angry hornets. epidemic ethics

A masking sketch.

My experience at the landromat in Twisp, Wa on Thurday is very typical of what is going on. The business was at about 80% use, and has added brand new machines to help with the workload. 

When I tried to enter [wearing new surgical mask and face shield, i could see unmasked people milling by the front door. I went around to the back, and used a machine near the back door.  I noticed that the mask users were all sitting in their cars, with the engines running to provide heat. I stood outside while the washer was going, and went back in to use the dryer. The 2 non maskers got into a loud conversation while I got my stuff into a cart. I noticed that the conversation was about the uselessness of masking. I opened the back door, and opened 3 dryers for transfer. The landromat owner entered with no mask. He closed the back door, and closed the 3 dryers that i had opened. I explained that i had opened the door for my own safety. When asked about the lack of masks in the business, he stated that one only needed a mask when within 6 feet of another person. He was very polite, but 100% incorrect; Tragically incorrect. 

Covid 19 has mutated so that it is much more contagious. Folks who are going about their normal lives without a mask will be increasingly offering swarms of particles to the rooms that they spend time in. 

We are trying to affect the transmission rate of the virus statistically, so that each secret, [no symptoms] case of Covid causes less that one new case. Even without testing and tracing, this plan of distancing and masking and hand washing can eventually eliminate the infection from our community. We are looking forward to this, so that we can save the masks for big fires and the next epidemic. We want all the kids to go to school. We wish to pack into buildings and enjoy fun community events. 

So, is it OK to stay by the door in a busy and essential business like a landromat? Is it an expression of the personal freedom that we value so highly? Is it an excelent expression of free speach to converse loudly about the futility of masking and distancing?

I suggest that such behavior represents selfishness and bullying. One does not have freedom to hurt another person. This is not a hoax, with the smart people ignoring lockdowns, masks and health rules that they believe are of no use. The people who are breathing through a well fit mask in public spaces 100% of the time are not fools that have been brainwashed by a political movement. The folks who are staying home and skipping visits with their family are not cowards. They do not lack money or courage. Those folks who are distancing and masking and staying at home believe in SCIENCE.

Like it or not, SCIENCE is back in as the guiding principle of our society. It is difficult to believe in semi living particles that you can not see, but that can fool your very own body into rejecting your very own lungs. By rights, these particles should be the size of hornets, and they should make a loud sound. It would be easy to distance from a person whose nose and mouth issued streams of loud, angry hornets.

Since the particles are invisible and have no odor, it seems like an act of faith to believe in them. Further, it seems rediculous to some people to take an uncomfortable action that seems to impinge on their rights. It only seems rediculous because we have not had a health crisis of this magnitude in the US since 1919. And, in a century, your culture forgets it's fear of epidemic disease.

I am not suggesting a fear based response. People have an ample load of economic and behavioral health worries. I am suggesting a science based approach based on the advice of people like Anthony Fauci and Paul Edward Farmer. During our year of illness, These scientists have been apportioning scarse PPE, ballancing the benefits of lockdowns with suicides from cabin fever, and working out health mandates that slow the spread, but allow food to be grown and distributed.

I will post this on my blog under the title 'angry hornets', so when some critic of my inteligence has this thread taken down, you can still read my nonsence! Text or write to me for a link so that you may read as much nonsence as you wish.

Thanks for reading!

The start of things. Symetry and the big bang.

 The big bang, as I see it.

I used to be quite disturbed by the fact that the universe was expanding, and seemed to be doing so forever. That is not a cycle, and cycles are pretty standard in nature. Rarely does a natural thing happen once without repeating.

A lot of things seem to breath, or to do something cyclic to keep existing. In our case, breath in and breath out, eat and poop, etc. Even the Judeo-christian notion of heaven and hell does not work for me. It does not make sense that a soul comes from nowhere, lives a short time on this planet, and then is filed in one of 2 places for eternity. That is not a cycle, and it is not sustainable. It would not keep going.

Everything in nature is in equalibrium. Births and deaths eventually ballance. Matter and energy are recycled forever, with no new matter/energy created, and none lost. So, how can the universe explode one time from a single point, and grow forever? There is no symetry and no ballance to that. It is not beautiful, and it does not make sense.

I started to think a lot about the arrow of time. Processes in the particles realm have no preference about the direction of time. Every single process can happen in either direction. For instance, a particle of Matter and one of anti matter can collide and change into energy. When there is enough energy present in an area, some of it can turn into a particle of matter and a particle of anti matter. 

Bigger objects are collections of many particles. With macro objects, there is a direction of time. Eggs break but they never unbreak. The arrangement of the particles is really important for something like an egg. An unbroken egg is a very organized item, and a broken egg is much less organized. Organization follows a law, so that a given isolated system is always becoming less organized. If you are thinking of the creation of a child, that is far from a closed system. Creating a new human being causes the disorder in the universe to increase. Organization increases in the child, but a larger amount of disorder is created outside the child.

