Ark Ship - Part Four

President Gibson sat by the fireplace in the residence wing of the White House sipping a scotch on the rocks. When Liaison Markey had delivered the news of the ark ship's arrival, Gibson hadn't immediately understood what Markey was talking about. It took a few minutes for Markey to jog his memory of the ark ship mission, and only then did Gibson really understand the importance of what Markey was telling him. Even Secretary Thacker was suitably impressed, had finally stopped reciting statistics about Russian military maneuvers, and began asking questions about the ark ship mission. The President had summoned his press secretary, and they'd hammered out a quick statement to be distributed to the news media. It carried the appropriate tone to convey the gravity of the moment, but Gibson knew the media wouldn't spend too much time on it.

Markey had mentioned that he had gotten the news from the Ark Ship Project, and mentioned a Communicator named Sutton. Gibson decided that he wanted to speak to Sutton. He checked the time. 21:00 hours, which meant in Houston it would be 20:00 hours. Not too late to call.

The Ark Ship Project office was abuzz with activity. Communicator Sutton and his team were still analyzing the colony ship's data and helping the colonists plan next steps. Sutton's phone rang. “Please hold for the President.” A second later, a familiar voice was on the other end of the line.

“Communicator Sutton. This is President Gibson.”

“Mr. President. It's an honor, sir.”

“I heard the good news about the ark ship.”

“Yes, sir. All appears to be going well. We're analyzing the data that the colonists are sending back, and we're pretty confident that they're going to make it.”

“Excellent news.” The President paused, and a slightly awkward silence developed.

“Mr. President?” George was afraid he'd been cut off.

“I was just thinking, Sutton. This is an Apollo moment. The whole planet should be tuned in.”

“I know, sir.”

Another pause.

“Well, keep up the good work. America salutes its heroes.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The line was disconnected.

The colonists gathered the next morning for their first dawn. It was a slow sunrise, with waves of brilliant color radiating outward from a point on the horizon that got subtly brighter until the red fireball of the sun pierced the horizon and began to draw sharp lines of light and shadow on the distant mountains and the landing site.

Mike and Susan had breakfast together, as they often did on the ship. Mike pointed at the distant mountains.

“I'd like to try climbing those someday. Looks like a pretty incredible view from the top.”

Susan grinned. “Once we get everything settled here, you're welcome to.”

“Any word from Earth?”

“Nothing since last night. I sent a message yesterday detailing the sort of “time zone” differential here, so I don't expect them to try to contact us until a little bit later this morning.”

“What's the plan for today?”

“The plan is to get all of the teams together and map out a plan to establish a crop cycle here. We also need to start constructing some more permanent facilities for storing the food and provisions that we brought down from the ship.”

“Where do you need me?”

“I've assigned you to the greenhouse construction team. We've got our first construction shuttle coming down from the ship today with building materials. A greenhouse will allow us to jump start the crop cycle using the plants and seeds we've already brought down from the ship.”

Susan heard the quantum computer beeping and went to check it. The message from Earth was simple: “Good morning! How did you sleep?”

Susan grinned and typed back, “Slept fine. Beautiful sunrise.” Susan had developed an affection for Communicator Sutton, whose reassuring messages had helped her manage the incredible stress of the task before the colonists. Despite her reservations, and the odd sense of disconnection that nagged at her, she was glad that after all of this time, Earth, and especially America, hadn't forgotten about them. It would have been a real problem for morale if they'd gotten this far only to find that something radical had changed on Earth and they were out here on their own.

“What are your plans for today?”

“Today the real work begins. The colonists who stayed on the ship are beginning work on dismantling it and bringing it down in cargo shuttles. We're scouting the area for other food sources or potential hidden dangers.”

“How are you feeling?”

Susan grinned and typed back, “Feeling good. Stress level is high, but it will be until we get established.”

“Understandable. I'm sending you our analysis of the soil and atmospheric data you sent us. Should be helpful.”

“Thanks.”

