Pod (1)

Darling, I'm here in my pod, safe, but alone, whizzing through space at close to the speed of light, destination New Earth, flag in my bag ready to stake my claim. I hope you're proud of me. The first colonist, founder of the new human race.

 

I'm travelling faster than any human has ever travelled, yet inside my pod all is calm, no change is visible in a static universe. The view is amazing, 24-hour night sky, no distracting man-made light, just stars in their element.  Sometimes I switch off all of pod's machinery, lie floating in zero-gravity and savour the still and the starlight. Wow!  Sometimes this is the greatest adventure ever.  I wish you could be here, but of course you can't, there's no room in my pod for two.

 

It's mad that we're apart, let alone apart in this way, separated by a billion miles and every second ever further.  We were so close, like two satellites in the same orbit, united by a force stronger than gravity, a force called love.  We could have stayed in that orbit forever, but now we're speeding away from each other at unimaginable speed, parted forever.

 

I'm so sorry I couldn't bring you.  But the rules were clear, the pods would never fly with two people in them, a pod that large could never reach the required speed.  I can't be with you Geoff, I can't save you, but I can have your babies, lots of them, a whole test-tube full, and they'll have a whole new planet to play on.  None of those worries about the flat not being big enough, our children will have a world to themselves. Our children Geoff, I'm going to have a whole world's worth of our children.

 

Silly me, I'm crying, can't record a simple message, don't know how I'm going to manage the founding an entire race thing.

 

My pod is no bigger than our bathroom at home.  I have to work, sleep and relax in the same chair, and, yes, go to the bathroom on it, though I use the Adapter to ensure that my waste is jettisoned straight into space. For exercise I use Floormat, a running machine, which I also use to play simulated tennis, football, hockey or cricket against Computer.  Computer always wins, its computing capacity is sufficient to govern an entire planet so it's pretty good at everything it does, although it still struggles with the rules of cricket.  

 

You used to win every game we played, couldn't help yourself, just like Computer.  You'd have been a perfect candidate for Coloniser, if only you weren't a man.

 

Gravity is only switched on when I'm working, to save energy I sleep in free-float, which is very relaxing. Sometimes I pee in free-float too, which is an incredible experience, you've no idea how uninhibited it is just to gush out and see your pee floating around you.  Of course, I have the filter system on, to ensure it's all immediately sucked out into cyberspace.  One wondrous moment of freedom isn't worth eleven years stinking of your own piss.

 

Best of all, of course, is sex in space, sex in zero gravity.  Not that I have sex now, being on my own, Computer may be able to simulate tennis to Wimbledon Champion standard, but there are some things that even he can't replace completely.  But before I left, in the test period when I was acclimatising myself to zero gravity, they let you join me. 

 

Well, you probably remember, I know I will never forget, letting you strip me naked, seeing my clothes float off one by one, then throwing your clothes away one item at a time, until we were both floating around, completely starkers. You floated off, but luckily I managed to grab hold of you and we clung to each other like we've never clung to each other before.  Eventually you managed to penetrate me, more by luck than anything else, and we had to cling to each other with every sinew and muscle in our bodies to stop it slipping out. 

 

We had sex not just on the ceiling, but all around that gravitation unit, positions even pigeons haven't managed before. That's the closest I've ever felt to anyone, every centimetre of skin that touched yours was important, not just for the sensory significance, but because touch was the only thing holding us together.  Then, as you came, we both lost concentration, causing your willy to slip out and sperm started to float everywhere, like a salty snow shower.

 

We were watched, indeed filmed, at all times, but we didn't care, how often do you get to fuck in zero gravity? Anyway, everyone in the observation room was destined to die on a doomed planet, so what did I care what they thought of me? Well, until it was over and I did feel a tiny bit awkward; there I stood, future saviour of the human race, naked, clothes scattered who knows where, covered in sweat and semen.  Mind you, I bet I wasn't the only girl who tried it.

 

I still have the recording, which I watch from time to time, when I need to; well you know, relax and let my hair down. Computer must think I'm a right slut.

 

xxx

 

A friend asked me shortly before I left, if this is something I'd do if the Earth wasn't under threat.  An eleven year mission to found a new planet, knowing I'd never see anyone I know ever again, but being the first human to step foot on an alien, habitable world.

 

My answer was that I don't know.  I'm not sure, even now, that I completely grasp the reality. It's crazy. 

 

The honour is incredible.  To be one of the 1,001 people on the whole of planet Earth who met the criteria for Coloniser, to be one of the 1,000 women who actually made it into the pods.  Obviously it's a shame there weren't 1,001 pods, but the expense of each pod is phenomenal. I pity the woman who didn't make it, that's one heck of a job interview to cock up. I would say I wonder what happened to her, but I know, she'll fizzle away with the rest of the Earth when the sun gets big and hungry, forever regretting her bungled answer to the question 'Why do you think you'd make a good person to colonise a new planet?’ 

