All is Lost

A brilliant scientist leads an attempt to save humankind from his planet and faces tests of his intelligence and morals along the way.

Prologue
There is so much unknown in the universe, and humans have a drive in them to understand as much as they can. There is an internal will inside of man that convinces them to always innovate, always learn more, expand their reach, solve the mysteries, process as much knowledge as possible, and then pass it down. Man has become arrogant. The society today has decided that they can solve all problems, think they can end world hunger, think they can understand everything in the universe that is thrown their way, even though they cannot even understand each other as they battle away, destroy their environment, and the species around them that previously ruled the land. What do they really know? How much farther can they physically advance before it is humanly impossible? How wide is their perspective? What if there was another kind of life out there that was far more advanced than Earth could even care to compete with?
Thousands of years before the conception of life on Earth, in an entirely separate galaxy, there was another solar system that contained this life. On the planet of Shezara, in the Trateran Solar System, lived a people of advancement past humans of Earth. The planet was comparable to that of Earth, about twenty percent bigger, but was about seventy percent water. It had one moon and there were seven other planets in the system, although no others contained life. The biggest civilization on Shezara was the Alyrian States, but there were two other civilizations that took the other land, and were only slightly smaller. All three civilizations; however, were made up of the same race of people, only were split up by geography. They decided separate governments would work best for each region. The other two civilizations, Khara and Triton, hailed to the government of the Alyrian States. The people had become advanced enough that space travel was already being utilized to slowly expand farther and farther away, in terms of exploration of other solar systems. They were working on the finishing of a realistic way of traveling long distances, even other galaxies, through faster-than-light travel (which was much farther away in terms of a time-table than the alternative) and also a form of stasis, that would suspend the life of a person so that they can survive the long travel, and then wake up when they get there. Their cities were mostly electronically operated and plant life was sustained almost exclusively within labs. They used small, flying projectile vehicles to move throughout their cities and to other cities on a wider scale. Cars had never been invented in the evolution of their technology. The general population had evolved to a higher intelligence and physical fitness than that of a “normal” human. People’s lifespans were growing as the generations went on, and the average life expectancy had gone up to 110 years old. Most people were healthy and brilliant. However, the Shezaran people had hit a “brick wall” of sorts in both their physical and technological evolution. Due to this, there were growing problems supporting the amount of life and civilization that the planet contained. People were living too long to sustain. There was no practical way to support the life the way that they were living and so they decided synthetically create more land. Therefore, they could expand to support the life, and it worked…for about 100 years. Then, everything started to go downhill. The planet was growing unstable, natural disasters were common. Death tolls reached the millions. The world was growing in disarray and people began to panic. Many people thought the planet was cleansing itself and destroying how it had been damaged. They said nature could not handle this amount of advancement and support this type of civilization. Most of the scientists said it was just a natural occurrence that their people had nothing to do with. The bottom line was that the planet was destroying everything the Shezaran people had worked centuries for, regardless of who or what was to blame. At this point in which the planet was being destroyed, it would equate to roughly 500 years before mankind arose on Earth, to put it into perspective. It became more and more obvious that the space programs were no longer just working towards exploring other parts of space, but now looking to inhabit a new planet. The core of Shezara was heating at a rate in which it would kill all life within 200 years. This story follows the man who led the attempt to finish their intergalactic travel and hope to find a new place in which they could rebuild. They had identified a planet in a galaxy not far off, believed to be uninhabited, it was similar to Shezara. This new planet was one of the hundredth of thousands of planets, labeled 3RTh (each planet named by a number up to 1000 assigned to a leading letter and then combination of letters following). The dilemma was that the rate in which Shezara was heating, not enough ships were going to be constructed in time and only about twenty percent of the entire population would be able to make the trip. The question was who deserves to go.
