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In retrospect, the thing that always seemed the most striking was that the knock on the door came during the May Day dinner. May Day is the day when we give thanks for being the ones who made it through the Anger and the Sadness. It's the day when we gather with our families and enjoy the fruits of our harvest, when we look at what we've done and say aloud, "We will survive for another year. We may not have a future, but we have a tight hold on the present, and we're not going anywhere."Now, we don't get many visitors out here on the outskirts of Taylor in the first place, but generally people stay home with their families on May Day, so I could see looks of concern and excitement cross the faces of my extended family. They all looked to me, the eldest at the table, to handle the unprecedented breach in holiday protocol. "Tallow," I said, "stop bouncing in your seat and go see who it is.""Yes, Aunt Percy," Tallow replied, and went off to the front door. She's actually my first cousin three times removed, being the great-great-granddaughter of my aunts Emma and Connie, but everyone calls me Aunt Percy unless they're worried how I'll react to what they're about to say, in which case they call me Miz Perseverance, Ma'am.Tallow came back into the room with Thicket Pajong, her neighbor and occasional playmate. "Beg pardon for the interruption, Miz Perseverance, Ma'am," Thicket said, "but the radio says there's a man from space named Tommy Sockeye and my Pop said I should come over here and tell you and I ran the whole way over and now I'm here..."Thicket ran dry as he realized that nobody was looking at him anymore. They were all looking at the wall opposite him, the one filled with pictures. In particular, they were looking at the oldest picture on the wall, the one with Emma and Connie as teenagers at their siblings' wedding. Emma is standing next to her sister, my mother Meena, laughing at a joke of some sort. Connie is trying not to laugh as she leans over the shoulder of her brother, in his dress uniform. That's the man my mother has just married in the picture, her first husband, Tommy Sockeye.The navigation system had, in fact, displayed a warning message that the stars were in a slightly unexpected position before we set off for home from 47Umag. The four of us had spent two days confirming that we were definitely pointed toward Sol and chalked it up to some sort of internal bug. We had already deposited the sixteen colonists on the planet with their Agriculture Box and their Genetic Diversity Kit, and we were ready to get back to a more familiar blue planet, so we fired up the engines and headed home.We were all on watch for the Otus Drive cutoff at Sol and our unanimous assumption was that our radio receiver was malfunctioning in some way. The computer was showing only one band of radio signal, not the expected cacophony of entertainment signals from Earth and interplanetary communications from various probes and satellites. The computer automatically brought that band up, though, and we heard the familiar voice of Mercury."...reporting normal. Energy reserves are at full, charging array is at ready status. Communications listening on interplanetary bands four through twelve. This is Mercury Solar Energy Station, broadcasting on special interplanetary band thirty-five. The current time, synchronized to Universal Time on Earth, is one-seventeen a.m. on May first, year two thousand two hundred thirty-nine of the Common Era. Last time synchronization signal received forty-two years and two hundred seventy-seven days ago. All Mercury systems reporting normal. Energy reserves..."We stared at each other in shock. Surely there must be some mistake. Our calendar aboard the Jim Bowie put the current date at July 13, 2140. And Mercury hadn't received its automated communications from Earth in four decades? How could that even be? Visions of extinction events or evacuation flew through my head until Manu, officially in charge due to having slept most recently, spoke up. "We don't know anything right now, so we need more intelligence. Paco, get into contact with Mercury and see if you can find out more about what happened. Katie, cancel our Mercury approach and bring us directly into Earth orbit, but get us oscillating in and out of the magnetosphere so Paco can still reach Mercury. Tommy, scan for signals originating at Earth. Maybe they're low on energy, or if they've left, maybe there's some low-power system that can give us more information."Paco was able to contact Mercury, but it kept stating that all information from the 22nd century was in backup systems that it couldn't access immediately. I didn't pick up any signals until a couple of hours later when we were close enough to see