Susan thought for a second, and then typed back, “Tell me you're not the only one watching us back there.”

Sutton's reply came after a brief pause. “Assure yourself that America is proud of you, and that you're not alone.”

President Gibson was watching a recorded broadcast from the launch ceremony of the ark ship. History recorded that nearly everyone on the planet had tuned in, that it had been, as Gibson liked to say, an Apollo moment. He watched as then-President Jill Blancheford got up to make her speech.

“My fellow Americans, and those watching around the world. This is indeed an historic day. A century ago, our nation stood on the moon. It was a giant leap for humankind, and our footprint on the moon remains. Since then, we've flung probes into the farthest reaches of the galaxy, which have sent back amazing photos of what's out there, beyond the cosmic borders of our imagination. We've put rovers on Mars, on its two moons, and dropped probes into Venus. We've built an international space station with a construction dock capable of building ships in orbit, and a space elevator to shuttle supplies back and forth. We've harnessed the energy of the sun to power our planet and eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels.

“And we've used our most powerful telescopes to peer into the heavens and look for other planets like ours, where there might be life, or where we might be able to make another footprint, another giant leap across the stars. We found one such planet, and we named it Amerigo, to honor the tradition of exploration and adventure that made our own nation possible.”

Gibson paused the playback. He had always wondered about that name. From his knowledge of history, Amerigo Vespucci's role in discovering America was decidedly limited, and the continent had been named after him because a cartographer had read Vespucci's name in some letters that may or may not have actually been written by Vespucci. Still, Gibson thought to himself, the writing of history is often different from the living of it.

Secretary Thacker poked his head into the Oval Office.

“Mr. President?” Thacker asked.

“Come in, Evan. I was just watching the ark ship launch ceremony.”

“I see. Well, I've got some bad news about Russia.”

Gibson sighed. Always with the Russians.

Poem for today

To You
by Walt Whitman

Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of
 dreams,
I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your
 feet and hands,
Even now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners,
 troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,
Your true soul and body appear before me,
They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops,
 work, farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating,
 drinking, suffering, dying.

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you
 be my poem,
I whisper with my lips close to your ear,
I have loved many women and men, but I love none better
 than you.

O I have been dilatory and dumb,
I should have made my way straight to you long ago,
I should have blabb'd nothing but you, I should have chanted
 nothing but you.

I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you,
None has understood you, but I understand you,
None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to
 yourself,
None but has found you imperfect, I only find no
 imperfection in you,
None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will
 never consent to subordinate you,
I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better,
 God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.

Painters have painted their swarming groups and the centre-
 figure of all,
From the head of the centre-figure spreading a nimbus of
 gold-color'd light,
But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its
 nimbus of gold-color'd light,
From my hand from the brain of every man and woman it
 streams, effulgently flowing forever.

O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!
You have not known what you are, you have slumber'd upon
 yourself all your life,
Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time,
What you have done returns already in mockeries,
(Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in
 mockeries, what is their return?)

The mockeries are not you,
Underneath them and within them I see you lurk,
I pursue you where none else has pursued you,
Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the
 accustom'd routine, if these conceal you from others or
 from yourself, they do not conceal you from me,
The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if
 these balk others they do not balk me,
The pert apparel, the deform'd attitude, drunkenness, greed,
 premature death, all these I part aside.

There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied
 in you,
There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good
 is in you,
No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you,
No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits
 for you.

As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like
 carefully to you,
I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than
 I sing the songs of the glory of you.

Whoever you are! claim your own at an hazard!
These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you,
These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are
 immense and interminable as they,
These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of
 apparent dissolution, you are he or she who is master or
 mistress over them,
Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements,
 pain, passion, dissolution.

The hopples fall from your ankles, you find an unfailing
 sufficiency,
Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest,
 whatever you are promulges itself,
Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided,
 nothing is scanted,
Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what
 you are picks its way.

Funny video

Since I'm not doing regular "happy Friday" videos anymore, here's this, because it's just a great song.