William John Carter had lived a simple life, his mother a professor and his father a local politician. William followed his parents plan for him, attended the top university, got married, and got a job with the most important government program just about in the whole world, SISP (Shezaran Intergalactic Space Program), which was ran as a global space program by all three civilizations. Will felt that he could best use his knowledge in this profession and that most other government programs were a waste of money. However, most politicians felt that money would be better spent sustaining Shezara instead of looking into other planets. As a result, many cuts to SISP had already been made over the years. It would become the single most important program the Shezaran people had left when Shezara fell apart. William Carter’s work pre-destruction and post very well might make him the single most important Shezaran to ever live.
End of Prologue

William Carter awoke, a dead man. He was freezing. He had no idea who he was or where he was. He looked around, at the fluctuating lights and heard a deafening siren coming from all over. Dashboards surrounded him full of technology he felt like he had never seen before, yet he knew how to use them. He turned the siren off out of instinct, using the controls as if someone was using his arms like a puppet. As he began to use these controls, flashes had started coming back to him. He was remembering events that had occurred, and then he remembered that he had recorded everything that happened in his ships’ logs. He immediately went to these logs in order to recall everything.
Log 1
The latest tropical storm had just hit a week previous and the death tolls were still coming in, it was already at over 500,000 people. Nature took no hostages. It was devastating the population, which has decreased by over ten percent in the past five years. All of the ecological scientists told us that we had 200 years before the planet’s core overheated and the planet could no longer be habitable anymore, but we all feared that it would be much, much sooner. The storms would not let up, it was one after another and people were in constant danger. Much of the land that we had synthesized to support more people has already been eroded away by the storms and earthquakes. I was being pressed to finish my projects on long distance and intergalactic travel, yet my funding had been cut each year previous, because most politicians believed that the ecologists needed the funding to save the planet, but at this point I fear we are past the point of saving. We need to focus solely on preserving our people and finding a way to civilize a new planet. I am so close to figuring out the FTLD (Faster-than-light-drive), which would be our most efficient way of moving because it would take much less time, and with less time, there are less problems. I am just missing one component. I have found a way to sustain a stable window to travel through sub-space in, but I cannot create a stable opening to that window, the ship could instantly be destroyed the second it enters the window if I cannot stabilize it. The second project, which is far more practical, is the sub-light engines and stasis pods, in which the passengers would be suspended in stasis until the destination is reached. The sub-light engines are ready, but stasis tech is relatively new to our people and I do not feel comfortable yet in suspending people in them for what could be thousands of years. The bottom line is, this planet can no longer be our home. We need to save as many of our people as we can, and staying here is only causing more loss of life. We need to put all of our funding into SISP so that I can finish my work, but many have begun to question my abilities because I have not done anything major since completing the sub-light engines. They have no idea, however; that I am the only one who can save them.
It was all coming back to him, Will was remembering Shezara, all of his work, his family, his life. At that moment a horrible thought struck down through Will’s body. Where was his family? Another. Where was anyone? Why was it just him in the ship? He checked the life signs aboard the ship and breathed a bittersweet sigh of relief, there were two other life signs in the bridge. He had no idea who they were yet, but the feeling that he was not completely alone was enough to give him even one breath of fresh air. “Please be my family” he thought. He almost did not want to see if it was not them. He ventured down the halls, that he had supposedly designed, as it came back to him. He came up to the bridge doors and swiped the mechanism to open them. He saw who these two life signs were.