that Earth was entirely lacking in the bright city lights that used to dot its dark side. We were beginning to theorize that humanity was extinct or at least absent when I heard the sound of singers in harmony. I relayed the news and kept scanning as the various broadcast frequencies grew stronger until I found someone asking for listeners to come in on a civilian frequency. "Seek you, seek you, this is A2GWJG, Alpha-Two-Gopher-Whiskey-Jacket-Gopher, looking for contacts."I engaged my headset and spoke. "A2GWJG, This is TRXK8H, Tango-Romeo-Xray-Kilo-Eight-Hotel, operator Tommy Sockeye of the Taraxacum Starship Jim Bowie, returning from Four-Seven Yoo-Mag. Over.""Very funny. This is Ntshwe Kgomotso of Omaweneno Village. Where are you really? Over.""This actually is Tommy Sockeye from the bridge of the Bowie. We are approaching geosynchronous orbit roughly over your location. Over.""Oh, you're actually a spaceman?" Ntshwe did not seem convinced. "Okay, what took you so long? And how did you get back alive? Over," my new friend laughed.I turned to my comrades. "Is there anything we can do to indicate to a terrestrial observer with unknown technology that we're actually up here? I'm getting the impression they don't talk to people in space much.""What about that thing we did for the colony inauguration?""That would do it." I turned the headset back on and asked, "Ntshwe, can you see the sky from your current location? Over.""Ha! No problem, just let me get over to the window." I heard the sound of wheels creaking. "I now have a clear view of Mars and Sagittarius overhead. Over.""Please stand by for ionosphere energy discharge." I kept an eye on Katie's counting fingers. "In five, four, three, two, one.."Katie hit a key and our engines briefly flared. We could see the lines of color spreading out through the air, but against the predawn sky in southern Africa it must have been spectacular. I waited for Ntshwe to stop yelling in what must have been Tswana."Whoa! Hold on, spaceman. I was just idling away the night shift at the station looking for a rag chew. But this is a conversation other people need to hear. Let me patch in my repeater so we can get the word out."
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"Aunt Percy, do you know this man who's come from space?" Tallow asked from the front seat of the tandem. She was cycling me out to the radio station to send a message to Tommy."No, he was gone long before I was born. I only barely knew he existed until we moved in with your great-great-grandmothers when I was six," I replied. "My mother didn't talk much about him. They had married with high hopes, and then her new husband was picked to be a Volunteer, went off into the stars, and didn't come back.""Do you think he's brave and resolute, like the Volunteers are in all the stories? He must be at least a little brave, to have gone on a mission like that, but on the radio, he just sounded confused.""Well, he was confused. He and his crew were expecting to come back to the world of a century ago.""But he said his ship left a colony behind out there. Does that mean what we say on May Day about the future is wrong?""I don't know. I've been a little worried about that.""Then why are we going to send him a message?""Because he's family. And that's what we do."
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The first time we were in radio range of Omaweneno we just exchanged identifcation and I told Ntshwe where we'd been. The second time I answered questions about our mission and spent a lot of time reiterating that we had no idea why we had come back later than all the other ships of the Taraxacum fleet. And why we had survived the voyage. It wasn't until the third time that we found out what that meant and finally got some idea of what had happened to the planet."Mister Thlose, our storyteller, tells us how after Launch Day in 2139, everyone was happy. Strangers hugged each other on the streets. People wore dandelions in their hats and sang songs in the park. The Inundation and its losses were behind us, and the Diaconate had risen out of that chaos to encompass most of the world's population. And now the Taraxacum Project was taking humanity to the stars!""Then the Cheng Hecame home full of dead colonists. Its computer pilot returned it to orbit around Mercury and reported that the crew had died soon after it arrived at their destinations. One by one, all the ships to the nearest stars came back as hearses, and the Deacons couldn't keep it all from falling apart. By 2140 the Anger had begun, and we weren't even looking for you spacemen any more."I wanted to ask what the Anger was, but we were passing out of range, and the signal was fading. We all stared at the radio console as the reality of what Ntshwe had told us sank in.
