Noriama: Chapter 4

Hannah Klein licked her lips. She rarely did anymore; constant chapped lips provided her solid motivation for breaking the habit, but when she was nervous, the old behavior resurfaced.

It bothered her that she was nervous. Not just because it brought back her lip-licking, but because there was no good reason for it. Her entire career had been full of presentations to URC panels. It was part of the job. After weeks of study, she knew the proposal backwards and forwards, and any question the committee thought up that she didn’t immediately know the answer too would likely come from the team of aides seated behind her.

She’d even argued this exact proposal before. Granted, it was more than two decades ago, when she had just been appointed as an EU Liaison, and a lot had changed since then; but now she was an established figure at the URC. They knew her, and she knew her trade.

So why was she so nervous?

Perhaps it had been the look Antje had given her after shaking her hand and saying good luck. It had been a look that carried with it the five years of meetings, research, political jockeying, and false starts since the KAP had reemerged on the global scene.

It was a look that put all of that weight on Hannah’s shoulders.

The last officials from the African Union filed in, taking their seats at the two-tiered semi-circular tables that faced her. Hannah took a final sip of water and pulled herself upright, closer to the microphones in front of her. It was important to look professional at these URC hearings; she was representing the entire EU.

It took four minutes for the AU delegation to settle, and the thin chairperson to bang the gavel on the table in front of him.

“I call to order,” Hannah’s translator supplied, “the first hearing of the AU Committee for assessing United Regional Council Proposal number EU-A3-4352, hereafter titled the ‘Kolonie-Arche-Project,’ or KAP. Chair Mosi Ndaw presiding. We are speaking with…” Mosi shuffled through his papers, “Hannah Klein…Am I pronouncing that correctly? Klein?”

“Klein,” Hannah corrected.

“Klein. Well, I was close.”

“You were, Chair Ndaw.”

“We are speaking with Hannah Klein, Liaison officer to the EU and voice for the proposal. How are you doing this morning, Ms. Klein?”

“Quite well, thank you.”

“Do you believe in fate, Ms. Klein?”

Hannah blinked. Her mouth opened and closed again. What sort of a question was that? Reflexively, she looked down at her papers, filled with notes and reminders of pertinent facts and answers to likely questions. She licked her lips.

“I…forgive me sir, but I —”

“It’s an odd question, I know,” Mosi’s smile was all wrinkles. His thin neck was long and his head stuck forward, making him look like a curious swan. “Indulge me, please.”

“I suppose I do, yes,” she admitted. It was an oversimplification of what she really thought, but she didn’t want to go into a philosophical debate here and now. She did believe that people thought they had more free will then they actually had. She had been brought up to never give up by parents with strong wills and future plans. She had wanted to work for the EU her whole life. She didn’t necessarily think it was cosmically ordained, but there was a kind of fate that guided everyone, comprised of their passions, their ambitions, and their hopes.

“I ask, because I’ve seen you sitting in that chair before, giving voice to this very same proposal. I don’t suppose you remember me? It was twenty-some years ago.”

Hannah’s life flashed before her eyes, searching for the smiling wrinkles that almost squeezed the man’s eyes shut.

“I’m afraid I don’t, Mr. Ndaw.”

“I’m not surprised.” he gestured over his shoulder without turning around. “I was in the back row; third from the left, I think? It was a long time ago for both of us, and I don’t even think I could remember what was said at that hearing. I was a new member of the AU, back then. And now, here I am again, here you are again, and here KAP is again. I wonder if we are not fated to be here.”

“It’s a nice thought, sir,” Hannah answered. She meant it.

“To prepare for this hearing,” Mosi leaned back in his chair, “I went back through the entire history of this proposal. I read the transcripts of seven years worth of testimonies, hearings, and meetings about KAP, and I noticed something in all of it. Do you know what that was?”

“I have no idea, sir.”

“I didn’t care about most of it.”

Hannah’s stomach dropped like a stone in a lake. Was this it? Was KAP about to be rejected yet again because the Chair wasn’t interested?

