Chronicles of the Ark-Ship Salvation

This is the first entry in the personal log of Colin Flannigan, IT-systems engineer for the Arc-ship Salvation, employee of the Eden Foundation.
02/14/2218, my name is Colin Flannigan; I am one of the IT-Systems engineers for the Eden Foundation, assigned to (voluntarily) Project Salvation. Currently I am working on the man computer system for the Arc-Ship. I’m tackling this on my own, mostly, I have a few testers. But I chose to do this on my own because I don’t think it would help to try to compile the work of multiple individuals and make sure it all works. Sometimes I fear I bit off more than I can chew, but I think I’m nearly done. I have been working on this just over two years now. The core of what I am working on is a system I’ve called M.I.S.S.I.E , it is a Multiple Interface Semi-Sentient Information Engine. Semi-sentient is a bit of a misnomer because it implies some level of A.I. but the system is designed to be adaptive, and even intuitive, but it cannot exceed its parameters, or make decisions it was not asked to make. So it’s not fully A.I. but if you ask this system to examine any information it can make conclusions that are not pre-determined. It’s fairly difficult to explain, but as a whole it’s designed to identify potential problems that a human crew would only identify when the problem shows up, and in this situation when a problem shows up, it may be too late to fix it.
I thought about trying to give the system an interactive personality, but when I started on that, well, I’ll just say it reminded me of trying to teach my sister anything. So I scraped that, and it stopped arguing and just accepted the changes. I also scraped the idea of having a primordially vocal input. The speech recognition was a problem, and it just becomes annoying. But I did have to set up a few audible responses, for notifications and warnings. I’ve left the baseline, so maybe we can have that option available another time. I didn’t think it was critical.
The problems with a system like this, is trying to anticipate what it might be asked to do. And making sure a system understands things I don’t, like theoretical astronomical physics. And mechanical engineering. I’ve been feeding textbooks into the system, and I think the system is at a point where submitting a textbook is the rough equivalent to adding new program parameters. So as I work, the work is actually progressing faster. The information systems on this ship are going to be astronomical. We are going to have electronic copies of roughly every book ever written, every movie ever made, and every song ever recorded, roughly. We couldn’t possibly find everything. We joked once that we are saving a copy of the internet and sending it into space, which is more or less true. Files have been downloading two and a half years now, so we just might have enough pornography to last all 100 years of this voyage. I thank god every day that we don’t have the problems with “computer virus” that existed 200 years ago. It took about 100 years but, eventually the effort to create a dangerous piece of code that could distribute and execute on it’s own so far outweighed the benefit that it became a novelty. Most of the “virus” these days are only seen as practical jokes. And even those are rare, since you risk spending half your life in prison for writing it, and about one year for each person you infected. The popularity of the virus prank died when some guy got 77 years for emailing a picture to his friends that had an embedded code that disabled the keyboard space bar. The sentence wouldn’t have been so severe had the joke not been spread to half the U.S. It wasn’t dangerous, or even particularly hard to fix. But there it is, no one feels like taking that kind of risk these days, thank god.
The latest update is nearly done compiling. I hope to fix the problem with the notification system. She was notifying of every single potential error she saw. I started calling it the cry wolf system. So now I hope to have fixed it so that the notifications will only be for important issues. I don’t need to be told that; our current course has us locked in geosynchronous orbit with the Earth’s moon, is a major error since we are not on course to our final destination. The system forgot to check for departure before verifying the course to the destination. Maybe it’s just me but I find that funny.

