Love From A Star: A BWWM Alien Romance (11 page)

For Professor Ravid Karrlson, it was unknowingly the way he would
write his name in the history books. Born in New Tokyo and educated
in Berlin, he had accepted the research position on Luna because it
gave him the best chance to do what he wanted to do, look at the
stars. Growing up, he had thrilled as he thought of Copernicus and
Galileo using the first optical telescopes to look out into the solar
system, and realize that some of the blobs of light in the sky were
more than just random glowing motes in the curtain of the night.

Unfortunately for Ravid, optical telescopes were far too weak to do
any of the sky gazing he had to do. Instead, modern telescopes were
composed of dozens of complicated sensors that sometimes took up
dozens of square kilometers of space, along with computers that, even
with isolinear chips and molecular data storage capacity, took up a
large room. He even had three artificial intelligences working for
him, poring over the data at speeds thousands of human workers
couldn't, before he even looked at a single data display.

With close to one trillion stars in the Milky Way however, even the
most advanced systems took time. Ravid could show the politicians and
those in control of the money all the data he wanted, but after five
years, all he had was a list of solar systems that didn't pan out.
The list was long, and the data took up teraflops of memory, but that
didn't matter to the government.

Munching on synthesized coconut ice cream, Ravid was going over the
day's reports, wondering if he could somehow spin the latest sets of
figures for the budgetary committee meeting next month when his
moment in history came, not with a clash of sirens or bells, but with
a simple beep, and the flash of a happy face in the upper right
corner of his data screen.

When he saw the face pop up, Ravid's spoon, which had been halfway
to his mouth, froze in place before tumbling from his nerveless
fingers. Hurriedly wiping his sticky fingers on his jumpsuit, he
tapped the screen, his ice cream and spoon forgotten. Eyes flickering
from side to side, he felt sweat break out on his forehead, and his
stomach balled up tight. Later, when interviewed by the Solar
Broadcasting Company, he stated that the only experience he could
compare it to was when he was eighteen, and had a naked girl in bed
with him for the first time. "Sure, I'd practiced what I was
going to do thousands of times in both instances, but when it came to
go time, terror was mixed with excitement pretty equally. I'm just
glad I handled it better at thirty seven than I did at eighteen."

"Oh? And what happened at eighteen?" the interviewer, a
perky brunette with a photogenic face, supermodel body, and morals of
a pit viper, asked with a grin. "Anything for our listeners?"

"Nothing to brag about," Ravid replied with a sheepish
grin, his cheeks turning slightly pink. The image made him even more
famous, and within a year he had gotten marriage proposals from over
one million women, including a famous porn starlet who swore she
could turn him into an expert lover regardless.

Ravid's discovery was simple and profound. First classified as
YT-X7-4B, then renamed Karrlson's Rock before the government stepped
in, the planet was as close to Earth as had ever been found before.
Orbiting a star both younger and larger than Sol, it still was within
the so-called "Goldilocks zone." A perfect nitrogen/oxygen
atmosphere combined with a mass only ten percent heavier than
Earth's. Almost eighty percent of the surface was covered in water,
and by all initial readings the planet was perfect for human life. It
even had two moons, which provided tides and protected the planet
from meteor strikes. In fact, the only major difference between
Karrlson's Rock and Earth was the length of its year, which was
nearly three times that of Earth. Dying at thirty 'years' old would
be commonplace.

Once his discovery was confirmed, Ravid Karrlson became more of a
public figure than a scientist, and his work was taken over by
engineers and scientists in other fields. Knowing about
Iðavöllr
(as it had been renamed) was only part of the problem. Getting people
there was the bigger issue. While faster than light communication had
been conquered early in the twenty second century, FTL drives for
physical matter had been a much more difficult challenge. Despite
development of warp bubble theory, the largest object yet sent
through warp space and confirmed to have survived were barely larger
than the typical office desk. A few pundits cracked jokes about
building a billion "space coffins" for the mission, before
the censors stepped in and shut them up.

Another concern by the Solar government was support. With resources
already stretched, any colonization attempt would have to be a self
sufficient mission, able to survive years without exterior support.
There was no way they could build two ships at a time, even if they
could figure out just how the hell to get them to
Iðavöllr.
The facilities and resources just didn't exist.

The big breakthrough came when the CyberGalactic Corporation
partnered with ExpandedReality Ltd. The credit was claimed by both
companies, and ended up going into litigation that stretched out
until both companies were bankrupt. Not too many people were upset
over it, since both were due to obtain enough money to bankrupt Mars
at least.

The biggest problem facing the designers was power supply. Geometry
states that as a sphere expands, the surface area of the sphere
increases not linearly, but by a cubic factor. If you double the size
of your sphere, you create eight times the amount of surface area.
Tripling the size requires twenty seven times the surface area, and
so on and so forth. In the realm of warp bubble generation, surface
area equated to power. There was no technology in human science that
could create the power needed to generate a stable warp bubble large
enough for a colony ship, it would take a fusion reactor the size of
a medium sized apartment building, even before any sort of radiation
shielding, fuel supply, or other necessities. The pure amount of size
needed was stopping the colony ship.

In the end, the solution was elegant, dangerous, and groundbreaking.
By combining fusion technology with controlled anti-matter
explosions, the ship would be able to generate enough power to run
the ship, provided the ship stopped at regular intervals to collect
interstellar fuel, in what the designers called a "lily pad"
arrangement. By eliminating the huge fuel tanks, the ship could just
squeeze inside the possible warp bubble when combined with the new
power supply arrangement. Of course, there were plenty of dangers
too. If the ship miscalculated any of their jumps by more than five
percent, it would run out of fuel.

