The Flight of the Planetary Dream Collector
1984 BC – Mesopotamian Marshes (Iran-Iraq Border Region), EarthOne clear night, a farmer and his daughter stepped out of their hut in the vast eastern marshes, to pray beneath the stars. The girl looked up and pointed, and called out to her father. He set down the mat he was carrying and looked up with her. A shining, green point of light streaked across the sky. It was gone almost as soon as it arrived, but before it disappeared, the green light illuminated the marshes nearly as bright as daylight. The father thought it an auspicious sign — something to be interpreted by his grandmother, a local soothsayer, the next day. The girl, however, was filled with wonder. Her eyes filled with tears at the magnificent sight. What was that? She never saw anything like it again, but the memory of it stayed with her forever. Her children, and her children’s children, knew at night to keep their eyes pointed above, towards the stars.
AD 2087 – Java Space Tether – Jakarta, Indonesia, Earth
Political leaders of the Nusantara Union, each representing different countries with a shared culture and identity, beamed at the deafening applause. The space elevator, whose base was nestled in the sprawling megacity of Jakarta, was finally operational. An economic boon to their region, they knew it would transform their nations forever, in ways they couldn’t yet fathom. As the applause continued, the president of one of the nations smiled as she looked up at the towering structure, following the rings of the space elevator as it disappeared into the heavens. She always had a curious mindset — she had been an astronaut before entering politics, and achieving this goal was something of a dream of hers. That curiosity, she remembered, was something all of her ancestors possessed. She wondered what they thought of her now, and said a prayer.
2581 - Capitol, Achenar
The protests were going to be violently suppressed, the activist knew. Breaking rank, she had publicly opposed the Emperor, arguing that Achenar was meant to be a republic. She was also acutely aware that the Empire, officially atheist but nearly deifying the Duval family, had no sympathies for their religious views or monastic traditions in light of this disloyalty. They had to leave. Quietly, the activists had been building a ship called the Progenitor, capable of faster-than-light travel, but not to the point where it could jump from star system to star system in an instant. That technology, she knew, was far off. But they could not wait. So they would leave their Empire behind, and travel for almost ten years, settling an uninhabited and unremarkable star system called Meropis.
When the Progenitor took final delivery of advanced terraforming technology, the activist knew there was nothing left for her here. She looked back at planet Capitol one more time, knowing she would never see it again, and knocked the dust off her shoes. She said a soft prayer as she boarded. They were going to build a better future, she tried to tell herself. She wasn’t sure if she believed it. All her ancestors, she knew, had laboured with that goal in mind: a better future for themselves and the rest of humanity. When the Progenitor left Achenar, the Empire was glad to see the dissidents depart. It made sure that propaganda on planet Capitol portrayed their departure as an example of intrepid explorers selflessly going out to colonize another world, living aboard their ship for ten years, all in the name of the Emperor.
3276 – City of New Laurentia, Anna Ceri, Meropis
The last remaining Sisters of Meropis, who numbered less than a dozen, knew that they could not live on Anna Ceri any longer. Named centuries ago for the woman who ascended to godhood — the leader of their order, the one who provided so much for them, and then went silent — the planet Anna Ceri, like the very first settlement on the planet, could no longer bear them any fruit. The Sisters looked back at their underground city — once a beacon of virtue, of human progress, of harmony, and love, it was now dark, derelict, and uninhabited. They boarded an underground rail line and watched the settlement disappear in the darkness as they left. One wept, but the others sat in silence. They reached the Planetary Dream Collector, a large but unremarkable transport ship they had built over the years, just as their ancestors had built the Progenitor. But this time they were going into a very different kind of exile — to the core worlds of humanity, where they would live out their remaining days in anonymity, striving to impart on others the lessons of their teachings, and transform the human race.
The last Sister to board the ship — the youngest of the group — carried with her a sophisticated artificial uterus: the sort that every Sister had developed in before their birth. This one was occupied, and a fetus slumbered inside. She attached the opaque, vaguely cylindrical device to the power systems of the ship once she boarded, and considered leaving at their next stop to join the other exiles in the CD-60 31 system. Instead, she resolved to take the unborn child to a planet called New California, in the Epsilon Eridani system — close to humanity’s ancestral home, Earth. To her, the child within was a seed. The tree of New Laurentia bore no fruit, and would likely never bear fruit again. But she quietly resolved that this seed she carried, a girl who would be named Arini, would grow into someone whose life would. She closed her eyes as the Planetary Dream Collector ascended a lift to the surface, and then took off, piercing the sky above as it began its journey to the stars.