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“Man seeks a future among the stars,” the serpent told them in the time between, “but pack their failings for the journey.”
Starship Conquistador
c. 2500 A.D.
I was born aboard ship. It’s the only life I’ve known. Despite all those ancient stories about cryonics and space travel, reality proved more difficult. My great-grandparents won the “get off the dying earth” lottery and boarded the ship. According to family lore, rioters breached security just as the ignition caught and the transport ship lifted off. Many of the rioters were killed in the rush and heat but Grandpa explained that was probably an easier death than the starvation, disease, and cancerous lesions left for the remainder of Earth’s citizens.
Mine is the fourth generation to inhabit the ship and we will be the last.