They Might Be Giants - Ana Ng from They Might Be Giants on Vimeo.

Ark Ship - Part Three

The media carried a brief mention of the ship's arrival, along with snippets of the President's prepared statement urging the world to “mark this historic moment and consider it in context with the petty problems of international politics.”

In Houston, Communicator Sutton had been sending messages back and forth to the colony all day, and he was analyzing the data the colonists had transmitted. It looked like the primitive equipment that the space program had used to find the planet and determine that it was appropriate for colonization had gotten a few things wrong. The colonists had a challenge on their hands.

George thought back to all of those ancient science fiction books he had read as a kid, and he wished that it had been possible to invent faster than light travel, teleportation, and all of those other ideas that, he was sure, had once filled the world with hope for a fantastical future of unfettered space exploration and global peace and harmony. Unfortunately, the laws of physics and the financial and practical limitations imposed by political reality had seriously limited what the world's space programs were able to achieve in the centuries since humanity had first set foot on the moon. America had barely even managed to build the orbital dock and space elevator that had made construction of the ark ship possible, and that was only achieved because a President with an incredibly strong personality and filibuster-proof majorities in Congress had demanded it. And then she was voted out of office with the next term, as America realized the cost of the project and turned radically away from it.

The truth was, as George had long ago realized, that the future is never as incredible or different as you think it's going to be. Computers get faster, new things get invented to make life easier, fossil fuels get phased out and fusion power gets phased in, global warming takes its toll as governments fail to act, but nothing really radically changes. An interconnected world had led to a stasis in international politics, as governments became less interested in conquest and more interested in competition. Most of the world's oppressive states had finally succumbed to the pressures of the international marketplace, and nearly every country had achieved some approximation of democracy, or at least enough of the illusion of democracy, to keep the populace from revolting and keep business moving forward. Sure, capitalism's inherent tendency to “boom and bust” continued, and certain countries did stupid belligerent things that made other countries angry, but nothing had happened in more than two centuries that might even possibly lead to global warfare or even a radical realignment in the global power structure. No, George thought to himself, there would never be a United Federation of Planets, nor would there be a horrible dystopian future of robot wars and nuclear holocaust.

A new message was coming through. The quantum computer translated it.

“Scouting reports complete. Analysis suggests colony establishment will be difficult. This isn't the planet we were promised.”

The last sentence made George blink in surprise.

The colonists were bedding down for the night in their landing pods. They had all gathered to watch their first ever sunset, as the white fireball sank to the horizon, turned pink, and then dusky red, and the sky had burned away to reveal a canopy of unfamiliar stars. A large, crater-filled moon began to rise red on the horizon to the southeast, framed by the craggy mountains.

Mike had gone to visit his good friend Paul Venster, whose father had led the botanical teams in their surveys. Paul sat in an armchair in his pod, reading an info pad. Music played over the pod's sound system, and Mike recognized it as the kind of ancient Brazilian bossa nova music that Paul had fallen in love with on the ship.

“Hey Mike. What's shakin'?” Paul put down the info pad and peered at Mike, who was standing in the doorway of the pod.

“Pretty incredible sunset, eh?” Mike said as he sat across from Paul in one of the pod's two dining chairs.

“I just can't believe we're really here. I mean, this is it, man, this is what this whole thing has been all about. We're just the lucky ones who get to actually do this thing.” Paul was not known for his eloquence.

“Yeah, I know.” Mike paused, and looked thoughtful. “But, I mean, why are we here, really?”

Paul blinked. “We know why we're here.” Paul started speaking in the proud, unwavering voice of the announcers on one of those mission indoctrination videos they'd all been forced to watch repeatedly. “We're here to show that America is the greatest power on Earth, so great that we're able to establish a foothold -”

Mike cut him off. “Yeah, we've all seen the glorious inspirational mission films, man, but really, what are we doing here?”

Paul thought a minute. “What do you mean?”

