What started as an increase in seemingly innocuous solar flares have become a deadly source of radiation on our planet. To save humanity, we must literally reach for the stars. - Senator Chambers, GBS news

I watched as the rocket left the Earth behind. On it, my husband and daughter were leaving the planet for good. I was ecstatic that they were going to survive, but it was bittersweet. I would not see them for a thousand years, and that was if we all were impossibly lucky.

The world is dying, I told myself again in what had become a mantra. Solar flares had increased by over 500%, engulfing the Earth in deadly radiation. Millions had already died, and before long, it would be in the billions.

Humanity took its existential end with surprising diligence. There was rioting and looting, of course, and even mass suicides. Despite that, most people were determined to have at least some survivors. Some nations concentrated on saving as many people as they could, creating networks of tunnels and concrete and caves to try to withstand the radiation.

Other nations and corporations looked to the skies. Most of the planet’s brilliant minds and considerable resources worked hard to create ships of differing designs and purposes to go to the closest stars. Some of the massive ships were Generational Ships, meant to go from star to star until a planet was found, in the meantime housing thousands of residents that would live and die for generations on the ship. Another option was being called Somnolent Ships or the slang of Sleeping Ships. These were ships that were not manned by people but AI carrying precious cargo- thousands of cryogenically sealed people deep in a frozen coma.

Cryogenics had long been a dream, and just happened to have major breakthroughs in the years prior to the Apocalypse, as everyone called it. The actual process of freezing and then thawing, for lack of better words, a human had been possible for over a decade. It was the mind, however, that suffered due to something called Sheppard’s Disease, named after the doctor who discovered it. A body could survive the deep freeze, but the mind could not. The longer they were in the deep sleep, the more likely they would come out the other end brain dead, in a coma or even worse, deeply insane.

At first it was theorized that this was because of damage to the brain, but Dr. Sheppard discovered that the brain waves were still going on, albeit at a pace of 30 times slower than normal time, due to being frozen. The mind, she hypothesized, was still active, while the body was not. The brain still needed stimulus in order to survive the frozen coma.

She needed the brain to think it still controlled a living body, it needed to be tricked that it was living, thinking feeling and moving around to stay healthy. So how could she keep the mind active and healthy, while experiencing the full realm of thought and feeling, motion and body control?

It was there where she drew inspiration from her husband, who was a neuro-game designer. He was creating games where the player could become fully immersed virtually in the game. It was in its infancy, neuro-games, mainly due to testing limitations. Slowly and surely, however, he was creating games that a person could play in a semi-lucid trance state. The games originally were called Dreams because they often felt like dreams after the person woke up, and were less games and more like implanted, vague memories. They were not overly popular, due to its large power usage and the lack of control the dreamer had.

It was at this stage the first signs of increased solar flares started happening. It was increasing in such a rate that scientists were able to give a 30-year window where life on Earth was still habitable. At that point, testing restrictions were lifted and the two separate issues- how to get a brain connected to a computer to create fully realized immersion and how to keep a person’s brain active while in cryogenically induced comas – solved each other’s dilemma. Once this system became public, the idea of Somnolent Ships took off.

Doctor Hanna Sheppard and Doctor Jack Sheppard are my parents. It was through them that I was able to get 2 seats on the first launch of a Somnolent Ship, The Mercy. They had given up their seat for their son-in-law, my husband Jason, and their adopted granddaughter, my daughter, Alexis. We decided that Jason should leave on the ship. He had been an assistant of my mother and knew more about Cryogenics than anyone else other than her.

I would be leaving on a ship after them going to the same start system. The ship’s name was Atlas. We bought a ticket with the entirety of the family’s wealth- which was not inconsiderable- and even got me a special deluxe package. My parents refused to go on the trip. They said their place was here on Earth, but I knew it was about money. Still, they had been offered a place in one of the best underground sites in America where my mother said they were sure to live out their natural lives.

I watched as the rocket disappeared. The Mercy had the best chance of getting to Proxima Centauri, home to one of the closest Earth-like planet we could find. It was the flag ship of the fleet travelling to Proxima Centauri. The trip would take approximately 27,000 years. The Mercy will host a real-life simulation of Earth as it was in the 1800s. Well, maybe not so real-life, as the world would be erased of racism, homophobia, inequity, and inequality- at least for the passengers. It would be an ideal world to live in.