 

It's a shame there won't be any men.  It's a shame that you couldn't have flown in one of the other pods.  I could have got there first, lit the first fire on the new planet, roasted the first pig and had dinner ready for when you arrived, your slippers warming by the fire.  But, of course, there are no men in the pods; they contribute nothing you can't fit into a test tube.  Colonisers must be able to self-fertilise, fly a spaceship and raise a new Earth; multitasking they call it. Even I only just qualified, one of the leading biochemists on the planet, with a side degree in astrophysics, fit, healthy, even good-looking, but at 25 I was only just young enough. Fertility will be as important as brains, agility and fitness; as soon as I get there I must breed like a Victorian housefrau.   

 

It's going to be a strange colony when we all arrive, if we all arrive. 1,000 women, hopefully all of us will be pregnant, some of us may already have babies, all in our early thirties, none of us will have had sex for over a decade.  If there are any men on that New Earth they've got a treat coming.

 

I'm planning to have our first baby here in pod, a few months before we land. There won't be space to have one before then, not enough food and energy for a growing child. Ten years before I can have kid, I guess I'll be really broody by then.

 

You must have seen the launch of my pod; it was filmed and would have been shown on every screen in the wide world.  Pod was fired up in a 420,000 mile circle of electromagnets, slung round and round for days until it reached sufficient momentum to power away at something approaching the speed of light, like the smallest particles of matter that were whizzed round the Small, Medium and Large Hydron Colliders at the beginning of science. It must have looked spectacular, or perhaps just a bit of a blur. Inside, of course, it was still as a summer day, quiet as the dead of night, lonely as only a one-woman pod can be.

 

I'm in the first of the pods, selected by lot, chance not merit deciding our fates.  The launch went safely, no damage done to the electromagnetic sling, so hopefully the others should all be behind me, whizzing their own ways through space. 

 

Imagine how terrible I'll be alone on New Earth waiting for the others to arrive, wondering if I've come to the wrong planet by mistake (I was always hopeless with directions), whether I'm wearing the right dress and forever fluffing the lines of my welcome speech in my head.  Remember how I wet my knickers when they made me Professor and I had to give that talk to the Academy, imagine the sheer heights of humiliation I could bring on myself hosting a restart-humanity-here party.

 

Though I will get lonely on my journey I should never get bored: I have a new planet to explore.  Analysis of the feeds from Lander will be the most important part of my preparation. When I left Earth there were an estimated twenty-one Earth years before the sun engulfed us, no time to wait for full details.  All we knew was that Lander had found a planet with flora and fauna, water, an atmosphere and gravity similar to Earth.  What sort of flora and fauna who knows, there wasn't time to care, my goldilocks planet could be full of ravenous bears bored of eating too much porridge and desperate for human flesh.

 

I could be travelling eleven light years to deliver myself up as lunch to an animal we haven't even got round to categorising; every biologist's nightmare.  

 

The Lander feeds I've just started to receive are the first ever pictures of the new planet, my new planet, the New Earth.  So far all I've seen is trees, lovely leafy-green trees.  Hopefully there'll be no dangerous predators and I'll be able to enjoy lots of woodland walks in the sunshine with my new family; our new family.  Think of it Geoff, those precious sperm you shed are flying with me across the vastness of space, 11 light years away, approximately 10.9999999999999 light years further than any sperm have gone before.  Even Steve, the guy at college girls called The Ejaculator, couldn't manage further than the ceiling, yet your sperm is flying to the stars.

 

My pod is the greatest technology ever built by man, yet behind on Earth there are still some believers who welcome the coming Armageddon with rapture: rapture, gospel and bunting.  It was foretold they say.  Yes, foretold by schoolgirl-level science, I knew this was coming when I was nine, the sun was running out of gas and about to go supernova, just as thousands of other stars have been observed to do over the millennia. I wonder if life-forms on those star-systems and planets were as happy at their annihilation as the religious nuts on Earth appear to be. 

 

Some religious people take an opposing, though equally silly stance, and say that the New Earth was chosen for us by God. Poppycock, of course, it took thousands of years of studying the nearby star systems for a suitable planet, trillions of trillions of dollars, God could have saved us a lot of time and money if he'd bothered to help out.  I'm sure he could have devised a better method than pods and electromagnetic sling-shots, unless he's planning on me taking out an evil giant en route.

 

I guess that in the religious mind I must be some sort of chosen one, and that at least is literally true.  If anything happens to my sister ships, or if the launch slings were damaged when firing my pod, it will be just me, a one woman colonist.  My family will be the Adam and Eves of a new creation, fumbling their way in some new Eden. I would be the new god, capable of deciding the morals and mores of a new society, deciding which species live and die (no spiders on my planet, yuk), my every word a biblical quote, my every decision weighed down by eternal importance. 

 

Anyway, I've been talking too long already, I'm going to have to go. I have Lander feeds to watch, then it'll be time to float off up to bed. 

 

I'm sorry you'll never get this message, Geoff.  If I sent it the day I arrive, you'd receive it 2,000 years after the Earth was engulfed by the swollen red-giant fireball that used to be the sun, such are the peculiarities of space-time.  By the time I arrive on my new planet the Earth and everyone on it will have been showered by superhot plasma, the very oceans boiled away. Everyone dead, and yes, that includes you, Geoff.  I am talking to a ghost.

 

I'm crying again, sorry. I never could get the hang of these podcasts.  What hope is there for me Geoff, how will I ever survive eleven years alone like this?