The Future Adrift

OOC/Applications thread: http://www.roleplaygateway.com/the-future-adrift-ooc-sign-ups-t37993.html

In the year 2139, a tired Earth was reeling from war. The breakout of the Third World War altered the surface of the world permanently with weapons beyond anything the soldiers of centuries before held in the worst of nightmares. Any country unable to sustain itself against the nuclear winter was quickly enveloped into chaos, leaving only the most advanced of nation-states standing. The United Federation of States (formerly North America and Great Britain), the Eurasian Alliance (Germany, France, Spain, and Russia), and Panoriental Territories (China, India, and Japan) all emerged as the three controlling world powers.

Still, Earth was no longer fit to survive the conflict. Radioactive contamination of the unshielded areas was quickly destroying what was left of the world’s natural resources and the technology that protected the three powers could not support the large population. The leaders of the world turned to the heavens for an answer.

For the United Federation of States, that answer came in the form of three massive ships designed to find a new hope somewhere in the stars. The UFS Kennedy, Roosevelt, and Churchill were the pinnacle of modern engineering. Each capable of holding a population up to 1,200 each, the ships were launched in three separate directions from Earth, all headed to distant stars in the hope of one day reaching a world where humanity would settle and someday live on. The pioneers boarded the ship knowing that it would take far longer than their own lifetime to reach a destination, pinning the hope of new life on their grandchildren and further down the line.

The pioneers of the UFS Kennedy are our ancestors. Their hopes live on in our story.

Malcolm Cael leaned back slowly in his chair, setting wire-rimmed glasses down on digital datapad sitting on the desk before him. Clinic days rarely provided a moment of privacy or silence, normally filled with the sliding shifts of pressure doors and the strained heartbeats of men and women, their DNA craving for sunlight and fresh air while their bodies had never even known of such things outside of schooling.

The doctor closed tired eyes for a few seconds, raising skilled hands to rub his temples for a moment. The man was on the young side of thirty, just barely, and kept himself in excellent shape for his age, leading by example for patients and shipmates dealing with the third, fourth, and fifth generations of a sort of “cabin fever” that was developing as the UFS Kennedy drifted farther away from the shattered surface of the only history and of them had ever known.

“Ugh,” he breathed with a long sigh. At first he was sure that there was some sort of persistent ringing his ears, something that a quick kerazine injection would remedy, but Malcolm quickly came to understand that it was, in fact, a high-pitching whirring noise coming from a moisture condenser unit in the top corner of his office. “Looks like I’m going to have to call in a consult for whatever’s ailing you,“ he muttered to the ship. Another issue to file for the maintenance crews.

Sucking in a deep breath, Cael reclaimed his glasses and the datapad, spinning out of the office and back out into the justified chaos of the clinic. So far, the morning had consisted of stitching up two Security Force trainees that had busted each other up during a training exercise, the sprained ankle of a young schoolgirl, and a “house call” for an irregular heartbeat of one of the ship’s oldest passengers.

“Sharon, send in whoever’s next and tell Dr. Chaya that he needs to cut down on using our tetracrin supplies unless he wants to spend the rest of the week working back in the pharmacy distilling a new batch,” he said to an intercom panel on the wall of the empty exam room, ready for whatever was waiting on the other side.

The days grew longer with every passing hour. Amelian wasn't even sure she could call the hours days anymore. All she, or anyone for that matter, knew was the never ending vastness of space. It was somewhere between the requests for Maintenance in the psychology ward, the request for a couple of holodomes and incident reports that Captain LaForet's attention was drawn upward from the screen before her by her communications panel. The little blipping light had a burning and familiar red glow to it. Everything was growing into a routine and sooner or later, Amelian knew she was going to lose control of the ship when either the Population outgrew the resources or the sense of mundane things drove more people insane. "Cabin fever" as Malcolm always put it. In the database of the ship, which also carried a complete record of Earth's history, she had managed to find the saying. It was always referred to as an ailment of the mind, not of the body. Naturally, why their ancestors strived to call it that was a complete mystery for the third Captain of the UFS Kennedy.