“Questions, questions, questions,” Mosi continued, aimlessly flipping through his papers. “I have no doubt we will be here for days, Ms. Klein, perhaps weeks, and all of my esteemed colleges will ask you their own questions, and they will repeat questions because they don’t think you answered well enough the first time. Then, we’ll have questions about the answers you give, because we won’t understand, and you’ll have to teach us about propulsion and mass-thrust ratios. But I am the Chair of this committee, Ms. Klein, and I am old. If there is one thing I have learned in my time at the AU and the URC, it’s what is beyond me. And after reading and listening to seven years of questions, this is all beyond me. In fact, there is only one question I have that I would like you to answer, before I let this pack of lions descend on you, and that question is; why?”

“Why?” Hannah licked her lips. “I’m sorry, Mr. Ndaw, I don’t understand the question.”

“Why do it? Even a casual reading of the KAP makes it clear that this is a gigantic project, Ms. Klein. Why spend however many euros and dollars and yen and reals; argue for what will likely be years with the Seven Nations, the Americas, and yes, us too; plead and protest and argue with bureaucracies and old stubborn Chairmen and Chairwomen; all to convince the URC to gather a bunch of people in a cramped metal boat and shoot them off into space?”

It wasn’t unheard of for the chair of a committee or hearing to ask questions in their opening statement, but rarely did they cut to the meat of the petition so quickly. Hannah opened the binder at her side. “Well, Mr. Ndaw, the many benefits and returns on the global investment in terms of financial —”

“No, no, no,” the old man waved his hands in front of his face as he shook his head. “I read your proposal, I know all that. Ships laden with gold and jewels, Ms. Klein. But some of us don’t need gold or jewels. Some people think we should consume less, rather then pull wealth from another planet and ship it to Earth, Ms. Klein. Some people won’t see a single Naira from this project, though they ‘invest’ billions. That is not why we should do this, is it, Ms. Klein?”

Hannah closed her mouth. For a brief moment she felt nothing but panic as the Chair’s bright eyes stared at her from across the room. Then, her mind cleared.

“No, Mr. Ndaw. That is not why we should do this.”

“Then why,” the old man cocked an eyebrow, “should we do this?”

Hannah reached out and grabbed her water glass. She took a sip, cleared her throat, and interlaced her fingers in front of her.

“Because nothing lasts forever,” she said. “Not even our planet.”

“I appreciate the sentiment,” Mosi nodded, his smile squeezing his eyes again, “but everything I’ve seen as a member of the AU says things on Earth are not going particularly well. Every year sees more and more extreme weather, hurricanes and tsunamis are tearing our coastlines apart, and we only have so much energy to spare, if we want to keep healing our planet.”

“That’s why we must do this now,” Hannah said, reaching out for her pen and opening her binder. “Because things are so precarious. Some unforeseen catastrophe can always occur; maybe a disease, or a war, or an asteroid. With all due respect, Mr. Ndaw, could you imagine trying to implement a project like this when things were worse?”

“Perhaps not,” Mosi leaned forward, his neck stretching. “Still, why now?”

Hannah continued to scribble across the pages in front of her, changing her planned remarks as fast as she could. “Again, with all due respect, that’s always the question anyone ever asks about important things. Why now, usually followed by why me. The answer is, as it always is; because there is no better time to do it, and there is no one else who will.”

“‘The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago,’” Mosi quoted, nodding slowly.

“Yes, Mr. Ndaw,” Hannah looked up from her folder, “And the second best time is today.”

For a moment, Hannah wondered if this tactic was too philosophical. The URC was full of practical and pragmatic people, and they were rarely concerned with intangibles like the human condition. Proposals were constantly rejected when they relied primarily on the passions of bureaucrats. That was why her team had decided to focus on the material benefits of the KAP, instead of ephemeral concepts like ‘humanity.’

But Mosi had been very clear in his pointed questions. He knew, or perhaps only suspected, that if she was going to get anywhere with tables of mineral yields and market projections. Percentages would be debated, spoils argued over, and if everyone thought there was a deal to be made, then getting a bad deal could sour entire regions on the project.

Scribbling a note on a scrap of paper, she handed it back to her team; they were going to need to work on the fly for the next few hours.