With the major design flaws taken care of, the government turned its
attention to the ship's crew. Debates raged among the various
political factions, until once again economic and political
expediency took over. Population was the biggest pressure in the
colonization effort, and the powers that be wanted real estate that
other people were living in. The problem was that, regardless of
power, there were laws in place that were hard to circumvent. In
setting up the colony program, the unspoken goal was to free up
valuable areas for those who wanted it. As such, the use of the media
was required.

The media campaign was unprecedented, and carefully planned. The
first wave of the campaign came through the political pundits and
talking heads, who carefully crafted their commentary to stoke the
twin goals of sowing economic discontent and the idea of new
frontiers. A lot of it required subtle timing and juxtaposition,
combined with data mining of social media commentary. Regardless of
what privacy laws were put in place, the government could read every
packet of data that crossed the solar system if they wished. Instead
of taking out enemies however, they used this informational
intelligence to instead steer the public opinion. It was much more
effective than direct action anyway.

After a year of stoking the fires of public discontent, the next
phase of the plan was launched. With great fanfare, the existence of
the new stardrive design was revealed, and plans were announced for a
new government program for development of large scale interstellar
ships. While the idea of a colony program was not specifically
announced, the government let the people put together the ideas on
their own. It wasn't long, hours in fact, before the first public
petitions (electronically signed by eight million) reached the
government's servers. By the end of the first week, over one hundred
million people had signed various electronic petitions requesting
colonial programs, deep space exploration, and various other ideas.

The trickiest phase of the government's plan came next. With public
pressure at a high, the government had to look inept and careless, or
at least partially corrupt. Unleashing the media again, populist
politicians and media personalities cast doubt on any unannounced
governmental plans for picking colonists, making it seem as if the
system was corrupt. "Only those who have ties to the power
players in the government are going to get this opportunity when it
arises!" Takahiro O'Shea, one of the most popular media icons,
blared one day. "This corrupt system of currying favor for your
friends has got to stop! What are you supposed to do if you are what
our leaders call Dirts? Stuck in your dead-end jobs, economically and
politically bereft of any power or influence, you're stuck while the
Quals march onto their shiny new colony ship to go off to the stars,
and to a cleaner, better future. Perhaps it's time to raise a ruckus,
and storm the new Bastille?"

The results were predictable, especially among the Dirts. Outcry
started, and tension ratcheted up in the Dirt enclaves. The police
responded by increasing both the number and the severity of their
patrols, until the inevitable happened. On Mars, a police arrest of a
forty year old Dirt man who had been violating curfew due to working
overtime at his job, ended in a police shooting. Within a week,
another shooting in South America led to riots, and an outcry for
justice. When the flames were high enough, the government stepped in,
the President declaring he will be making a public statement at noon,
Greenwhich time. The riots subsided momentarily, while the Solar
System turned its attention to the President, who spoke from in front
of the classic facade of Buckingham Palace.

"Citizens of the Solar System, good afternoon, wherever and
whenever you are.

"Recently, we have watched as neighborhoods have burned, torn
apart by social upheaval. Regardless of the reason behind the
upheaval, businesses have closed, homes have been destroyed, and
innocent men and women lie bleeding in the streets. Now, there are
some in our society who claim that since these riots have been
confined to the areas inhabited by those who are commonly called
Dirts, that it doesn't matter. They're just Dirts, you say, let them
destroy themselves.

"I cannot let that happen. I was elected to represent and lead
all of humanity, Qualified and Unqualified. I refuse to use the word
Dirt for those who are not Qualified any longer. For you, the
Unqualified, I say here today that we are going to institute changes.
I have already spoken to the leaders of the System Congress, and have
submitted bills to speak.

"Long before we had a System-wide government, the nations of
this planet represented many different areas. I myself come from
North America, where about six hundred years ago another group of
what we can only call Unqualifieds stood up against the man who lived
in this building behind me now. They rioted, they looted, they
burned, they fought, and they won their freedom. From them, a new
society rose, one which a few hundred years later became the most
powerful on Earth at the time. While that nation, America, has faded
into the pages of history, the fact is some of their ideas have stood
the test of the centuries.

"Opportunity should not be limited to just those who are
Qualified. History has shown us that regardless of their status,
every human being has the potential to make something of themselves.
While our current society tries to provide that opportunity for
everyone, the fact is that some manifest their talents at times later
than others. Some manifest those talents in situations they would
never have before. Abraham Lincoln was a failure as a lawyer, and was
barely mediocre as a state legislator. Yet, when confronted with the
crisis of the First American Civil War, he led the nation and held it
together.

"Even in more modern history, we see this lesson. Tamara
Villalobos Griorgina was born to one of the most extreme levels of
poverty ever seen. Growing up in the Australian outback, she writes
in her autobiography that she often had to catch locusts that would
infest the solar farm her father worked at in order to have enough to
eat. Yet, she went on to pass her Qualified exam and stand where I am
today, as President of the Solar System.

"Therefore, in agreement with the heads of the Space Agency and
with the leaders of the major parties of the System Congress, I am
pleased to announce that opportunity has again arisen for every
resident of the Solar System, Qualified and Unqualified alike, one
that hasn't been seen in human society in two centuries.

"Five years ago, we as a
people were greeted with great news, long in the waiting. Professor
Ravid Karrlson discovered the first truly Earth like planet in orbit
around another star. While Professor Karrlson has been rewarded
greatly for his efforts including the Nobel Prize, his discovery sat
dormant for far too long, tantalizingly out of reach due to the
limits of our technology. Recent technological breakthroughs however
have allowed us a new future. Starting in two weeks, construction
begins on humanity's first interstellar colony ship. This new kind of
vessel will be the first of many, to take humanity out of just our
neighborhood and into the wider galactic neighborhood. As such, it is
with only a hint of sentimentality that we have agreed to name the
ship
Glorious Enterprise.