robots arms and legs off with the rest

of it landing on top of him, good times!

Message from the Elder-Leader:

‘Tomorrow we will come to the end of a very long journey. You don’t

need me to tell you what a momentous time this is. I just want to say

that my time as Elder-Leader was the most exciting time of my life.

You all know that I will reach my fortieth birthday next week, so it

is extra exciting for me to know that I will not be going into

storage, but will be initiating the bringing out of storage of all our

ancestors.

Thank you for your applaud and your support during my term of office.

Now, I would like to introduce the person who will be escorting our

beloved ship into orbit around Minior. District Officer-112523, will

be speaking to us through one of our robots- 21456.

‘We have been monitoring you all, and we have decided that we do not

want you here, you will be sent back to Earth immediately.’

The End...