Rogue Factor by Ryan Frost

12/04/2231

            Today, I found out that I'm on the short list to go on the expedition. I should be excited... perhaps I am, but above that, above the nervousness and everything else, I'm afraid to go.

            But am I less afraid to stay, or is the fear I feel here just more familiar?

            The news has been non-stop for months now. Every day there's another city under siege, another emergency measure levied, another declaration of war. For us, or against us-- it hardly seems to matter anymore.

            Nothing does, drowning in "duck and cover" drills straight out of the Cold War, and conspiracy theories about secret, Earth-independent doomsday installations straight out of a tinfoil hat. Such stations may well exist--but if they do, there's no realistic way anyone without security clearance could know a damn thing about them.

            Besides, this expedition proves that any installations anyone has are far from foolproof. Packing a thousand people into a prototype long-haul spacecraft and aiming it at a planet we estimate has an "eighty percent probability of being habitable" is madness, but we're trying it anyway.

            We are, after all, living in mad times.

15/04/2231

            I was interviewed today. I do not know if it went well, or even where I am. The lieutenant interviewing me was stone-faced, and would not tell me her name. Such tight security is no surprise. My background check came before ensuring I had any useful skills for the journey. Which I do--if there was ever a practical use for studying extremophilic organisms, it's adapting a human colony to an unknown biosphere.

            Such priorities do not inspire confidence. The project being sabotaged would be bad for morale, but before launch, we are all to be put into cryogenic sleep anyway (another new technology the voyage will be stress-testing). The earliest possible betrayal would come hundreds of years after this war is long over; it would be utterly pointless.

            It's a sad state of affairs when an optimist is the one expecting to be stabbed in the front.

16/04/2231

            I listened to the news this morning. Not that I wanted to. Since I was only allowed my anachronistic little paper journal (nothing capable of external communication), until recently my biggest problem was how little I had to occupy me. Last night I dared to imagine this was a test of my patience for the long journey, but now I believe I was simply too unimportant to be concerned with.

            Much like my home, it would appear.

            Vancouver was subject to a massive, unanticipated amphibious attack yesterday. Few details are certain, but there was heavy damage to infrastructure, and likely matching casualties. Not nearly enough military presence to put up proper resistance.

            I was uncertain if staying would be the wiser choice, but now it is no choice at all.

17/04/2231

            The communications quarantine means I cannot even try to contact family or friends. The ever-so-put-upon gentleman who rejected my requests was kind enough to explain that the extensive damage to network infrastructure, traffic spike as others like myself phoned after loved ones, and general state of emergency meant I had a negligible chance of reaching them.

            Is the futility of attempting human connection something they teach at military academies, or is it learned on the job?

19/04/2231

            I've been chosen to go on the expedition. I would worry that my recent loss (presumptive loss? I've still had no contact with anyone outside this damnable base) had impacted the higher-ups' decision, if I believed they were particularly prone to human emotion.

            Even if pity did not play a role, their decision is hardly a vote of confidence. I might just as well be benefiting from sheer dumb luck in having never happened to form any social ties with that ever-growing group we call "the enemy".

22/04/2231

            I just toured the cryogenic pods, receiving a brief explanation of their operation from a frazzled-looking technician. Writing a thesis on how living things survive extreme temperatures did not prevent most of the summary going over my head.

            It did not help my focus that the damn things look so much like coffins, I'd swear the resemblance was intentional. But I am so tired. Coffin or not, part of me looks forward to stepping inside.

23/04/2231

            This morning I was told I will enter cryosleep tomorrow, leaving just enough time to begin the necessary fasting and drug regimen. We will apparently be given further, prerecorded instructions once we wake up near our destination. Either this is another brilliant security measure to prevent information leaks... or proper briefings were planned, then cancelled. Things may be even grimmer than we have been told.

            No... "grim" feels wrong. Despite my personal stake, I wonder if a swift end to the conflict, even a crushing defeat, would be best. Less time for someone to get an itchy trigger finger with the nukes.

            How ludicrous, that we have kept bombs capable of ending human civilization on standby all this time. More ludicrous still that most of my life passed without ever considering that fact.

            It all seemed totally implausible, until suddenly it didn't.

            How foolish of me, to think such things in a military base. Just fool enough to get in an icebox and be flung into the abyss, I suppose.

02/12/2714

            After five hundred years, I am awake, farther from Earth than any human, ever.

            I would probably feel triumphant, if the re-warming process didn't feel like a debilitating hangover. Posterity must forgive me if my first entry from outside the solar system is brief.

            Still, I was lucky. Our head count came up slightly short. We are mostly strangers to one another, but one woman awoke without her husband.

            Frankly, the majority surviving was more than I had dared to hope for.