Colin Flannigan
02/14/2218

Chronicles of the Arc-Ship Salvation

This is the first entry in the personal log of Caira Flannigan, ships engineer for the Arc-ship Salvation, employee of the Eden Foundation.
I don’t think I could possibly be more excited. This ship is amazing, I can’t believe I am going to be living on it, and I am even more amazed I get to work on it, and get my fingers into the most intimate workings. I’m one of the ships engineers, there are about 50 of us right now. When we are going we will share the work fairly evenly, but right now we all have specific areas assigned to us. I’ve got the environmental systems. It’s not the most glamorous, but it’s probably the most visible part. Comparatively speaking I’ve got the easy job. Don’t envy the bastard that has to get the gravity right. Now we mostly float around. Lots of magnetic shoes for now. There was a time when they thought about just going with loads of magnets instead of trying to engineer a rotational gravity simulator. But honestly, a ship full of magnets is just a bad idea. So we wound up with a ship that isn’t exactly a looker but is definitely impressive. It looks like a… well it’s a long steel tube, our jokes and nicknames have become old now. We’ve got it set up to start around moon gravity levels, and slowly ramp up to earth gravity, to give everyone a chance to adjust. Most of us have become so used to the low gravity that to just jump right back to normal some of us might break our legs. We will probably run at normal gravity for a while but we also plan to, very gradually, ramp it up. We suspect that the gravity at our final destination will be higher, and we think it’s better to adapt to slightly higher g-force than to be potentially too weak to manage. That’s the thought anyway. Today we don’t have to worry about much more than going from about .5G to 1G. But like I said, that’s not my area yet, so I don’t have to worry about much more than the results. For me, I have to worry about lights, oxygen, water, and unfortunately, waste disposal. The problems you’d never think about, are now a big deal. Where do you get food? How do you produce more air? Can you manufacture water? Where does the trash go?
These problems nearly killed the entire project. But it’s all manageable. We were stuck thinking about synthesizing elements. But we forgot that most of these things are organic. They don’t need to be synthesized. If we have enough plants, and air and water they will cycle, and be mostly self sustaining. We just have to maintain the ratio, and make sure everything is moving. The earth itself provides us with the perfect model. So we just needed to make sure we had ways to replicate those natural systems. This was, in and of itself, a major feat of engineering. Have you ever TRIED to set up a farm in space? We have to get the gravity up a little more before we get the animals in here, no one wants floating cows. I could spend a few hours outlining the systems we set up, and honestly I would like to but that will have to wait. But I’m sure all that will be published before we leave, wouldn’t want to take our secretes to the far side of the universe. Without leaving a note, always leave a note.
Back to my problems, I have to go solve a few. Just got a note about the lights. Apparently we forgot to make sure that we had enough lighting that completely simulates the full sunlight spectrum. Including the UV parts. You never think about Vitamin D until you don’t get it. It shouldn’t be a big problem. We already had that lighting for the plants in the farm, just need to make sure we get spread around the rest of the ship. Someone is going to be changing a light bulb or two. By someone I mean all my assistants and the construction crew we still have on sight.

Caira Flannigan
03/16/2218

Chronicles of the Ark-Ship Salvation

This is the first entry in the personal log of Hajar Dermot, assigned to biomedical services, and cryogenics lab, for the Arc-ship Salvation, employee of the Eden Foundation.

My name is Hajar Dermot; I was recruited by The Eden Foundation two years ago to work on Project Salvation as a cryogenics engineer, and biomedical lab technician. I left my home in San Francisco, said good-bye to my friends, and moved to the moon. Honestly, I couldn’t turn down this opportunity, not only for the fact that this is an endeavor that has never before been attempted and therefore the possible discoveries in my field are unprecedented, but also for a childhood dream come true. The things I have been working on for this voyage…sometimes I have trouble digesting the scope, and the ethical implications. Not that the works is unethical, it is just new ground, and sometimes I get the feeling we are entering areas best left alone. I once voice my concern, and I was not the only one, but Dr. Barlow assured us that he has taken every effort to ensure that our individual work was ethically sound. He also assured me that most of the programs I had concerns about were in place for extreme circumstances. Given where we will be living, and how long this trip is supposed to take, I can’t blame them for wanting to prepare for some fairly extreme circumstances. I should probably commit much more detail in my log at this time. There will be time for opinions and analysis once we depart and we’re not entirely consumed with last minute preparations.

I both dread and look forward to leaving. Dread because I will be leaving behind my girlfriend, I offered to get her a position, but she didn’t like the idea of leaving Earth, not many do like that idea. I can’t say what I am most looking forward to, mostly because I am most looking forward to confronting the great unknown.

Hajar Dermot

02/09/2218

Chronicles of the Ark-Ship Salvation

This is the first entry in the personal log of Adriana Fang, voluntary passenger on the Arc-ship Salvation.