Mike tried to put his thoughts into words. “What I mean is, what connection do we really have to this mythical America place that sent us here? None of us, none of our parents, and on back from there, ever set foot there, and we'll certainly never see the place.”

“Yeah, but,” Paul stopped. He wasn't sure where this conversation was going.

Susan was just sending the last bit of data from the day's explorations back to Earth. She had begun to regret the somewhat testy note she had sent earlier about the planet they were “promised.” The space program had had no way to know with absolute certainty that the colonists would have an easy time of it. Still, she wasn't happy about the task before her.

Hell, in her heart of hearts, she wasn't happy about any of this, and she suspected that not many of the colonists were really pleased to be here either. Oh sure, they had all had the freedom to choose what role they would play in building the colony, but beyond that, they were all slaves to the mission, just as their parents and grandparents had been. And while she too had been forced to sit through a dozen or more indoctrination films, she was having a hell of a time trying to figure out her purpose here.

Ark Ship - Part Two

The first part of the mission was to survey the landing site. The colonists fanned out across the rocky promontory and used their geological scanners to get a picture of the area. Mike Harris had been given the assignment to survey a small plateau to the southeast of the ship. His scanner's compass had found the magnetic north pole of this new planet, so he knew which direction to walk. He found that despite the low gravity, he was quickly out of breath, and as he examined his readings, he noticed that the oxygen level on this planet was somewhat lower than the oxygen on the ship, and his scanner also measured a lower air pressure than the ship's life support systems.

Mike found the plateau and used his scanner to take pictures, samples, and readings of the surface and the air. It was a fairly uninteresting piece of scenery, but to Mike, it was a breathtaking new world. The ground was a dusky red color, and the low gravity meant that with every footstep, he kicked up a fine haze of maroon dust that shimmered around him as he walked and coated his skin. He was looking for the kinds of soil nutrients that would be needed if the colonists were to be successful in creating a sustainable crop cycle on this new planet. If soil conditions made it impossible to do direct implantation of Earth crops, the colonists had brought along some chemical substitutes that might do the job. The botanical teams would be coming around later to examine the local plant life and determine what if any uses the colonists might make of it.

To Mike's eyes, it looked like implantation would be difficult, but not impossible. He had to get his report back to the Colony Coordinator immediately.

Communicator Sutton had been trying to get through to the White House to deliver the news of the ark ship's landing. The Project was supposed to have access to the President to report any developments, but it had been quite a while since they'd tried to communicate with Washington. Unfortunately, today, the White House communications staff had no idea what he was talking about.

Finally, he got through to Liaison Henry Markey, the President's advisor in charge of keeping in touch with the Project.

“Henry, good god, man, you need to brief your people about this thing. I had to wrangle my way through four levels of staff before I got to you.”

“I know, George, I know, but with the Russia situation heating up, there's just a lot going on here, and I can't be everywhere at once.”

“Well, look, please deliver this message to the President. The Amerigo has landed. Big day for America and all that.”

“Wow. That is big news. I'll get it to Gibson right away.”

Defense Secretary Evan Thacker walked in to the Oval Office. He was carrying a pad on which a large red message was flashing repeatedly.

“Sir, it's the Russians. I swear, if they keep this up -”

“What, Evan? If they keep this up, what?” President Gibson had begun to regret choosing Evan as his Defense Secretary, but it had been a grand gesture to the Party to give the job to his main rival for the primary nomination. Evan had always had a hot head, and Gibson shuddered to think what the Secretary might do if he were in charge instead of Gibson.

Evan threw down the message pad and pointed at it.

“See? This is a communique from our spy on board one of the Russian ships.”

The President looked at the pad. Evan was right – the Russians were behaving very badly. Of course, they had elections coming up, and the Communists were looking stronger than ever, so the hard line nationalist government had to scare the populace into voting for them, lest the imperialist Americans threaten their sovereignty. Gibson sighed. The more politics changed...

The President's intercom beeped and his secretary notified him that Liaison Markey wanted to see him.