How does this apply to the early universe? There is so much matter in the universe, and so many complicated structures. So the arrow of time is assured. The entire universe will become less and less organized as time proceeds. Matter is scattered farther and farther afield, and energy degrades to ever less condensed forms. 

So, if we follow the history of the universe backwards, we expect to see more and more organization, and more condensed energy. Times arrow remains locked in by this complexity and organization, until the entire universe is in one location. A single universe sized black hole would not give out any light. It could not rotate, because there is no other matter to rotate in reference to. It would be, in effect, a single particle without motion or temperature. There is only one way to arrange that matter, so the 2nd 'law' of thermodynamics no longer holds. Events can happen in either direction in time, exactly like they do in the particle realm. The big bang is free to occur in both directions of time.

If my notions of symetry are correct, there would be no difference in the 2 directions of time. There could be people and other highly organized arrangements of matter in both directions. I believe that people would experience the flow of time in a similar way in either direction. There is no forward and back in this scenario. No one is living 'backwards'. And both universes are free to expand forever, loosing organization. This symetry is enough to make me comfortable with the endless expansion and disorganization of our universe. There is no need for a god, or for any miracles. An endless explosion, taking place in both directions of time, is a ballanced and elegant system that i can hold on to. Otherwise, i need it to eventually condense and explode, again and again, in an endless cycle.  

A perfect political storm... the American flu!

The perfect political storm for the United States. This is the time of the Trump flu or the American flu.
We have the intersection of an attempted takeover of the US federal government, a virus outbreak, and World War that has possibly already begun.

How could I imply that there has been a successful coup in the good old US? I am using my own eyes. A superstitious and demented person has shut down the helpful parts of the federal government, and concentrated on 'making a killing'. The killing includes using the office of POTUS to sell snake oil drugs. It includes lying continuously to the US population. The killing features an early denial of the novel virus, followed by a weaponizing of the virus to get rid of concentrated minorities, close the borders permanently, and to prevent an election.

The timing could not have been worse. We have not seen a world war in 80 years, and we have not seen a killing pandemic in 100 years. That is how we have stumbled blindly into both catastrophes. The 1918 "Spanish" flu, and the start of hostilities for WW2 around 20 years later are both too far back in our cultural memory.

Because we no longer fear war enough, we have occupied at least 2 major countries in the world. This does not seem like a big deal to us. I can only imagine that the people of Germany felt a similar entitlement when they blitzcrieged across borders into Poland and the Chech republic. The world lets you grab 2 smaller properties, and clamps down when you take a larger country. This occured when Germany marched into France in 1940. They had been welcomed into Poland, and allowed into Chech. But, even though Hitler assured everyone that Germany simply needed coal, and did not mean to disturb the French people, war was declared.

Our current situation is eerily similar. We occupied 2 countries because we were too lazy or stupid to switch to better forms of propellant when the time came. REALLY! US corporations took over the government using fake emergencies and distinctily un-American new laws. Just like Hitler turned a fraction of the German population [the brownshirts] against the rest , we have Trump whipping himself up a private army of far right extremists, and a private news service that is more like a propaganda ministry.

Should we blame the epidemic on China, and try to fight them? That seems to be the strategy for the US war on Covid. We did not stock up on masks, we do not believe in testing for the cattle [oops; i mean citizens], and we have reopened while still the world hotspot for the epidemic. We are not the Covid leader by a tiny margin. No. We have more cases than the rest of the world combined. And, that is without counting! We are the worlds exporter of the virus, sending planeloads and shiploads of untested infected to other countries. We have refused to work with researchers around the world to learn about the virus, and we have only counted a fraction of our own cases and deaths.

The irony of trying to start a war with China is staggering. After a brief cover up [yes, they are a huge surveilance state], China open sourced their research, and controlled their own outbreak at state expense. They had 5000 deaths, and forcefully curbed the oubreak. They will be now be testing every citizen in Woohan to control a small number of new infections in the original hotspot. We opted to prolong the outbreak, and have settled on a policy of every state for itself as far as testing and contact tracing. This means that there is no strong attempt to end the lockdowns. The lockdowns are ending due to popular feelings, amid a steady increase in the infected rate. And, amazingly, we seak war with the only country on earth that can defeat us easily without any assistance.

We have an election coming at the perfect storm moment. The last election did not go so well, with obvious election meddling, voter suppression, etc. This one has almost no chance of proceeding well. Basically, we have a king that will not step down without a fight. A fat, superstitious and poorly educated king that likes to divide and harm. A king of con men, who made believe he was rich, and made believe that he was clever. Well, guess what? a brilliant person can fake being drunk or stupid. But, a stupid person can not fake being smart!

