The Only Journey of Elpis - Elpis

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The Only Journey of Elpis

Elpis

The year 3345 after the great catastrophe, the already reduced terrestrial population left the planet completely because of the unsustainability of the life in it, because of the poisoning of the seas, atmosphere and sources of fresh water, caused by the increase of the sub marine volcanic activity and the continuous expulsion of poisonous gases coming from the mantle.

After populating three colonies located on Mars, Europe and Titan and after the collapse, for different reasons, of two of them, the last human settlement in the solar system, located on Titan, had to be abandoned, because of a series of epidemics that reduced the population to less than one hundred and thirty thousand individuals.

Not being able to wait for the response of the advanced colonization ships, which left Earth 1590 years before; the last humans of the solar system, abandoned the latter, in a last attempt to survive; bound for Proxima Centauri b, a planet that, according to observations made, before the catastrophe, by the Roger Penrose Space Telescope, and confirmed eight hundred years later by the Search and Exploration Telescope of Exoplanets of the Moon, could possess liquid water and an atmosphere formed mainly by nitrogen and traces of carbon dioxide.

Thus, aboard a generational spacecraft, which was named Elpis, in reference to the Greek goddess of hope, the last living humans left hoping to live on a new planet, at least while the signal from some of the colonizing spacecraft was being received.

Elpis was formed by a central nucleus of cylindrical form of six hundred meters of diameters and thousand five hundred of length, where was located the habitacional area, and three rings where were located the areas of the crew, services and production, these sectors maintained a constant rotation on the longitudinal axis of the ship, to generate an acceleration of gravity approximately similar to the one of Titan, the rest of the ship, that included the area of engines, control, reactors, hangars and warehouses, were ingravidas. The nose of the ship was protected by a shield to divert any particle that could be found in its path and in its rear part were thirty hydrogen fusion engines that generated the necessary impulse to move its almost thirty-five thousand tons.

The Elpis would never reach its destination, during its journey, shortly after leaving the Oort cloud, the entire life support system of the residential and crew areas failed, causing the death of all occupants. So the IA, in charge of flight control, and OLIMPIA, the autonomous task monitoring system, decided to orient the ship in a collision course with Proxima Centauri, after issuing messages announcing the situation to all the colonizing ships and launching thirty probes with a duplicate of all the historical information of the human race, stored in the ship's memory banks, which would emit tracking signals on all frequencies over a period of two hundred years.

Original text of @amart29 Barcelona, Venezuela, July 2019

Other stories from the The Only Journey of Elpis series

• Richard's Awakening
• Flashbacks
• OLIMPIA
• Elpis

This story was originally published on my Weku blog.

Thank you all for your attention, I am looking forward to your comments and observations until the next one.

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