“Right, tell him to wait a minute – I'm in with Thacker.”

Each of the colonists would be sleeping in their own pod, which would eventually be converted to create more permanent living quarters. The pods had been designed for this purpose, and, though cramped, were equipped with necessities such as beds, tables, chairs, and sanitary waste disposal and food and water recycling facilities. The colonists had also been able to bring a limited quantity of personal items down from the orbiting ark with which to make their landing pods more like home. The ark ship itself would eventually be disassembled in orbit and brought down piece by piece in cargo shuttles to be converted into buildings and equipment for the colony.

Colony Coordinator Susan Macintosh had set up a temporary command center outside of her landing pod. Susan had received survey reports from most of her teams, and she wasn't exactly happy about what she was seeing. The landing site's soil PH was alkaline, which limited what Earth plants would grow here, and the sunlight, though oddly bright, was almost too weak for adequate photosynthesis. However, there were signs of nitrogen and other nutrients in the dusky red soil, so there was hope. The botanical teams reported that the local flora was, while not poisonous, of a scrubby variety with little nutritive value whose primary purpose seemed to be providing the planet with its limited oxygen supply. The ship's climatologists had insisted to Susan that this was the best spot for establishing the first colony, with a weather pattern that they described as “temperate semi-arid desert,” whatever that meant. Essentially, they told her, it doesn't rain much, and local flora is thin on the ground, but the temperature range is reasonable from summer to winter. The presence of the river nearby had also been a bonus. The planet had no real oceans to speak of - much of the equatorial region was desert – but the far northern and southern latitudes each had a system of shallow rivers and lakes fed by a limited rain cycle and snow melt from the tall mountains.

With the chemicals and equipment on board the ship, she thought, the colony should be able to create a very basic crop cycle, focusing on vegetables and grains that thrive in desert and semi-arid conditions. The colony's diet would be limited, but adequate. The establishment of greenhouses to grow those plants that wouldn't be directly implantable would further augment the colony's diet.

Her quantum computer beeped – she had a message from Earth. She looked at the display terminal. America salutes its heroes, eh? She imagined that the President would probably give a big speech, that there would be parades, and all of those things she'd seen in the old newsreels.

Mike Harris arrived at her command center and presented his report. Just like the others, it indicated that taming this planet would be a challenge.

“Look at this, Mike.” She pointed to the quantum computer.

“America salutes its heroes,” Mike read. “Huh. Well, that's nice. I imagine there'll be parades and whatnot, like -”

Susan finished his thought. “- you see in those old newsreels.”

Susan had taken Mike under her wing early, because he had shown a precocious intellect and a keen interest in the mission. They had developed a kind of mother-son bond, especially after Mike's own mother had succumbed to the same kind of crushing depression that had claimed dozens of the crew over the centuries. Some people, when they realized that they were going to live their entire lives on the ark ship, and die there, without ever setting foot outside of it, couldn't cope with that knowledge, went catatonic, and eventually either took their own lives or literally starved to death, unable to find the will to eat. It had been a persistent problem, one that at times had even threatened the viability of the mission.

Susan and Mike looked at the message from the distant planet.

Poem for today

Refrain
by Allen Ginsberg

The air is dark, the night is sad,
I lie sleepless and I groan.
Nobody cares when a man goes mad:
He is sorry, God is glad.
Shadow changes into bone.

Every shadow has a name;
When I think of mine I moan,
I hear rumors of such fame.
Not for pride, but only shame,
Shadow changes into bone.

When I blush I weep for joy,
And laughter drops from me like a stone:
The aging laughter of the boy
To see the ageless dead so coy.
Shadow changes into bone.

Ark Ship - Part One

The landing pods were coming down from the orbiting ship. On one of the pods sat young Mike Harris, a descendant of those who had begun the journey to this new colony two hundred fifty years ago.