If you are reading this, mister President, Please understand that this is an attempt at comedy. Of course, I know in my heart that you are the most interesting US president in history. There will never be another like you! I hope that you don't mind if we just hold an election using the internet and the mail. The US will split up if you keep on doing what you are doing.

A spoon theifs confession

I am an avid spoon thief.
Spoons are the only thing that I steel.
I don't go after jewel encrusted or platinum spoons, so i will likely remain a misdemeaner spoon thief.

Here is the history:
I was a strange kid. In my own defence, i was jerked around a lot. I was thought to be mentally handicapped until 3rd grade, due to poor testing performance.

On my end, I remember being curious why the students sat in a sort of audience, because I just saw a blob moving back and forth at the front of the room, and heard clicking and scritching noises along with the speaking. My eyes were finally found to be extremely nearsighted. I was given glasses, and was soon moved to all advanced classes.

Now the blob was writing on a chalkboard, and the sound track was, of course, the same. The sense of sight was very cool, and I became fascinated with photography. I had a hunger to see things, and to collect those sights for later viewing.

To set the stage, I was an undersized nerd child, toting around a Minolta SLR, and taking over the school newspaper, the yearbook, the av department...

Even though my family owns a printing company on 6th avenue in NYC, I decide that it is alright for me to actually steal items of any value from stores. Here is the funniest part... I was a shoplifter with a very strict code of behavior. I only stole photography materials, and I distributed the impact of my thefts over time and throughout dozens of stores.

I always bought items as well. My favorite technique was to arrive in the store with a shopping bag containing a down jacket. I would put on the jacket, and wait through the checkout line with the bag stuffed with purloined goods. I had two or three partners, and together, we could succeed in stores with elaborate mirrors and  security.

I also sold photographs, won cash prizes in contests and received large grants to create displays . So, I had a way to 'launder' my illegal gains. I built a darkroom in my parents basement. I was 14, and I learned how to frame a wall, hang Sheetrock, wire sound, wire 120 volt electricity and do plumbing. I already knew that I was a busy monkey, and that keeping a really big project going was a way to beat the blues.

I reach the age of 16 in this way. I start doing commercial artwork for my families print shop, and they start issueing me large checks! But, I can no longer stand to live in a densely populated area. It seems that I had started to sense other peoples thoughts, and that makes it pretty difficult to concentrate.

I run away from home. Not like a young kid, with the classic bag lunch on a stick. I use my wealth to purchase a motorcycle, and forge some documents so that it can wear a legal license plate even though I only have a New York learners permit for driving.

I ride west into the sunset, having all sorts of adventures. I encounter hunger for food for the first time. Wow! No parents to provide food! If I could not be penned up by those adults, I would have to learn how to provide myself with food. Luckily, i had my shoplifting background. As long as I had could work enough to have any money, there was no temptation. but when my belly roared, i saw grocery stores as an extension of my mothers pantry. If I was cold, a clothing store could be my wardrobe away from home. My strict code now protected me from over consumption. I had no greed, because the world was like a giant free yard sale for me. I helped myself to the exact items that I needed to survive.

Enter the season of Winter. Holy moly.... I had forgotten that one needed a warm house sometimes! How could I socially engineer a free house? I did not figure that out, and the cold pressed me south to the Palm Springs area of California.

I set up camp in an isolated side canyon above the Springs, and decided to try a fruit fast. That worked well, as I could pick as much as I wanted from the yards in town. Another group set up camp in 'my canyon'. We started to visit, and I found out that they were a criminal gang that actually included violence in their efforts. They felt that they were beyond redemption, and just spoke plainly about their exploits.

As a sheltered Long Island adolencent, I had never actually met a hold up enthusiast or murderer before. I did not feel any personal danger, but instead, that the gang would protect my safety avidly. I was not as secure about my stuff. I went out to gather a backpack full of fruit. I stepped outside of my own stingent rules, and stole some tiny item that was not really needed to survive. I was not astounded to find my equipment gone upon my return to camp.

The gang had made it pretty clear that they lived to aquire. I then made a permanent connection between the act of stealing, and the feeling of being stolen from. It was an accident, but it was very effective. I would actually try this technique with a child. 

From this exact moment on, my attitude toward stealing changed completely. I saw that the universe actually had a very finely tuned system to keep track of karma. It was an automated system, and there was no way to beat it. If you were helpful to others, you would never be allowed to starve. If you took their things, all bets were off.

It was very freeing. Any greed that I had melted away. You could not gain things that the universe did not mean you to have. So, there was no need to spend time mooning over all that stuff. You could just enjoy the matter that the universe gave to you.

The gang had left the valley, but my next guest was a very wealthy gay gentleman that lived nearby. He observed my quite naked form, and was motivated to approach me and to offer a deal. Would I please pose as his lover, in exchange for lavish room and board? I would take my drivers license test with a sports car worth part of a million dollars, and have whatever the hell i wanted in my very own building.

