It was year 2069, he stood there looking at the sky.
Although the sky was clear, his mind was foggy. He needed to make a choice, a choice which he knew he would never forgive himself for doing regardless of whatever he chooses. He just stood there contemplating the effects of his choice, but he also knew, as the captain of the agency, he has to think of the betterment of humanity as a whole, even if it affects him adversely on a personal level, because already the temperatures are almost unbearable back on earth.
It all started in 2040, the Space Agency had sent some 100 people on a ship to Elysium — the latest discovered planet with the most chance of survival of the human race — in the ship called Alpha-1. It was an 85-year trip, so obviously, all the passengers were in cryo-sleep. Even in their sleep, they were dreaming, because after all they were the biggest dreamers, to have left everything and everyone they know behind for a fresh start, to a place where nothing was certain, to wake at a time, where with almost certainty, everyone you had ever known would be dead in a planet you left behind almost a century ago.
They dreamed of so much possibility, and they were told that their dream can be made a reality, the passengers dreamed of being the first architect, the first engineer, the first gardener, the first barber, etc on the new planet, a new world of Elysium.
But one thing they never dreamed of was, the fact that technology would be different then. Just 30 years into the journey, the geniuses back on the earth had built a spaceship that will take people to Elysium in just 22 years. So now, as the Captain of the agency stood there, thinking whether he must send a new ship, with a new crew into the void, knowing that they would reach there before the Alpha-1, most probably crushing all the dreams/hopes/purpose of everyone who was aboard the Alpha-1 because they wouldn’t be the first architect or the first engineer in the Elysium. He was imagining himself as a Passenger of Alpha-1. Imagine going to sleep for 85 years thinking, you will make an actual difference in the new world, but only to wake up to find a bunch of kids, already skateboarding on an already inhabited planet, to be back-stabbed by the same people, who gave you dreams of a new fresh start, to have left everything behind to be the first people on the fresh new land, only to find that, you weren’t even given the courtesy to have known that there is a possibility that it might be shattered one day.
He thought of the Apollo Crew, as he imagined, how it would have felt if NASA landed another set of the crew on the moon before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, except this time, the stakes were a thousand times larger. This is interstellar travel and hasn’t been done before.
Also this time, it was personal, the captain’s son was on the Apollo-1, he always dreamed that his son would one day, way up on a new plant, and breathe the air, as the first Marine Biologist in the new world.
So he stood there, looking at the sky, thinking of all the dreams he was about to kill.
