Journey to Proxima Centauri B

15 July

My dearest Lynn,

Liftoff was a success. We all entered cryo-sleep soon afterwards, after taking a moment to admire the view as we passed the dark side of the Moon. We all just reawakened today, everyone seems to be in good health except for Oscar, who has some mild side effects that are expected to clear up before we reach our destination. This is the first time that we’ve all been awake simultaneously since we broke HEO at the start of this expedition. Donna has checked the computers against our visual observations of celestial positions, and it seems that the engineers did their jobs well and the equipment has kept us on course as expected. Good spirits all around. Though I must admit it feels strange to wake up 6324 years later. Ship’s logs show the most recent message from home was more than 6 millenia ago. So the eight of us are on our own, with no hope of aid or rescue should trouble find us. 

For posterity, the ship’s crew consists of

Oscar Wells: xenobiologist & accomplished agronomist;

Donna Adams: astronomer, navigator, and pilot… we’ve nicknamed her our “busdriver;”

Artemis Clarke: chemist, engineer, and chief of maintenance;

Arnold Weir: mission commander, military hero, and veritable genius;

Scott Card: ship’s doctor, and once we land he’ll be our colonial physician;

Bob Taylor: mathematician and physicist;

Debbie Cole: Scott’s wife, amateur astronomer, professional plant geneticist;

Francesca Herbert: hydrologist, environmental scientist, chemist, and yours truly.

18 July

My dearest Lynn,

Absolutely nothing of note has happened for the past few days.  But we’ve all finally worked out the cramps and little aches associated with long-term cryo-sleep. The numbers say we should arrive on 23 September, which I remember is your birthday. Just please don’t ask me how old you would be, since the answer would probably make me cry. Until then, we’ll be sailing on through the black. Onward, to Proxima Centauri B!

26 July

My dearest Lynn,

We’re all starting to go a little bit stir-crazy. The ship is quite small, every inch of space has some function other than just being an inch of space. And the view never changes because the distance between stars is too vast to see any shifting in positions over such a short time span. It would be nice to stretch our legs and breathe non-recycled fresh air for a change. But other than that, I have no complaints. Things are progressing well. At least there are several of us here so the conversation hasn’t become stale yet. 

On a personal note… in my head, I know that I will never see you again. That everyone I knew is dead and gone. That the whole world will have changed drastically in ways that I can’t even imagine since I was last there. But out here in the black, without any real point of reference linking us to home, that realization hasn’t been able to sink in yet. It’s something that I know intellectually, but emotionally it still hasn’t hit me yet. Even so… just for the record, I do miss you, my darling little sister. I miss hearing your voice, I miss your smile, I even miss the way you would always ask me a million annoying questions and try to tag along when I was with my friends. We are a long way from home here, and we are very much alone. So of course I think of you often. This diary is my way of keeping your memory alive, by telling you about my journey it’s as if I can keep a part of you here with me. I hope you don’t mind, Lynn.

1 August

My dearest Lynn,

For the past few days, Bob has been claiming that he saw lights outside the ship. Of course we all think he is pulling our legs, just looking to create a distraction from the seemingly endless boredom out here in the blackness of space. Nobody takes him seriously. We just laugh and brush him off. But lately he’s becoming quite insistent. I hope he’s not actually going insane, because we’re all trapped in this tin can with him. Nothing else worth noting today. Same view, same comrades, same stale recycled air, same cramped bus. Not long to go though, just a few more weeks.

6 August

My dearest Lynn,

After several more days of the endless tedium of doing our jobs, keeping the ship clean and functioning, and trying not to get on each other’s nerves, I… well, I’m not sure how to say this without sounding crazy. It’s about Bob’s lights that I mentioned last week; I think I’ve seen them, too. If I see them again, I’ll have to report it to Arnold. But for now I’m just assuming Bob has made me a bit paranoid and I’m seeing things that aren’t really there.

8 August

My dearest Lynn,

I saw them again! The lights, out there in the dark. I got a clear view of them this time. They look like fireflies from back home. They even move like fireflies, swaying to and fro. They’re very soft lights, but in the black you don’t need to be very bright to be visible from a long distance. They flicker on and off at strange intervals, and they even have the ability to change their colors. These chromatic changes can apparently cover the entire visible spectrum. And when they’re switched off they may actually still be glowing, but in a spectral range that we can’t see – like UV or infrared. I can’t tell if they have any actual structure to them, or if they’re made entirely of light. But they are both fascinating and beautiful. I am about to report them to Arnold.

