Ring Transport - Origins Pt. 02

The trick was, they were going to have to perform these tests while naked. We couldn't have people thinking this was too easy, and being naked in a group showed an ability to have an open mind, to accept a stressful situation, and demonstrate commitment to the idea they really wanted to come aboard.

We would only take a ratio of two women to every man, and 80 percent of them had to be below age 35. We would be founding a new world, we needed people who could have kids.

I couldn't take people who were physically unable to cope with moving around in a raw environment, that might doom them and the people around them. These few tasks meant we could select out those with at least some capabilities.

If someone can't learn to tie five kinds of simple knots? Yeah, they're a risk to themselves and others as well.

Once the news went around that those were the requirements, we saw a lot of the refugees start swimming in the nearby lake at least daily.

Two weeks later, we swooped down and picked up a class C shuttle's worth, about 100 people, from the refugee camp. From there, we gave them a nice ride into space and then down to a sand beach in Bahrain. It was nice warm water and a gentle surf.

Most of the first shuttle was made up of widows right near the cutoff age of 35, who already had kids. These women had few options, but that was great for us. We could handle that.

Almost all of them passed. Some couldn't swim, some changed their minds halfway through, and that was fine. The rest, we took up with us.

They got to see the ship, come onboard, get their medical problems fixed (ships' medical devices could fix almost anything except missing limbs and that was a decision by us due to it taking up a bunch of resources onboard).

After they got acclimatized, we allowed some video chats back to the camp to their friends, and we had more sign up.

Korean, Chinese, Algerian, Nigerian, Brazilian, even Canadians and Americans signed up. We had inflows of people that grew into the thousands per day.

Obviously, we had to automate the testing process and provide the ability to just show up, and be paired off with a partner once they were onboard. That didn't always work, but surprisingly, people seemed to accept their arranged marriages far more often than not.

The mining mission to Mercury was greatly helped by some robots that could use lasers to cut ore into precise chunks, load it onto carts, and carry the carts into the AquaBlue Guppy (the Minnow class we'd sent there). Setting up a regular set of flights that each carried over a million metric tons of almost-pure copper, the Aquablue-G by herself quadrupled the world production of copper.

The electric cars of the world needed copper to work, and we could do that.

Manganese, Magnesium, Nickel, Cobalt - all these could be easily gathered in well-delineated strata on Mercury's surface.

Of course, to describe this as a money-making venture is to undersell the economic clout we built up by selling these and other materials in the open market.

Having money meant buying out coal mines and shutting them down. Having money meant financing ecological collection expeditions to locate and collect breeding populations of all the world's insects, plants, protozoa, aquatic life, etc.

Having money meant buying the materials required to set up a farmhouse on an open prairie on a planet that had no infrastructure whatsoever. Each of the items needed for that farmhouse, and its neighbors, and for the blacksmith's shop, and the dentist's office, all the minor industries that an 1850's world needed? Yes, we bought that.

Space was the premium, not mass. We encouraged ultra-compact delivery of as many items from our required list as possible. Many countries around the world lined up to get our contracts, and to exceed in various ways the minimum standards for what a container held.

Sure, they'd have the cookware, plows, seeds for all the vegetables, books with plastic no-rot paper, axes, looms, cotton-gins, etc. BUT, they'd also have, tucked into odd places, a silver flute plus repair parts and tools, or a set of 30 neodymium compasses nested together, or a sturdy pair of binoculars with unbreakable AlON lenses. They added things. We opened random containers and checked what was in them, and found these things and awarded more contracts (and financial bonuses) to the companies that made the best ones.

Our pace increased, loading more and more people aboard, an ever-increasing rate, approaching the one-year mark with 75 million people aboard the Maple.

As best we could figure, this was about 10% of her max capacity given life support limitations, and a good safety margin in case a planet couldn't be found inside of 20 years and thus with 5x more people (kids) aboard.

There were a LOT of refugees in the world.

== Chapter: Arrivals and Departures ==

At the one year mark, a second ship arrived into orbit and I had a decision to make.

Would I depart with the Maple? Or, would I stay and help load the Larch?

The decision wasn't easy.

The ship's computer on the Maple helped out, throwing various considerations to me, but I knew in the long run I had to decide based on the best chances for humanity as a whole.

In the end, as may or may not be obvious, I elected to stay to help load successive ships.

Transferring my flag, I kept using the same apparatus to collect ecological samples and people and cargo, and just kept the process up.

The Maple closed her doors, albeit with some significant crew having migrated to follow me - most of my family. This included by this time Pri and her twins Cloe and Zelle, Julie and her kids David and Lisa, and Dani, and her twin daughters Summer and Cheri.

One of the things my ring did, unbeknownst to me at the time, was to utterly negate birth control, and stimulate dual ovulations to produce larger numbers of twins than normal.

Our family was bigger, for sure, but everyone was well loved.

My next questions are whether we're going to depart on the Oak or the Birch. Maybe we'll wait for the Sycamore. Wherever we go, though, we'll be together, and mankind will be safer, protected by thousands of light years and utter anonymity - we won't have a clue where they're going. We don't want to know. It's safer that way.

Eventually, maybe, we'll build our own Seed ships, and take the job the Hob started to even more possible worlds, if there are other intelligent species out there who have problems with self-destructive tendencies. We might be able to pay it forward a little.

== Chapter: Epilogue / Publisher's Notes ==

This Vastly Important historical document was discovered and translated recently at the excavation of Tycho Base on Martia, a 3,000 year old archeological site left over from the Seeders Era. Measures of technology onboard the Birch showed the seedship's origins to indeed be non-human, confirming that humanity didn't develop reaction-thrusters themselves.

Additional materials describing the cultural references made in this document, including the military-industrial socio-political environment of Old Earth, are available in the archive.

A Boswell Critical Edition of this work, with facing pages explaining the terms and customs, is available from this publisher either in English or Marit, though for the full understanding we urge readers to purchase and study the English Version Study Guide to capture the full meanings of the words.

Scale and cutaway models of the Seedship Birch are available in the gift shop opposite the Obelisk.

Visiting Moon-D and the 12 colonies requires parental permission and can only happen during aphelion months. See the docent or your school leadership for details.

== The End ==