My name is Jon Jones, my friends call me Jay Jay. I am the youngest deep space explorer in the history of my world, United Earth. I'm fifteen, by the way; I have longish sand blond hair and blue eyes. As for my height, well... I stand at about four foot, give or take a few inches. Still, I am nearly indestructible due to some hush hush project I signed up for a year ago, thus I am on this mission.
It is the year 2139 and I am the last best hope for the future of mankind. After the great war to free the planet from the iron grip of the New World Order nearly seventy years ago, the Earth has become a barren, inhospitable place, scorched by nuclear fire, and plagued by freak weather patterns, making survival for those who are forced to live on the overpopulated world difficult at best, with frequent food, water, and power shortages common in even the richest ares, where as in the poorer sections of the world it's not unheard of for the population to resort to cannibalism simply to survive.
I'm just about to launch the first test run of my new ship, the Star Seeker, which has been equipped with a recently developed, highly experimental warp drive. My destination, the very mysterious Velusian cluster, the only place other than Earth itself in the know galaxy where there's a reasonable chance for the survival of the human race.
Supposedly, in 2058 right before the war really began, a large group of the Earth's best and brightest lead by Genius billionaire Amelia Velus, launched a massive space ship bound for the cluster, in an attempt to escape the threat represented by the growing power of the New World Order. The ship they used, christened Noah's Arc after the ship of the same name mentioned in the old testament of the christian bible, is believed to have carried an experimental warp drive of the colonists own design much more powerful and efficient than the one I was about to test. Unfortunately, if such a drive actually did exit, the would be colonists left no record of the technology, nor has there been any word from them since their exodus to the stars more than three quarters of a century ago, thus leaving their current status, as well as the success or failure of their mission, unknown.
This selfish shortsightedness on the part of the scientists left the rest of humanity to suffer under the rule of the NWO until they were overthrown over a decade latter after a long and bloody war that cost countless lives and resources, as well as damaging the planets already fragile ecosystem beyond repair. Even after the conflict, the damage was so great, and both resources and technology so rare, not to mention the loss of many of our greatest scientific minds during the exodus and the decade of warfare that it had taken those of us back on Earth another fifty years to discover, or possibly rediscover, the warp drive technology that all of us involved in this project will allow humanity to leave our dying world, and find a new home among the stars.
I'm receiving my final authorization from mission control to activate the warp drive. To be honest, I'm a bit nervous. Not only does the fate of humanity depend on it, but my own fate as well, and I'm not eager to find out just how indestructible I really am by being at ground zero if the ships reactor explodes. Now or never I guess. I flip the switch, and the universe blurs around me. I breath a sigh of relief. The drive appears to be working. Looks like Doctor Coff and the other scientists involved in the project knew what they were doing after all. It's all up to the computer now. All I can do is sit back, and wait for reentry into normal space. If everything goes well, I should reach the Velusian cluster in about a week or so. Even with warp travel, the cluster's a long, long way from Earth. I'll be spending most of the trip in cryostasis in order to conserve my oxygen supply, only being awakened by the computer a few hours before the ship's scheduled to exit from warp. That's when my real mission begins. I'm signing off now, you won't hear from me again until I exit from the cryo chamber.
I slowly awaken from a deep sleep. My body is still cold and sluggish from the cryofreezing I was forced to endure during the week long trip to the cluster, but with my unique metabolism that shouldn't be a problem for long. A glance at the nearby chronometer revealed that I only had a few hours to go before the ship was scheduled to exit warp. Good, everything seems to be going according to plan so far. There was unfortunately still the chance of the ship failing to exit warp however. If that were to happen, than I'd be stuck hurtling through space at speeds well beyond the speed of light for the rest of eternity, or at least until I died of old age, or crashed into a star or something.
After getting dressed and grabbing a bit to eat I strapped myself into the acceleration couch, and counted down the time before reentry into real space. Finally, after a seeming eternity of nervous waiting, the timer reaches zero, and I throw the switch that should deactivate the warp drive and cause the ship to reenter normal space.
It works! the streaks of light all around the ship solidify into stars, more stars than I've ever seen before! With so many stars, surely at least one of the has a planet of two capable of supporting human life. All I had to do was find them. I checked my ships scanners for any sort of signal that might indicate the presence of intelligent life nearby, preferably human, although that may be too much to hope for. At first glance, there was nothing. I was starting to get ready to give up, when suddenly the ship started receiving some rather strange signals from a nearby star, indicating there may be intelligent life on one of the worlds orbiting it. I had the ships computer do some quick calculation to see if I had enough fuel to make it. The initial figures looked promising. My ship has just enough fuel to go there, take a few day trip around some of the planets, then go back. There was no margin for error though. Well, long story short, there was an error. Some idiot of a scientist forgot to think about what to do if I encountered alien life. I saw a ship approach me and, surprise, surprise, it fired some sort of towing ray at my ship, pulling it closer. Unfortunately, it also drove all of my computers and gauges crazy, causing a cascade failure. I got hit with a shock when I tried to hit the emergency thrusters and passed out.
When I woke up, I found myself lying in....
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