As I sit, quietly, looking back on the earth from my small room in this cold, cold motel on the moon a song plays through my head over and over, the song is called "2000 Years", over 200 years old, written by Billy Joel (of Earth - I think I like saying that now). They are his words, but I feel so very strongly when I hear them that they feel like mine. I don’t think the song was as appreciated as it should have been. I discovered this when I was studying 20th century history, it was written near the turn of the century, but it may have been written last year. It covers how I feel right now pretty damned well. I am starting this journey on my own, alone with about 2000 other people, hope I can make a few friends quickly, I’d hate to spend the first 50 years sitting against a window watching the stars sail by, alone.

So the head of the passenger management has asked us all to make at least one journal entry here, before we leave. They didn’t say exactly why, but I imagine it’s so they can get a good feel for all of us before they lock us inside a big tin can for the rest of our lives. It’s a good idea; I’d have done the same thing. Most people will tell blank screen things they would never tell someone trying to get a psychological profile. Let’s hope they actually read them. However, knowing these guys they will run them through an algorithm that looks for “unstable” phrases and things like that, lazy, but efficient, probably what I’d do too. Lord knows I wouldn’t want to read 2000 logs like this one, and no one that has figured it out would probably say much aside from “my name is Ralph, I have a cat, and I don’t wet myself much anymore.”

So here we are, my name is Adriana Fang, I am 23 years old, I was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, and I’m leaving Utah, and the Earth forever. I started studying 20th century history when I was 13 years old, and I fell in love. The science fiction is incredible; it quickly became an obsession, the books the movies, all of it. What was their future is my present, and past (sometimes my future too, but not too much). Did you know that people would create these fictions, and then kids would love it so much, they would spend a lifetime making it real? We would never have gotten the advances of the 21st century, if someone hadn’t first made it up. I love it. There was a movement to get this ship named the Enterprise, or the Millennium Falcon, a few lobbied to name it Serenity. I think they were afraid of starting a war if they used one of those, pity, but I like Salvation, even if it does sound a little doomsdayish.

Love, Adriana Fang - 03/17/2218

Chronicles of the Arc-Ship Salvation

This is the first entry in the personal log of Silas Paige, voluntary passenger on the Arc-ship Salvation.

Sunday, March 22, 2218, this begins the personal journal of one Silas Paige, 32 years of age.

        I have volunteered for life among the stars, and I feel unfathomable amounts of both anticipation, and fear. The ship is the most incredible thing I have ever seen man create. It hovers above the moon, its enormity blocking the sun for long periods. At first glance, it appears to be a floating hollow cylinder, and little more; but upon closer inspection, it is apparent that the planning of the ship's design was meticulous. The outer sections are where most of us will work and live. The center sections contain the inner workings of the ship, and the entire behemoth will rotate with such force that it will feel as though we are standing, once again, upon the surface of the earth. I am sufficiently impressed that I feel no need to inquire as to its inner workings.

        On this ship, we've been told, we will all receive work assignments. This was at first disheartening, as I was hoping to spend my time writing and exploring the heavens. This disappointment vanished once we learned that many of these work assignments were simply temporary, until our work was no longer required. I have not yet received a final assignment, but the passenger assignment officials said I would be working with the “bridge staff”, working with the piloting, navigations and communications crew. I suspect this is due to my background as an astronomer and writer, but one can hardly anticipate the inner workings of the minds within the Eden Foundation.

        I aim to make this entry brief as I still have much to prepare before our shuttles transport us to the ship. Once on board we may have no opportunity to communicate with our friends and family remaining on earth, and I do have quite a bit left to say to those left behind.

Silas Paige, future intergalactic citizen. 03/19/2218

Chronicles of the Arc-Ship Salvation

This is the first entry in the personal log of Paki Clarke, assigned to passenger safety and security, for the Arc-ship Salvation, employee of the Eden Foundation.

My name is Paki. I am security for the ship Salvation, one of security.  There are not enough of us for this ship. The passengers out number us nearly 25 to 1.  they say we should no worry we are there to just keep people out of the places they should not go.  They won't even let us carry weapons, I don't call this stick a weapon, they are foolish to trust these people.  