“Okay then,” Mosi said, looking down at his papers, “That concludes my opening statement. Now we will begin with questions. The Chair recognizes Mr. Muygwi Nuanjui. You have thirty minutes, Mr. Nuanjui.”

---

Joanie Haverkamp rubbed her forehead. It was supposed to have been a short meeting. Not short in literal terms, but in the new definition of short; short for a KAP meeting. It was only supposed to last for two months.

They were on month five.

She was exhausted, and she wasn’t even a politician, she was a politician’s aide. Her duties were little more than collecting data, arranging meetings, advising, and condensing testimonies from experts into easily digestible soundbites for her minister.

But that meant she needed to be at every committee meeting, listening to every speech, noting every turn of phrase and choice of word to tease out exactly what her advice was going to be.

It hadn’t been going well; the KAP was never going to get off the ground. Not like this. The science was all well and good — or it seemed to be, from what little she could understand — but the problem with any large scale project was always the same; people were involved.

Doubly so with the KAP. Diplomats and politicians from every country in the world had to agree, and when there were such deep-seated animosities between the different countries — from India and the Seven Nations to New Jerusalem and the Americas — there were disagreements that rose purely out of spite instead of any rational impetus.

Political scientists and sociologists had been toiling away, not to create the legal framework for exo-planetary colonization, but to create methods for building the framework in the first place. The whole world needed to agree for the project to work, and that meant each region needed to have its say, have their views heard and incorporated into the final product.

That meant committees on top of sub-committees, and people from across the globe pounding on tables and shouting their prepared outrage at this or that suggestion, claiming some profound injustice. As far as Joanie was concerned, she had thought her minister’s sub-committee’s goal was a simple one; All they needed to decide were the metrics and parameters for deciding whether a candidate was suitable to become a colonist.

That was it. They didn’t need to come up with how anyone would be measured, or who would be allowed to apply. They didn’t even have to explain their reasoning. But even this seemingly minor decision had taken three times as long as everyone had suspected.

This was not a unique phenomenon.

As a result, she had become tentative friends with other aides from different committees and regions. It was natural enough, and they all had taken to retiring to the bar every evening to unwind, share their own ideas, and continue the arguments of their superiors in a more relaxed setting.

In her years at the URC, Joanie had come to appreciate how the real work of running the world was not done in committee rooms, or on the center floor behind the podium, or even in hallways between offices. The real work, the bones of the entire process, were assembled in one of the twenty bars and pubs surrounding the URC campus. Sometimes between politicians and diplomats, but mostly between aides.

“Here,” Jaonie distributed her round to the other two aides at her table.

“No, no, no!” Leya Cardozo slapped her hand on the table. “Joanie, tell this man he is a fool.”

“You’re a fool, Mr. Dupaul,” Joanie handed Philipe his drink. “What did I miss?”

“I am telling the man that the colonists of Proxima must be volunteers!” Leya snatched her glass. “In spite of his elitist passion for oppressing the downtrodden, it’s the only reasonable answer to the question.”

“I thought we were talking about the Compact?” Joanie hadn’t been at the bar for that long, had she? Four minutes at most.

“It’s all related,” Philipe nodded. “The Compact outlines the processes and methods for crafting the colony’s new government. As I said before, we are drafting it under consultation with over a hundred sociologists, psychiatrists, and political scientists to ensure a solid chance of a successful government — much the same as every wire and bolt on the space-craft has been checked to improve efficiency, remove flaws, and ensure a successful colony. I’m merely saying the same care should go into selecting the colonists.”

“You hear?” Leya shook her head. “How can I speak with this madman? Selecting. The URC has no right to dictate who will be a colonist. You speak like Perrocampo.”

Joanie quickly glanced at Leya, searching for any tell-tale signs of suppressed fury, but the passionate Argentinian was simply shaking her head, an expression of dismissive resignation on her face. Not what Joanie had expected; she recognized the derogatory nickname of Emilio Ocampo, the recently overthrown South-American dictator and butcher of millions. Joanie couldn’t ever remember the name being spoken without a tone of pure vitriol.