Jason and Alexis would be living in Boston while aboard and asleep in The Mercy, and Jason was already set up to be a merchant. The passage of time will ‘only’ seem like 1000 years to the passengers since the brain activity is only running 30 times more slowly than normal brain activity while in cryogenesis.

I think of these things rather coldly. I had been raised with the knowledge of the Apocalypse, having been born 5 years before the increase in Solar Flares. I was a child of The Last Generation. What caused panic to the earlier generation was common knowledge to us. This did not mean I didn’t miss Alexis and Jason immensely, or that I felt OK with my parents sacrificing everything for their child and grandchild to live. Those were just the facts, and I was living them.

Atlas will be leaving a week behind The Mercy and let us just say corners were cut when creating the ship. The chance of survival is much less. But a chance is better than no chance at all. Instead of a historic simulation, Atlas’ simulation was a game that truly little was known about. Called Divine Intervention Online, the MMORPG would hold 5000 passengers now known as ‘players’ who would be the option to grow from mere mortals to literal gods over a period of 1000 years. It promised enough procedurally generated land and content to keep the players busy for the entirety of the voyage.

The game selection was controversial, as many of the passengers were extremely faithful in religions like Christianity, Islam, Judaism and others that felt uncomfortable playing gods and goddesses. I dismissed the controversy as irrelevant. I was an Atheist born to a family of Atheists and the whole issue sounded silly to me.

I didn’t really care about the game. It could have been about prehistoric penguins for all I cared about, as long as it got me to where I needed to go and reunited me with Jason and Alexis. Yes, it was important, but I just never really thought a lot about the in-flight entertainment. Much of this was experimental anyways. So much could go wrong to the ship or the technology keeping us alive. It was a long shot, and who knew what our minds would be like when we arrived to Centauri Prime. Maybe we would just be pieces of freezer burned meat.

The pamphlets all said that there were redundancies to every bit of technology. For instance, it said if the battery cells died, there was an experimental Radiation Shield that would be turned on. Another example would be if Divine Intervention Online didn’t work or had coding issues, my father’s old Dreama technology would turn on. Yes, it was more energy intensive, and yes it would make the passage of the time seem like a distant dream as opposed to a thrilling cutting-edge adventure, and it was riskier for the mind, but the mind would still arrive theoretically intact on arrival.

***

A week later, I was in the lab where I would be put into a cryogenically sealed coma and would seemingly enter the game immediately afterwards. They had only a few hours to put me under, freeze me, get me up into space, into the spaceship and connected to Divine Intervention Online before my mind started to deteriorate.

I shivered as I stood naked in the room. I had been completely shorn of all hair and was waiting to be injected with a concoction of drugs that would start the prosses of Cryogenesis.

The previous night had been a rough night, saying goodbye to my parent and to the Earth. It has been a dangerous place to live, but it was still home. I also could not sleep, thinking that there was every chance that I would be heading to my death when put to sleep.

But that was the day before. I put that out of my thoughts as the tech assistant came in and injected me with the fluid. There was no discussion, no great goodbye. Most idle conversation had gone away with the prospects of a future on Earth. When you know that the world is ending, there is not much to say.

After the injection, I slowly slipped under and there was just blackness. A void of nothingness. I seemed to float in it, there was no consciousness in this void, and I rested.

My rest was interrupted by words that pierced my vision.

Neuro Interface installed…

Connected to Neuro Interface…

Downloading Divine Intervention Online…

*** Ship wide alert, Atlas has left the station. Have a fun and safe voyage! ***

Download has encountered a critical failure…

Reinstalling Divine Intervention Online…

Download has encountered a critical failure…

Brain health deteriorating…

Installing backup, Dreama technology…

Alerting DIO to problem…

DIO has added your connection to Patch 800.01.01…

I remember little of what happened next. I seem to recall happy dreams of swimming in the ocean, going on rollercoaster rides, jogging in the woods on a sunny day and other meaningless vignettes. Periodically, ship wide alerts would occur, announcing patch updates which corresponded to the subjective years that had passed during the voyage, polls of the players who successfully made it to Divine Intervention Online and other vague notifications. Finally, I was awoken during the ship wide patch update of 800.01.01

Downloading Divine Intervention Online…

Success! Starting connection to the game…