Deep in space, somewhere near Mars, sitting in a behemoth of a ship that easily reached 10km in length sat a dejected young man staring at his computer screen. Within a room plunged in darkness, only illuminated by the faint light coming from his screen. Yet with the lack of illumination one could tell that the young man was fairly tall, nearing 1.90m in height, had short dark brown hairs and a terrible stubble he was too lazy to take care of. He was wearing baggy black pants and a loose light blue T-shirt. His lack of sleep was also evident, proof being in the dark bags under his eyes. And most importantly on his screen were three large blood-red words announcing to the world: “YOU HAVE LOST!”

“Jesus, man. How the hell did you do that?” he proclaimed.

“Eh. I’m just good at this I guess,” replied a male-sounding entity from the computer “You up for another game?”

“I don’t know… Losing like thirty times in a row isn’t really that entertaining you know.”

“Come on Siton! You’ve barely left your room ever since we’ve boarded the ship ten months ago. We hadn’t talked for almost a week prior to playing this game,” the voice exclaimed, “Let’s play another round!”

“Fine…” Siton gave in his friend’s plea, a faint smile forming on the corner of his lips. He was still enjoying himself despite having lost his 30th game in a row.

The truth was the voice had not lied. Ever since Siton had arrived aboard the WACS 3 (World Alliance Colony Ship 3) he had essentially locked himself up in his room. The reason being related to his presence aboard.

Some time in the early 2050s, strange phenomenon started occurring around the globe. The apparition of the so-called rifts. At first, they resembled little pitch-black balls with an unstable shape that would float in mid-air ranging in size from a golf ball to a bowling ball. Their most fascinating property was their ability to distort space. Originally discovered by a swiss farmer that had poked one with a long stick and almost fully submerging its 1.30m length entirely inside the 10cm wide anomaly and yet pulled it out intact. From this point onwards the supernatural balls were aptly named rifts.

At first, they were found to be interesting apparitions to the greater majority if not mystical, save for a few madmen proclaiming the end of the world. For it was promptly discovered that once something fully went in, it never left. Many tried workarounds such as tying ropes to what went in, only to find it severed soon after. It was soon established that the rifts could only remain stable for so long with something partially immersed, cutting said thing if it remained there for too long (a couple of minutes on average). However, that did not stop people from peeking inside them. These individuals reported powerful headaches and seeing a bright light with a few tendrils sprouting from it in a vast empty space. They also almost died due to the vacuum on the other side.

However, that feeling of awe soon disappeared as the rifts slowly started expanding with no signs of slowing down, swallowing all in their path. Despite the inherent curiosity of mankind, their survival instinct was far stronger. Within weeks of the news rolling in, millions of people were marching in the streets across the globe, attempting to convince their governments to stop them. Yet, very few were aware that most if not all of them were already doing just that… and were utterly failing.

And so, for years the rifts steadily grew alongside the protests, until March 2058 where all governments declared in unison their powerless in the face of those events and that Earth was doomed. That is in roughly 80 years, nothing would be left but a giant rift. As an act of precaution, the world was put under martial law for a year following that announcement.

But along that despair-inducing announcement, the governments declared the formation of the World Alliance, containing 90% of all countries. They declared the construction of four colony ships that could house between 20 thousand and 100 thousand souls depending on their assigned region and size, thus giving one last glimmer of hope to the despairing humanity. They stated that the best and brightest of each region would be selected to board a ship along with a lucky few. These ships were headed for three unique potentially habitable worlds. One for the moon, this one would receive a significantly higher amount of resources due to its closeness to Earth. Two for Mars due to all the groundwork that had already been laid there and its similarity to Earth. Finally, one for a newly discovered habitable planet in the Alpha Centauri system, this one had been deemed the most likely to be habitable, but it was also the farthest.

The four ships and their respective regions were as follows WACS 1 was for North America with 20 thousand places heading to the moon, WACS 2 was for Europe and Africa with 70 thousand places heading to Mars, WACS 3 was for South America and Oceania with 20 thousand places also heading to Mars, and last bust not least WACS 4 was for Asia with 100 thousand places heading for Alpha Centauri Prime.