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Three days after arrival, we were above Omaweneno again, but we weren't attempting any communication, and Ntshwe hadn't attempted to reach us. Morale aboard the Bowie was altogether nonexistent. We had slept about 18 hours in the last day, and spending much of the rest of the time only arguably sane. Our combat simulator, which had been abandoned since the colony world proved devoid of animal life, was getting heavy use. We were angry at the ship for not getting us home in time. Angry at ourselves for not realizing what had happened. Angry at the Deacons for picking us to go so far and for claiming we were "Volunteers". Angry at relativity for putting us in this absurd position. Angry, in the end, at whatever had brought us back, unlike all of our comrades in the Taraxacum Fleet, healthy and alive.Manu had suggested that we not land until we had a good reason to do so. We had plenty of life support supplies, and weren't sure whether we even wanted to use them. Katie had programmed a route down to Ntshwe, but she had also programmed one out of Earth orbit and into the Sun. I considered the odds of us using either to be about even. I don't know how long we would have stayed in that condition, but on our next approach it was interrupted by a relayed message from the ground. A woman's voice, not a young voice but strong and clear, cut through the static of the multiple relays it had taken to arrive."Good day, Mr. Sockeye. My name is Perseverance Dee, and I am your wife's daughter. As your nearest relative, I am pleased to offer you and your crewmates hospitality here at my home. I live at the Bulsara homestead outside of the village of Taylor. I hope to see you there. Thank you.""We should go," said Manu, sitting down next to me in the bridge. "That is, assuming she's for real. Do you think she is?""My gut says yes. Bulsara is Meena's name, and..." I had to stop for a full minute to compose myself. "I mean it was her name. Sorry.""It's okay.""If she's not for real, she knows at least the last name of my wife. That's something.""And she's living in a homestead of some sort? What does that even mean?" The two of us stared out the window at the unexpectedly alien planet beneath us."So if we're going, how are we getting there?" asked Katie, arriving on the bridge with Paco. "I don't think the village of Taylor is on our existing maps. Can Ntshwe give us directions?"Paco spoke up, the first time he'd spoken at an audible volume in the last day. "So this counts as a reason to land? Good. I'd like to examine the engines. Our late arrival happened for a reason, and I'd like to find it. That will be easier on the ground."I already had the headset on, and opened a channel to Ntshwe. "Ntshwe, do you know this Taylor village? Is it near you? If not, do you know which overparish of the Diaconate it's in? Over.""Spaceman, you sound like a history book! We don't have overparishes or parishes or countries or states any more. When I was a child some folks tried to make a list of what we had, but they couldn't find any, what'd they call 'em, 'relevant political units' larger than a village. They said if they had tried to make a world map, it would just be grey from all the tiny bits of color. Then someone wrote a song called 'The Grey World Is Home To Everyone' and it got pretty popular. People still sing it at festivals.""So do you know where Taylor is?""I have no idea, but I don't think it's near me. That message came through at least six relays, which puts it anywhere on this side of the Earth. If you want to find your relative, you can follow the relays. I got it from a station in Chiradzulu to the northeast of here, and they said they got it from Nanyuki almost due north of them. You should be able to go from station to station until you find the origin. And they'll be listening to this conversation, so they'll be expecting you. Over.""Ntshwe, you've been a great help. Thank you for dealing with this traumatized spaceman. Over.""It's been a pleasure. Over and out."It turned out to have been more like fifteen relays, but we found it.
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If you are ever in the position to have an interstellar spacecraft land in your cabbage fields, I hope that, like me, you have it happen almost immediately after harvest. They are very large and very loud, and the landing process is not kind to the coherence of the soil. On second thought, if you do get to decide when the interstellar spacecraft lands in your fields, just before plowing would not be a bad choice. Just make sure it leaves before you actually need to get the seeds in the ground.By the time the ship was on the ground, the whole village was either watching or hurrying over. Mattock, Tallow's father, kept the throng back while the ship settled. I watched from the edge of the fields as a hatch opened and four people in uniforms stumbled out onto the ground. They stood at attention as I made the walk out to them, assisted by a cane on one side and Tallow on the other.I recognized Tommy immediately from his picture on the wall. I realized that he was almost certainly wearing the same clothes as he had in that ancient photograph. I cleared my throat and began to speak. "Greetings, all of you. I am Perseverance Dee, and I welcome you&151;""You have her eyes," Tommy interrupted. "How can you have her eyes?"I didn't know how to answer. As I tried to come up with something to say, he actually fainted. Tallow had to help his comrades carry him back to the house.
