Chapter 2 - Doubt's Shadow

Dr. Covern was pissed. He had worked, suffered, given his all for entire lifetime for a doomed planet. Everything he could do to bring the world out of chaos he did. He had watched friends die, stood behind the scenes while others took credit for his work, bowed to and whispered in the ears of terrible terrible men. He and those like him were able to bring some stability to the world. Eradicating hunger, controlling climate change. Disease was a thing of the past, for christ-sakes! It all had to be for profit, but it was done! To have it all end up in ash and smoke... An end as quiet to the universe as Whoville would have been if Horton had not been chilling in the cool of the pool that one day.

He slammed his fist down on his desk angry tears splashing among his papers. He was angry then...resigned. That is just the way the universe works. Better that they had the technology and the willing help from the technology to save some humans. If only some and start over elsewhere.

At first he had been furious with Corinne’s computations. The event was still a year out. Surely if they made a mad rush they could save many many many more lives then the measly 50,000. Not even a drop in the bucket! But no...as he went over her numbers and her plans he saw that she was right. They also needed to ship food, infrastructure. Fertilized eggs of food animals, entire seed catalogs. Medicine, equipment, fuel. Then there was the time. It would be 50 years before the first ships reached their new planets. A hundred years on top of that before the last ships would be arriving.

No, Corinne’s computations were correct. He did note that she had included a hard copy of all of her systems in every ship. He would have to do something about that. Surely humanity could survive without her as it certainly would without him. Envisioning these people awakening and looking for something, anything to blame would surely tear them apart. No, they would get a fresh start.

....

The solar event that would burn the surface of the earth to a crisp was scheduled to happen January 17th and exactly 6:42pm. Despite the world uniting and tackling problems like climate change, hunger and disease, the government had neglected to invest in planetary evacuation. There were only about 20,000 space worthy air crafts - most of them in space already with families working and growing. Very few crafts would be able to return to earth to save a tiny fraction of inhabitants. Next to none would be able to survive a long trip to another inhabitable solar system.

Corinne was the most advanced AI ever created. She had used all data and some very complicated projections to determine the date of the planet killing event. She also compiled the genome for all of mankind. She had been able to extrapolate that there had been 3 mass extinction events for humans. Carriers of certain genes were almost 500X more likely to survive than their counterparts. Using this system she could project which humans would make the best shot at finding and surviving in new worlds.

These genes were extremely interesting to her as they only expressed in the most trying times. Afterwords, maybe a few generations later, they were back to recessive. Passed down the line until needed again.

She had 10 worlds picked out - uninhabited, early stages of unintelligent life evident. 5,000 per world should be more than enough. The humans would enter a deep state of sleep where all bodily processes were shut off. Her research had shown her incidents of near drowning where children were pulled from the water sometimes more than 10 minutes after being submerged. The body simply shut down - no harm done. This combined with an anti aging serum and they would wake, just as they are now but with a new world.

They would of course be kept in the dark about the fate of their old planet. Soon to be a dead husk rotating around the sun until it eventually turned into a black hole and started to mindlessly binge on anything and everything it could suck in. When they woke up - between 50 and 150 years later - the earth would be a distant memory, barely worth a look back. Then real work would begin on their new homes.

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Chapter 1 link here!