And that year, slightly prior to the announcement, Siton Novmundo was born in a backwater city in New-Zealand that was relatively untouched by the chaos that was spreading worldwide. Although he had a rather logical mindset, he wasn’t particularly gifted in any way and he did not try to excel in his life due to this. To him, there was no way in hell he was good enough to be selected despite his interest in biological sciences. Therefore, he spent his time trying to enjoy life. Although that came with its own hardships, he managed to be mostly successful in this endeavor. Yet deep inside him, he felt this dull feeling of meaninglessness, he felt like his life had no purpose. He had this drive to achieve but not the abilities needed to do so when doing so required abilities far beyond what he possessed. The world was due to end within his lifetime and anything he would do would amount to nothing. He was doomed to forever stay in the giant shadows of those who established the pillars of humanity, as many others were.

Soon after he turned 15 alarming news silently spread across the WA leadership, the rifts had suddenly started growing at an exponentially faster rate. The world was only given just over three years to live as opposed to the 65 or so expected. Wisely, they decided to withhold that information from the public in order to avoid worldwide anarchy. Unfortunately, this forced them to pick up the pace with the construction of their ships as well as selecting the most promising candidates for the very sought-after spots on the colony ships much sooner than anticipated.

Over the years, successful candidates were silently being gathered and sent to their respective ships. Imagine the surprise when one day, when he was 17, WA agents came knocking on Siton’s door giving him the opportunity to claim one of the 20 thousand places as his own and to join them at their training center were he to accept. As previously mentioned, there were spots aboard for a few lucky ones. Which in this case translated into a lottery system for 1000 places on WACS 3, which he had somehow won amongst half a billion other people. And so Siton agonized over the decision for a few days before being pushed by his family to accept the offer. After saying his last heart-breaking farewells, he went to the training center. Long story short he learned the truth about how much time the world had left and was sent on the WACS 3. He got to personally witness the Earth get engulfed by the rifts as the ship slowly departed from its home planet.

That absolutely devastated him, everyone and everything he ever knew and loved was gone just like that. Causing him to isolate himself in his room for the first week. Actually… All but one. A quiet student from the same school and year level as him named Fredrik Oman had managed to earn his way up through his talent in robotics. They didn’t really know each other all that much beforehand, but they quickly got very close once introduced to each other by the ship’s AI. Holding onto each other tightly as one of the few things they had left of their past.

“You can’t just keep wallowing in self-pity man,” Fred exclaimed due to Siton’s continued silence following his 50th defeat.“ Although its true you got lucky, you didn’t steal that spot from anyone, and your family would have been extremely glad to know you’re alive. So, do them a favor and actually live it, dude!”

“Yeah, you’re right… I know all that, it's just hard to switch to that mindset.”

“I get it. You know what? Getting out of your room will do you some good. How about you meet me at the B5 Observatory room in ten? Does that sound good to you? “

“Ye-“

The world suddenly went black and was accompanied by the worst headache Siton had ever felt. It was a head-splitting and earth-shattering pain that would have knocked out even the toughest minds. Yet as he felt about to lose consciousness, the pain stopped without warning, gone as swiftly as it had appeared.

Siton looked around his room to find himself plunged in darkness. Whatever had happened must have killed the power supply. Before Siton could do anything else, dim lights started appearing in a pattern on his walls accompanied by a loud announcement.

“WARNING! AN UNEXPECTED EVENT HAS OCCURRED! AUXILIARY POWER IS NOW ONLINE! PLEASE FOLLOW THE LIGHTS TO YOUR NEAREST ESCAPE POD IN AN ORDERLY MANNER!” Which was soon followed by an identical statement, and then another in a seemingly endless loop.

Having a history of being prone to panic Siton felt his mind kick into overdrive as it overtook him. Slowly but surely leading it to a catastrophic failure. The connection to Fred had been interrupted due to whatever had caused that blackout.

The announcement was also getting everyone to evacuate the ship. And Siton was pretty sure that the lights they were supposed to follow would lead them to different escape pods. Mostly due to the fact they lived about 10 minutes away from each other. Right now, what Siton felt he needed most was support, someone to help him get his mind under control. Therefore, in his panicked state of mind, he made the rather unwise decision to head for Observatory B5, their previously agreed-on meeting point, in the hopes of finding Fred there.