When the voyage to save the human race began almost exactly 100 years ago, Jebidiah LaForet was a French-English man of his late fifties with a son 13 years of age. He was a man who had seen the assassination of the Queen and Prime Minister of the Greater UK and had nearly witnessed the assassination attempt of the United States President. This was just about all there was before mutually assured destruction. No one had learned who had started the tragedy. The boy, the one that was 13, was named Johan Michelangelo LaForet. Apparently, there had been a great artist in the 17th century by the name Michelangelo. That was always the myth. When his father died at the age of 78 of Radiation poisoning, Johan Michelangelo LaForet gained control of the ship. At the age of 33, he was already a very hard man. It wasn't until he too was nearly 50 that he even bothered his time for a wife. Truly, aboard the ship that was the only woman, only person, he cared for. Even after he had a daughter. His wife died of some cancerous aid when the girl was only about six years old. By six, Amelian, had only but one friend. A young boy just a few years older than she was.

Malcolm Cael, the son of one of her father's men. Because Johan had no other heirs, Amelian was stripped of friends and hidden away to become the perfect clone of her father. Needless to say, it didn't work. Although she was shoved into all sorts of studies, languages and other things the Captain had to know, she did not let herself disappear from her friend's life. Granted, that boy came to be her only friend. Years later, her father died, throwing the seat of power at her when she was only 33.

Amelian raised her hand and pressed the small glowing button on her communications panel. "Amelian, don't forget your appointment today," an old, gravely voice spat. This was the ship's oldest and most prestigious security official. The elite, second only to the captain. Amelian nodded, "Thank you for reminding me my friend," she responded and just as quickly, the shortwave died. Yes, her medical appointment with Malcolm, how could she forget? She gave a slight grieving sigh. Although she adored seeing her friend, it could've easily been better if it didn't usually end with her being jabbed with something sharp. At least, she knew when she was around he got a chance to hear himself think. It was a constant way her guard made sure she wasn't going to just keel over and die some day like her mother, her father and her grandfather. She called them suspicious old crones, but they defended themselves with a 'doing what we must for the safety of the ship'. Amelian had only one year of actually doing her job. It was one of those positions that you could take a life time preparing for it and still not have adequate training. Surprise, Surprise.

Amelian stood from her desk and retrieved her uniform jacket from the hook on the wall. Something never changed even after two hundred or so years. She tugged the red and black spandex fabric on over her shoulders and zipped the asymmetrical seam all the way up to the top until the zipper was hidden by a flap of red fabric. Once she was pleased with her appearance, she let herself out of her office. She walked down a vacant corridor until she reached the Medical Wing. It was busy as always and the last thing she wanted to do was take away precious time from the people that needed attention more than she did. However, she was pleased with herself that she had timed it just right. He wasn't on the main floor, meaning he was probably in exam by himself. Moving as to remain mostly unnoticed by the people of the ward, just the one Secretary, and put herself in front of the door and took a small breath inward. The sneaking had done a little number on her adrenaline. With that, she let herself through the electric door, probably quieter than any security official or child could ever hope to manage. She took her time for her somewhat small presence to be know. Knowing how loud the door were though, that wouldn't take much time at all.

( Whoops, didn't mean to write a novella, I just got carried away with the history I though needed to be shared. )

“Come on, you heap of bolts. Breathe!”

With a little more verbal jeering and the gentle touch of a dual-circuit spanning wrench, the power relay began to emit a low hum. To the ears of the twenty-one-year-old girl jammed into the small space between the relay housing and the bulkhead, it was a sweet song better than any lullaby passed down by the community nursery mothers caring for infants and toddlers while their parents served on ship work shifts.

“Okay boss,” the girl spoke as she pressed the handheld communicator to her lips, the small silver ring attached to the piercing there creating a small clicking tongue as it contacted the small microphone, “you should have control back on that panel now. If not, there’s nothing else I can do from here, so I’m getting the hell out of this test tube before the walls start closing in around me.”

With that, Taryn “Dodger” Bennett shoved the spanner back into the pocket of the insulated coveralls shielding her body and began to climb up the ladder in the thin tunnel that led out of the bowels of the ship and back into the civilized world, or at least the closest they came to mimicking civilization aboard the UFS Kennedy. The girl immediately dropped everything and began tearing away at the thick coveralls, latching onto the zipper and tugging sharply until the fabric began to loose from her shoulders. Her skin needed to breathe.

