The Talitha Colony Ship

   

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Origin

  Thousands of sols ago, humanity had a crisis, one of its own making. Earth was a shell of itself, housing those who couldn’t escape. Resources had gone to terraforming Mars, creating a paradise for the ultra-rich. Eventually, it lost its glamor.   The rich had transported thousands of people there. Low-paid labor to work menial labor and keep the planet a lush paradise. The population grew naturally. After several generations, it no longer felt like a rare commodity. It was just another planet full of people, like Earth.   Engineers from Mars built an underground city on Venus, a marvel of technology. It became the sought-after experience. Eventually, it also lost its appeal. The population grew, and the technology aged. Harvesting resources on Venus was dangerous and expensive. The fear that the aging technology would fail catastrophically grew. Eventually, those who could afford to do so fled as a precaution. Some moved to Earth, and others to Mars.   But, Earth would never be the same lush green home of their ancient history, and the terraformed environment on Mars was even more sensitive. They wanted a new marvel. Something bigger and better to show the ingenuity of humankind.     The Talitha was built both to be a marvel and to find their next glorious home. The people funding and designing this project knew they wouldn’t live to see the place the Talitha landed. They may not even see the finished vessel, but their children and their legacy would live on through it.   They forced workers to gut the resources of Venus, including the underground colony. It took eighty years, and they had to overcome many hurdles. The construction of the Talitha took place in space. The finished ship would be too large to lift through any planet’s atmosphere. When it was done, it was nearly 1,500 kilometers in diameter. A massive colony ship inspired by the then-ancient Stanford torus design.   Five-hundred people boarded the Talitha when it was complete. The occupants included the current scientists and engineers who had been part of the project. The list also included doctors, farmers, ranchers, educators, and other basic skills needed to keep humans alive for generations. There were only sixty-two trillionaires and billionaires, including adults and their children. They allowed one hundred millionaires to ride as passengers as long as they had a useful skill and would sign over their entire net worth.   The Talitha was a research vessel as well. As it traveled through the solar system, and then out, it recorded data and sent it back to the scientists on both Earth and Mars.  

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A Change of Plans

    Things went well for the first generation of passengers. They had a mission. Their children and grandchildren learned to embrace the mission of expanding humanity’s wanderlust. However, the overseeing ultra-rich also believed they were better than the ship’s labor-force.   In less than 100 Earth years, the leaders had become tyrants, demanding more and more from the rest. Discontent brewed, especially as the people at the top seemed to contribute less and less.   The children of the working class didn’t attend any school. As soon as they could help their parents with their duties, they did. They were left with very little choice in their lives. More and more questioned why they were letting a small group of self-important bullies dangerously hurl them through space.   The anger among the majority grew. They were basically being treated as human cattle.   During the 100th day celebration of the Talitha, there was a mutiny. The ship’s population had grown well over a thousand. There were only 140 adults in the ship’s upper class. There were a few weapons on board, all held by the overseers. But not even they could make up for the sheer numbers. In a matter of minutes, the people overpowered and removed them.   A woman who called herself only Shahar led the rebellion. She had already chosen a council, people who had helped manage the workforce, but were not the previous tyrannical rulers. They organized the ship under a new watch. Any of the rich who didn’t submit and agree to pull their fair share were imprisoned. Any who had killed was themselves executed with their own weapons. The bodies of those executed were all buried in one place, under a newly planted fig tree. The tree became a symbol of what would happen to the greediest.     The Talithan people went through many social starts and stops. The administration reorganized or removed if the people found it lacking. Eventually, they settled into a rhythm. There was still a hierarchy; someone had to make fast decisions in times of emergency, decisions that could mean life or death for everyone aboard. They always voted for people to fill these positions. No one was there simply because they had a rich ancestor.   The people onboard started referring to themselves simply as Earthians. In their lore, Mars became the destination of the rich. A symbol of the subjection of the poor. Earth had been their true ancestral home.   The Earthians also cut themselves off completely from the planet-bound humans. The ship was theirs. They didn’t know where they were going. But they knew they didn’t want to be found by the people who had been communicating with them, demanding information. They would find their own planet and bring true humanity back.   It wasn’t all smooth sailing. For many generations, the question of traveling further from the only known habitable planets or turning around always came up. Those who wanted to continue always won. The shipbuilders designed the ship to sustain them for several thousand years.   The Talitha went over 700 years with no major physical disasters or massive loss of life. In the year 711, a meteoroid escaped the lasers and took out a small section. It was in one of the unoccupied sections, which was sealed off, then turned into resources by the ship’s robots. Even with that, the decision to continue on remained.   Eventually, they passed the point where going back might be more hazardous than continuing. The Talitha had been flying through space for over 2900 Earth years, according to the ship’s computers. They had lost more of the ship, but they still had most of it. There was plenty of space and resources. They also didn’t know what they’d find if they returned. The ship’s mutiny had been long ago. They didn’t know if the planet-bound humans would remember them, or even existed. So, they continued into the unknown.  