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I woke up in a sunlit room under a quilt I recognized, and for a moment I thought it had all been a dream. Then I noticed how much older the quilt was than it had been the last time I had seen it, draped over my in-laws' living room couch. The quilt ceased to provide any warmth.My traitorous surroundings consisted of a wooden bed, spread with the uncannily ancient quilt, a chair with a straw seat, and a window with midday sun coming in through brightly printed curtains to light the whitewashed wall. My uniform was hanging in a closet, and someone had left some underclothes, a pair of pants and a button-down shirt folded over the back of the chair. I stared angrily at it all for about half an hour, then got dressed and went downstairs to find some food.The house was quiet, but the child who had been supporting Perseverance was sitting at the long table doing some task that I could not immediately identify. As I entered the room, the child looked up, and addressed me brightly."Hello, Mister Tommy! How are you?"I looked out at the fields, with the Bowie towering over the nearby trees, and searched for an answer that was truthful, bearable, and appropriate. "Tired. Not sleepy. How are you? What's your name?""I'm Tallow. Is it true that the Volunteers were all fearless like the storytellers say?"It took me a second to reply. It's disconcerting to find that you're a figure of legend. "No, we are, or were, I guess, just like everyone else. We weren't really even volunteers. But the Deacons wanted to send out their entire fleet of ships to the stars on the same day, so if you were qualified, you went.""That makes sense. I had always wondered why you left when you seemed so happy." Tallow continued, as if my ruin hadn't just been summed up in a single sentence, "Do you want some food? There's still some leftovers from May Day in the kitchen. I'll get you a plate."Tallow went out and returned with a very full clay plate. Apparently May Day involved preparting a lot of different dishes. I sat and ate ravenously. I hadn't realized how tired I was of our stored food aboard the Bowie until I had an alternative. As I was eating, Tallow continued her work, which appeared to be some sort of educational task done in chalk on a tablet. As I watched, something occurred to me that had been trying to get through to my brain since yesterday."Tallow, did you know you look very much like my younger sister? How is that?"Tallow gave me a look of disdain. "I'm her great-great-granddaughter, silly. See?" She pointed at the wall, which was covered with photographs and drawings of family members. I got up to examine the images. There was Meena's and my wedding day, with our sisters clowning around. The photo was one I'd seen hundreds of times, but the foxed corners and faded tints were not. I shivered. The other pictures, however, told a story of the century I'd missed.Connie and Emma's wedding, with Meena in partial mourning. Meena with her second husband, a man I was pleased not to recognize. He appeared to be out of her life by the time the young Perseverance reached the age of six or seven. Children running around as the three women built what I suspected was the house I stood in. Meena and Perseverance drawing with sticks on a desert dune and looking up at the sky. More generations growing up as the previous ones grew old. At some point the photographs gave way to well-done drawings in ink or charcoal. I felt a pain in my hand and looked down to discover that I had bloodily reduced my stoneware mug to shards.I felt a touch on my shoulder and found Perseverance standing beside me. "I'll fix it," I told her in a choked voice, "or I'll make you a new one..." She shook her head sadly, and turning into her embrace, I bawled in her arms.I sat down with Tommy on the couch and shooed Tallow out. He wept and wailed with his head in my lap while the sun sank lower in the sky. Eventually he ran dry and sat up."Feeling better?" I asked him.He nodded. "Better isn't the right word, really, but I think I can face the world.""Good, because people are going to start coming in from the day's work." I stood up and went to the stove to heat some water. "And it wouldn't be a bad idea to clean and bandage that hand. Come over here.""So what happened?" Tommy asked, wincing as I applied a hot cloth to his wounds. "We left a world that was more or less united and rebuilding to become a sustainable technological civilization. Was there some disaster to interrupt that?"I laughed, not entirely bitterly. "Yes, there was a disaster. It was you.""Me?""Not you specifically, but your fleet's failure.""We heard that anyone who went out to the stars came back dead. But they didn't have a contagious disease or anything. They just died somehow. How did that set off a disaster?""We gave up large-scale industry and any technology harder to maintain than radio as part of accepting our fate. When we found out that it was impossible to get to the stars, it was like the whole planet got a terminal diagnosis from their doctor at the same time. There wasn't any bold future to hope for. We were stuck on this broken planet, in this mostly uninhabitable solar system, and we were going to die here.""What happened?""We went through the stages of grief. As a species. Between the Anger and the Sadness, we lost billions.""Billions? Of Diaconate Pounds? Or... I don't know your currency.""Of people." He stepped back as if I'd punched him, which I suppose I had. "Entire overparishes. Most of the northern hemisphere, in fact. Mother and I were lucky to find ourselves here, but not everyone was so fortunate. It's possible that your crewmates don't have any living relatives. They're probably beginning to figure that out."He nodded. "I'll look out for them."As