Gaia's Blessed Children

Repeated History

Our ancestors strived to build a better world for us, technology and science made leaps in just a few short years, and then all they worked for was given to the new and young people…

Then came the complaining about how they… we… took everything for granted and ‘destroyed’ all they worked for… How we are the reason the world would come to an end?

The truth is… With or without the negligence of the youths’ ignorant blissful lives… our planet had been tapped and drained of its life force for far too many years for it to sustain itself long enough for the ‘children’ to grow up and stop acting like spoiled brats.

So who is to blame when the land breaks apart and the gravity holding us grounded becomes so unstable that land masses floats to the sky like islands in the sea? Or when the sea rises above the land, swallowing up forests and desserts?

In a last ditch effort to survive, nine interstellar spaceships, meant for deep space exploration, carried almost two thousand people each to save them from a collapsing Earth and to find a new home…

…

The teacher was getting way too personal with her lesson about the station and the ships history; from when they lost their ‘home’ from before they lived among the stars on a planet called Earth.

“Miss Aurora! Please may I have your attention?” The teacher snapped out of her reverie when she noticed the youngest in her class trying to pry a broken tablet open with a ruler…?

“Nine ships left Earth just as it fell apart carrying almost two-thousand people to the safety of outer space, since then the ships have traveled in search to find a new home to settle down on. Six of the nine ships at any time will move ahead in different direction in search of a hospitable planet, while three are elected to stay docked at the station, pushing it forward. Every ten years the ships will redirect back to the station to reconcile on the fifteenth year, then for five years they will move together before separating again while three newly elected ships, of the nine, are to stay behind once again, taking over the duty to push the station along so that it will always remain a central point to gather the survivors of Earth. Currently we are in the sixty-forth cycle, it’s been nearly fourteen years since the other six ships left the station, this time it’s Creed, Calypso and my own, Altair, that is was chosen to stay behind. Three years after the ships parted a black hole was discovered and found to be stable. After Atlas and Vega was pulled in they were able to re-establish radio contact and confirm that they were safe. Another ships returned and went through and came to the other side safely, gathering near Vega and Atlas. Due to this one by one the other ships went through and finally the station. Coordinates show that our current position is at most nine-hundred years’ worth of travel away from where we entered the black hole… or so the Council and the Captains reported. Miss June I know the stories, it’s all we ever hear in class. Repeated history is as boring as how our forefather repeated history was stupid and fool hearty of them.” Aurora and quickly finished her history teacher’s long rant.

“It is because they didn’t learn from history that they repeatedly made the same mistakes, perhaps if they sat through repeating history classes they would have known better.”

“Or they were as bored as me and just didn’t care!” She shrugged. For a fourteen year old she was really rude to her elders when she got frustrated, which she was since she cooked her tablet and couldn’t get it fixed after several times of opening it up and changing parts, parts she had snatched from Old man Dan’s workshop when she went to ‘visit’ Felix.

“Well seeing as you are so bored, why don’t you write a complete history report about the station, sum up all one-thousand-two-hundred-and-eighty years of history, and if its good I’ll give you your passing grade and you don’t need to attend my class any longer.” Miss June grinned, knowing that Aurora’s tablet was busted and she wouldn’t be able to complete the task anytime soon.

“It’s done!” She stood up and handed a drive where she saved all her ‘history’ lessons and work on before she destroyed her tablet. Miss June’s smirk flattened.

“I knew you’d say that so I wrote it already at the beginning of the year.”

“How…” The teacher was stunned, not only her but others in class as well, Dione who sat at the back of the class trying her best to hold back a snickering laugh.

“The same way I knew Mister Ballard’s would have me write a three thousand words essay in four languages so that I can get out of his class.”

“… So that’s why you aren’t attending half your classes…” Miss June sighed.

…

Aurora wandered around the hallways with no clear direction of where she wanted to be, her wrist raised in front of her  thoughts blank, she hated this ‘bracelet’ it was mandatory for all ‘Touched’. Even though she showed no signs of being a Touched like all the others, she was never considered ‘normal’.

She had heightened reflexes and she was a lot ‘faster’ in learning about new subjects, hence she easily got bored. While the children of some of the Touched showed no similar traits as her, other Touched that survived the Star Fire were living with constant pain, but they too showed improved intelligence and heightened ‘senses’ some of them could hear you breathing down a hallway and others could smell the food being prepared at the other side of the station. She didn’t seem to have anything special like that, only she was still ‘smarter’ than even them, but even ‘normal’ people often were born with extreme smarts like her, it wasn’t uncommon for a once in a lifetime genius to exist every now and then.

With a fast mind, obviously came fast reflexes. She didn’t feel so ‘special’ like the doctors made her out to be…

“Hey freak!” She bolt was thrown at her head, she was too occupied with her frustrated glaring at her ‘wrist-watch’.

Tristan… her worst bully stomped nearer…

“Stay away from her, douche-bag!” Someone came running fist ready to pummel Tristan in the face.

“Hail you stay out of this.” Hail didn’t stop and even as Tristan prepared for the incoming blow from the running teen, Hail changed his form and his fist connected with Tristan’s guts.

“Stay down, Tristan!” Hail scowled.

“Follow me.” He took Aurora’s hand and dragged her away.

“Thank you Hail…” She lowered her eyes to the floor, she never understood why she would become so submissive around him… If anyone else pulled her along like this before she agreed to ‘anything’, she would have complained and argued, even thrown a mini tantrum… but Hail… he was the calm to her ‘storm’.

They reached the viewing deck, it was open and she could see the dark space… silver dust glittering in a far off distance that could not be reached in just one lifetime.

“Feeling better now?” He asked after a moment she turned around to see him sitting on the floor patting on the ground in gesture for her to sit down.

“Yes…” She sat down and laid her head down on his lap and he handed her a tablet, her mothers, that she kept in a hidden pocket in her bag.

She opened up a file, the schematics for the station.

“Did you know that there are twenty-seven thrusters on the station, they aren’t enough to move the station from point a to be, but to reposition the station’s  in a fixed position… mainly because the station is too large to be propelled by so few thrusters. Even with three ships’ rockets pulling the station the station can’t travel even a fifth the distance a single ship would on its own, that’s not to mention using its hyper-drive.”

“I didn’t know that. But then again, that’s why you are the smarts and I’m the brawn!” He pulled his fingers through her red wild and fizzy curls.

“The sectors the thrusters are connected each are actually parts of the station that can be isolated and detached from the station. Like the station’s own ‘escape pods’ only they take a hundred instead of two people at a time. The station’s medical bay can also be detached and has its own life-support systems, while the ‘escape rooms’ can ensure life-support for at most three days, the medical bay can do the same for about two weeks. Only thing is, the medical bay would be completely stranded, since it doesn’t have any thrusters connected to its section.”

“And you are telling me this?”

“Hey… It’s always a good idea to know how the station can be used in case of an emergency…”

“That’s why we have a Council, they know all this so we don’t’ need to.”

“But what if they can’t be trusted?”

“You are too worried for nothing.”

“But that’s just the thing… I don’t believe it’s just for ‘nothing’.”

“… Then tell me more.” He sighed and listened to her talking, watching where she points on the maps and comparing it to the station’s design plans she had ‘borrowed’. 

If it was one thing she had learned from 'history' it was that people in power rarely care about the little people... they never change.