I left my home in Johannesburg 2 years ago last month, the last of the slums on Earth still stand, I was lucky to have a friend that worked for Eden.  When we leave this planet behind us I shan't look back, I am glad to leave it behind.  Full of small people, people that never look up, never think of anything more than the space just under their shoes.

They asked us all to make this entry, to say who we were, my name was Paki.  When we leave I will find a new name.  One that was not born in a shit slum.  

03/24/2218

About The Chronicles of the Ark-Ship Salvation, A Preface

The chronicles from the journey of the Arc-Ship Salvation recount the voyage of the Salvation to the five sisters planetary system, orbiting the star Gliese-581, a voyage of 20.3 light years (1,283,792.76 AU or 192,052,828,593,390.2 KM), that lasted 103 years. The Arc-Ship, officially designated Arc-ship EarthOmega15, commonly called “Salvation”, was the apex of Project Salvation. Project salvation, started by the Eden Foundation in the year 2210, began with the intent to establish a human colony on a planetary system outside our solar system. The Eden Foundation, founded in the late 22rd century, was born of the belief that the human race needed extreme intervention to avert extinction.

The planetary system selected, Gliese-581, was virtually unknown before the launch of this project. Early in the 22nd century, researchers discovered that the star Gliese-581 was host to multiple planetary bodies, similar to and larger than Earth. The Unified Space Astronautics Research Institute launched multiple probes in the hope that they would eventually be able to send as much information as possible about this unique planetary system. Throughout the years, they discovered these planets possessed the needed elements to support life. No evidence of life has surfaced at this point, and no way to prove or disprove the hypothetical environmental conditions of these planets would be available until the probes launched years ago came within range of the system. Early in the year 2205, the first probe, launched early in 2101, was close enough to make observations that are more precise. The information relayed along a series of probes and satellites that launched at regular intervals, forming what became known as the intergalactic information superhighway. The initial readings confirmed four of the five planets possessed an atmosphere, and one of the five was a medium sized gas giant. The atmospheres around the four were oxygen rich, with traces of carbon dioxide and nitrogen. The temperature appeared to be in the habitable range for each, and oceans were present on three of the four. The third showed signs of liquid water but could not be determined if the quantities indicated the presence of an ocean. The USARI, along with the majority of the scientific community on earth suspected plant life to be plentiful given the environment. No evidence in the data collected showed that any intelligent life other than possible and even likely, animal life inhabited these planets. The ability to detect "intelligent civilization" was highly debated; however most admitted that it would be virtually impossible, given the current limitations, to detect an intelligent civilization that had not yet developed electronic technology. These elements made these planets the ideal candidate for colonization outside the Earth's solar system.

Eden announced Project Salvation publicly in 2215, to begin full-scale construction. Calls for volunteers went out first, seeking individuals that were willing to join the colonization effort and live on a generational starship. The foundation made considerable efforts to recruit family units, and young couples that have not yet had children. Applicants began lining up by the thousands, and by the hundreds turned away, due to the thorough screening process. The “passengers” underwent screening for physical and psychological problems, as well as genetically profiled for genetic defects and disease. The foundation indicated that it wanted to screen out possible genetic diseases from the ship’s population; it was later revealed that the eugenic theory behind the screening was not simply for the long-term health of the population on the ship, but was being used in secret and sinister cloning and genetic engineering projects. The extent of these practices was unknown for duration of the voyage, but was later uncovered during the colonization.

Five generations lived on the arc. In that time each passenger worked and earned a basic wage, except the children, they were educated full time until the rough age of 17. After the age of 17, they would enter into paid apprenticeships. The money, or credits, they earned could be used to barter for the moderate commodities that were sold and traded by many different merchants. In the early years of the voyage, the merchants were few, and they were all the same artisans that sold what they made, this dynamic developed over the years into a fully-fledged marketplace. Artisans of every skill were found onboard, due to the efforts of the passenger recruitment teams. They understood that without a skilled master to teach the next generation, these skills would likely be lost. These artisans were at first encouraged to take ordinary jobs until the ship’s infrastructure and a young population was established, this proved to take place much faster than anticipated, and most were returning to their chosen trade within the first five years. In later generations, many workers were able to survive entirely by producing only “luxury” items. By the time the fifth generation was born, there was a fully functional marketplace, economy, rudimentary government, and judicial system; with all the inherent problems that come with them.

