“He did it. The kid went and ran away.”

“So? He’s legally an adult now Veronica. He can waste his life if he wants to and you shouldn’t keep babying him.”

“I don’t care what the law says, twenty years is barely worth anything. Let alone adulthood: the right to vote and sign your life away on a pipe dream. When I was twenty you wouldn’t even let me move out of the house!”

“Yes, dear, but you’re my dearest daughter.”

“He’s your dearest son.”

“He’s my only son.” Chancellor Schuler replied flatly before sharply turning and exiting the room.

Veronica stared after her mother indignantly for a short moment before mumbling to herself, "And I'm your only daughter."

She returned to the work piled on her desk and breathed out a heavy sigh. Behind her, the city teemed with life, uncaring of the millions of family dramas playing out in its many homes.

Transporters shuffled busy commuters about, each in a microcosm of existence. Each had little care for the world and people around them, too concerned with their own journeys and desperate to avoid detours. Towering above, pods zipped up and down the orbital cable carrying passengers and precious cargo alike.

*****

The International Space Station (ISS) was a well oiled and nano-printed machine of efficiency. Pods were emptied of their cargo in short order, which was then sent off to its next destination in the station. Passengers alighted from their crash-couches quickly upon arrival. There would be no time for rest as attendants aided and sometimes manoeuvred them towards their next destination. Errors were avoided, and the few that ever made it through were caught by redundancy upon redundancy. Such was the operational maxim of the ISS since the time of its conception—allegedly.

The newest addition to what was simultaneously the most ancient and most technologically advanced artifact of humanity was an unassuming anchorage. No ships were docked in here; rather, it was being used more as a glorified cargo bay. Sam slowly floated her way through the vast space, making note that each item on her list was accounted for.

This was the last of it. The colony supplies and backup supplies had been loaded months ago, all that was left was the passengers. Precious cargo indeed. It did not matter that every pseudo-stasis-pod had been documented and accounted for by three separate AI’s in digital triplicate. When it came to the important, sentimental, and necessity of life type of things, people wanted the human touch. Even if it was the least reliable.

Sam flicked her finger in a check motion next to the name plaque of an Aiden Schuler, pausing a moment for her mental assistant to ping and register the affirmation. Whether the checks be made through flesh or metal, the data would all be recorded and stored digitally. Sam wondered if the wetware of her augments made any meaningful difference in this.

“Above my paygrade.” Her quiet contemplation echoed loudly in the silent hall returning her words in piecemeal. The half-spoken ghost she called it. A vast anchorage did not make for an articulate conversation partner. The sound of her chuckles had a haunting edge and today's guests made the room especially eerie. Perfect, Sam thought.

These were the last set of the passengers, all 8,065 of them. They were only a touch visible through the privacy glass of their viewports. Each was a black silhouette standing row on row in their metallic coffins. They would not move for more than thirty years and even then, only a portion of them would first awake to set up the foundations of the colony. In that time, they would still age, although, with life expectancy at two hundred and rising, many were willing to accept the lost time.

Except, they weren’t really losing time. They were dreaming. Acting out fantasies and mundane life in the virtual realities they were all connected to. The silent shadows betrayed nothing of their active minds. Surrounded by thousands, only half-spoken ghosts accompanied Sam as she made her way through her checklist, occasionally talking to herself and cracking jokes only she could laugh at.

Five hours later, all passengers were loaded and secure within the cradle of CS Abeona. Ten hours later, the ship's AI has completed its final checks and sent out the final request for launch. At 14:00 GMT, April fifteenth, 1458 United Human Era, the first interstellar colony ship launched into the void of space. The ship would be fully AI automated, with a human redundancy crew on standby to perform regular bi-weekly checks and loaded with enough supplies for two settlements and a passenger manifest of a quarter-million souls.

Heading: a green and blue jewel—visible only as a slight wobble on the speck that was a near-by star.