The Distance from the Sun to the Earth

     A nation planted, so concerned with gain

     As the seasons come and go, greater grows the pain

     And far too many feelin’ the strain

     When will there be a harvest for the world?

     ‘Harvest for the World,’ The Isley Brothers

     The distance from the Sun to the Earth is approximately ninety-three million miles, or one astronomical unit, which is close to the distance displayed on my monitor as I wake, somewhat surprisingly, as I thought I’d be dead.

A light breeze from the air conditioning unit flicks my hair gently as I look about me, groggy and disappointingly intact after the explosion. A quiet whir is the only sound, what light there is comes from the sleek monitor within arm’s reach, and of course a viewing panel allows me to take in the spectacular and endless beauty of space.

     Space is tight, in here, I mean. It’s no more than a slim bed encased in a large, streamlined coffin whizzing through the cosmos. I can breathe, I can see and feel, my fingers holding the nylon restraints preventing me from drifting about, not that there’s anywhere for me to drift to. My mouth and lips are dry, so I gratefully pull the thin drinking tube towards me.

     I check out the ‘in-flight entertainment,’ a sop to anyone looking to distract themselves on their journey. There’s not a lot to watch, a few archived movies from the old information age, no point investing in films no one will remember. Toilet arrangements are rudimentary: working with the design team, I made sure not to spend time and money on anything elaborate.

     So, here I am. I can see the stars I can’t see back home. They’re so much brighter than I imagined, sparkling, piercingly brilliant in varieties of colour and intensity. The sun, my closest source of light, illuminates any objects capturing and reflecting its rays. Around me I see spinning splinters of light, travelling at the same speed, I presume, in the same direction, glittering. They must be the remaining fragments of our ship, zooming through the void with me. It’s an awe inspiring, melancholy sight.

     My enormous migrant vessel, ‘Mary Rose,’ one of fifty, left Earth, I guess, a week ago, judging by the distance I’ve travelled. Flights have been running for nearly a year. The ambitious target of a hundred annual departures is close to being achieved. There were nearly a thousand of us aboard, all volunteers on this particular flight, all desperate to be start new lives in new homes. We’re the last convoy of ‘Star Settlers’ this year, a dreadful name dreamt up by some PR agency I brought in to market the ‘solution.’

Take off, and the rough jostling and pressure of the G forces was more uncomfortable than I’d envisaged, despite the ‘orientation’ workshops my team rolls out globally. All prospective settlers have to attend. I’d give feedback on my experience, but why bother?

     No point panicking, it won’t help. I wake to find myself, one of the architects of the ‘solution,’ if that’s how history remembers me, on my way.

#

     If I go back far enough, it all started with the ‘Urchin’ virus. Once it took hold, it was unrelenting and vicious. The population was decimated. By the time an inoculation was discovered all we were left with were scientists and officials, the odd genetic outlier who shrugged off the virus, and those wealthy enough to abandon their fellow humans and hide away. There was no one left to tend to animals, or harvest crops. As a species we ground to a halt, our numbers dwindled, and we slipped backwards into a new dark age. That was nearly two hundred years ago.    

     Humans remembered enough to move on. Progress came quickly; the new age of enlightenment, then a new age of industry, followed by sudden leaps into a new age of technology and information. Nations fell, then resurfaced. Boundaries and beliefs were shelved for the benefit of mutual survival because boundaries divided us and believing in something is different from knowing. Of course, old habits die hard; skirmishes over land and resources, over gods and prophets, escalated inevitably into wars. We can be a resourceful, innovative, and social species, yet at our core we are cruel, violent, and selfish. Then we suffered the eruption.

#

     There are no communication channels installed in the pod. I made sure of that. If anyone wakes, then there’s no use calling for help. Your final destination, at the agricultural station, well, no-one’s going to care how you arrive. I don’t suffer from claustrophobia, but, with only distant stars and the speeding fragments of the ‘Mary Rose’ for company, I reach for the button I insisted on being installed. A light blend of opioids mixes with my oxygen, and I’m calm.

     I’m lucky that the spin of the pod is slow, allowing me to see various objects near and far, for a little time. There’s no sense of up or down. I see what looks like a large piece of the bridge of the ‘Mary Rose,’ a short distance away, spiralling gracefully. The crew must be gone, wiped out in the explosion. Me, I was in my pod already, as were all of the settlers; a carefully screened group of human beings with the skills and attitudes we look for. I don’t feel lonely, despite being alone. It’s a state I’m used to.

     A revolving object catches my eye. I gaze at a slender ovoid coming closer, my mildly opiate haze not entirely robbing me of my curiosity, fingers reaching to the viewing panel, sensing the cold of the void around me. The viewing panels aren’t designed for us to look out, but to make assessing the arrivals quicker by the operating bots. I smile, the object, now clearly a pod like mine, drifts closer, and I make out a figure inside, smiling. I wave but there’s no response.