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Design

  The engineers who designed the Talitha used the Stanford Torus design as their base. Residents lived in a massive ring with a 1.5 km diameter. The rotation of the outer ring created gravity similar to Earth. Their design was a little smaller than the original Stanford Torus, but the humans could still adjust to the speed over time without too much motion sickness. Before the residents were commissioned, they took a test to ensure they wouldn’t get too ill. Of course, this only helped the first generation. Beyond that, they attempted to control any motion sickness with drugs and highly discouraged people with severe motion sickness from having children.   Sophisticated computers controlled lasers placed around the entire colony ship to prevent space debris from destroying it. The engineers knew that over time parts of the system could fail. As a failsafe, they also built the Talitha so it could close off, or shed, parts of the ship. If a section of the outer ring sustains severe damage, the craft could jettison the piece. This would also lower the overall weight of the ship, a crucial ability if they lost parts of the engine.   They also closed off sections of the ship to the original inhabitants and put them into stasis. If a biological catastrophe hit, the survivors could move into the next section and start over. It would also be available if they overpopulated the section they were in. Methods of population limitation had been pre-planned, but not enforced with the original 500. They had plenty of resources and space. They also needed to make the next generation of people who would take care of the ship and work on future planned programs. Over the many generations, these limits were put into place and receded, depending on who was in charge and what the current status of the ship and resources were.   A deuterium-based fusion propulsion system powered the Talitha. It was a closed system fueled by compressed pellets. Powerful lasers blasted the pellets, creating the propulsion and energy for the ship. The engine ‘waste’ was collected and fed into a reactor for the ship’s power. There were three separate engines that performed as one. This way, if there was a malfunction, the ship wouldn’t completely lose momentum. Or lose the ability to get away from a hazardous situation.     The engine was in the center of the vessel, and a secondary ring in between the engine and residential area held spare parts and cargo. Neither the engine nor the secondary ring rotated, and anyone going into those sections had to work in zero gravity. Some people who were more sensitive to the rotation would visit or practically live there. Because of the negative effects of extended zero gravity, no one could live there indefinitely.   Specialized robotic unmanned shuttles collected elements in space to store as fuel. They would collect specified resources from gas giants and interstellar clouds. The shuttle would then transform into fuel when returning and burn up. They were used sparingly. As soon as the last one was gone, the occupants of the Talitha knew their time was running short and they needed to find a planet.   There were also drone shuttles with sensors that combed through debris they passed by or their external lasers created. They mined the surface of the space rock and collected any useful minerals. These did not self-destruct.  

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Habitat

  The sections of the large outer rings were, more or less, large human terrariums. Each section mimicked different climates, though all were various degrees of temperate. The variety allowed them to grow a wider variety of plants and animals.   A wide variety of meat animals, vegetation, grains, insects, and mushrooms were loaded onto the Talitha. Additionally, they could use cryogenically frozen eggs, sperm, and embryos to re-seed the DNA if issues arose. These existed for all the ship’s mammals, including humans. They carefully maintained the meat-animal breeding program to prevent genetic anomalies. Even with these safeguards, many species died out before the Talitha landed.   They left Earth and Mars with five species of cattle, seven species of goat, four species of pig, twelve types of bird, and three species of rabbit. At the end of their journey, all the cows had died out. One goat breed, two pig breeds, five bird species, and two rabbit breeds were still alive.   The population of the people onboard had gone through several cycles of expansion and shortage. During some particularly rough years, they had to euthanize anyone who needed round-the-clock care. A bacterium mutated and caused thousands of severe cases of pertussis before it could be contained. People feared having children. There was a population imbalance and, in time, there were too many older people and not enough younger people to care for them and keep the rest of the ship going.     By the time the Talitha found the planet they would call home, they had lost 2/3rds of the original ship. They had limited their population to 1,000 people, fearing they would use too many resources if they went over. The section of the vessel they landed with had only 926 individuals.  

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The Landing

  The Talitha’s mission was to find a habitable exoplanet, which never changed. The crew didn’t visit the first one in the queue. But they didn’t drift aimlessly in space either. There was a list of potentially habitable planets. They skipped the second and aimed for the third. At each destination that had liquid water, they sent resource bots to the surface to take readings. Talitha Harbor was the fourth planet.   The first planet had no atmosphere and was simply a rock. Next came one with too much sulfur and nitrogen oxides. The third had seemed promising; it had water, but the drone could find no signs of life. The crew decided not to risk it, and the ship moved on. After many generations, they discovered a planet with life.   For four months, the Talitha spacecraft circled the planet, deploying resource-gathering robots. They weren’t sure the Talitha would make it to the fifth planet, but they also didn’t want to seal the fate of everyone on board. Finally, the decision was made for the first group to go down.   The Talitha made its way to the surface section by section. Three sections meant for construction went first. They spent months clearing forest and planning for the others. Dying colonists who didn’t want to spend their last days in space were sent down, at their request, to die on the planet. Going with supplies and more cargo. With assistance from the AI on board, the engineers planned the landing site of the largest section of the ship they were going to keep, in an extinct volcano. The geothermal activity below it would power the building and become its primary source of power for everyone else.   They hollowed out part of the mountain, then carefully landed the ship section. In the end, they kept seven sections of the ship. All seven still exist, at least in part, in Anunitum. The largest section was named the Fortress. Three other sections are giant husbandry farms for the Earthian creatures they saved. Four are greenhouses, which are museums as much as places to grow food. The other three have become vocation buildings. They’re used by Vocation of Preservation, Vocation of Education, and Vocation of Virtualization .   The rest of the Talitha orbited the planet for many sols. Once the people had established themselves and knew the planet would be home, they sent the rest of the ship into the sun. Making sure they did so before the electronics broke down too much for communication. They didn’t want to risk parts of it crashing into the planet and wreaking havoc. For many sols, they could have left the surface with the sections they’d landed. But the choice was made not to keep them up. For one thing, they didn’t have the right fuel source available. Eventually, they dismantled the engines and melted the parts down or used them for other things.   There is one section of the engine left, though it’s not usable. It’s part of the Earthian History Museum at the bottom of the Anunitum Fortress.  

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