Log 2
10 years have passed, and these scientists estimations have shortened, every one of them. “We have 200 years” …” we only have 100 now” …”70” …”30” … ”within the next two decades this planet will no longer be habitable”. Of course, now that these scientists can no longer do anything, the fate of the planet falls on me and my team as a last resort. If they had just listened to me, then maybe we would not be playing catch up with our very survival as a race. I’m no ecologist and based on the years leading up to today, I could have told you we did not have 200 years, maybe another 50 if we were lucky. Now it’s all on SISP, I finally got the funding that I had always lobbied for, but it was starting to feel too little too late. We enhanced our stasis tech and were now confident in a long-term suspension in stasis if absolutely necessary, but viewed it as a last resort because even though it could sustain the life for as long as needed, we have no idea what the effects on the body or mind will be after thousands of years. A short trip in stasis would be much safer, if we could travel through sub-space. We have also finally discovered a way to create a stable window for the FTLD and sustain that stable window, but more problems have arisen. Based on my simulations, we may not have enough power output to exit the sub-space window. We would be stuck in sub-space and the ship would be destroyed if we tried to exit it. There was also the issue of power sustainability. We had enough power to make the trip, but we are concerned that while traveling through sub-space, power could be drawn from sub-space and could overload the ship. We do not yet have the best understanding of sub-space, but we know that energy flows through it and that energy could overload our systems. We just don’t have enough time. We should have been working these problems out for the past 10 years and now they expect me and my team to just save all of them with the little time we have left. There is also the problem that even if we can figure out how to successfully travel, that there aren’t enough ships to take everyone. Previously we thought that only about twenty percent of the population could get taken, but now that has dropped to roughly one percent. We are talking about 120,000,000 people. Who could’ve imagined that is what our race would fall to. We hit the highest peak in our existence, just before the fall, and the fall was harder than anyone could have ever predicted. They should have just listened to me. Now they are not even informing the people that only a fraction of us will be able to go. They should have listened to me. My wife, Ariel, is worried but I keep assuring her that the government has it handled. I know that she and my children will get taken along if we have to leave so I have been slowly getting ready for that. I have spoken with my father too, alerting him that he should begin to prepare for such a thing to happen. However, my father seems a lot less worried about this whole situation, he has always been a calm and collected man so I guess I don’t really have to worry.
The doors opened. It was not his family. His heart dropped. It was a scientist he worked with, Thomas Gerard and his wife. He hurried to help them, trying to ignore the feeling of absolute emptiness that had just hit him. They woke up and were in the same condition Will was in when he woke up. Will had concluded that the stasis must have caused a temporary amnesia but that reading through recordings and the logs had helped him regain his memory. They were confused and scared but Will worked them through it and they began to remember. Will brought them back to their personal logs and they went back to remembering.
Log 3
Something is happening. The scientists aren’t talking to anyone and the government is not telling me anything. This cannot be it, this is way too soon, but the tremors are getting worse and people are starting to get mobilized. I’ve called the capital multiple times but no answer. I need to know if I should go get my family or keep working. We are not ready, not even close. The ships that we have ready can hold maybe 100,000 people each. We’re going to have leave too many of them behind. Finally, I get an answer. They are saying that its happening now. The planet’s core is overloading we are going to have to leave within the next thirty days before it becomes unbearable. I told Ariel we need to get our things ready to board the ships when they are ready because it could happen at any moment, and I will not have time to get my family ready with all of the work I have to finish on the ships. I have been sleeping here for the past month, trying to get as much work done as I can, but I need to make sure I go home just one more time to get my family here. I need to explain to my children why we are leaving. My son, Jack, is a bright young kid so I think he will take it well and realize the weight of what is going on. It is my daughter, Ava, that I am worried about. She is just a happy little girl with no cares in the world and I do not want to put all of this on her. She will struggle with not being able to take all of her things with her and for her to understand why we are leaving our home and all of her friends behind.
Will was getting overwhelmed he needed a break. It was as if his entire life was being downloaded into his mind all at once. He decided to take a break from the logs and assess what was happening right now. He had remembered all he needed to, to operate the ship. He realized they must have landed. “Why hadn’t I checked the ships’ time logs?” he thought. The time logs matched the time they would land 3RTh. They were there. He checked the atmosphere and living conditions outside and it matched their readings. He opened the door and stepped out.
