Lights out on the Starship City

Interview with an engineer who worked on the Starship City, the Year 2074

"To advance the knowledge of our solar system for the benefit of all" That's what they told us when we were making this project, what a load of bullshit honestly. Back then I thought I was helping to create a new future. There was no way it could go wrong, it was just too big of a project to fail. As long as we had the funding resources and time of course. But we didn't have any of those three to the extent we needed it.

What do you mean by that Mr. Brown?

Do you know what this program was originally called? Just Starship, nothing else, but that CE-fucking-O thought of the genius idea of making it a city. A fucking city. Do you know how many people the ISS holds at maximum? 6. Fucking 6, and we thought we could have 1048. Half of them being some billionaire looking to have a vacation for a year. We needed to complete the project 10 years earlier than planned and with less reliable parts.

Less reliable parts?

There was this story in the papers that mocked us for spending $1,000 on button covers, some political commentator had the gall to say that he could make one for the same quality for a dollar. A prime example of wasted expenses they said. So that CEO to save face from his investors promised to make sure no more wasteful spending happened again. He also ensured "Higher Quality Reliability, all at a Lower Price" That was a lie, we were just using cheaper parts of dubious quality. We replaced the $1,000 button covers with ones gotten from Amazon for $20. Consumer Grade shit, we almost accidentally launched the project five months early because someone was leaning a bit too hard on one of the button covers. But if anything it's a miracle that our team managed to even launch the thing, not less have it running perfectly for 6 months.

Did you raise any objections to the limited resources and the time to launch?

No... I wanted to, and I should have. But it wouldn't have mattered to that prick, he actively punished and fired anyone who raised objections about how much funding and time we really needed. We even predicted by the third month in space, something catastrophic would happen, some poor intern sent the report to the CEO, and got laughed out of the office.

Why did you work on this project Mr. Brown?

Why else, they paid well, lots of benefits and I could tell my children that I worked on the "Most Historic Achievement of Mankind." No one would have declined that offer. Wouldn't you have?

Do you have any regrets in joining the program?

Someone else should have had my job.

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Interview with a survivor of Starship City.

Why did you go on the Starship City?

They had this free ticket raffle to go on the Starship, 48 people would be able to go on the ship for free. I joined online because why not? No harm in not trying. Then I got an email saying I won. I would be treated the same as a billionaire for a year, and have a once and a lifetime experience, lucky me right?

Was that a joke?

Yes... it was, I was stuck in space for 2 years with minimal power and rationing. I would call that more unlucky wouldn't you say?

Could you tell me what it was like before the power went out?

It was amazing, they had this massive a massive banquet the first day, grapes, wine from the 1950s, champagne, steaks, steaks in space! They had this laboratory where they grew meat from scratch so that we could eat actual meat. They had all the luxuries fitting for Saudi nobles, career politicians, CEO's, wealthy oligarchs, even literal queens. Queen Elizabeth II was on that ship, I cannot believe that she's still alive too. We ate like royalty every day, and we were treated as such.

What do you mean we?

Well, I made a small clique with all the other lottery winners, called ourselves the Lotto Clique. We were all different in a way, in race sexuality, and class. Some of us were college students, most of us were blue-collar workers, hell 2 of us were homeless before the ship launched. But we all had the connection that we were different from the blue blood who had the money to pay for the ticket.

When did you know that something was wrong with the ship?

It was in the fifth month on the journey, one day, we stopped having meat for our meals, instead, we had nuts for our protein. I thought it was a bit strange so I went to ask one of the maintenance workers I befriended. What he said shocked me, he told me that there seemed to be a major problem with the ship's power and that some major systems might need to go down, that included the Meat Laboratory because it costed too much power. He also told me not to share this with anyone, so I didn't. But I did start stocking up on food just in case. People thought I was insane for stocking up on food but thank Christ I did.

What was it like when the power went out?

When the lights out on the Starship City, most people thought it would just be for that day. That's what the staff told them, and they did still get their meals. But my maintenance friend told me otherwise, that half of the solar panels were damaged beyond repair because of inadequate parts, and that we were stuck in orbit on Jupiter until help could arrive. Told me the captain was going to announce strict regiments and rationings tomorrow to conserve what little power we had. Once the announcement went off everyone was scared shitless. It was anarchy. Imagine knowing that you're in a spaceship where the power was dwindling, help was literally planets away, and the situation could only get worse every day. Some people couldn't handle it, they went nuts and caused a mess to say the least.

Tell me how it was living in the blackout?

I would group the blackout days into 4 stages, the Mass Panic, the Lockdown, The Second Panic, and the Rescue. The first few weeks were the Mass Panic, people breaking shit trying to leave on escape pods, god knows what they wanted to escape to, nearest human civilization was 400 million miles away. Those were the worst days. The ones people wrote about, even that movie too. Who smuggles a gun into a spaceship?

I'd say that the First Panic was the worst, the most amount of people died, the most amount of unrest and general instability. A lot of folks were angry that they weren't getting as much food as the staff.

Then was the lockdown, when everything stabilized, and the people who went nuts either died or was stuck orbiting Jupiter on a pod. It was gloomy and without hardly any hope. The only reason we were still sane was that we knew that Earth was planning a rescue, and we could talk with our family. That was before comms broke.

The Second Panic was when we learned that we couldn't communicate with earth anymore because it broke. By then all of our energy went to creating food oxygen and maintaining our orbit around Jupiter. When the communications went down a lot of people just gave up. It was the only source of our hope that we could live a normal life again, and that hope was gone. We stayed like that without hope for another year.

The rescue was, unexpected. We knew our sistership was being refitted and fully repaired to try to save us, but as we knew it, it wasn't even close to being done. And we didn't want another ship stuck in space. But then apparently, for the first time in a year, the announcements were different. They said that our sister ship, the now-famous USS Savior would be coming to evacuate our ship in a week. They were close enough that our broken comms could still talk to each other. And on March 16th, we were saved.

How did you survive?

I survived because we stuck together. At that time of the Mass Panic, our Lotto Clique decided to share food as one collective. We didn't want to be apart of the restlessness, and rioting that was also going on at the time. We had extra food from when I stocked up, and the food from each of our rations. We had to defend our food though. We did things we regret. There was this family, I think they were all heads of some company, but now they looked like they came straight from the Great Depression. They needed food and begged us for some. We refused saying that they could just buy it with the amount of money they had. Their child died of malnutrision. It was our fault for not giving any food to them.

I'm sorr-

Don't be, every single person did something they regretted on that ship. Is it ok if we end this interview now?

It's fine.

Thank you.