Somewhere in the universe, there is a central star. Close to it, there is an unfathomable cascade of material rich asteroids, dust, and clouds. Somewhere else in the universe, roughly equidistant of this star, are the nine worlds which the human species has spread toward. The journey to the central star takes about nine months for each of the colonies, and the central star acts as a way point and the transfer station Assembly.
Her pale finger traced the trajectory line across the otherwise empty black of the screen. The portal that let her see the world outside the capsule mirrored the screen. Empty black, for this stage of the journey. She was already drifting back to sleep, her hibernation umbilical gently tugging her away from consciousness, and into a thin smile. In the moment before she closed her eyes, she saw the text on the border of the screen.
Assembly.
She fell back into quiet unawareness.
The vessel continued to travel along its course, her life sustained by a complex series of machines and monitors. The capsule was silent, inert, and sterile. A Womb-class vessel. Space for one, and a nine month journey, from origin to destination.
Assembly was an empty outpost. Empty of humanity, except for a few days of each year. It had a complex series of environments within it, where robotic gardeners and efficient systems harvested resources from the nearby asteroids and synthesised fuel, sustenance, oxygen, and everything the travellers would require.
The Nine planets humanity had spread to, each roughly a nine month journey from Assembly, would send one person each standard Earth year. The computer would then determine where each of the nine would journey onward, to integrate with the other colonies.
Who got sent to the station was the business of each individual colony. The selection process for some colonies was random, others were more particular. Some sent their best, some sent their worst. Some used it as a way exile undesirables from their planets.
Some of the colonies welcomed their new residents with joy, love and open arms. Others were more sceptical and even imprisoned those from the other planets. Sometimes they imprisoned the best and brightest. As a medium of cultural interchange, there were suspicious successes.
All the same, the emissaries of humanity would be redistributed at a rate of one per year. It was all that Assembly could support.
Assembly was an ageing station. There were no plans to replace or rejuvenate it, and some thought this to be a great loss. It was initially thought the robots could repair and maintain the station indefinitely, but they couldn't account for all the things that might go wrong with such a terrifically complex system, and it wasn't a place that could support long term human habitation, given its early-space-era construction.
The colonies of the nine conducted trade almost constantly - but this was all unmanned, automated and transactional. Only the nine, each year could witness the deterioration of Assembly, and they were at the mercy of an ageing station.
Hers was not the first ship to arrive. She had been woken to witness the docking procedure, and to manually override it if anything were to go catastrophically wrong. She had trained for this, but was confident she wouldn't need to do anything.
As expected, the docking process completed without issue, and a hiss of different air entered her capsule. The ublicial detached, and she prepared to wander into the group of gossiping strangers from the other planets.
Assembly was alive with various accents. Hers would add to the chorus, then it would be lost among wherever she was to be assigned next.
Author's Notes:
This is a story and a world that I definitely want to expand. Vastly. It was a response to the prompt "star crossed" for my writing group, and it gave me way too much inspiration. There are some similarities with other science fiction literature here, but I am keen to explore the nine worlds, the way people are treated by the governing bodies of each, and any subterfuge that may occur, along with the jeopardy of a decaying transfer program in Assembly.
I feel like it is interesting, and I can do a lot with it. I think of the various colonies of Battlestar Galactica, the worlds of Foundation, and more.
Thank you for reading :)