Log 4
Today is the day. We have to leave today. I rushed home to gather my family as soon as I heard the news. I explained to my daughter that we are just going on a little trip, and that some of her friends will be on the other ships when we get there. This calmed her down a little bit but I could see it in her eyes that she was scared and just wanted to go home, this killed me. Jack was helpful and assisted me with our belongings. He had grown up a lot over this past year, helping a lot around the house as I’ve been gone a lot working on my projects. He resented me at first, I knew he did, but he has come to appreciate the circumstances as I have told him what I’ve been doing with my time. My wife is my biggest supporter and I don’t know many women that would have stayed with me after what we have been through in the past couple years. I have been distant, suspicious, and gone for many of the years but she has always stayed by my side and supported me through it all. I do not know what I would do without her, I have spent about ninety percent of my life with her, even knowing each other in our childhood. After I gathered my family, I went to tell my father as quickly as I could, but this did not go the way I planned. They did not want to go. They both just said they were ready for their time if it really was their time, and that they felt they would be taking up valuable space on the ships when they would be gone soon after we arrive to the new planet anyways. I pleaded with them to just come with and that they would be valuable, especially with my father and his experience in leading people. They refused to listen, but I could not take this, I could not leave them behind like this. No matter what I said they would not listen. He assured me that I can take care of my family and I can lead better than he ever could, then we said goodbye. As long as I can save my family that is the only reason I am living for. They are my number one priority and they always have been. We have six ships that will hold about 600,000 people. That is what we will start over with. Everyone will be put into stasis for the trip and the ship will wake everyone up when we arrive. The ships will be how we rebuild, they dig into the ground and lock in a root system, and our technology will synthetically begin rebuilding a livable civilization. We have marked the landing spots on 3RTh and we are ready to begin boarding the ships. All of our families are already here and will board first. All of a sudden a massive earthquake hit and a tidal wave was heading right for us. We just started boarding everyone with the clothes on their back. This was it we had to board now and leave otherwise all of our work was going to be destroyed and that would be the end of us. Everyone was in a panic trying to get on board but they were not all going to make it. We had to leave. We made the choice to close the doors early or we would not make it so we began to ready the engines and take off. They started off and we entered space. We had left them behind. This was it, we are the best and brightest of our people chosen to continue on and save our kind. Only about 350,000 were able to board but it was either cut it off early or we all would have died. It had to be done. We are now readying to start the FTLD and start our journey. The planet is beginning to go critical, and when it does we need to not be here. It will create a blast big enough to incinerate the entire solar system. We have to jump now. I alerted the other ships that we have to try and jump prematurely otherwise we will not make it. There just isn’t enough time, we have to go now. The captains of the other ships argued that we cannot go now we do not know what happens if we jump before the FTLD is ready, we could all be destroyed. We have to go now though so that we even have a chance. We begin the jump, the windows open up in front of us, but the planet is overloading behind us. It is interfering with some of the windows. They aren’t going to make it.
It was better than they had ever expected, there was green everywhere and flowing water within sight of the ship. It was the most beautiful thing Will had ever seen. The air was so much fresher than he had ever breathed on Shezara. He saw smoke off into the distance and decided to investigate. It was not a far walk, it was another one of the ships, but this was not a major ship, it was a shuttle. He walked up and opened the door.
Log 5
​My ship entered the window safely, but the readings showed that there had been a catastrophic failure in four of the other ships. So Shezara and all of the people on it were gone, four of the other ships were gone, and I have no idea how many people made it onto the other ship, but there were only one hundred on mine. My family was among those on my ship, I went to them and made sure they were ok and then I contacted the other ship and they reported that only about 61,000 people had made it onto theirs. All of those other people did not make it because of me. Maybe if we had waited just a few moments longer the window would have been safe. It’s all my fault.
​He opened the shuttle door, and there were his children. They were still in the stasis pods, but Will was overcome with joy. He did not know why they were in this shuttle or how the shuttle even got here but he did not care. He checked their vitals and they were clear so he took them out. They showed the same symptoms as himself and the Gerard’s, but Will talked them through it and it began to come back to them. They returned to the main ship and rested. Will was through almost all of the logs and remembered most of what happened, but there was one person from his family still missing, his wife.
