The Arrival (flash fiction)

The Arrival

The computer systems aboard our starship awoke us from our long hibernation. We all slowly awoke with long hair and raging hunger. According to our computer, we had finally arrived at our destination after silently voyaging for millennia through the depths of black void. I looked at the viewscreen: before us was a planet with wide oceans and continents. The planet was so impossibly blue it stood out in sharp relief against the blackness of space around us. This was to be our new home where we could begin again, and hopefully not destroy the biosphere a second time…

Joanne Fisher

Word count: 99

This was a second thought regarding the Carrot Ranch’s prompt on impossibly blue.

I read recently the problem with the idea of using hibernation to travel large distances in space is that it would require a lot of calories. Bears, for example, have to eat a lot of food before they hibernate in the winter, otherwise they wouldn’t survive it, and humans would have to do the same. Unfortunately even if you began the journey morbidly obese you still wouldn’t get very far with current technology (probably not even out of our solar system). Thus traveling huge distances of space using hibernation wouldn’t feasibly work. There are several of other ways of getting humanity across the stars however. Firstly you could put the crew into cryogenic storage instead and try to revive them once they arrive at the destination (this could have a high fatality rate). Secondly, forget sending people and send a 3D biological printer and just print out humans (as many as you need) once you get there. This would be more practical as it means you wouldn’t have to worry having life support systems on the ship itself. Thirdly, invent a warp drive or faster than light drive that actually works. Fourthly, hopefully find out that wormholes do exist…

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©️2023 Joanne Fisher

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