Content Disclosure: Mild Violence, Strong Language
Before I left the solar system, I took a walk in the woods behind my house. It was the remains of Superior National Forest, one of the few Class One ecosystems remaining in the world, meaning it could survive without human intervention. Even so, I spent the past sixteen years monitoring the botany and the beetles, noting liabilities and weaknesses in the system, waiting for my intervention to be necessary. My predictions were that it would become Class Two—limited intervention—in twenty years. Conveniently, that’s when the human population was predicted to dip below the big red line.
During my pre-launch physical, they found a wood tick on my lower back so bloated that its body was a yellowish-green light bulb. It was an adult male, meaning that after its body reached its blood capacity, all that was left was for it to detach and die. I would have squashed the blood sac with my naked heel had the doctor not placed it in a vial, a gesture I usually avoid when it comes to life of any kind, though parasites are the one life form that has continued to disgust me through the years.
I was assigned to Glacialis, a small, white-blue planet 2,432 light years away. The promise was in the (likely) high concentration of water on the planet’s surface, even though much of it was (likely) frozen. With a planet that far away, our readings could do little more than give us the color of the surface and some spotty weather readings. As scientists, we wanted data, but hope would have to do.
They called us the Prophets because we were desperate enough to resort to religion, or at least the aesthetic of it. We were still scientists, after all. There were fourteen of us when the project formed, assigned to search for the Promised Land in pairs. It became thirteen when, one month before launch, Amos Harding died from drinking contaminated water. According to the reports, he had been ingesting it for weeks without knowing, as they found a flaw in his house’s filtration system. His town’s reservoir only had six months of water left, meaning the residents all would have died before he could even report his findings, something he was well aware of.
None of the vessels were designed to house three people for the duration of travel, so I volunteered to go alone. The windowless oval meeting room felt heavy and dark that day, and there was a long silence and an army of relieved stares in my direction after I spoke up. All the other Prophets patted my back in thanks, but in truth, I felt lighter knowing I could tackle my mission alone. Collaboration is not an action I do well, as I tend toward explaining and teaching when in the presence of others, though I am quick to admit it is a flaw of mine. I figured it was better to create an environment where that defect could not show its prickly face when humanity was at stake.
It took eight months and three light jumps to reach Glacialis. The jumps were instantaneous, covering up to one thousand light years in a blink, but the charging period was the killer, leaving the vessel dormant for up to three months between travel. The jumps also required a landing space near a potent sun, making direct trips impossible for most Prophets.