The Traveler

I awoke to the sound of screeching metal and static.

"Robert, the vessel is being drawn into the orbit of a nearby moon. Forcefully, I might add."

The voice was familiar, effeminate, and frustratingly deadpan given the circumstances. The small starship I was in was indeed being pulled, jerked, and jostled in the direction of a planetoid close by. With no viewports - 'the passenger is to remain in stasis until destination is reached or overrides engaged and does not need to enjoy the view' - I had to rely on the report of AMI, the literal voice in my head, as well as the multitude of sensors and screens and gizmos that comprised my little cabin.

From the panicked beeping of the various control panels, the intermittent and unpredictable rocking of the ship, and the readings on some of the finer measurement tools built in, I figured we were being drawn in by several tractor beams situated either around us or on that aforementioned planet. It was both surprising and not.

"It appears that we are encompassed by several gravitational augmentation beams. Should I engage the boosters?"

I shook my head. AMI - also known as the Autonomous Memory Interface - was a blessing and a curse at times. Whoever thought to make the voice of the AI meant to 'guide humanity to its next step in evolution' sound exactly the same as a GPS was a sick or stupid individual - or both. As helpful as it was - when not in stasis waiting for this or a crash landing to occur - I think I'd go (more) insane after a few hundred years of nothing but that voice to talk to.

"We're already in 'em. Dunno if we can get out." My voice cracked, more than a bit rough from disuse. Couple dozen or hundred years in silence does that to someone, especially when you don't /have/ to talk out loud for your only companion to hear you. But something - or someone - was pulling us towards this moon, so I better get back into the practice. "Might as well wait and see where they take us."

"According to my calculations, it is the moon that I mentioned moments ago."

Did I mentioned AMI was an artificial intelligence? Embedded within a chip in my brain? You'd think by now it would better understand figures of speech, but I guess it's only had so much to reference since we were both blasted off of Earth alongside a dozen other single-passenger 'Exploration Vessels.' I guess some background information couldn't hurt.

The year is roughly 2098, give or take a few decades. Space-time dilation and all. Humanity has progressed rapidly with the development of integrated biomechanical chips and the realization of fully synthetic, easily replaceable organs. We no longer die of old age, suffer from obesity or malnutrition, or fall ill to cancer or other conventional viruses and sicknesses.

Since that has become the case, overpopulation, overconsumption, and over-development have run rampant, to the point where Earth is becoming increasingly uninhabitable for all but the wealthiest. The scientists estimate we still have 'plenty of time' to either fix the problem or find a solution, but that changes very little. Enough people have realized that we're on the downhill slope that they took matters into their own hands - and started colonization efforts. The only problem is we didn't know for sure what planets were and weren't habitable. But if humans can no longer die of 'natural causes,' who's to say they can't live indefinitely in space too?

So now we've come full circle. I'm Robert, last name irrelevant, an ageless - or maybe deathless - primarily-synthetic human with a not-so-supercomputer in his head, shot out into space in hopes of finding a new home for humanity. If only it were that simple. First impressions, considering I've been awoken by my ship being commandeered from afar and sucked down to a planet's surface, is that there may indeed be habitable planets out there, and we may not be the only ones trying to inhabit them. Go figure. I can only hope we don't repeat past mistakes. With each of us 'Explorers' having a database of all of humanity's history and knowledge in our heads, it sounds easy enough, but if we know one thing about humanity, it's to never underestimate our capacity for fucking things up royally. Let's go meet some aliens.

"Technically, Robert, we are the aliens in this story."

I sighed. "Thank you, AMI."