The ship is quiet.

Always felt to me like a tomb. It doesn't help that there are about three thousand bodies aboard, lining the walls of three equally large rooms. They stare out from behind frosted glass, sightless and silent. Not dead, never dead, but not quite alive.

I sip my coffee and put my feet up.

I always get a little...morbid, about four months into my shift.

Two months to go. By the end of my six months on duty I will be downright terrifying. That's how it goes, when you're alone in space with nothing but a couple artificial intelligences to hang out with. You start going a little crazy.

Our job is to ferry a colonization crew out to a habitable planet. Thousands of years, each year divided into two shifts. Two hundred and fifty ship's crew, paid a fairly enormous bonus for each shift, watching over cold semi-corpses. We will each lose seventeen years of our lives. Each of us medically checked, each of us under the age of thirty-five. Each of us bored out of our minds while we watch the infinite nothingness pass us by.

At least the coffee is good.

Every five years we wake up a cadre of scientists. They review the collected data from our trip, long range scans and information gathered up by a half dozen AI systems. Apparently they made some big discovery on the last one, a whopping three years back now, and sent a pile of information out home. It would have reached home about a month or two ago, by my math.

They were very excited but very hush-hush.

But, if you get a scientist drunk, they tell you everything.

With the data they had, they'd figured it out. The thing that keeps us out here. FTL travel.

That was the good news.

The bad news was we couldn't make it work with what we had here. The scans revealed material sources that could be used. If the scientists at home could find those, or replicate them, they could do it. They could get there before us, and that is entirely unfair.

I'm shocked we didn't have the materials. We have almost everything.

Our colony ship is a behemoth. Stuffed full of the bodies, but also modular habitats and all the supplies we'll need to manage the start up. I will be forty by the time we arrive. Hell of a thing. It will be very cool to be one of the first to step onto an entirely new planet. So there's that.

I sigh and rub my hair. I've already lost four years. Eight shifts and just like that, I'm a different person. Sure gets boring, even with a library as stuffed with books and movies and music as the one the ship has.

"Sir. We have a contact." The voice breaks me out of my thoughts and I start up from the chair, spilling coffee everywhere. The voice is one we're not supposed to hear. Not ever. It's a rough, military voice. Reminds me of my drill sergeant.

"Contact?" I shout, leaning over the console. I see it. It's on approach and it looks big.

Very big.

"Who is it?" I ask.

"I have no identifying information. It appears to be seven kilometers in length and vaguely humanoid in construction. I suggest arming the proximity cannons, sir."

"Yeah, sure. It won't make a difference, but do it."

This ship has some defences, but they're meant to shoot down stray rocks and incoming projectiles that might pierce the hull, not defend the ship from a boarding. It's not that kind of ship.

There aren't any of that kind of ship.

"I have a visual." The AI says. I inspect it and my heart beats hard in my chest. I tilt my head and squint, just because I might be seeing it wrong.

There's no way.

It's impossible.

It's huge. It has a sloping nose and hundreds of compartments that line the sides and top. Heavy guns, smaller guns, what look like hangars. A command superstructure rises up nearer the back, multi-tiered and sleek. It's something out of a fucking movie.

I should wake the crew but I've forgotten myself.

I've forgotten everything.

Because that ship that came out of nowhere, the military looking thing that is bearing down on us, it's from home.

It's from Earth.

And I know that because the video screen reveals a message. It's written in block gray letters on the front of the ship. They must have worried they wouldn't be able to hail us. They're not wrong, we have lots of tech but our channels out are limited.

We weren't ever supposed to talk to anyone. We were supposed to be alone.

My heart is still pounding and I re-read the message. Then I re-re-read it.

Mayday

Trouble Ahead

Earth Sent Us

Mayday

They say a society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit. The phrasing is intentional because the thought of the young providing the same service is disconcerting. Youth and hope tend to go hand in hand. While old men are allowed to be written off as having had their chance, we do best not to dwell on the fragility of youth.

 

Yet aboard the Calamity’s Chagrin the shade tree’s seed had been found. Regar’s pursuits had always been viewed with patronizing permissiveness. He wasn’t doing anyone any harm and his passion for the project was endearing if not infectious. He was left to his own devices so long as the required tasks were being performed.

 

The first time the entire ship’s lights flickered and the drive’s constant hum wavered, he had finally commanded their full attention. In the confines of his workshop, aimlessly adrift in space, he had discovered it. He had elucidated what the entire collective effort of the Federation failed to muster. He had bent the laws of physics.

 

Excitement ran through the ship like a fresh jolt of electricity. They would have a purpose. They could take control of their fate and begin their search of the stars with intention rather than passivity. With the ability to travel faster the light, their lives and the lives of their offspring wouldn’t simply be placeholders documented in the genealogy logs to keep track of those who knew nothing of life except for the walls of the Chagrin.

 

Oh, how quick we are to fall from grace. The anger at Regar’s next discovery more than washed away the excitement. Why would he pull the rug out from under them like this? Like a man discovering a thousand uses for water on an arid planet, his genius did them no good at all. He apologized profusely. He tried to focus on the advancement for the sake of “humanity.” This redirection did little to quell the resentment among the ship’s inhabitants that despite the discovery of faster than light travel, they simply did not and could not muster the resources to harness it. They were a saddle without a horse.

 

In the coming weeks, it was clear the situation was becoming untenable. No amount of problem solving or self-aggrandizing proclamations of virtue could stifle the anger within the people’s hearts. Regar’s ejection into the vacuum of space was uneventful and unsatisfying. It did not heal the scar of withered hope he had inflicted upon Calamity’s Chagrin.