Log 6
​I prepped the pods for the long sleep, I wanted to double and triple check my calculations before we went in because if any of us woke up early, there would be no way to reenter the pod we exited. The math checked out and we started helping the passengers enter. It was down to all of the scientists on board and our families, it was about 15 left. The other ship had already all gone into the stasis and were on their way, but I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t help but feel I was living on borrowed time or that maybe I didn’t even deserve to be alive. I let all of those people down. I told them that they would be ok, and yet they weren’t. They were relying on me and I let them down. I thought I knew it all but I didn’t and now they were dead because of me. The last of us began entering stasis when all of a sudden the ship hit a huge volt of power that shook the entire ship. Power fluctuated all throughout and there were secondary explosions along the ship. It was the issue of the FTLD drawing outside energy from sub-space and it was overloading the engines. I thought that I had calculated that and solved the problem but I fear that prematurely jumping into sub-space may have altered the calculations. I rushed to the bridge and on my way there my wife stopped me and asked me what was going on. I told her that I had it handled and that she doesn’t need to worry about it, to just go back to the stasis pods and get ready to enter. She knew when I was lying and could see the worry in my eyes. I lied to her about having everything under control, as I did for multiple years, and she could see right through me. As I walked away from her I heard a deafening blast behind me. The hull had been breached in the corridor we were in and the roof was exposed to space. The vacuum of the abyss pulled her away from me but I grabbed onto her hand for dear life as I held on to a pole with my other hand. I have never felt the amount of pain and agony that I did struggling to hold on, but somehow I found the strength from within. Time seemed to have stopped as I held on. All I could see was her. I thought about all the times she kept me in check, and tightened my grip. I thought about how she had spent much of her life in a struggle because of me, and tightened my grip. I thought about how much I loved her and how I was always too ungrateful to realize what I had in her and that I really could not fix everything, but then my grip began to loosen against my will. She looked at me and I told her that I had her, but she could see it in my eyes, we were both about to be pulled into the breach within seconds. I looked at her and I knew what she was about to do, I begged her to please just hold on and I could get us out of this but we both knew that was a lie. We both knew that we were about to die, but I would give my life a thousand times over to save her. Then she looked at me and said “they’re going to need you” and she let go. I screamed in agony as I saw her body get jolted away from me. I struggled to get around the doorway and seal the corridor. It didn’t feel real. The woman that I had just spent my entire life with was gone in an instant...for me. Why me? Why wasn’t I dead yet? I wanted to be dead. I failed her just like I failed everyone else. I told her everything would be ok just like everyone else, but it’s not ok. I just sat there as the ship was falling apart before my eyes, my entire life replaying in my head. This was the end, and the only person to blame was me. I thought I could fix all of it, I thought I knew everything, I thought I was the one, but I was wrong.
​Will knew everything that had directly preceded the demise of Shezara now and most of what followed. He knew the fate of his wife, and it killed him. He no longer wanted to live. The sheer emotion of feeling it was all his fault, and remembering these memories, in which he was completely helpless, was too much for him. He had no other will to live but then he remembered his children. He must go on for them, no matter how painful, because this is all bigger than him. This is the survival of an entire race that they were in charge of rebuilding.
Log 7
​I deliriously got up and made my way to the bridge. I got there and there was Thomas Gerard, full of panic, and running from monitor to monitor trying to solve the problem. I joined him and we isolated the problem, and solved it by breaking off the front of the ship, which included the stasis pods. This way we could control the power input as it was only being isolated to one area. The loss in doing this was that we let go of the bulk of our technology that is going to be needed in order to rebuild once we get to 3RTh. We made our way to the stasis and there were my two children, asking where their mother was, but I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t tell them that I once again failed my people and my children. I told them that she was gathering a few things and then would go into stasis once she gets back. They said ok and I put them into their pods. It was just me left, I put Gerard into his and I was the last one. I contemplated not even getting in mine, just letting the life support do its thing and put me down. I felt that all of these people might be better off if I was no longer there to help. Gerard was a brilliant man and could fill my shoes if he was forced to, although he never had the confidence to do so. I sat there and began to feel lightheaded, I calculated in my head that I probably had about five minutes of air before I would black out. Then she called my name, it was my wife. Well it wasn’t her, I knew that, but she was there, with me in that moment. Tears rushed down my face and I apologized, all I wanted to do was be with her. She told me I had to go on but I couldn’t face it not after seeing her like this. She picked me up brought me to the pod and simply said “it’s not your time, they’re going to need you”. Then I went into the long sleep.