Philipe did not show similar restraint. “Oh please,” he scoffed. “This isn’t one of your anarchist meetings. We’re not organizing a protest march; we’re building spacecraft and mission plans designed to colonize another solar system.”

“Oh, is that what we’re doing?” Loanie grinned at Leya. She managed to grin back.

Philipe waved a hand, “Listen; mathematics, science, physics…these are all predictable. We can measure stress tolerances, we can establish benchmarks, we can organize everything to the smallest detail, until the only uncertainty is the same uncertainty we always runs into; ourselves. The number one predictor of success for this colony will end up being the colonists. Will they obey directions? Will they handle the equipment properly and avoid petty personal disagreements? And will they pass these virtues along to their offspring?”

“Virtues?” Joanie interjected before Leya could speak. “I never thought I’d hear a Frenchman call blind obedience a virtue.”

“It is no good for France,” Philipe cracked his first smile since sitting down, “but for the KAP colony, it will be very much a virtue. They must be physically fit, mentally capable, and psychologically suited to the trials that await them, or else the URC risks losing every resource spent on the endeavor.”

“The URC risks?” Leya snorted. “Such a fool!”

“About many things, yes,” the slim Frenchman grinned, “as are we all. But about this? No. Before a decision is made about how to get the colonists, we must understand who the colonists need to be.”

“The colonists need to be colonists. Not soldiers, not company-men. Pah,” Leya leaned back in her seat. “Metrics and measures for what makes a good colonist. Perrocampo called them his Normas Argentinas. His ‘Argentinian standards,’ what made someone a real Argentinian.”

“Now hold on,” Joanie stepped in, “I don’t think it’s quite the same thing. We’re talking about skills and training, not ideology or genetics.”

“No, I certainly am,” Philipe twisted in his seat. “The universe is a hostile place, and space-travel is not a stroll down to the corner-shop. The colonists will have to be physically and mentally capable not only of surviving the journey, but not putting the whole project at risk while doing so. There are behaviors and genetics that will need to be screened for.”

“Do they?” Leya leaned forward, poking the table in front of her with her middle finger, like she was hammering a nail. “Or is the URC creating its own standards with which to measure who deserves the right to colonize a new planet?”

“So you’re not a fan of the Compact at all?” Joanie asked.

“It’s looking at the whole concept wrong.” Leya moved the glasses on the table to give her animated gesturing room to perform. “This isn’t Spain sending Cortes to find gold, this isn’t Columbus looking for India; the entire planet is working together to build the first exo-planetary ark in human history, and we won’t all work together just to give the Seven Nations an eighth, or expand the North Americas. We shouldn’t even be calling it a colony, really. They’re not jumping across the ocean and sending back tithes to the crown; this is a whole new planet!”

“You think the Compact needs to change its Independence clauses?”

Leya laughed. “I don’t think it matters in the slightest. Independence isn’t an issue, it’s been decided for us: Do you know why the old United States had to fight for their independence? Because it only took two months to sail from Britain to America. This trip will take decades. If our lifespans were still as short as they were at the turn of the century, it would take generations. If we send red-coats to enforce some URC edict, the round-trip would take over a century. It doesn’t matter what the colony calls itself, it will be independent, because nothing the Earth does will make a bit of difference to them.”

“Fine,” Philipe crossed his arms. “If the URC has no place on Proxima, what metrics do you think should decide who is colonist material?”

“Were you not listening? The only metric worth measuring: will. When we overthrew Perrocampo, it was done by the sweat of our own brows. We were not freed by the URC, or a foreign army, we fought for our freedom, and so we value it! The colonists on Proxima will have to struggle daily to survive, and they won’t do that if they are given the right to colonize like a gift. They have to fight for it. They have to want it.”

“Emilio Ocampo was a dictator,” Joanie frowned. “It’s a different situation, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s a good metaphor,” Philipe set down his drink. “Ocampo slaughtered thousands, and so will the KAP, if they are careless. The difference is, the skills to survive an exo-colony are not opposition, but cooperation. Do you know what will be outside those colony doors, once they land? Death. Instantaneous, inescapable, death. The universe wants to kill us. Mistakes will not result in scrapes, or complications, or inconveniences that are easily fixed. We’re talking about a complicated system of regulated environmental factors. If just one of the colonists makes a mistake, they’re all dead. The colony is going to be so carefully designed, tolerances within fractions of fractions of error, that the slightest miscalculation will result in a catastrophic failure.”

