The Solar System is Dead.

My name is Jerry and I’m a civvie flight engineer on board a military vessel. Since the war turned nuclear, it’s become essential that flight engineers are paired with pilots who have military training. If you want to travel in a productive capacity, it’s the least you can do to make things happen.<br><br>We’re about a year into the Mars-Jupiter Lagrange point. There are Solar System refugees from everywhere on board. We’re POC: Planets of Origin. I have heard flight engineers call Solar System refugees Solar System Sphincters (Triple S for short) when they are in the mess and the flight engineers are alone. I guess the POC/ Triple S label is what we get in lieu of a home Solar System. For example, my friend Carl is an POC Mars. He was on Mars when the war came to the Solar System. He made it off of Mars in time in a civilian ship, and was rescued by a passing fleet. The fleet brought him straight to the war. I guess it turned out well for us: we needed a radiologist, and I couldn’t imagine anyone better than him in the position. If he wasn’t able to radiate the intelligent alien cyborgs trying to shoot us out of the sky, they might have already destroyed us. I shudder thinking about it.<br><br>I’d better get back to the story quickly. This isn’t going to end happy, but most stories I’ve experienced don’t. I’m being called away.<br><br>…They’re asking me for the coordinates of the nearest star system. I didn’t realize we had made it so far. how long has it been since I’ve had a chance to look out the window? I think the last time I looked into space, we were somewhere near the orbit of Saturn. It was beautiful, but the war did a lot of damage to the planet. It’s not what it is in the pictures.<br><br>It was certainly a different era before the war. I remember when I was young, I would read Carl Sagan's Cosmos and imagine people living on Mars and beyond. It turned out that the future in Cosmos was just a fantasy. The future I have now is a flight from war. We are living in the whims of people we’ve never met, and our lives are on the line so Solar System governments can take their revenge.<br><br>This isn’t how I thought it would be. I always wanted Solar System governments to work together. I wanted Earth to be like an early version of the Federation in Star Trek, working towards civility. I don’t know why I was so optimistic. Everything Solar System governments ever did was fight and oppress and destroy. Those are the results of government and history. I guess I sound a little bitter.<br><br>“I’m reading the closest star is 6.9 light years away,” I said. “Estimated time to arrival is about a thousand years at 10%c.”<br><br>They’re telling me there’s no where to go but where the coordinates point. They’re saying that the Solar System is dead.<br><br>There’s a crew meeting called. I didn’t have to be in the room for long to understand what was happening. We’re Solar System refugees- flight engineers, scientists, and astronauts. The Solar System is on fire. We’re in a military vessel fleeing to the nearest star system. We’ve got the equipment of a battleship and the people of a research flight. It’s a miracle we’re even able to operate the damn thing. Our only chance is to get in cryosleep and hope our equipment doesn’t fail before we reach the star system. If we make it, we’ll be safe. We’ll be able to make a life for ourselves. If we don’t…well, I guess we’ll be here forever, and we can’t do anything about it.<br><br>The Solar System we once knew was already dead. There was nothing left. There was nothing left for us when Mars fell, or when Jupiter or Mercury were destroyed. We knew this already. We weren’t POC Earth or POC Jupiter or POC Mars. We were POC Solar System. We were tainted by the system wide flight from death. We were tainted by the fact that our home System was gone.<br><br>I was so lucky to make it out of the system, and I lived with that knowledge every day. I should have expected people would treat me like I was tainted, or unimportant, or Solar System Sphincter. I knew this already. I knew it the day I POC’d Solar System Solar System.<br><br>Everyone was so visibly upset during the meeting, except for me. POC Solar Solar System was already gone. It was the same on Mars. POC Mars was already gone when we Solar System Solar System refugees flighted in. I knew the same on POC Earth before I left. I didn’t understand what I was doing there. I flighted to Mars, and then fled to this ship. Now I’m fleeing the system. My whole life has been in flight.<br><br>I do wonder why we POC’s even exist. Why do we have to run? What do the aliens want with us? Why do they want to kill us?<br><br>The aliens haven’t been named- flight engineers call them the Awful Medium because they are as big as the face of a mountain but made out of Earth, and they are medium. They come out of the darkness, flight on a solar system killing beam of light, then leave into the darkness. They’re like locusts. The only difference is that they’re not interested in each other.<br><br>I feel like these aliens are the only things humans care about. They are the reason for every sacrifice, every moment of anger and pain. They are the reason human history is blanketed in war and oppression. Sometimes I wonder if it’s true that the Awful Medium are guilty of all this. I wonder if we have another common enemy that we don’t know about, that we’ve even begun to comprehend, that we’ve even begun to fight.<br><br>I have a feeling that this whole war has been a lie.<br><br>I have to go. I’m being called away to the cryo bay. If I make it to the exoplanet, maybe I’ll read this entry to my child. But for now, the Solar System is dead.