​That was the end of the logs. That was all he could remember up to, but what had happened to the other ship? Will went and scanned for the ship on the planet’s surface, but there were no readings that any other ships had landed besides the main and the shuttle. There was also the question as to why his children came down in a shuttle, and why Thomas, his wife, and Will were the only ones on the main that landed. Will came to Thomas and asked him if he had remembered anything after they had come out of stasis, but Thomas did not. Will decided that it was not important enough to continue and that they would work tomorrow on synthesizing the land around them so that they could rebuild their cities the next day, so they all went to sleep. During that night, Will had a very vivid dream, only it was more than a dream, it was a memory, the final memory…. Will woke up and exited the stasis pods, they had arrived at their destination, 3RTh. He now had to land the ship, that was already highly damaged from the power troubles they had experienced when first entering sub-space. He pulled Thomas out of his pod in order to assist him, and then also pulled out his children because he wanted to be with them in case the ship did not survive reentry. In the same way, Thomas awoke his wife. They decided it was not worth waking everyone else up if they were all going to die, and would just wake everyone up if they survived it. However, when he awoke his children, they asked where their mother was. He was overwhelmed with emotion as he had to tell two of the most important people in his life what had happened to their mother. They began to cry and they huddled together while Thomas worked on the reentry to the planet. They began their descent into the atmosphere and the ship began falling apart again, the turbulence was great and Will began to panic. He quickly ran to the shuttle, to put his kids into and send down, the shuttle was in strong enough condition to survive reentry on its own and had an autopilot feature to maneuver itself. Will, Thomas, and his wife stayed aboard the main because it had to be manually brought down and they would be dooming all of the others if they just abandoned ship. He put his children into the new stasis pods in the shuttle and told them not to worry, that they would be together again soon. As Will sent them and was walking back, the ship crash landed and Will got knocked unconscious, and so did Thomas and his wife. Will was out for about 12 hours before he awoke, a dead man.
​He remembered it all now, from being a child to working on Shezara to now. He also concluded that the reason he did not experience the initial amnesia from being taken out of stasis was because the ship woke him up, and was able to start filling in his memory right away. That process was interrupted from the turbulent landing and that is why he experienced confusion after they landed and he woke up. That was the same reason that all of the others experienced the amnesia, because they were woken up by him and not with the help of the ship. There was still some things he did not know, like what had happened to the other ship, and where the stasis pods from the main that had landed were. He and Thomas decided to go looking for the stasis pods the next day. They ventured off, and had concluded that the stasis pods were ejected during reentry as the ships’ auto mechanism, the ship sensed that the main might not make it, and sent the pods out on their own because they could survive reentry. They ventured about 5 miles and then they saw it. There was the rest of the crew. They went down and awoke the survivors. All in all, there were 55 of them that survived the crash. They explained what they could to the passengers and then guided them back to the main.