“I think you’re over-stating the —”

“If anything, I’m under-stating. We need specialists up there who know exactly what to do, when, and how.”

“You want to colonize with robots instead of humans.” Joanie laughed.

“It’d be a lot more likely to succeed.” Phillipe’s smile was coy.

“But we’re not colonizing with robots,” Leya countered. “We’re sending humans, and that means there is always the chance of failure, no matter how trained or skilled the colonists are. A faulty washer, a misapplied sealant, a slight miscalculation before the rockets even launch…/Your/ problem is you don’t think anyone who isn’t part of the URC is capable of being taught.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but the URC nations have proven a desire to work together as a cooperative and unified global force.”

“So then one of your metrics for suitability is loyalty to the URC, eh? Typically neo-capitalist; Proxima is a whole new planet; it doesn’t belong to the URC.”

“I hardly think it belongs to anyone, really.”

“No?” Leya raised a finger. “‘Who owns the front door, owns the whole house.’ I’m saying if the URC truly doesn’t own Proxima, then they should release the KAP to the world. Publish every specification they have, open all the committees, scientific studies, everything. Let every country in the world decide for themselves if they want to build their own craft and send their own colonists.”

“Okay, first of all,” Philipe pinched the bridge of his nose, “that’s stupid. Second of all, the KAP is designed to support two-hundred colonists. That’s the compromise between enough genetic diversity to prevent complications, keeping the weight down on the spacecraft, and managing wear and tear on the equipment that will be needed to keep the colonists alive. Are you suggesting they scrap that number and launch…what, a thousand rockets? Enough to support whatever number of people want to go? No restrictions at all for age or fitness? You think a baby can survive the G’s to reach orbit, or Grandma can survive the sixty-year journey?”

“That’s not up to me, that’s up to the people. The URC is saying only the people they think should populate humanity’s first colony in outer-space get to go. They’re practicing eugenics.”

“Now that’s nonsense,” Joanie shook her head.

“Not at all!” Leya leaned forward. “There is no bus service between Earth and the colony. Those two-hundred people will be all the genetic diversity Proxima gets for who knows how long. Maybe forever. And what if no Argentinian meets these normas URC they decide upon? The first human colony in space has no Argentinian on it.”

“There are more than two-hundred sovereign countries in the world,” Philipe sipped his drink. “Do you think they should pick one colonist from each? Or a breeding pair, just to make sure?”

“Why should they get to pick?” Leya pressed her finger into the table.

“There wouldn’t be any picking, the choice would be made for them. The KAP is a multi-hundred-trillion dollar project so far. If the process is opened, the colonists won’t be whomever wants to come, they will be whomever can afford to come. The wealthiest nations will make their spacecraft while the poorer nations will be left behind. Opening KAP to the world will ensure the colonists are only the richest people of the world.”

“The richest people in the world will never be colonists,” Leya rolled her eyes. “They’ve got it fine here. Colonizing means giving up your entire life for no certain reward. You’ve got to want it, and the people who do are not going to be the top-of-the-class elite who can have any job they want to support their family and suburban cottage. A society geared towards a certain kind of person by definition harms those who do not or cannot conform. Those are the people who will colonize Proxima.”

“Nonconformists and rebels…not the best choices for creating a group of astronauts. You may not like the URC establishing criteria for the colonists, but it’s a more reasonable idea than sending the worst of humanity out of a misguided attempt to keep things…healthy.”

“There, again, you hear yourself? Worst of humanity? That’s how you think of them?” Leya straightened slightly, tugging on her sleeves. “You are talking about the same people who always lead the migrations of mankind; the poor, the downtrodden, the disadvantaged. Colonization is never practiced by the well off, it is an act of desperation by the isolated and destitute who dream of a better life. They’re always out there, and it won’t be too hard to find them; they’ll come to us.”