03/12/2714

            Today was spent reviewing the state of the ship's systems, logs, and any instructions left for us before departure. The latter contained very little I didn't know already, but the logs were much more interesting.

            Tight-beam transmissions from Earth, received mid-flight, but all very old.

            The worst case scenario is impossible to dismiss: no new transmissions because no one is alive to send any. The pragmatists among us have pointed out that the communications delay was enough to make communication with Earth effectively impossible anyway. The optimists have suggested that people might well still be alive, just technologically diminished, or that knowledge of our oh-so-secretive journey might have been lost, or even that the impracticality of communication lead those planetside not to bother.

            But by some cruel instinct I know that we are the only ones left. I can feel the weight of the entire human race on my shoulders. I recall reading that early humans once numbered only a few thousand. Did they feel as I do?

            No, I should not dwell on it. If my macabre feeling is correct, I damn well shouldn't spend my time moping.

            Things will feel better once we can actually see our destination. There is no obvious cause, but something must be off with the alignment of the sensor array--none of the stars are where they're supposed to be...

05/12/2714

            There is nothing wrong with our sensors. Extensive diagnostics indicate that they are all oriented correctly to within hundredths of an arcsecond.

            It is our ship which is not where it is supposed to be.

            Already I hear whispers of sabotage. That those in the pods which failed altered their pods to open early, enemy agents working while the rest of us slept. Never mind that a single person could have done the job, but a dozen pods failed; that the bodies in the pods show no signs of having ever left them; that a saboteur could've doomed us more certainly by just blowing the engine up.

            When I hear these accusations, I try to try to bring the conversation back to planning for the future. To determining if anywhere reachable might be habitable, or the ship might be modified to be a more permanent home, or we might somehow re-enter cryosleep without a second course of the pre-freeze drugs that we do not have.

            I'm usually met with uneasy silence. Wordless musing if my attempt to shift focus away from the idea of betrayal belies some new, impending treachery. 

            The last remaining human beings are adrift in space with a few months of food and no credible plan, and we are busier creating a scapegoat than figuring out how to fix anything.

07/12/2714

            The woman widowed by the cryogenic pods has been murdered. May she find the peace I'm increasingly certain we never will, and may the bastards who killed her choke in their sleep. They are still anonymous, but I know it will not be long before there are purges out in the open. Blood will not wash away cruel, arbitrary fate, but that won't stop them from trying.

            I've found a few people who seem interested in trying to solve this mess. Perhaps we can survive until we have a real solution, and convince everyone else to end this witch hunt.

            And perhaps we'll run into some friendly aliens who will invite us over for tea.

08/12/2714

            Things are deteriorating faster than I anticipated. It is not longer safe to move about the ship. A lock-down has been enacted, though we do not know by whom. All we know for sure is that a message was sent to our personal devices, instructing us not to leave our quarters. Shortly thereafter, the ship-wide intranet went dark. As we deliberated on what to do, we heard an adjacent door open. Then, a violent altercation.

            We have not left our rooms since.

            How kind of them, creating a distraction free-environment in which we can work.

15/12/2714

            None of us have eaten in days. Water is provided by localized recycling systems, but the pantry is inaccessible. We are no closer to synthesizing what we know into anything useful. Many ideas have been proposed, but we cannot actually test any of them without more information. Propositions of escape have been equally abundant, but no one is eager to be the first through the door.

            I worry about more than just hunger. Jakobs has become fixated on the lengthy calculations which describe our trajectory, staring fixedly at his notepad and repeating something under his breath. I believe he is searching for something, but my inquiries have only been met with demands for quiet, for focus.

            We're all going mad in this silence. At least he's found some Stockholm-esque fondness for it.

16/12/2714

            There is hope yet. No sabotage is needed to explain our predicament, only painfully simple human error.

            At what would have been lunchtime, Jakobs, voice shaking with excitement, beckoned us all over with a single word: "Look". He walked through each step of the trajectory calculations until a point about two-thirds through, encouraging us to check his work as he circled a perfectly innocuous number 2.

            On the next line, he had deliberately removed it.

            We've each independently confirmed his conclusion. This missing factor of two entirely explains our unexpected position.

            There is paranoia, and then there is madness. Without a plausible alternative to foul play, ignoring the holes in that hypothesis is one thing. With such an elegant, independently verifiable explanation, there is no rational group of people who could continue on this course. Meeting our unseen captors once filled me with dread, but now I eagerly await it. At the least we will die with the facts in our hands, rather than with our own blood upon them.

Scrawled hastily; no date provided

            You'll end up killing everyone on board one way or another. When you find this journal tied to the handhold on the wall in the airlock, if you even bother to read it, may this stick in your mind like an ice-pick: There was never a rogue factor on this ship, like you claim. Just one in the equations.