The ship’s windows used to bring awe to my ancestors, who saw the beauty of the Milky Way spreading spectacularly before their eyes. For my entire life, there has been nothing but emptiness beyond the windows.
The books tell us that ninety thousand years ago, mankind invented ships that could approach light speed. The ancients explored the galaxy as eagerly as God’s own children explored our solar system. What they found in the distances of our galaxy brought them to their knees as they beheld revelations one after another, until the space-king Marialius bore a vessel called the Gaius which could flow past space at speeds exceeding light’s.
Man felt that anything was possible. Legendary Earth became dry, its fabled water never returned, and the planet was abandoned. Worlds everywhere were made in Earth’s image, and millennia went by unthought of, while the gears of progress ground along. All of the Milky Way was made for human beings, it was said. Quintillions died in battle for the infinity that was the galaxy, and human greed found new meaning in the unimaginable wealth that floated past them. Savage war in which planets and solar systems ceased to exist through means now lost to antiquity occurred through hundreds of generations. There were too few humans who could say that they and their great-great-great-great grandfathers were not veterans of the same war.
Eighty billion humans escaped the misery of the Milky Way from Alpha-Orionis-5G, whose name is lost. It was said to be the seventh most massive satellite of the fifth planet from a star they say is only centuries away from antique Earth.
They all left the galaxy on this vast ship Callisto. Callisto was built in orbit around the planet itself, and was of such incredible mass that often small rocky bodies would begin to orbit it, Callisto. Nuclear weapons would tear them into manageable pieces that could crack against Callisto’s thick shell. It was impossible to rid the surroundings of the ship completely of satellites, and many remain, forgotten. The minute quantity of matter that found its way even to the void between galaxies follow the Callisto, and we have never stopped ridding ourselves of them when they become to massive.
Our goal is NGC 1300, millions of years away. It is impossible for anyone, in any of the countries of Callisto, to truly tell when our descendents will see the majesty of nature, but it is difficult to imagine that, even if navigation has not, and does not, fail, our children will remember the vastly ancient purpose for which we are all here. Our purpose is ancient now, and many have begun to forget. Perhaps we will evolve on the Callisto into creatures unable or unwilling to keep the covenant. We may float through void for all eternity, and to be sure, whether the undreamt vision of a natural home is ever realized or not, the millions upon millions of years we still must travel will certainly be an eternity. It is true, none of us will ever know.