everyone came in for supper, Perseverance had me help Tallow set places at the big table. I sat down with Katie and Manu as they ate."So how was your day?" Katie asked. "Less busy than ours, I hope.""I suppose so, unless you consider having an emotional breakdown busy." I proferred my bandaged hand. "I'll be alright, but I owe our hosts a mug.""I figure we're all due for one of those," said Manu, "probably as soon as we stop working.""What have the two of you been doing all morning?"Katie stretched and rubbed her shoulders. "Mostly heavy lifting as equipment gets stowed for the winter and preparations start for winter repairs. Stellar navigation isn't really a useful skill on a farm."I nodded. "If we were useful in these conditions, we'd have been assigned to stay out on 47Umag." I waved up at the sky. "Is that the right direction?" I asked Katie."More like below our feet, at this latitude. I keep on thinking we should just hop back on the Bowie and run back there, but it's already been fifty years for them, and another fifty by the time we'd get there. Who knows what that world is like now? They may have even given it a name.""So did you leave Paco out there? He's not alone, is he?" I had a vision of Paco having a breakdown like mine out in the fields."No, he has your great-nephew Cistern with him. They're looking at the engines. They had a stack of chalk slates and one of the tablets from the ship, and were running simulations and doing vector calculus.""Will Cistern be okay if Paco has trouble?""I think so. He teaches math at the school in town, so he should be used to emotional crises."Discussion of Cistern and Paco was interrupted as the two collaborators themselves arrived, shouting and brandishing slates.I put down my tea as my cousin's boy Cistern ran in with Tommy's crewmate Paco."We got it! We got it!" Paco yelled. The whole table fell silent as they lined their slates up along the wall of pictures. Once the slates were in order, Cistern began to explain."Ahem. Everyone ready?" The table sat rapt at attention. There was a palpable awareness that we were the first to learn the solution to a puzzle humanity had tried to solve for decades, and given up as impossible before most of us at the table were born."Good. So, the way the Otus drive is supposed to work is that the ship is wrapped in a double shell of warped space. Out in the universe, time is, of course, passing at a normal rate. Inside the interior shell, time is also passing at the same rate. But between the two shells, time is passing at the accelerated rate expected by time dilation when something travels at near light speed. Any questions so far?"There was no sound except the dusk calls of animals outside."Great. So, the fatal flaw of this approach, as we learned a century ago, is that any particles from quantum fluctuation of that space during the voyage that make it into the warped space build up in there over the course of the trip. When the drive is turned off those particles are all released. Half of them go out into the universe fairly harmlessly. But the other half go into the ship, and if the ship has traveled more than a few light-years, the resulting dose is fatal."The four listeners who had just stepped out of an Otus drive ship looked queasy. The rest of us just nodded. I remembered reading news articles about this, and to everyone else it was history."The difference between those ships and the Jim Bowie is that the shells generated by the Bowie's drive are too close together. Specifically, they are close together in a way that causes them to form a single shell that doesn't contain any spacetime. This has the beneficial effect of preventing the build-up of quantum radiation. So the passengers don't die on arrival. The negative effect is that this arrangement doesn't provide any protection from the time dilation predicted by Einstein. Time passes much more slowly for the ship, but from the perspective of the universe, the ship is traveling at a little below the speed of light. Thus Paco and his crewmates have avoided the fate of the rest of the Taraxacum ships, but at the cost of arriving back at Earth a century late."He stopped, and Manu stood up and said a few words thanking Cistern and Paco and led a round of applause. Everyone returned to our food as I considered what I'd heard, and what it meant for us all in the long run.The two scientists came over and sat down with us, but we didn't get to start eating again before Perseverance came by and quietly asked the four of us and Cistern to follow her. She led us to a room with comfortable seating and closed the door behind her."Paco," she asked, "is this unique property of the Jim Bowie something specific to the manufacture of its engines, or is it more like a dial somewhere that ended up at an unexpected setting?"Paco thought for a moment, and replied, "It's more like a dial, I'd say. The Bowie's Otus drive is mostly controlled by the computer. We needed to see some physical readouts to figure it out, but if I had more of a physics background, I could have diagnosed the issue on the ship. Why do you ask?"Perseverance seemed to be suppressing some reaction, but she continued quietly, if not calmly. "I'm trying to determine whether the world war will be centered on Taylor or whether we can get the rest of the fleet set up the same way and have a hundred or so smaller wars so we can get all the dying out of the way sooner.""What?" Manu stepped between Paco and Perseverance as the rest of the room stared at her. "Why do you think there's going to be a war?""Do you think people are just going to treat your return as an interesting bit of news? We've had decades of peace worldwide because the most we could hope for, as a species, was to last a little longer. It made a lot of our reasons for