​By two weeks later everyone had regained their memory and were now working on a plan to rebuild. Will, however, made it a point to analyze Shezara and what had happened, leading up to the overload and destruction of it. He could not stop thinking about what had happened. As he analyzed the data, he concluded that it was their fault. All of their advancements, synthesizing new land to fit their needs, engineering the life to fit their needs, was altering the planet, and the only way the planet new how to respond, was by cleansing itself in a way. He brought his findings to the others and there were many different reactions. Many denied it and believed that it was nature running its course, many believed his findings, but the main question was why did it matter? Will answered “because we can’t let it happen again, we can’t doom our generations to come”. Everyone looked at each other in disbelief. Was he really saying what they all thought he was saying. “Yes you know what I am saying, we have to let all of it go, we have to destroy it”. He was referring to the technology that they had brought along. Much of the crowd erupted in disagreement, but Will argued that the most essential thing to understand about their past and their future….is that nature always wins. He called a vote, and they decided with a slight majority that the technology would be destroyed. This was the only way. If they had used it, they would have automatically put themselves on a path to destruction somewhere down the line for their descendants. That was it, they destroyed all of it and buried it. They had to now start over. They would hold with them the knowledge of a species far more advanced than anything ever seen on Earth, and yet their children and grandchildren would be living in mud huts and hunting for animals with their spears and hand-made knives, but this was the way it had to be.
(5 years later)
​They had now built a substantial settlement. This new place was different than Shezara, it felt more free. Will had been elected as the leader of the settlement shortly after they rid themselves of their technology, but some of the people still disagreed with the decision and did not want to follow Will. About 20 of them left about 3 months after the decision to start a new colony of their own. They had scouted out areas and traveled roughly 30 miles to build their settlement on a mountain ridge. Their leader, Quinn Grey, named their colony New Alyria. Will’s colony was named Orian, after the name of the ship that they had arrived in. Will and Grey had their differences. Will, however, was willing to maintain relations with the New Alyrians and tried to contact them multiple times, but Grey was still angry at Will’s actions and wanted nothing to do with him. Before they destroyed the ship, Will sent out a sub-space message to the Shyanne, the other ship that had successfully entered a sub space window when the Orian did. They should have arrived at the same time as the Orian and the only explanations that Will could conclude was that they either exited the window early, and had to travel the rest of the way with sub-space engines, or that the window was unstable and they were destroyed. Still, Will held out hope that they had survived, although he knew that he would probably never see them in his lifetime again. The message contained a list of the survivors and that they would be destroying the technology, along with his findings about why Shezara’s core overloaded. He hoped that if the Shyanne had more time, they could analyze it further and understand fully what happened. Still, the Orian settlement has been coming along, the population is now up by 13, bringing the total up to 48. Will had not talked to the New Alyrians in over four years, so he had no idea how well they had been advancing, or if they had even survived at all. The winters are unforgiving here and the summers are harsh. Still, living this way is almost freeing from their past lives full of programs and technology that did all of their work for them. Life was as good as to be expected.
(60 years later)

​Will lay on his death bed, with only time left to rest and think. He recalled all of the people he had lost along the way, he recalled the Shyanne that never showed up that carried his best friend, and recalled the beginning of the Orian settlement all the way up to that day. They had grown exponentially. Their population was up to 413 people, and they were living comfortably. Many of the original crew had already passed away. Will was one of the last 5 surviving crew members, and he did not have much time left. The crew had decided to limit what knowledge they passed down to the next generations, in order to slow the rate of evolution to a more natural rate. About 20 years ago, Quinn Grey showed up at the Orian’s settlement ready to make amends with Will. They talked it out, apparently the New Alyrian settlement was coming along, but at a much slower rate than that of the Orian’s. Grey explained that he had not anticipated how difficult the trek to the mountain top would be with more people and supplies and 5 of the people that followed him died along the journey. He felt responsible for them and admitted that he should have reached out to Will for help, but let his ego get the best of him. Still, they continued the venture until they arrived and started building housing, but the ground had loose topsoil and so it was difficult to build upon. They actually ended up abandoning that settlement and venturing another twenty miles until finding a prairie that was perfect, but 3 more people did not survive that part of the journey. Grey also admitted that he would have come back earlier but was afraid he would not survive the hike back. Their settlement is now around 100 people but they have still been facing their share of issues such as disease and poor leadership, ever since Grey died about 5 years ago. Will never thought that he should have been the man to lead the last effort to save the Shezaran people, even though he was the smartest man on the planet, and he still could not help but blame himself for everything that happened. He felt that if he had been better prepared for the end, instead of putting it off, that maybe his calculations could have been more precise and his people, including his wife would still be there. In the end, however; Will just wanted to be with his family, which had grown to be quite big at this point. His daughter had a husband and 3 children, one of which had a child of their own already. His son had a wife and 6 children, 2 of which had 2 children of their own, and a third who had a child on the way. The only person missing was his wife, and Will was ready to join her. His family all gathered around him, he had become very weak and was fading, Will only said “I’d give anything to bring you all home and be with her (his wife) again”. His son answered “We are home dad, and you will be with her soon”. It was on that day that William Carter died, and his grandson, William Carter, was born.
