when you live half your life enclosed in a spacecraft you find that things like jet lag aren't so much of a problem anymore.
Take for instance, the way a person may feel when up at the north pole of a planet. Some people are often a bit put off by the long days or nights.
Myself, I found a nice little planet that has a perfect 90 degree axis to its sun. This allows for this place up north that is always at sunset - or sunrise if you prefer. Great climate: tropical poles.
Lately, I've been preferring the sunset...makes it feel like the party is always just getting started, or that you've always gotten off work just a few hours ago.
I even simulate this time while on the spacecraft.
I find it amazing how many people there are out here. I guess that earth just gives every person that is born a spacecraft. The sheer number of people out here is a testament to that.
I am one of the oldest ones now...at least one of the earliest travelers. I do find people who have been making short hops, and thus have made many more visits that I have yet. These people have already spent their 200 or so years of life running about the near planets.
The roaming charge on these visits is mere decades.
Myself, I've decided to take the half-century jumps. Get further out there, you know. Interstellar travel is a reality, well then lets make it to some stellar distances.
A thousand or so years have passed since I left earth. This current planet is my 20th jump. To bad it's such a dump though. Hell of a way to spend this momentous distance in time.
Well now, its getting time to decide.
I am now nearly 1k light years from Earth. I could head straight back right now and get there 2k years after I left.
Or, I could take another route back and spend my last 100 years enjoying the journey back.
Or, of course, I can just keep on going. I could become one of the explorers. I could forsake anything close to my present world and venture out into the complete unknown.
Of course, with this last option, the chance of going back to Earth approaches zero.
But to see the universe of a million years from now. To see the people - if they are still around (and it looks like they are here to stay).
I get ideas: we all do. If I don't write them down I forget them.
If you like an idea I have, please leave comments, I hope you will expand and improve on my ideas with your own additions to the stories.
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2 comments:
The old woman looked over the table at me. Her eyes were alight in an eerie way, lit by the candlelight and enhanced by the warmness of the starport's cantina's intimacy. "I do think that there are more jumpers these days...wouldn't you say,skipper?"
Now, I must explain to you that when she called me skipper, it was not as a sea-captain. Rather, she was simply referring to my youth and distance traveled in standard years. She showed me no respect despite my awesome reputation of being one of the first million travelers from earth. She showed me no respect at all, and that was fine with me. After all, I respected her.
The old woman had taken a break from speaking in order to take a deep pull on her pipe. "You know there my 'bitty nepling, the jumpers, don't you?"
I did. "I do," I said.
The jumpers are those who have chosen to jump very great distances in space and time. Millions, perhaps a billion or so light years. These were a varied lot: some being simply very old and wanting to arrive at a time for more longevity; some, simple adventurers; some simply suicidal. I was a skipper,something between a lifer and a jumper.
"Good, because I'm now convinced that all you skippers are going to be jumpers before too long."
She might as well have called me a coward straight up.
"Why? What do you mean?..." But it made some sense to me.
She wove together my inklings, "It's just that so many of the jumpers from here are in fact just regular skippers like yourself. They up and proclaim, 'hey everyone, I'm jumping to the year 3 million and none of you can stop me!' after which they hop into their starship and punch-in right above the atmosphere. Swear to gad, the analysis of the residual spacetime does show considerable velocity. They are going millions of years out there."
She finished her statements and absently lifted her cup of cocoa to cover her mouth; her eyes fixed down and to the left. Perhaps they were averting from mine.
very cool ^.^ i like this one, but how lonely skipping and jumping seems, albeit quite adventurous. perhaps skipping/jumping with a loved one. that's where it's at, methinx.
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