My homeworld. Among the crew, I am the only one who was born and raised here in the Tien Terra system. I can see the planet on the long-range sensors now, how it was before I was born. As I watch, I can see my grandfather spending his fortune building the first gateway, the signatures of spacecraft assembling the structural components from asteroid metals, and the exotic components being launched from Tien Terra Alpha. I can see the massive structure take shape at the L2 Lagrange point.
It all seems so close, so real, so now… I want to send a message to my father, telling him to have faith that grandfather will return. I feel like I am a time traveler… but I am not. All this happened long ago, a recording not in digital media, but in light itself.
In a few hours, if I chose to apply the sensors correctly, I could see my uncle driving my mother to the hospital, and possibly the car crash that could have killed me mere hours before my birth.
I watch the planets swiftly orbiting the sun, all in real-time footage, and I feel like some sort of foreign god, shooting towards the planets.
In less than one hundred kiloseconds, if all goes well, we will be sending shuttles to dock at the Zheng Lee Memorial Space Elevator Terminal.
We will be recruiting for a week. Mr. Landerson is leaving, unsurprisingly, and Zephyr seems intent on getting me a new first officer. She notes that she has grown too large to keep track of everything at one time, and would hardly be able to manage a crew of over 40 by herself. Instead, she wants me to step up and take on the role of captain, and get myself an executive officer who can execute my orders. Most of the current crew will be elevated to lead the relevant department. Maria will become Chief Engineer, Susana will become the head of the science department, Gestler will become Security Chief, etc. I suppose that the good doctor Tanaka will have some assistants.
And so many more positions. It’s not entirely surprising, given the size that Zephyr has become. I understand that she has quarters for 64 crew members now, without anyone having to share a room. I’ve gotten lost wandering her quiet corridors. I spend a lot of my time in her gardens, watching the projected sky, listening to the sway of the trees. Zephyr has a magnificent lounge, a gym complex, a cafeteria with a kitchen built to feed massive quantities of people. But all those places are too large, too quiet, too empty… they feel haunted, they feel abandoned. If I flipped a coin at every intersection, rolled a dice at every elevator, I think I could wander for days without seeing another living soul.
But all that will change. We will recruit and recruit and recruit. No lies, like last time, no deception. Pay will not be in credits, it will be in priceless experiences. And with priceless experience we will buy a crew to explore the stars.
And yet, I cannot help but wonder whether Zephyr could find a better captain than myself? I never really did that much. What will happen when there are a full 64 crewmembers? Or 128 crewmembers, if we use the bunks. Will I be able to manage that? Or should Zephyr find herself a different captain?
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