Dodger was a young woman that obviously cared more for the random beats and rhythms in her head than any marching orders or organized chaos the rest of the ship cared to present. To call the girl eccentric would be putting it midly.

Shedding the coveralls, it became clear that Dodger wasn’t much of one for fashion conventions, either. Once a skinny tomboy, the girl had quickly begun to come into her own body around the age of sixteen. Five years later, there was no denying that she could have passed for an entertainment director is she ever cared to clean herself up. Instead, her body was now covered by a pair of tan shorts that cut around four inches above kneecaps. A slender upper body clung tightly to a bright red shirt that stuck to the skin lightly with the traces of sweat from body heat formerly trapped by the coveralls.

“S’agood thing that you’ve got me around, Winchester,” she said with a cocky, teasing smirk. “Otherwise you’d have to skip a couple meals just to fit down there.” Wiping her brow with a tired forearm, the girl jutted out her bottom lip and blew upward sharply to free her face of a few strands of fiery red hair.

This part of the job was boring, Noah had long ago decided. Being the head of the maintenance crew meant he had to do all the "dirty work". Mechanics use the term "dirty work" to refer to official paper work. Any mechanic worth his or her salt usually preferred handling a circuit wrench or welding torch over writing up paper work. Winchester had that same feeling at this moment as he monitored Dodger's progress with the power relay.

“Okay boss,” the girl spoke as she pressed the handheld communicator to her lips, the small silver ring attached to the piercing there creating a small clicking tongue as it contacted the small microphone, “you should have control back on that panel now. If not, there’s nothing else I can do from here, so I’m getting the hell out of this test tube before the walls start closing in around me.”

No wonder the Old Man was cranky sometimes. Thought Noah to himself after checking off the control panel from the Fix-it List. Sometimes he wished he could turn back the clock to when he was in Dodger's shoes, but at the same time, he was also glad he didn't have his Old Man hovering over him anymore. The best part about that job was working with his father, but that was also worst part about it at the same time.

“S’agood thing that you’ve got me around, Winchester,” she said with a cocky, teasing smirk. “Otherwise you’d have to skip a couple meals just to fit down there.” Wiping her brow with a tired forearm, the girl jutted out her bottom lip and blew upward sharply to free her face of a few strands of fiery red hair.

"Skip a few meals?" he replied, cocking his eyebrow, "Hell no, I'd just have it redesigned with more space for me to fit in!" he said, retorting to her remark with an equally cocky, but also cynical grin.

"Hey Bossman, we got another burnt out 'torch here! We need a replacement!" buzzed his comm-link.

"Seriously? That's the third one this week, guys, can't you take care of your tools?" he said into the comm-link's mic, sounding a lot like his Old Man would have sounded back in the day, "I'm on my way out there. Try not to break anything else in the meantime." with his, he slipped the link back into his pocket and handed Dodger the Fix-it list, "Here, toss that on my desk, will ya? I gotta babysit the greenhorns again..." he said, obviously annoyed but somehow also relieved that he wouldn't have to do "dirty work" for a bit.

Morning clinics seemed to make the day creep by at such a day that Malcolm Cael often swore the Kennedy would circle all the universe and return to Earth by the time the stream of patients came to a trickling halt. Then again, morning was just an arbitrary term had little to do with anything on the ship other than preserving a sense of tradition from generations long since gone from the decks of the ship. They measured their “days” by the rotations of a planet no living passenger had ever seen, measured their “years” by a star that was among countless others in the sky now.

Still, order and tradition had to be preserved. The residential quarters of the ship features an artificial lighting system that dimmed with the passing of the “night hours.” The original designers of the ship had even come up with a lighting system that actually capture and distributed traces of vitamin D in an effort to replicate the effects of sunlight back on Earth. They’d tried to think of everything, but Malcolm Cael couldn’t help but think that his grandfather and some of the other original passengers aboard the Kennedy would have expected to be settled on a surface by now.

The hissing sound of the door opening behind him didn’t draw much attention from the doctor for a moment. Cael wasn’t the type to uphold appearances and play on his official title or standing when it came to working, ditching the idea of an orderly white coat for a faded blue long-sleeve shirt the dipped low enough under his clavicle to display another white shirt beneath. For him, the world was about functionality rather than appearance.