“You are right, I shouldn’t have said worst of humanity…but I think anyone who thinks Proxima will provide a better life for them has no idea how difficult life is when your own planet is trying to kill you. Besides, the rockets still need to be built, the equipment provided, and that requires resources. Every colonization effort in human history has involved wealthy sponsors of some stripe. England’s crown provided the ships bound for Australia, Spain funded Columbus, even the Pilgrims who journeyed to the United States were funded by a group of ‘merchant adventurers’, and they still lost half their population in the first winter. The URC is the only organization that can build the KAP, and they simply won’t if the colonists aren’t well trained and effective citizens from their own regions.”

“Sponsors require returns on investment, and there won’t be any with Proxima.”

“Don’t be so sure. I’m friends with a transcriber from India, and she says they’re putting a stipulation in the project, demanding a slow-traveling cargo pod full of material from Proxima on a semi-regular basis.”

“I’ve heard similar, but it doesn’t matter. That’s just theater; how could they enforce it? But never mind, the point is that the colonists being all like-minded URC citizens is more dangerous than the alternative. Homogeny is fragile; it’s been proven time and again throughout history. Cavendish bananas, tulip mania, the potato famine…Diversity of thought will be vital for the colony to create a robust and healthy culture. The URC is an Earth government. The colonists will be creating their own society and culture. Over time, they’ll work out what it means to be Proximan, and for that to happen, they need multiple worldviews from different cultures, classes, and societies.”

“And what is to stop a nationalist or an extremist from settling old scores?”

“Extremism comes from alienation, disenfranchisement, and frustration. Radicalism only thrives among those who feel trapped, alone, and helpless. It’s a primal scream to alleviate isolation. What kind of alienation will anyone experience on the colony? When everyone needs to work together to survive, there is no place for isolation.”

“They’ll be isolated from Earth.”

“Not just isolated, expunged. Earth will be meaningless to the colonists. A dream, or a myth. They’ll forget all about us in a generation or two.”

“Okay, but what about being trapped? Every colonist won’t be able to wander freely through the base; there will be rules and laws that will be enforced by a judiciary…won’t that breed the same discontent?”

“I disagree that it’s inevitable that the colonists will demand some kind of official hierarchy. Anarchy is a valid form of governance. But even if they do, there won’t be enough space for disenfranchisement. It wasn’t just weight ratios and equipment costs that brought the colonist number down to two-hundred. You’ve heard of Dunbar’s number, right? It’s the limit of people we can maintain a social relationship with. Any more, and we stop thinking of people as individuals, and start seeing them as groups. Keeping the population low makes it harder — not just psychologically, I mean physically — to separate into separate social groups of ‘us’ and ’them.’”

“I think you’re assuming a great deal, not the least of which is that these diverse world-views will survive long enough to influence the eventual Proximian culture. What use is conservative or liberal fiscal policy on a new planet? What good is free trade versus fair trade if there is no one around to trade with? When survival becomes your foremost concern, high-level political theory will collapse quickly into pragmatic and practical concerns. If your life depends on being part of the social community, any divergent views will vanish astonishingly quickly. It’s a survival technique. It’s no accident that the greatest cultural shifts in society occur during times of great struggle and turmoil — just another day on Proxima.”

“Oh stop it!” Leya rolled her head back. “Stop trying to find precedent for everything; we’re not trying to fill a wooden boat with pilgrims or criminals, we’re not looking for a water route to India. This is all new.”

For some reason, out of all the things that were said, shouted, argued, and agreed upon that night — and every night for the rest of the week, for that matter — that sentiment stuck with Joanie for long after. She remembered it when she watched the KAP launch on the television next to her partner, clasping each other’s hands and gently crying.

At the time, she didn’t realize how it would stick with her. Instead, she simply smiled. “Well, thank god we don’t have the final say. Next round is yours, Philipe.”

---

The dusk sky was a perfect shade of purple. In ancient times, the color of the sky was a sign for mariners, seers, and prophets who could auger good or ill fortune in the most common things. The idea amused Antje; these days she just enjoyed the view.

