Avalon Dreaming

Prologue

In the beginning...

The Arcanis was the cumulative work of 14 years to develop the most energy efficient and longest sustaining space travel since man first headed into the stars. It was a massive ship, bigger then any space going ship ever created. It took years to develop and was finally complete in November of 2018, filled with the most state of the art technology of the time. The most massive project since the giant hydrogen collider was created. It was to be the most advanced creation the modern world would ever achieve. The scientific community marvelled at its new wonder. Silently the world waited.

Inside was a wide array of scientific equipment, wires, specialized fuel cells – and the LSG. A living space garden, combined with an advanced sustained ecology lab. The computer systems alone were so advanced that they had to be guarded at all times, for fear of tampering or spies.

It seemed strange that this monstrous creation which caused such uproar was meant, not for handfuls of the worlds most intelligent scientists, but for 8 sleeping children barely old enough to fill out their jumpsuits. Children, who spent 5 of their 12 years in intensive training for this day. The launch of the Arcanis on its 8 year voyage into space to find L562.

This little planet somewhere past Pluto and Eris had been spotted for years. However it took years for the satellite Oryan to send the incredible resonance images back from its computer systems to the main computers on earth. Not only was L562 a mysterious beautifully similar planet to earth but it also seemed to support life. The vibrant colour photography of the alien world beamed back pictures so close to our own planet from space that at first even our own scientists thought it was a hoax. After all, a self sustaining planet so close to our own was almost thought unachievable. A brilliant beacon of hope in a dim lifeless world of space.

It was a beautiful atmospheric rock complete with ice, snow, mountain caps and remnants of lots of frozen oceans. Although it was obvious from the images that most of this planet was still frozen in massive amounts of ice; where there is water there is life.

The temptation of this inaccessible proof that our existence was not random had become the jewel of every scientist's dreams. It became a feverish technological race to create Arcanis and to move everything into place for this fictitious dream to become our reality. Our future.

Years could have waited, come and gone, with this tantalizing information kept silent from the populace until the governments and scientific community was ready to share it. But now, it was becoming more then just a curious idea. Now it was becoming a necessity to discover other resources. In fact, less a necessity then pure survival of the human race.

The world's water supply was slowly diminishing. After the giant oil spill of 2010, Earth's oceans never fully recovered. It was the whales that first harrowed our end. When the first dead whales started to beach themselves on the shores we knew this had been more then just the political disaster as was reported. This was a global earth shattering problem that everyone had hoped would simply be ignored.

Finally all the human pollution of Earth caught up with the human race – and it was finally starting to mount a significant attack.

Eventually it affected rivers, creeks, and even streams. Our water was contaminated. Although drinking sources could be cleaned the process of filtering took the quantity of our reserves lower and lower. People were dying. Not just on a minor scale but a massive threat that could eliminate the human populace just as the animals were.

Humans would become extinct if nothing happened. Following in the trends of the great whales were the sharks, the fish and the coral living reefs. Already the forests were dying, the rain was killing birds and mutating cattle. Meat was becoming toxic to eat. The ecosystem was broken and the food chain was now in chaos.

If this new world had usable clean ice as it seemed to indicate in abundance; this was the hope the world was looking for. A new world, a new clean surface to start again. And when the news reports finally broke open and explained about the Arcanis project – the world rejoiced, even when their information was slightly distorted. Because one never tells the entire story.

This wasn't to bring back clean water. This wasn't to somehow save the planet. This was to create a world accessible only to those deemed worthy and to leave the others behind. It was the first encampment to what would be the new world order on L562.

It was a mission of salvation for the greedy. A lifeboat only meant to save the elite on a dying world.

Hailed as our last chance for life – this craft already shrouded in lies, betrayal, and last options took to the stars with it's 8 children, the seeds of a new world, sleeping in stasis for the long journey.

The world held its collective breath. For a while everyone worldwide saw the brilliant images of the Arcanis, the sleek triangular ship, blasting off in triumph. However 8 years is a very long time for a journey to take, especially on a world that has its own problems.

Quietly the news reports and announcements about the journeys progress had been buried under the news reports of disasters and deaths happening all around them within the first year.

Dying cattle and the eliminations of farms followed in the second year. Soon only one solution remained – blood was still clean. And the massacres started. People were killing their own animals so their thirst could be quenched by something liquid. Murder was on the rise; and cannibalism was becoming far more common.

Soon blood born diseases were given the freedom they needed to survive and epidemics started strangling the small hold people had on a failing idea. The human body was not meant to survive without water. You could fool it, you could cheat it – but eventually biology would win.

Life was not salvageable. The world was in chaos. Nature was cleansing mankind from it's soiled ground.

There were no news reports when the second ship, the sister to the Arcanis was released into the atmosphere. A desperate attempt by desperate people for a dream that the Arcanis offered. It was the ship carrying the stasis elite. Those with enough deep pockets to be sent out to find what new world the Arcanis was supposed to settle for them.

It would be the last attempt man would ever make.

6 ½ years into the 8 year voyage of the Arcanis the radios on earth finally went silent. One could only assume that it was then that the final silence triumphed the end of the earthbound human race. Their soiled legacy to be buried and corroded in the violent aftermath of their own destruction.