 

Understandably, the initial transmission of their discovery resulted in a flurry of communications from Earth asking for details, formulas, explanations. Their hunger for the information was a slap in the face. Earth was not concerned for their wellbeing. Earth was not interested in what was happening on the Chargin. It merely wanted to extract from them any ounce of nourishment it could, and then it would discard the husk into the abyss.

 

If hope couldn’t feed their souls, then contempt and avarice would have to suffice. They clutched Regar’s secret tightly to their chest. Earth would never be afforded the chance to shelter in the shade of their tree.

"What the hell is happening?" commander Duncan asked the first officer as soon as he walked into the command and control center of the ship. 

"God knows, sir," first officer responded, "eggheads in the back are already working on it. Go see them for more answers."

Santa Maria was a technological marvel of its time. This five kilometers long metal colossus traveling at half the speed of light carried thousands of colonists to their new home, planet Hope in Trappist system. It was the fastest object ever constructed by humans, and yet the journey was about to last for roughly 50 years. Those who boarded the ship in Armstrong Lunar shipyard will be old when it arrives to it's destination, and those who will be born on the ship will be the ones to kick start first human colony on another world. Duncan knew that it's his sacred task to steer his ship safely to its destination, and this weird gravimetric anomaly that appeared next to the ship isn't going to stop him.

"Do you have any idea what are we dealing with?", commander asked the scientific officer sitting behind his desk after he walked to the back of the command and control room, "Come on, give me something!"

"Seems to be some kind of… rupture in space?" scientific officer explained confusedly while looking at his computer monitor, "it seems to bend light in strange ways, that's why it looks like a disco ball. It seems to emit gravity, but the gravity isn't technically strong enough to bend light in the way we see."

Commander sighted and looked over his shoulder at the monitor: "It's just 500 kilometers away from us, could it possibly be caused by any of our ship's systems?"

"Hard to tell," the scientific officer replied while taking down his glasses and wiping sweat from his forehead, "first, we will have to find out what the hell are we even looking at. I will gather my team and send a tight beam to Earth with the info we gathered so far…"

He was stopped by a loud beeping suddenly flooding the room from the main speakers.

"Report!" commander screamed towards the first officer as he ran towards the main navigational console.

"We have radar contact emerging from the anomaly," first officer reported from his console, "both radar and LIDAR systems report it as… ship! There is a ship emerging from the anomaly, length approximately 300 meters, distance 450 kilometers and closing at rate 250 meters per second."

"Any ID?" commander asked swiftly.

"No ID, no transponder signal, unknown configuration," the first officer reported, "I have never seen anything like that… I suggest engaging first contact protocol."

Whole room went silent, looking at the first officer in shock. First contact protocol was never engaged by any ship in the whole history of spaceflight. 

Commander nodded and turned towards the communication officer: "Compress all data into a single file and send it to Earth with a tight beam, then send standard greeting messages on all AM, FM and microwave frequencies…"

"Sir," the communication officer stopped him, "we… we have a comm request on standard UNSA emergency frequency." 

"Open the channel on speakers," the commander ordered and sat down on his chair in the middle of the room.

What followed was silence, interrupted by static. And then voice.

"... hello? Can you hear me?," unknown voice spoke in clear English.

"Yes, we can hear you," commander responded, "I am commander Martin Duncan of UNSA Santa Maria, please, identify yourself!"

"Nice to hear you, commander," voice responded, "I am capitan Jim Patel, UNSA Explorer class ship Galileo. I hope our FTL drive didn't scare you."

"FTL drive?" commander stood up in shock, "we have been gone from Earth for what, 10 years? And you already cracked faster than light travel by then?" 

"No we didn't. You did," voice answered calmly.

Commander looked at his scientific officer, both silently asking "what?" under their breath.

"Or, rather, you will," voice continued, "you say you were gone for 10 years, I say it was 40 years. Relativity is a strange thing. And turns out, faster than light travel only complicates it all. We noticed it during first tests. One time, experimental ship arrived back to Earth even sooner than it actually left! We have to throw away all our concepts of time, and deal with the fact that things can be caused by something that didn't even happened yet. From my perspective, scientists on your ship cracked FTL technology many years ago, and sent it back to Earth with a tight beam. We continued from there, and eventually applied the technology in practice."

"This is unbelievable…" commander almost lost his words, "so what will happen now? Will we board your ship and you will drive us to Trappist? Or will you tow us?"

"No, we cannot do that," capitain Patel explained, "you have to continue on your journey. You have to invent FTL drive and send it to Earth, exactly as it already happened. We have no idea how causality works now, and we have to be careful not to cause any paradoxes. We are still learning how to use this technology. You have your path, and I have mine. We just wanted to let you know that… it will turn out great. By the way, Trappist system is already colonized, when you arrive, colony of thousands of people will greet you, just so you know. Good bye, and Godspeed."

"Wait…" commander screamed, but communication channel closed down. 

Galileo fired it's breaking thrusters, turned around and entered the anomaly it came from. The anomaly closed right after that, as fast as it appeared.

Commander Duncan sat down and blankly stared into the wall. Scientific officer uploaded data from the computer into his tablet and walked to him, still looking at the data.

"Do you have any idea what the hell just happened?" commander asked him.

"No, but this data we collected from that anomaly… it actually explains a lot I missed in my theoretical FTL drive research I was working on before we left Earth," he mumbled while swiping pages on his tablet.

Commander turned to him: "So you are telling me you can actually do it? You can crack FTL technology?"

"I don't know yet… but most probably… yeah, yes, I will," he answered looking at commander, smiling, "but I would have never been able to do it if the anomaly never showed up in the first place."

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