fighting and killing seem petty. But now that's not the case anymore, is it?" She turned to Cistern. "You were born as the Sadness was ending. You didn't see all the people who just gave up when they realized that there wasn't any way that they were going to be part of anything but the end of history. But you've lived your life expecting that if something killed you, it would be something natural and local, like disease or famine or accident. You've never worried about pollution or war, and we could have gone centuries or millennia that way. But now, we'll destroy ourselves fighting about who gets to go out to your colony fifty years away, and that colony will be all that's left of humanity." She stopped, breathing heavily, and sat in a chair to rest."Are you feeling all right?" I asked."I'm physically fine. I'm upset, because I don't know what's going to become of us all. Sit down, everyone." We sat, thinking. It was Cistern who spoke."Aunt Percy, I know you're one of the few people alive who knows what life was like during the Anger and the Sadness. But that doesn't mean we can't all think through our options. We could, for example, tell people that the ships can't make another trip. We'd keep on going like we have, but with the knowledge that there's another planet with humans out there. He took another piece of chalk out of his pocket and wrote "1. Reset" on the painted wall. I suspected someone younger than Cistern was going to have to clean that later."We could just send ships to various locations around the world and tell anyone who wants in to hop in for a ride back out to 47UMag," Katie suggested. "But it's essentially a one-way trip." Cistern wrote "2. Everybody Gets One" on the wall."We could gradually reveal that the option is still open to go," said Manu. "Though that puts us in the position of trying to keep a secret from the planet when we are also telling people on a regular basis. Not ideal." Nevertheless, Cistern wrote "3. Gradual Reveal" on the wall."We could hold some sort of worldwide referendum on what to do," I offered. "It's not very practical, but we might be able to do it with the technology on the ships." Cistern looked doubtful but wrote "4. Ask Everyone" on the wall."Can I ask a question?" said a small voice behind us. We turned to find Tallow standing in front of the door, which she had evidently opened and closed soundlessly. "Are there any closer planets we could go to? I don't think anyone would be happy if we said there was just the one chance to go, but if there were shorter trips, then some people could go, and other people could go later.""Let me see," said Paco, and pulled his handheld console from his pocket."I didn't even know those worked this far from the ship," said Katie."I reconfigured the receivers so I could check things from here," he replied. "Like my mail, which seems to have arrived.""You have mail?" I asked. "Who in this century even has the ability to send you mail?""Mercury," he said, and used the projector in the console to display a slowly rotating map of nearby stars, about half of them circled in white. "The circled stars are the ones we sent ships to. ""Generally the F, G, and K class stars with known planetary systems," interjected Katie as Tallow approached and stood next to Paco."All of those missions failed except for ours," continued Paco, fingers flying over the console's control surface. The circle around 47 Ursae Majoris, at the north end of the map, turned blue. "But the automated reconnaissance systems on the ships didn't have any problem with the radiation. And once Mercury had recovered the downloaded mission files from its backup systems, I was able to have it process the data. Here are the stars with planets that are probably habitable." He pressed one last key on the console.Circle after circle turned green on the map. Not all of them, and a few turned red, indicating that not only was there no oxygen-producing life on any planet, there were no planets that could support life at all. But most of them were green, and there was even a double green ring around a dot labeled μAra out at the edge of the chart."Now that's a sight to make even this old cynic think fondly about the future," said Perseverance.
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It's been thirty years since we arrived in Taylor, and while I can't say that all of Perseverance's concerns were misplaced, we've been able to keep things fairly calm here on Earth. We've re-introduced some travel and communications technology, but only as needed by the colonization project, so the disruption has been minimal. It took longer than expected to get the ships set up again, but we've had a few round trips to Alpha Centauri and one to Epsilon Eridani. The colonists of Alpha Centauri Ad named the first settlement Perseverance, which brought her a smile a few months before she died. She was the one who started us saying "We will survive for another year. We may or may not have a future, but we have a tight hold on the present, and if we're going anywhere, it's under our own power."For a while, my work with the colonization project kept me traveling around the world, but now we have enough other people involved, including Tallow and Ntshwe, that I can relax some. I've settled down back here in Taylor. I haven't been able to see anyone from this century as an appealing romantic prospect, so these descendants of Meena's sister and mine are the only children and grandchildren I'm going to have. When I pass, I'll be buried in with her so we can finally be together. But for now, there's radio telescopes to listen to in Antarctica, repairs to do on the farm, and toddlers to keep busy so their parents can sleep. I have plenty of life still ahead, and I'm looking forward to it. There's no reason to pity me.