9 August

My dearest Lynn,

Excitement hastens my hand as I write this. Arnold has also seen the lights. Apparently so has everyone else, but we were all so afraid of being called crazy like Bob was that we didn’t want to say anything. So we each thought we were the only ones, that we were hallucinating or something. What’s more, today the lights put on a show for us, a sort of luminescent dance. It was perfectly choreographed. They arranged themselves in rings circling our spacecraft, and ran circles around it. First in one direction, then the other. Then they changed the angle of the rings and did it again. And again. And again. This went on for several hours before the lights dispersed. Which leads me to believe that it is not simply a cloud of plasma or fluorescent particles like Bob first thought. There seems to be some sort of sentience there, the way they cooperated. Perhaps they are trying to communicate with us? This could potentially be mankind’s first extraterrestrial encounter. Well, at least for us… back on Earth 6324 years have passed since we left, so perhaps the rest of humanity has already met with aliens? Who can say for sure? I was able to film part of the light show today, if Earth has developed technology by now that lets us communicate with home after we land, then I’ll try to send the video back there for everyone to see. Big news. Very exciting. Crew morale is the highest it’s been since we launched.

15 August

My dearest Lynn,

The lights have not appeared for several days. We’re not sure if they’re hiding from us, ignoring us, or planning to return later. Or perhaps we’ve simply left their territory. We’re not sure if they are friendly or hostile. We’re not even sure yet if they are truly a form of intelligent life. Opinions on them are mixed here, but at least it gives us something to talk about other than keeping inventory and the ship’s maintenance schedule. Business as usual otherwise. Sailing onward.

29 August

My dearest Lynn,

I haven’t recorded a diary entry for two weeks because I’ve been engrossed in my books. I broke out some of my personal effects early, to fight the encroaching boredom. I was going to wait and unpack it all at the new colony, but I needed something to do. I’ve been re-reading the “Apocalypse Man” series, from the beginning. I only just finished it, soon I’ll have to pack it away again for three more weeks. 

Regarding our illuminated visitors, we’ve seen no sign of them since the 10^th. Donna even agreed to let Bob and Oscar play with the ship’s exterior lights, hoping to attract them. But all we’ve seen out the windows are distant stars hanging in the dark void that surrounds us. And of course, Proxima Centauri is steadily growing larger in our view as we approach.

On another note, Oscar has been hanging around a lot. I mean, in my personal space – not just here on the ship, because where else would he go? I don’t mind, he’s a sweet and funny guy if you can get him to turn the nerd part of his brain off for a minute. And he has a cute butt. It was always part of the deal for this mission that we would be expected to pair up after we land, as we start getting the new colony established. Scott is married (happily I believe), Arnold is too strict for my taste – all about the mission and protocol, and Bob is too much of a goofball for me to take him seriously half the time. I think Oscar wouldn’t be a bad choice. So maybe I’ll start turning on my flirt game a bit, see if it leads anywhere.

13 September

My dearest Lynn,

We’re almost there. It’s been smooth sailing so far. Considering how long this journey has been, the fact that the ship is still intact and operational and we are all still alive is absolutely a miracle. And when you consider the speed involved (approximately 220,000 mph relative to our destination, on average) it’s a miracle we didn’t hit any micro-asteroids and explode on impact, or the cryo equipment didn’t quietly kill us all as we traveled across an interstellar space so dark that there is no such thing as “solar power” there. And then we had another sort of miracle, with the dancing lights around our ship last month. And today, perhaps another. There is a radar contact that doesn’t appear to be an asteroid. It’s bigger than our ship. A lot bigger. And it just changed its course to intercept ours. Nobody here knows what to expect next. Arnold is making sure we’re all armed, giving us safety and security training in case they board our ship with malicious intentions. Oscar is simply thrilled at the prospect of seeing an alien life form up close. Scott and Debbie are pretty stoic about it, they seem to prefer rechecking our stock of medicines and seeds to make sure everything survived the trip and will be ready for use when the time comes. I don’t know what to think about it, I honestly don’t know. But if Donna’s math is correct, they’ll cross our path next Thursday, and then we’ll know. One way, or the other. Until then, we continue sailing ahead through the black. Because we still have a mission to complete and a colony to establish. I just hope the neighbors will be welcoming. Otherwise we will have come a very long way for nothing.

18 September

My dearest Lynn,

It seems that the bus driver’s math was correct. The object didn’t alter course or change speed. They’ll be here tomorrow. I can already just barely see it out the window. I can’t see it well enough to describe it in any detail yet, it’s still too far away. But I am certain of this: it is not an asteroid. The realization has set in that this may be my final entry in this diary, if our great journey comes to a violent end tomorrow. Andrew has permitted us each to take an unscheduled shower tonight, though it will mean forgoing one of our remaining scheduled ones later in exchange, in order to put our best foot forward if a face-to-face encounter actually happens. The rest of the crew is digging things out of storage that might help us to communicate with an unknown species, or perhaps simply catch their interest. Music, literature, photographs, mathematical equations, even – as inspired by our earlier encounter – a choreographed lighting display using the ship’s exterior lamps. We will prepare to the best of our abilities, and then all we can do is wait and see what happens next. 

19 September

My dearest Lynn,

I must be brief. My heart is racing. They will intercept us in mere moments. They are NOT friendly. And we are NOT prepared for their sheer

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