“Sorry for the backlog this morning, we get a little jammed anytime a virus makes its way through the...” Malcolm’s words were cut off for a moment as he turned and noticed the captain standing before him instead of any patient he’d been expecting to encounter. Captain Amelian Laforet wore the official uniform and the given pressure of the captain’s chair well on a youthful face. There were those in the crew and the general population that felt she was too young to command the ship, but Malcolm gave her the benefit of the doubt. After all, she was still working her way through the position. If nothing else, she brought a life, energy, and passion to the bridge that had been sorely missing in the years before.

“Something tells me that you aren’t here to tell me you’ve found the perfect place for building my new clinic on the outskirts of a brand-new colony,” he offered with something a smirk playing on the corner of his lips. Malcolm knew that Amelian considered the confines of an examination room or his office to be one of the few places on the ship where the young captain could speak freely about the pressures she endured and the challenges facing the ship. Although medicine was his primary concern, Cael was the unofficial ship’s counselor in many ways and knew enough about it to lend an ear when Laforet came calling. On top of that, it was just good to see an old friend.

Leaning against the counter, Malcolm punched up her data on the pad he carried with him at all times while in the clinic.

Dodger’s intense green eyes did a quick once-over of the datapad list before flashing them back over to the tired expression on the face of Noah Winchester.

“You got it, Chief,” she offered, following quickly by another upward burst of air from her lips to force red hair from clinging to her face. Bending down, the young woman picked up the pile of clothes she’d shed moments before and began to sulk off in the general direction of Winchester’s office at the back of their workshop.

Taryn “Dodger” Bennett had been selected for maintenance and programming before even taking her aptitude tests. At the age of nine, she’d rerouted a computer console to make it seem as though God was communicating with the education module that belong to a boy who had been picking on her the week before. She’d gotten in serious trouble and then had a long conversation with an admiring senior programmer t hat wanted to know how a nine-year-old girl had been able to sneak through their security protocols.

Loving to work with her hands, Dodger secretly loved wedging her body down into the bowels of the ship and working on the heart of the giant whale that carried them through space. She’d applied and, after being denied the first two times, been accepted to carry a dual specialization in mechanics and computers. As much as she loved solving the puzzles of the digital world, there was no denying that the girl felt at home with a smear of grease on her cheek.

Sliding into the small office, Dodger dropped the datapad down on the desk and stretched her arms above her head for a moment. The relay was supposed to have been an all-day job, so there was plenty of room for her to goof off for a while without anyone missing her one way or another. If nothing else, she needed a break from the male-dominated society that was the Maintenance Crew, tired of all the jokes and even more of the leering eyes.

Throwing a black utility vest with empty pockets over the hugging red shirt, Dodger pulled it tight around her torso and slipped out into the corridor. She needed something to break her out of the funk, the general bad mood she’d been in for most of the week. If nothing else, going and jeering the Security Force boys during their training exercises would be fun. Anything for a little conflict.

( I was going to wait and see if anyone else we had accepted was going to reply, but I guess not. My writers block also doesn't want to go away I think I might have to duck out of this for a little while, I've got absolutely nothing to add)

John paced the ship. He did this often, so often he knew most of its passageways and corridors. This was surprising because most of his walk he is generally deep in though. Ideas running through his mind. He stepped out of the way for someone passing him, not even looking up, if he had looked up he would probably have not noticed the he had just passed the ship's very own captain.

He walked slowly, in his mind he was running through a project he was working on for the last few months. He knew though that even if he finished it successfully it would have to be ratified by the officers, and like all the last ideas it would probably be classed as "dangerous" or "not worth it". But he tried anyway, hoping that someday something would get through. realistically he knew that such a thing is very unlikely to happen, specially with the understaffed and poor conditions of the lab. There was one room, and one other researcher working there. The other wasn't even particularly knowledgeable about physics.

He was about to turn around when he heard raised voices and look up towards the clinic just in time to see some one dressed in rags smack a woman right in the nose. He was taken back and walked over as a few security officers took down the offenders. He approached the woman, concerned.
"you alright?" he asked, offering a handkerchief to block the stream of blood emerging from her nose. He looked over at the man on the floor "What happened?" he added, curious.