Chapter 1

…

“Let’s get this over with,” Admiral Emmerson Hale said. He’s a highly decorated military leader, and equally cantankerous. It was impossible to look at his face and tell the difference between scars or wrinkles.

“The science team has planned our course,” I said. “They found an Einstein-Rosen bridge out by Neptune, and they think the other side is in Proxima Centauri. We only have enough fuel to get there if we go through the wormhole, so at this point it’s our only choice.”

Admiral Hale scoffed. I shot daggers at him with my eyes. He was outspoken against the Ark from the moment that it became the plan.

“We should have spent our last resources on trying to fix the planet instead of building this cockamamie death trap. We don’t know for sure this wormhole is going to send us to the right system.”

“The scientists have said this is our best shot at survival,” I said. “We’ve already lost billions of people, and if we lose much more, we won’t have enough people to sustain a population. It’s too late for Earth.”

            “It’s not too late,” Hale barked. “We could build a facility with the same systems and stay here!”

            The whole room turned into yelling contest, but the council had the last say. I banged a metal piece of my suit against the wall.

            “Order!” I shouted, quieting the room down. “This is what we’re doing, Hale. Our food stores won’t last forever, and we can’t grow more We only have enough fuel to get there if we go through the wormhole, so that’s our only choice.” Mostly we survive on canned and freeze-dried food, but it was just whatever was left after The Degradation.

…

The ship was made of the most sophisticated technology we have. The air on board is constantly recycled, and there are water filtration and treatment systems on board. They’re in the bilge, along with the life support systems and the housing for the lower income citizens, the plebs, of the Ark. Other than the systems in the bilges that have their own room, the plebs all live in one large room. I went down there once. They would carve out their section then fight with their neighbors for more space. It smelled like sour body odor with a faint aroma of excrement, like the plebs outside the market mixed with a tinge of engine grease.

            After a few months we got to the wormhole. It was strange, like a giant perfectly spherical bubble, colored with a dark iridescence. Into the sphere we flew. The ship picked up speed. After a time, we had come out on the other side of the Einstein-Rosen bridge. The exit of the wormhole had put us too near a large gas giant planet.

  The craft began shaking, first lightly like turbulence on the old commercial jet planes. Then it quaked with a ferocity I can’t explain. I heard a baby crying, and its mother trying to calm it on my way to the bridge when the shaking started. I ran down the hall of the craft and took the lift to the bridge.

            The other councilors were there, already strapped into their seats. Admiral Hale picked up the microphone for the loudspeaker that rang through the whole ship.

“Attention citizens of Last Ark,” Hale was using his official voice through the loudspeaker, “get to your safety seats and brace for impact!” I watched the cracks in his face turn to a blur as the Ark shook. Hale towers above me, and I’m not short. I don’t know how his short, grey hair seemed so dull in the bright fluorescent light. The glossy black panels that coated the inside of the bridge may as well have been mirrors.

            “Use our thrusters with the gravity,” Hale yelled, “steer into it!”. A red light on one of the pilot’s terminals flashed while it let out a deafening sound like a chopped-up police siren. The council was on the bridge, strapped into our seats. The restraints reminded me of a roller coaster in the days before The Degradation. The ship trembled with a violence beyond the earthquakes. Ashley was locked into her seat next to me, her eyes closed, her lips moving to inaudible words. I held her hand. The whole ship permeated with the sterile smell of bleach.

            The Ark shook harder, and I confess I felt the warm wet of urine turn cold on my pants. I don’t think I was the only one.  

I looked out the window. The planet was so large that only a slight border of the emptiness of space was visible. I remember thinking how beautiful it was, the colors swirling together like spilled paints. That’s when I saw the moon.

…

Kathryn

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