Man is going places

All the way through the written history of man – sorry, ‘Man’ - there were adventures to keep you interested. Everything from the use of the first tools to the discovery of managing fire through to the first flights of the Montgolfier brothers, people had wanted more. During the 20th century the people of planet Earth started to realise that they were running out of living space, and in the first few decades of the 21st century there was an endless number of skirmishes, resulting in the all-out war of the Middle East, which cost Israel half of its people, and wiped out seven countries in the surrounding area. It seems that Israel’s neighbours were stupid enough to think that they would go down without a fight. During 2185, with the planet seriously over crowded, and more and more battles going on all over the place, an unassuming student from South Africa discovered the missing pieces in quantum physics and ion propulsion. The result was the first ever Faster Than Light drive. He announced it to a few close friends, and then within two hours the whole planet knew about it. He was instantly wanted by every TV and radio station across the planet. Three days later he was assassinated by a right-wing Christian group in the United States of America who had decided that since Faster Than Light wasn’t written about in the Bible then it was Blasphemy to even mention it, and utter Heresy to think about making it possible! Of course, having discovered the missing parts of the maths and physics that were necessary, it was another matter entirely to build the device. That took another century, and a lot of heartaches and deaths along the way. Tests and trials had failed, one after the other, until an Israeli scientist realised what the problems were, and refined the formulas. Within a decade they had the first craft assembled in orbit, and the team of four on the craft were looking forward to a quick trip to Jupiter and back, in the same day. No-one was more surprised than they were that it went completely to plan! Millions of miles were covered in minutes. For the rest of the 23rd Century, and into the first 20 years of the 24th it meant that Man had started to conquer the Solar System. It took another two centuries to establish the Solar System Bases (SSBs), as initially all the supplies had to come from Earth. After the hydroponics had been sorted out, and most of the SSBs were semi-independent, Man began to look further out. Since the only identifiable stars that were close were still over four light-years away, this was a bit different to the activities within the Solar System. A few more adventurous types had already gone - they couldn't wait for things to be sorted out on Earth. Working spacecraft became cheap and easy to assemble – families got together and created their own ships, and went on their own exploring journeys. Thousands of families vanished from the planet over just a few years. It was the ultimate explore - even more so than those early pioneer settlers of the USA, all that time ago. None of those early explorers had yet made it back home, to tell of what they may have found, and since the communications signal still had to go at light speed, it would be some time before any messages were heard. But Man being Man, he went soon enough - huge ships, some over a kilometre in length, with 2,000 people on board. The journey to the neighbouring stars was to take a few weeks, instead of centuries, and before long a sphere of settlements had been established around the Solar System. Some of the ships were government funded, but some were private - the big Corporations had the money to create and staff some of the big ships. So too did the Religions. Not that they knew where they were going, or who they were going to find, but they went, with their Religious fervour, to convert anyone who would care to listen, each to spread their Word. For all of this time the push for this was from Earth - massively over-populated, the Governments of Earth used every excuse that they could to get people off-planet. And it worked - the subsidies were quite large, and it did allow for an easing of pressure for those left at home; the planet started to breathe again. And so it was for century after century - they went exploring, and making claims of planetary ownership along the way. In all that time, no intelligence was found - of a type that was akin to that of Earth (self-aware, building, using tools, exploring...). Not a one. There were basic creatures, on a par with the lower-end life forms of this planet, but nothing higher. And still Man persisted. After a while the only explorers that were left were the Religious ones; they had the idea that it would be in the next system, that it will have the planet we are looking for, the people to show the Word of their God to... And it never happened. For the next 4,000 years Man explored, everywhere that he could. And slowly came to the conclusion that Man is the only one. There is nothing else out there. Which is where it all started to fall apart - the Religious followers began to question, and doubt their leaders. Why have we wasted all of our lives doing this work, when we could have settled, and had a good life? So they started to fall apart, and splinter. And disintegrate. Over the next 500 years it all crumbled - having established the Earth territories of thousands of light-years in diameter, the conclusion was that they could not go on. We are alone - if we are alone in all of this space that we have now mapped, we are alone in all of the Universe. And so Man started to die out; Why should we bother...? Each of the planets slowly died out. They had literally lost the will to live. They gave up communicating with others of the group, they abandoned all plans of building any more churches or mosques or temples of all kinds. They stopped having families, and just died out. The last remnants of the Governments on Earth put things in place. They secured everything that they could and put the robotic controls in full command. Then each of them, separately, got into their own space craft and left Earth. They flew in random directions, and after the first few days lost contact with each other. Man was gone. In all of the huge expanse of the Universe he had made his presence felt, and achieved – nothing! Man as a race was extinct and over the next few centuries Nature, on every planet, took its course and removed all traces that Man had ever been there. The weather systems eroded all of the buildings, and the bacteria in the ground and the air attacked everything, reducing it all to dust. Had there been anyone left to see this, they might have remembered the line from one of the earliest Holy Books “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust”. Adam was reported to have come from the ground, and Man had now returned to its origin. Nobody was to know that two thousand years later a lone space craft – huge, with over 10,000 people on board – appeared in Earth space. They were not at all Human, but had arrived from another universe, where the technology had been similar to that of this Earth, just bigger and slightly better. But there was no-one left in this Universe to meet them.