As he moved to get up from his chair the whole ship shook violently for a solid ten seconds which was promptly followed by the emergency lights turning red.

“WARNING! PLEASE FOLLOW THE LIGHTS TO YOUR NEAREST ESCAPE POD IMMEDIATELY!” The announcement suddenly changed to a more pressing tone.

‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.’ Siton thought as he ran out of his room still wearing his slippers, and into the metallic lifeless corridors of the ship. Well… not so lifeless anymore as it was filled with a veritable horde of frightened individuals plowing their way to the escape pods. Forcing Siton to fight the flow with all his might as blaring alarms assaulted his ears, and the very ground he stood on rebelled against him. His muscles aching due to his lack of exercise ever since he got on board. Yet he slowly but surely was making progress through the red-tinted sea of chaos.

After what seemed to be hours but more realistically a couple of minutes thanks to the progressively thinning crowds, Siton finally found himself to be at his target destination. B5 Observatory. He originally intended to find Fred here but the first thing he saw was definitely hard to miss. The ceiling and two of the walls of the room were replaced by a huge reinforced clear plastic dome. Allowing for an incredible view of what lay outside the ship.

And that was a planet. One that wasn’t the expected orangy-red color of Mars. Instead, it had huge lush continents, deserts and snowy regions separated by deep blue oceans. All wrapped within a dim blue atmosphere. Behind it was an extremely powerful light source akin to the sun with five equally bright tendrils emanating from it. Each five times as long as the center yet only half as wide. The oddest part of this sight was the complete lack of stars. There wasn’t a single bright spot in his entire field of view besides the oddly shaped star.

“Insane right?” said a young man that also looked in his late teens. He had light blond hair and blue eyes and was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans. He wasn’t too tall sitting at just under 1.80m and gave off the feeling that he generally didn’t talk much unless he had to.

“Fred! What doe-“ Siton began to question. After all, how the hell could Mars have plant life and oceans on it when it was but a dull lifeless rock minutes ago?

“This is no time to talk,” Fred interrupted him. “In case you haven’t noticed we’re getting really close to it really fast. We should really get to those escape pods now!”

That last sentence pulled Siton out of his shocked state as Fred grabbed his wrist and dragged him along, following the nearby emergency lights. The next couple of minutes consisted of frantic running through a maze of empty corridors and occasionally passing windows only to see the planet growing ever closer to them. When they finally arrived, they were faced with hundreds of escape pods or the lack of thereof. The room was a huge hangar, escape pod entrances were lining up the walls across multiple levels and hundreds of meters. Yet all of them were closed, signaling the absence of their corresponding pod. They had arrived too late.

“Damn. We’re fucked aren’t we?” Said Siton, his blood freezing.

Keeping his cool, Fred looked around, trying to find any available escape pods. Regardless of their initial impression, it was still very likely they had missed an open pod amongst all the others. Then something caught his eye. It seemed that the emergency lights were leading to only a very few specific escape pods. Looking closer into it he noticed that all of those were open!

“Siton! I think I’ve found our way out!”

“What? Where?” He replied.

“Just follow the emergency lights!”

Swiftly understanding what his friend meant Siton ran after him to the nearest available escape pod. As they were about to reach it the announcement got significantly louder and suddenly shifted to a countdown.

“WARNING! 180 SECONDS BEFORE ESTIMATED IMPACT! IMMEDIATELY MAKE YOUR WAY TO THE ESCAPE PODS! 176! 175! 174!...”

“Shit we’ve gotta get in now!” Siton yelled over the alarm.

“We’ve got a problem! That one only has one place! You have to get in! I’ll follow the lines to the next one!”

“Hell no!” came the reply.

“That wasn’t a question! See ya down there!” Fred yelled as he roughly shoved Siton inside the pod and slammed the emergency launch button next to the door

“FRED!” Siton cried out as the doors to the pod closed behind him. He only managed to turn around in time to see his friend smile at him as the pod launched away from the ship.