The other pod, turning ever so slightly faster than mine, comes closer, closer, and the smiling face is nearly upon me. It’s not a smile, it’s a grinning skull behind charred, sooty glass; the skeletal remains of someone burned alive as their pod ejected from the ‘Mary Rose.’ The sedatives comfort me, else I might just reach for the button that dumps my oxygen.

#

     The agricultural station is fully automated. There was a lot of handwringing about ethics amongst us, I recall. Who would staff it, who would manage the arrivals and process them?

     I, and my colleagues, were a community of scientists and engineers, invited by the Western League of Nations and Pan-Asian Republics, to devise a strategic response to the parlous state humanity was in. Our resources were growing increasingly scarce.

The huge volcanic eruption in Yellowstone brought our tentative forays into land use down around our ears. Our skies fell dark, land poisoned under ash and toxic rains. Endless winters. Famine brought more conflict, we hadn’t learned our lessons from history. Yet again, humanity faltered.

     Our food came from huge factories; lab grown proteins and synthesised fats and carbohydrates. We became a largely inanimate species grown lazy and flabby, people cooped away in their rudimentary homes, eating, watching TV.

Under pewter skies, streaked blood red, gangs roamed the lawless zones; looting, raping, murdering. Human flesh was in high demand by those who could afford it.

#

     “Daddy, why do we keep hiding?”

     My son, Archie, was difficult to pacify when the raid siren shrilled. Natalie and I would race to our shelter, bolting the storm door.

     “There are dangerous people outside who might hurt us. We come down here, so they leave us alone.”

     “Why?”

     I’d look at Natalie and she at me, unable to find the words. Instead, we’d lie still, trying to keep him quiet with whispered stories of the old times, of when we had blue skies, when we grew our own food.

     “Before the virus, we had cars, boats, and planes. Before the volcano we had warm sunny days and crisp, cold winters.”

When Natalie fell pregnant with Archie, an accident of course, we were horrified. How could we, in good conscience, and both of us scientists, consider bringing a child into this nightmare? Terminations had been outlawed by the current administration, erroneously convinced on a policy of repopulation. We made the best of a bad lot. I hadn’t appreciated how much I could love my son. He was the most wonderful mistake I ever made.

     “Why can’t we see the sun anymore?”

#

     No idea was off the table. For weeks the team, made up of experts in different disciplines from different continents, explored concept after concept. Arguments raged, tempers flared, normally passive colleagues turned over tables, shouted into each other’s faces, even coming to blows. Humanity’s worst traits were never far away. After two months of creating sustainable scenarios for the planet, there was only one idea we all agreed on. Gradually, guided by limitations in technology, it came together, uncomfortably, shockingly.

     My team blueprinted the ‘solution.’ We had to build an off-planet environment, capable of delivering sustainable food, by harnessing the sun. The siting of a vast agricultural base had to be a considerable distance from the earth; our existing technology could only harness the sun’s rays if they were weakened by the distance of one astronomical unit from Earth.

We had to ensure there was enough nutrient within that environment to grow what we needed, quickly and efficiently. We modelled ideas, tested and tested again, as the bleak truth dawned. The Earth no longer had enough organic matter to provide what we needed.

#

     After what happened, I buried myself in work. Senior leaders were concerned about me. I had to undertake various assessments of course; trauma counselling, screenings to ensure my work remained unbiased and unaffected. As it was working was the only way I could cope as the issue remained, a seemingly hopeless task, of creating the growing mediums to grow and harvest crops on an industrial scale.

It was a night in late August, the ash and smoke of Yellowstone painting the sky an endless grey, when I had the idea. I sat alone at home, undisturbed. I freed my mind to go deep and dark, burrowing for inspiration. Then, I had it. It was bleak, it was brutal, unspeakable, yet it would solve our problem. I kept my own counsel at first, sitting night after night at my cobbled together computer, harvested from old parts, always working late, preparing to present my ‘solution.’

I didn’t discuss my concept with my friends and colleagues. I faced the gathered contingent of the allied agencies, throat dry, voice barely audible. There was uproar. Scientists, sociologists, politicians, religious leaders, all bawling into my face.

“How can you even suggest such things?”

“What you’re suggesting is madness.”

“You’re finished, you hear!”

I sat calmly in the eye of the storm, and waited.

A day later there was a knock at my office door and three people entered, silently. Our chief space scientist, the environmental advisor and the agency’s envoy.

“We need to discuss your proposal.”

#

There’s a bright reflection from something ahead. I look at the distance travelled and yes, I’m close to the agricultural base. As I grow nearer its vastness is overwhelming. Huge domed structures containing the growing plains, several gigantic solar arrays powering the climate controls and farming machinery. I drift closer, the scale of the structures boggling my mind. I’ve only ever seen images, drawings, scale models. This is the consequence of grief, of my endless despair and absolute fury.

#

My plan, approved in secret, was a Trojan horse. Sold as one thing to get the funding and rubber stamping for those more problematic areas. Those of us in the inner circle stayed silent; us scientists abjuring our consciences, becoming bedfellows with political pragmatists and industrial leaders.