Dreamscaping: Part Two

                Xander stared at himself in the bathroom mirror in a combination of amazement and horror.  He had seen his reflection before, but never with this type of clarity.  He wasn’t sure he approved of this new visage.  The face was the same, for the most part, this one seemed to be missing the scars and weathering brought from years of battle.  The hair was short, well kept, and clean.  Xander spent the better part of a quarter hour simply marveling at this hair.  It appeared to be the same basic color, but was soft, and bright, so maiden-like.  He did not approve of the rest of his body, either.  It appeared to be weak and undisciplined.   However, as there was no other option available, Xander accepted this body for the time being, and turned his attention to the problem of dressing.   The clothing he found himself confronted with were strange and impractical.  They were, like his new body, soft and weak.  After testing and tearing a few sorted articles of clothing, he settled on an uncomplicated t-shirt and jeans.  The zipper on the jeans presented a substantial challenge, and one that nearly ended with a catastrophic injury, but a challenge that was soon overcome.  Now dressed Xander exited the bedroom and found himself confronted with unruly and very unkempt looking dwarves.  These dwarves were staring at him expectantly, and with apparent frustration.

                “You took for-ever!” the larger dwarf barked at Xander.  “We’re hungry!”

                “I beg pardon, young dwarf,” Xander protested.  “But if you are hungry, why then have you not found yourself some food with which you can break your fast?”

                “What?” The larger dwarf questioned, appearing to not understand his meaning or his words.

                “My apologies, did you not understand?  I simply wondered why you would inform me of your hunger, rather than looking for a way to resolve the problem yourselves.”   Xander said, believing himself to be very reasonable when faced with two very rude dwarves so early in the day. 

                “Dad!” shouted the smallest dwarf, as he began to sob.

Xander was stuck dumb at this.  Had this dwarf called him dad?  He reached down a lifted the young boy and held him at arm’s length, looking at him with a new thought creeping into his mind.  He knew this child, and it was no dwarf.  This was his son, and the larger dwarf was his daughter.   Xander knew this dream, he had been here many nights before, but this was not a dream. 

                “I am truly sorry, my children!” Xander plead, “Please, forgive me; I was caught in a dream.  Come we shall breakfast together.  Lead me to the kitchens.”

                “There is only one kitchen dad, it’s down stairs.  Are you being silly again?”  His daughter asked him, sounding concerned.  

                “Nay, daughter, I simply forgot.” Xander countered.  “You may find I have momentarily forgotten many things this day.” 

Both children laughed, and climbed up Xander’s legs to cling to his neck. 

                “You sound like Thor daddy.”  His daughter giggled. 

It was about this time when Xander realized he had forgotten, or had never known, the names of the children now calling him father.  At this point Xander realized that this was going to be a very long day…

Dreamscaping: Part Three

Xander woke, suddenly and without the slow easing into the harsh light of morning. He woke with a creeping legion of fierce nausea marching steadily from the depths of his bowls to the space behind his eyes. His body began to tremble and shudder, rejecting everything about the waking world, and forcing Xander to crumble back onto his sweat soaked pillow. Slow memory began to surface, and the reality of his failed self-destruction danced in his stomach. His body was reminding him now he had made one hell of a mistake, which he understood. What Xander could not account for was the unattended pants flung onto the lamp in the corner, and the mess of auburn hair on the pillow next to him. To make matters more alarming that mess of hair appeared to be snoring. These things, in addition to the foreign hotel room in which he now found himself, seemed to point to something being very wrong. The absurdity of the situation was too much for Xander to take in at once and he found himself fixated on the pants hanging from the lamp wondering, how would a pair of pants end up on a lamp like that? Before another thought could race through his mind the immediate need to locate, and get to, a bathroom became undeniable, and a seemingly impossible task.....