Their species would have to go through a whole new degeneration into the very base of a man. They would devolve into a primal species, and then evolve all the way into a new civilization, similar to that of the Shezaran people, but would never match them in their physical and technological evolution.
(Shortly after the arrival on 3RTh)
Will and his son had been adjusting to their lives for about three months, when they were looking off at the sunset, after a long day of hunting, when his son said to him. “We have not even named this place yet, what should we call it?” Will thought about all of the names that the Shezaran people had been debating before all of this happened and it had just been identified as their new home world. Some argued that it should be called Alyria, some argued it carry its previous name of Shezara, Tratera was in the discussion, but all of those names had seemed to much tied to the past, and too sophisticated. He thought of what would be simple, and he remembered the identification name for it…3RTh, and what his team used to call it and it seemed simple enough for him. Will looked at his son and said “Earth”, it’ll be called Earth.”
Epilogue
(Year 2250)
Earth has reached a point of advancement that rivals that of Shezara, but still doesn’t compare. They have visited the moon, set up a base, and even started a sizeable civilization on a neighboring planet named Mars. They continue to advance and strive to learn above all else. They still question where they came from and how their existence came to be. There had been a legend of a mysterious hero figure who ventured on a quest from a far off place and started a civilization here, and that all of the generations today could be traced back to him. Writings being traced back hundreds, and even thousands of years were consistent in this story, but this story was widely seen as just that. Many people believed it was actually just an allegory for God and this figure was actually fictional. This mysterious figure was believed to be named Carter. This legend exemplified everything that William had not wanted to happen. He did not want to be remembered, he did not want the civilization here to grow to the size that he did. He wanted to rewrite history as if he was never there, because that did not matter to him, all that mattered to him was that his people found some way to live on.
All of this advancement was not without struggle. Natural disasters had been plaguing Earth for about 50 years and geologists traced it back to the planet’s core, which was overheating. They believed this was the root cause of the natural disasters, but they had devised a technology in which they could control the climate. They believed this way they could stop the natural disasters, and stop the core from overheating. More technology was their answer, reminiscent of a past they never knew.
A bright young scientist from NASA has discovered a habitable planet in a neighboring solar system, in which an exploratory mission was planned to visit and explore the planet. Earth continued to struggle as the mission left.
(Year 2275)
The new planet has now been settled and about 100 inhabitants now live on it, continuing to explore it and survive. Suddenly the young scientist got a distress call from Earth and Mars. With the distress call was the last words of Earth and all of the data on the planet, including what went wrong. The planet’s core overloaded and their solar system was destroyed in the blast. Once again their people were orphaned and needed to start over and carry on an entire race. Except this time was different, this scientist knew that it was their fault, and was ready to accept what happened. He wouldn’t lie, ignore the problem and hope for the best. He would record everything he found, build a new civilization, and learn from their mistakes. If they knew what went wrong, they could prevent it from happening again. This time the technology would not control them, or so he hoped.

Author's Note

Ignore minor flaws in the correct science of it all, feedback on point of view shifts (third person main, first person on the logs), feedback on world building and character development