‘Star Settlers’ was launched at the same time construction of the station began. We had an ambitious, five-year timeframe to get the ‘solution’ off the ground. Celebrities were conscripted to sell the story.

Your new life starts here!

Sign up now for a better future for you and your loved ones.

Off planet living offers clean air, clear skies, fresh food, safe neighbourhoods, and careers. Live the life you’ve always dreamed of.

Visit ‘Star Settlers’ agencies in your region, or through your online media provider.

     Demand crashed the website. Pop-up drop-in centres staffed by friendly and informed agents were swamped. In some places the military had to be engaged to control the rioting, as people fought to be first in line to escape their poisoned, barren Earth. I watched the footage with some amusement, to the bafflement of my colleagues.

“What’s so funny about this? It’s desperate.”

I agreed.

Over the next five years the agricultural station was constructed at the same distance from the Earth to the Sun, only in the opposite direction. I worked with multiple teams on the transport options, settling on large bulk carriers that would carry smaller, individual ‘people pods’ to be returned and reused. It was an elegant, efficient solution of transporting people to their destination.

#

I gaze up at the underside of my destination as the automated controls feed me into the flightpath for my pod. It’s a magnificent sight. Natalie would have been so proud, and Archie, it would have blown his mind.

I feel the pod juddering as it adjusts its trajectory and I fall in line with the hundreds of other surviving pods ejected from the ‘Mary Rose.’ We form a conveyor belt, of sorts, gliding into the heart of the station. I’m one of the few who already knows what they will marvel at, those lucky ones who survived the wreck. Sudden bright lights make me squint and turn my head, and the pod stops with a thud. I breathe a sigh of relief. I’ve arrived.

#

Before I dreamt up my ‘solution,’ I’d been leading a team on utilising hydroponics to grow vegetables in volcanic ash. No matter how we tweaked or engineered plant DNA, results were useless. I had been working later than normal when a news alert popped up on my phone. A hostile gang raid had been reported near my home region. I was forced to stay in the building until an all clear was sounded. I tried to call Natalie, but it went unanswered. She’d be in the bunker with Archie.

I finally got home to find the front door busted in.

“Natalie? Archie?”

I called and ran from room to room. The place had been ransacked, drawers pulled out, cupboards wide open, photographs in frames smashed. I stood at the open bunker door. A small, bloodied teddy bear lay in the front yard, the dead grass of the lawn torn up by tyres. They hadn’t made it.

Days later, I remained inconsolable, sleeping on my office floor, desperate for news.

General Fisher, head of the home guard, came to see me. “We managed to catch and exterminate the gang leaders, and their underlings confirmed our fears. I’m sorry professor, but your wife and son were taken and sold to the meat trade. Their last known whereabouts was at the butchery on Keane Street.”

I threw up.

#

The ‘solution’? Quite simple, really. We needed a good, rich source of material capable of growing crops. We lacked decent soils on Earth, but we had certain types of silt and clay we could export. Fertilisers only work if there is decent loam and I had read of our ancestors sacrificing people in their fields to ensure a bountiful harvest, enriching the soil with blood and bone. Losing Natalie and Archie shaped an inevitable strategy.

“My proposal is to focus on two factors to ensure our survival. We must eat, and we must manage our populations. We must make difficult decisions. Our only solution is to transplant, from our stressed and depleted planet, the most bountiful source of rich and plentiful nutrients, human beings. Convert them into the fertilisers and soils.”

“Are you suggesting we ship our dead bodies out into space to grow crops?” someone called.

“No. Not our dead. The living. Those amongst us who consume the most, yet contribute the least; the criminals, the indolent, the violent, the ‘useless eaters’.”

After the disbelief and disgust had died away, mine was the only model that stacked up. Quietly, I had the backing to proceed. Longer term, we would market the ‘solution’ as an opportunity to flee this world for a better one. Psychometric analysis would select the low hanging fruit for the second wave, but for now we’d use our incarcerated criminals, our defective souls, our costly elderly populations, and begin phase one.

Strapped into their survival pods within our huge transport vessels they’d blast off and be delivered to the agriculture station, or, ‘The Reaper,’ as I’d named it, alive to ensure freshness On arriving they’d be processed: torn to shreds, composted, and scattered upon the new prairies in space. Their sacrifices would feed a planet.

#

Planting an explosive device on the ‘Mary Rose’ was my endgame; ultimately futile, as I’m now one of thousands of survivors. I can just about see people moving, trying to release themselves from the straps holding them in place. Pointless. Those bindings won’t be freed until their pod arrives at the processing station, where the automated grappling arm will unscrew the pod’s base, bindings release, and by their feet they’re yanked out and carried to the scrounger where they’re dropped in.

Archie adored large, complex machines. I did this for him, and Natalie.

I can hear screams and the crunching and grinding of the mincing machinery. My pod stops and I smile. The base of the pod turns and through my viewing panel I’m scanned to confirm my arrival. My legs are gripped tight. I know what’s coming and I welcome it. It’s what we all deserve.