Dreamscaping: Part One

Xander woke suddenly and without warning, it was dawn. Disorganized shapes shift and tumble into focus, organizing into a recognizable form, and order is briefly restored before the chaos. “Once more into the fray!” he hears echoing in the memory of a dream that is already fading. The chaos is struggling to hold on, and his mind is fighting to restore the balance. He is aware, briefly, of two worlds, in one space and time. With this awareness, the chaos dissipates and the brief existence of the shadow of a dream of a fractured reality is fading into the harsh tones of his alarm clock. Thus, Xander wakes once again, weary and tired. He suffered only momentary disorientation that usually follows his unusually vivid dreams. Now sunlight was intruding into his bedroom, notifying him that, regardless how long thinks he slept, he had spent the night soundly in his bed and it was now time to get up.

“What is it like,” asks one doctor “when you dream?”

“I reach through my mind into the night, searching, endlessly searching. Reaching, grasping, pawing, clawing, biting, and straining to reach the unreachable. Loosely bound prose floating through the air, vanishing into dust with the slightest glace, with realization reality vanishes into the night. This is not how it is supposed to happen.” Xander said. “There, in the mirror of my mind, I see myself, seemingly safe in bed, a tempest raging beneath the surface, I am suddenly not myself, and something new flows through my mind.”

“Go on” Said the doctor, as he took notes in a rapidly filling notebook.

“Sometimes, I hear an echo of a voice,” mused Xander, “saying; “this night he will not dream, there will be no reprieve no more will nightmares wake him. For he slept a sleep that not even death could wake him from. When the dawn breaks, he will wake to find the world he left the world he fears to find. Nothing will be what it seems, and what things seems to be will not be what they appear. Up will be left and left will be down, down will be up, and you will be forever changed yet altogether unchanged. I hold his life in the palm of my hand and bend his will to my own, he will by dancer on the world's stage, through him I will splinter time and mold it to my liking.” And I begin to dream, not falling, or drifting, but thrust deep into a dream you would never wish to dream, and I wake, cold, alone, and unsure.”

“That is no way to spend a night.” Said the doctor, closing his notebook, “I would like to try some new medications to help you sleep.”

That is how it usually goes. They then offer him the latest drug to help him sleep. He tried them once, and woke more exhausted than he had ever been in his life. He does not try them anymore. Whatever Xander’s problem is, a pill will not fix it. What surprises him most is that no one ever asks what actually happens in his dreams. Maybe they don’t care, or it does not matter. However, he has grown attached to them you might say. Most people do not dream the way he does. No one has ever said, “Oh I had one like that too” when he talk to them about his dreams. Xander only ever has one of three dreams. He is always himself, mostly anyway, just different versions of his self....

Chronicles of the Ark-ship Salvation

>Query: Arc-ship Salvation/Earth........
>Matches found:...1...Display data files < Y/N? >...
>Y...
>...
>About the Arc-ship Salvation;
>Official designation:...Arc-ship Earth Omega 15 or AsEO15 commonly “Salvation”
>Size:... at the time it departed earth It was rumored to be near 4,000 square kilometers, with capacity to comfortably house 3,200 passengers and crew.
>Engine and propulsion system:...
>Destination:...Gliese 581 solar system aka “The five sisters” so names for the unique 5 orbiting planets – 4 “earth-like” moons all orbiting a single gas giant.
>Mission:...to colonize one or all of the 4 potentially life sustaining planets in the Gliese 581 system.
>Departed:...05/22/2218 with 2,000 passengers – 800 crew and 1,200 voluntary passengers.
>Estimated arrival at destination:...09/2321 – 4,384 known passengers and crew
>Recorded deaths:...5,116;...232-Illness...514-accidental(work related or other)...143-homocide/manslaughter/other non accident...4,220 natural causes...7-unknown/missing.
>Recorded births:...7,492
>Reported accents and injuries:... < file not found >
>Security reports:...4,256,328...< access denied >
>....connection terminated, data request denied, insufficient access....
>...
>...< disconnected >

Chronicles of the Ark-ship Salvation

This is the first entry in the personal log of Dr. Alan C. Barlow, assigned to passenger management, and health services for the Arc-ship Salvation, employee of the Eden Foundation.

My name is Dr. Alan Barlow; I am the passenger management supervisor on Arc-ship EO15 for the Eden Foundation. We have been working on this project three years and two months now, and are nearing our departure window. Two months ago we began shuttling our voluntary passengers to Eden’s lunar base of operations, knows as Tranquility Center 5, for orientation and evaluation. We have elected to assign jobs based on skill level and experience. As this would no doubt cause some conflict, with some we have also established a training program so the less skilled and experienced passengers can move into a “more desirable” position, and therefore become more valuable.