Antje jumped at the loud bang of a cork. “Michael!” She snapped, turning to her companion as he started to fill their glasses. “They haven’t launched yet! Have you no sense of occasion?”

“Eh,” he shrugged.

Antje smiled as she accepted the offered glass of champagne. She had wanted to wait to pop the cork, but she couldn’t be mad at Michael, not now. Not today.

They were sitting, the two of them, on the most comfortable folding chairs Michael had ever found. They were, in fact, not that comfortable at all, but now was not the time for such Earthly concerns. All they really cared about was that they were facing in the right direction.

“Twenty years,” she said, holding her glass up to the dusk, watching the purple filter through the pale golden liquid, dancing through the bubbles as they rose like streamers. She kicked off her shoes, pulled off her socks, and pressed her toes into the cold grass.

“Longer than that,” Michael muttered, setting the bottle down. “We first met more than forty years ago.”

“Sure,” Antje shrugged, “but twenty years since the URC accepted the proposal. We toasted then, remember?”

“Well,” Michael stared at his own glass, “I don’t think you can only toast something once, can you? Besides, we didn’t do the heavy lifting during the last years. That was all politicians and engineers.”

“Speak for yourself,” Antje laughed. “I don’t think I’ve slept a full night’s sleep since.”

“Hmm.” Michael looked up at the sky. The stars were just starting to appear, slowly creeping into view as the omnipresent sun faded away. “I’ve slept wonderfully.”

Antje stared at her friend for a moment, noting the relaxed lines in his face, The bright eyes that sparkled with aged joy that only finds itself in old men and women; the joy of a long life filled with failure and regret come to success.

“To the Noriama,” she said, holding her glass out to him. He turned and stared at her glass a moment, before tapping it with his. The ringing danced through the air like a butterfly.

“I still don’t understand the name,” he muttered, taking a sip.

“I think I do,” Antje inhaled deeply, letting the night air flavor her champagne as only a cool spring evening could. “It was Takenaka’s doing.”

“The mineral director?”

“Yes. I don’t know who he spoke to, or who he petitioned on the naming committee, but it’s his daughter’s name.”

“I didn’t know he had a daughter.”

“He doesn’t anymore. She died a few weeks before he arranged our meeting in Brussels.”

“Is that why he —” Michael stopped himself. He didn’t need to know.

What was it about the stars and space, that drew you to them when you wanted to keep something alive forever? There was nothing alive about space. It was full of dead rocks, floating in the void, and burning explosions so big they would burn for eons. There was nothing but death up there. Life was down here, on Earth, with your feet on the grass and your head in the clouds and your hands dangling in rivers and forests.

But somehow, whenever humanity wanted Eternity, when they wanted something to last forever, they tried to put it somewhere out there.

After a moment he heaved a sigh. “You want to hear something funny? About tantalum?”

“Go for it.”

“It was named after Tantalus, from Greek mythology. I don’t remember why, exactly, but he was punished by the gods and forced to starve in Hades, with food and drink always just out of reach. That’s where ’tantalize’ comes from. For all eternity, he stands knee-deep in water, with grapes growing over his head. If he tries to drink the water, it pulls away from his cup, and if he tries to grab a grape, it pulls away from his hand.” He looked back at the stars. “It’s always right there, above his head, and forever just out of reach.”

Antje took a deep breath. “That’s pretty funny.”

“How much time left?”

“Seven minutes.” Antje glanced at her friend. “Do you regret not being in the control room? I could easily have got you in.”

“They asked me,” Michael shrugged. “I declined. I’d rather be here, right now.”

“Me too.” Antje reached out to pat her old friend on the shoulder. It had been a long haul, and there was something fitting that they end the project alone together, the same way they had started it.

It wasn’t the first launch. The Seven Nations had launched their first rocket three years ago, and had retained a fairly steady launch schedule ever since.

It wouldn’t be the last launch either. Over a thousand industries across the globe had come together, each focused on developing and implementing their agreed upon portion of the KAP. For the next five years, rockets from all across the world would escape the Earth’s atmosphere to send materials and equipment off to Proxima b.

But all those rockets were in service to this launch. These rockets held colonists.

“Can I ask you something?” Michael asked, taking another sip of his drink.

