TO THE STARS! Climate change, war, famine, inequality – is life on Earth getting you down? Why not apply to join the Supermassive Space Ark™ voyage to Earth 2.0, where humans will be able to start again? Help us build a new, improved and equitable civilisation. Richard Hollingham offers a vision of the future. 146
THE YEA R IN SPACE
T
he sky switches on at 6am. The bright uninterrupted blue stretches to the horizon, dotted here and there with perfect light fluffy clouds. It’s going to be another glorious day. Just behind the rows of corn, swaying slightly in the gentle breeze, two figures in ragged overalls trudge across the field. Beyond them, in a small wooden shack, the children are getting dressed. No school for them; they will be helping their parents with the harvest. The bees come online at 6.30, pollinating the fruit trees in the next field. A few don’t make it. One day they will fail completely. It’s fifty years since the Supermassive Space Ark™ left Earth’s orbit to travel beyond the solar system on a mission to colonise a distant world around an alien star. When they signed up, the hundreds of carefully screened volunteers on board this interstellar spaceship accepted that it could be several generations before they arrived at their new home. Along the way they would need TO THE STARS!
147
