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A quote: “A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.” ~~ Jean de La Fontaine
I’ll start with a story …
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One hundred years of waking up in his own Keep and Noah was still disoriented by planetside sounds.
Noah’s life had been destined to be lived only aboard Ship. He knew it soon after decanting when Ship explained there would be several more Noahes before Ship’s destination. And as long-lived as he was genetically altered to be, he was still a biological unit, not immortal.
Then Rogue Time forced them to drop out of their journey, cut all ansible communication, and find an alternative world for the cryo-lives they carried.
A tapping at the door and Grace’s head popped in. “Grandfather, there is a great gathering for you. Do not disappoint.”
Noah waved his hand, “Old woman, I will be there, if only to have my journey give me peace from your nagging.”
She laughed hard, but it held sadness, too.
And that edge of sadness also gripped the crowd that held pennants and flowers as he mounted his horse, packhorses in tow. He turned and waved as he passed through the gates, his other hand inside his robes holding tight a small ansible.
Ship was hidden halfway ‘round the world. After 100 years, would she wake when he called?
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Now, it’s your turn.
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.featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license
Sheila Garrett says: Bob Anson studied the map he’d been given. They’d selected a good campground; fresh water, surrounded by trees, and far enough from the roads. Camp had been set up and people were settling in.
Suddenly gunfire broke out in the distance. The map showed a road half a mile away up the creek. The firefight seemed to be there. He gathered his combat group and slipped into the trees while the rest got ready to leave or tend any wounded.
They met a group of women and kids crossing the creek. One, very pregnant, was assisted by another who panted, “Please help, we’re from Ft. Campbell.”
Bob nodded and pointed downstream, “Our camp is there.” and went on toward the gunfire. On arrival, they saw dark forms slipping into the brush on the other side of the road. The gunfire cut off like a switch had been flipped.
A fatigued figure stepped out from the vehicles parked on the road. “Very good, Anson. I’d like to see more verification on the incoming group but the response time was excellent.” Two other men were moving among his group, slapping on bandages and removing ammo from their packs. “You have three casualties, and two new fighters, here’s your new goals. Good luck.” Bob nodded, received the sealed envelope and started back to camp.
In fantasy novels the adventure starts with an ancient map and a prophecy. I guess the fortune cookie I got the night before First Contact could count for the latter, although I grew up in a faith tradition that teaches that the age of prophecy ended on the isle of Patmos with the completion of the Book of Revelation.
But you’re not going to get a map in the usual sense when you’re dealing with interstellar travel, not like the old novel where the protagonist discovers an ancient bowl that is decorated with a map to the world that holds the source of the black stones everyone’s trying to find. That author was still thinking in Space Is An Ocean terms, and forgot that a galaxy isn’t a solid disk, but a system of systems, with all the stars and their families of planets going on their orbits around the giant black hole at the galaxy’s core.
So what we had was a system of descriptions of the proper motions of a large number of stellar objects, including several very bright ones. If we could correctly determine the time period these notations represented, we’d be able to project that data forward to our present, and thus know where our treasure planet would be now. It was like how the Apollo astronauts had to aim at where the Moon would be when their transfer orbit took them to its orbit — but over a million or more years rather than three days.
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