Anarcho Communist Collective

One of the most sophisticated ark ships that left the Earth was built by a multinational corporation that was a leader in some of the cutting edge transhumanist technologies of the time. Despite nanotechnology allowing for creation of virtually unlimited resources, the tech was restricted to allow a capitalist society to persist across much of the planet. Many of the richest capitalists paid enormous fees to the multinational for their tickets as they were promised an edge over the other ark ships.

Instead of travelling for light years either awake or in deep sleep, the passengers' minds were digitised and stored on the ship. This reduced the mass of the vehicle and, in turn, the force (and time) needed to accelerate and decelerate. Along with the these "first class" passengers, the egos of workers were also saved. Some base minerals were kept on the ship for use at the destination. The plan was to send ahead an even lighter "seed ship" to terraform parts of the destination planets. Upon arrival of the main ark, bodies would be built for the workers from the raw materials on board. The workers were to build the infrastructure on the terraformed areas and, when complete, the elite passengers would have bodies constructed and move on to their new worlds. The workers were promised land as payment for their efforts.

Shortly into the voyage, the corporate leaders "polled" the minds of the elite passengers. The proposal was to delete the minds of the workers and jettison much of the raw material that would be used to recreate their bodies. The reason was to free up more computing power for simul-space (virtual reality) activities and to further decrease the travelling time. Drone bots would be used to build the infrastructure at the destination. It would take longer to build but could shave years off the journey time. This would give them an even greater edge over the other ark ships (perhaps winning them extra worlds) and they wouldn't have to share their land with workers. 89% of the first class passengers voted in favour.

One of the ark programmers (a worker) had feared this kind of thing and had left safeguards in place should such a termination sequence be instructed. This led to egos of the workers being loaded into the simul-spaces where a virtual war ensued as workers and elites fought for control of the computer systems. Unfortunately for the revolutionaries, their original minds were still deleted and those who "died" or were "crippled" in the virtual wars were driven mad or left with amnesia or permenantly deleted. But ultimately, the workers won. The elites now existed only in digitised prisons.

At the destination, the remaining workers set about building on the terraformed lands.