As a whole, we have managed to keep our 1200 voluntary passengers content with this process. There was some minor conflict when we had to reject 200 volunteers due to genetic defects and disease, but the outrage was short lived. We hope not to repeat that misunderstanding, and have since decided to inform our passengers of any procedure, and its intended purpose before we begin. Our mistake was allowing rumor to spread as we screened passengers. Once we explained that we could not afford to have passengers that would strain limited resources and present a danger to themselves and the ship, the outrage subsided. Currently we are fighting rumors that we collected a genetic profile from each passenger in order to match potential mates. While this was debated within the group, we decided that this practice would ultimately fail. We have instead set up programs, not yet active, to encourage relationships and responsible reproduction.

My role, for the time being, is to ensure everyone has been registered, profiled, screened for medical and psychological deficiencies, and assigned a job (as that for some reason falls under psychological fitness). Our facility management group is handling living quarters, and all other equipment. Once we depart, my role will evolve to overseeing the on-board healthcare network. A change I am looking forward to, as I am growing tired of the administrative paperwork involved in this phase of the project. Why did I take this job again?

Dr. Alan Barlow, primary medical advisor, The Eden Foundation.
03/15/2218

Chronicles of the Ark-ship Salvation

This is the first entry in the personal log of Jefferson E. Castilion, voluntary passenger on the Arc-ship Salvation.

I volunteered as soon as I could, a chance to live among the stars. I know I won’t live to see our destination. They tell us we could be traveling up to 115 years, but they expect it to be less. We are leaving from the Lunar Tranquility Center next month, they have been preparing this for the past 3 years now. We have all been told that we will have jobs on board, even if we aren’t part of the ship’s crew. I suspect they need a little of everything. Farmers, teachers, doctors, even guys like me. I will be in sanitation. I’m a space janitor. My mom always told me to do my homework or I’d wind up cleaning toilets. Well, I suppose she was right. It’s not the job I chose, but they assigned the more skilled jobs to the people with more experience. They say though that there is lots of time to learn new skills and what you start doing is probably not what you will end up doing. Not that it really matters, we all get paid the same, have the same rooms, except for the families, they have larger spaces, but I guess it’s all pretty equal. When you have a limited space I suppose it has to be doesn’t it.

I don’t know much about the ship, yet. I’m not the most technical, I didn’t pay much attention in school, but I understand more than they think. They keep talking about this bio-steel stuff. And from what I can gather, they are actually GROWING parts of this ship. It makes perfect sense, I mean parts wear out, and if you can just grow some new parts in a lab using basically water and protein you practically have a never ending supply of spare parts. At least I think that’s how it works, all I know is that ship will out in space a long ass time, and if things break, there better be a way for us to fix it. They are calling her Salvation, well, that’s not the official name, that’s our name. The official name is Earth Arc-ship Omega something. Our name is better.

It’s time for more training, maybe this time they will tell us how we are supposed to get the next generation of space babies started. I wonder if they will start assigning us partners. Wouldn’t surprise me, that would be the king of thing scientist running the Eden Foundation would try to do.

J. Emerson Castilion 02/13/2218

What I am working on

These are the "working titles" for the stories/books I am currently writing. These may, and likely will change as I develop these stories.

Dreamscaping: What if your dreams were real, and what would happen if you fell across that border one night? How would you get home, would you want to go home?

Chronicles of the journey of the Arkship Salvation: Select log entries from the passengers and crew on a 100 year journey to colonize new worlds.

The Fall of The Five Sisters: 2000 years after the Arkship Salvation arrives in the five sisters solar system, 4 colonized planets are nearing collapse, on the brink of war.

Hi folks.

So this is where I am going to, from time to time, publish stories, and story fragments that I am currently working on. I am doing this for many reasons, but mostly because I am looking to share and receive feedback. I seem to work best when I can get some fairly regular egging on from friends and anonymous strangers. So for what it's worth, enjoy. (once I have something posted for you to enjoy that is.)