“You can always ask.”

“Why did you help me?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, all those years ago, at that party, when I cornered you against the wall and rambled on for an hour about extinction level events and tensile strength of different metals, why did you listen? Why did you decide to help?”

“You made a good case.”

“No I didn’t. I was young, and stupid, and didn’t think I was either. You had no reason to help me, but you became my biggest supporter. We wouldn’t be here, if not for you.”

“You too, you know. You did the science bit. I just shoved it in front of people’s faces.”

“Well, we can agree to disagree. Still; tell me why?”

Antje frowned, staring again at her glass. “I think it was because I was tired of doing little things. It’s the little things that make a difference, you know. Tiny things. A few cents of tax, a commuted sentence, an edited speech…Spending so much time in the EU has really taught me how much the little things can change the world. Did you ever hear about NA-E3-6623?”

“Was that a bill?”

“A proposal submitted to the URC by the Northern Americas. It asked for a reduction in the trade tariffs implemented after the Chilean Crisis. The tariffs stifled innovation, they said; had five hundred pages tracing the tariffs all the way to a reduction in youth test scores.”

“Sounds intricate.”

“It was. It was designed to be, I’m sure, on the hope we’d just sign off on it rather than expend the effort of understanding. I only read a bit of it, and I wasn’t grasping it, so I asked the Department of Regional Budgeting to take a look at their numbers. Seven different teams went through all five hundred pages and five of them didn’t find anything wrong. Air-tight, they said. Their request holds up.”

“What did the other two teams find?”

“A misplaced decimal point. That’s all it took. From one decimal point, a whole policy proposal was put together. If we hadn’t caught the error — a single error — the Northern American Conference would have had their tariffs reduced five years early, and the world economy would have shifted.”

“Ah…so that made you want to shoot some people off the planet, eh?”

“No,” Antje’s laugh was as light and clear as the champagne. “It made me want to do something big. I was tired of hunting for decimal places, for trying to guess how a two percent tax on fish from Africa will impact the shipping industry across the globe. I didn’t want to deal with finding every impact a tiny action would have on the world. I wanted things to…” she paused, taking a sip of her drink.

In the distance, down the hill and almost five miles away, there was a brilliant flash of light. With glacial slowness, at 6:43 pm local time, November 14th, 2154, a bright yellow flame blossomed like a flower on the ground, and began to rise. Slowly, the glow rose, unzipping the sky and leaving a thick gray furrow behind it, like a finger dragged in the sand.

Michael couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. He didn’t even believe he was seeing it. On the tip of that flame was a rocket, carrying one fifth of humanity’s future.

After ten minutes, there was another flash, further away than the first. Then, after another ten, another flash. In one hour, seven rockets had launched, all aiming in the same direction, all carefully calibrated to follow the same path, or close enough as to be easily correctable once they reached orbit.

They’d never see the Sunessen engines engage, not from here. Once the rockets were in space, they would each dock with the re-purposed ISS station and board the specially designed ark that would be their home for over half a century of travel. The official mission time for the Sunessen drive’s activation was tomorrow, 2:32 in the morning. The event would be recorded by six different telescopes and satellites, and cheered in bars, parks, and living-rooms around the globe.

Antje and Michael didn’t speak from the time of the first launch until the seventh rocket was completely out of sight. Once it was gone, they stood up, gathered their things, and prepared to return to their lives on Earth, the only home they would ever have.

Halfway back to the car, Michael stopped, and looked back at the night sky. The stars were plainly visible now.

“What?” Antje asked, her voice tight from choked-back tears.

“Just realizing,” Michael sighed a deep and anxious sigh. “If anything goes wrong…this was our one shot, is all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Forty years, it took, to get this project off the ground. That’s a third of a lifetime, Antje. We fought tooth and nail, and we weren’t the only ones who did. After all of that, if something goes wrong, do you think we’ll ever try again? It would take generations for us to trust colonization again, no matter what caused the failure. Too long. Too long before there is some disaster, and it’ll be too late for us to do anything about it. This is it. This is our last chance. If Noriama fails, Mankind will never leave the solar system again.”