It hadn't been easy to grow up on an interstellar ship, never having set foot on a planet, never breathing fresh air, never seeing the sun rise over the hills as he'd heard about in the stories that had been passed down. Now, setting foot on a strange planet, feeling dirt under his feet for the first time, rather than the reassuring clang of the metal walkways, not to mention getting used to the lower gravity, was going to be a real challenge for all of them.

Mike's pod landed, and he opened the air lock, breathing real fresh air for the first time in his life. He was immediately overwhelmed by the scale of the planet. He knew this planet was slightly smaller than the Earth, but it still seemed huge to him.

In front of him, the terrain was rocky, with tall, craggy mountains stretching to sharp peaks. There was a smattering of scrubby plant life here, most of it scattered around a narrow river that the orbital survey teams had named the Mississippi, which would serve as the colony's water source. They had all been warned not to touch any of the plants until they had been analyzed to determine potential dangers or hidden poisons.

The sky was a pale blue, the sun a white fireball to the north. Mike had to squint and shield his eyes in the unaccustomed glare. Sure, he had been given training in what to expect on this planet – they all had. They had been forced to sit for hours every week under sun simulation lamps so that their eyes wouldn't atrophy in the dim light of the ark ship. They had done physical training and studied the scientific disciplines they'd need to build their colony. But after so many centuries of travel, some of the equipment hadn't worked to optimum efficiency, and so the training hadn't been as rigorous or thorough as his ancestors might have intended.

Mike was a thin, pale young man, whose age calculated in Earth years would be about twenty one. However, the strange way time passed on the ship, the lack of seasons, of a definable day or night, the irregular sleep schedule, not to mention the relativistic effects of traveling near light speed, meant that Mike wasn't sure exactly how old he was. And on this planet, whose year passed in 300 earth days, and whose day was 27 hours long, Mike couldn't begin to calculate his age. Still, he was clearly in his prime, though like all of the colonists, he was slightly malnourished from the replicated and recycled food stores on the ship. In time, he and his comrades would adjust to local conditions, and the hard work of taming this planet would make them strong and hardy.

He took a deep breath and stepped out of the airlock, and was immediately struck by how different, how odd, how utterly alien the planet felt under his feet. The gravity, slightly lower than it had been on the ship, was causing him difficulty in walking, and as he looked around, he noticed the other colonists having similar problems. It was a bit of a funny moment, and he suppressed a smile.

The Houston Space Center, Inc., where the generational ark ship had been designed and the orbital construction dock and space elevator had been built, was privatized (along with the rest of NASA, and a lot of other government agencies deemed “unnecessary taxpayer burdens”) after the launch of the ark ship. Since that time, most of its efforts had been focused on orbital advertising platforms – giant billboards hovering in low earth orbit filling the night sky with ads for toothpaste, condoms, and cigarettes.

During the privatization process, the systems used to communicate with the ship had been sold to The Ark Ship Project, a non-profit organization that had been set up to ensure that contact was maintained throughout the ark ship's centuries of travel. It had been decided not to tell the ark ship crew about the transfer, so as not to hurt morale on the ship. As far as the ship's crew knew, they were still communicating directly with NASA.

The Project kept tabs on the ship using the principle of quantum entanglement. Before the ship departed, a molecule of hydrogen on Earth had been tagged to a molecule of hydrogen on the ship, and by “jiggling” the molecule on Earth using certain patterns, thus “jiggling” the molecule on the ark ship, the Project could send messages to the ship, and vice-versa, in a kind of quantum Morse code. This method of communication had been a critical breakthrough for the space team, one that had circumvented the limitations of light speed in a practical and ingenious manner.

A new message was coming through, and the quantum computers were busy translating it. The uncertain nature of quantum mechanics made this a job requiring a massive amount of computing power, and messages had to be kept short and succinct.

Communicator George Sutton, an ancestor of whose had been among the launch crew for the mission, read the message from the display terminal.

“The Eagle has landed on Amerigo. Survey teams dispatched.”

He typed back, “Congratulations. A historic day. America salutes its heroes.”