He was a great guy. I explained that I was 16 and seemed to be heterosexual. So, it seemed absurd to fake a relationship with an older man just to get the use of a sports car. It was a complicated deal, because he did not desire sex at all. He needed to make other wealthy males jealous of him.

We agreed to just be friends. He was very gracious about it, and offered to replace some of my stolen backpacking equipment so that I could begin to hike the Pacific Crest Trail in the spring. I declined that too, but agreed to a dinner at my place for few days hence.

When our dinner time arrived, I was surprised to see a limo pull up nearby. My friend was supported by a staff! They carried dishes on fancy silver, and set us up a picnic along the side of a small stream. It was absurd but great. I still remember some of the subjects that we discussed.

I found out that my friend had devised a plan to leave the remains of our feast behind, as a sort of sneaky gift. I declined all but a Stirling silver spoon and an amazing long woolen blanket. These items were to accompany me on a very unusual hike of the Pacific Crest Trail.

I can go into the hike another time, but this seems to be the start of my rampant and wanton spoonthievery. You may already know that heaps of money are not tempting to me. Tools and guns and very valuable things can be loaned to me, because I always return them. But, you should maybe check your spoon drawer if I have stayed at your house. Are you missing spoons?

*** note. I am only attracted to table spoons and small serving spoons. I can not be blamed for the loss of teaspoons. Look around under and behind things to recover your tiny spoons.

Our world war

A repeat of history? How could we be so foolish?

As I filter the news through my nonsense filter, I find that something seems to be struggling to repeat past events. It is the darnedest thing! I am cast back to Adolf Hitler. I can see him pointing and spitting and shouting in staccato bursts. But, this time he is fat and orange haired. And he is talking in confusing circles. He is choosing verb tenses at random, like a oddly flawed lie telling machine.

Well, I say to myself, “Self..., at least this Adolf is really working for the good of mankind in general, and I live in the wealthiest land with the most personal freedom!.... America of the 2020s bears no resemblance to 1930s Germany !” .

To begin with, the US of the present day is a force for world freedom and democracy! Well, not so much. My country has recently started bragging about it's skill at torture, and it's world record prison populations. Instead of spreading democracy, my country has most recently occupied 2 resource rich countries. There has been no middle eastern or world resistance to the US seizing of oil reserves and strategic locations. It is reminiscent of the success of the blitzkrieg. Overwhelming, lightning fast wars carried out by gentlemen and gentlewomen in snappy outfits.

“Well, I say to myself.... at least we are entirely free from tyranny within the tight borders of the US!”
As far as that, the US borders are the scene of some kind of holocaust.  Refugees are allowed to come north, are exploited for their labor, and are ejected when their labors are less desperately needed. The “justice” system in the US has been replaced by an absurd concession. For profit jails lock up about every hundredth able adult in the country. Best represented in the permanent for-profit prison population is the black race. A people that were literally stolen from their homes in Africa and brought to the American continent as property.

The US military fights wars using oil company contract workers as shock troops.
The favorite tactic lately is the precision drone attack. Basically, we burn people to death with robots!

So, a country that was reluctant to join ww2 when Hitler got out of control, is now using Nazi Germany as it's role model. The place that was once famous for frontier law, mining booms and adventure currently shelters the most spied upon and captured population on earth.

Note the results of the Covid 19 infection of 2020. It is revealed that the health care system of the wealthiest nation in the world is really a baroque sort of milking apparatus for the captured population. The constitution of the country had not been able to withstand a novel development. Clever checks and balances had been built in so that the various parts of the government would forever be in battle with one another. No religious group or political party could gain too much control.

The flaw was the original concept of the corporation. A group of people who incorporated (literally.... clothed itself in a body) would enjoy more rights and fewer responsibilities. This allowed such embodied virtual citizens to create impossible things, like railroads and canals.

An entity like a corporation would be controlled by government so that a single monopoly would not get more wealthy than a country. That did not work. Corporations eventually did form overpowering monopolies, and took over the governments of countries. The US federal government fell in 2011, when energy companies staged a precision false flag attack on buildings in New York City. New laws were passed, and the controls of the best weapons on Earth were passed over to Oil company executives. US elections began to be rigged, so that Banking and Oil CEOs got elected no matter who the people 'voted' for.

Oil production was never about making the Earth a better place. Much the opposite. Burning a lot of oil is similar to a constant volcanic eruption. And taking refined fossil fuel high up into the atmosphere to burn it inefficiently was probably not one of our  brighter mental light bulbs. The checks and balances of the earth's various systems are not suited for controlling an exponential explosion in human population and energy use.

By this point, the US has dragged it's heals about changing from liquid fuel to gaseous fuel. Big wars were fought to avoid the use of natural gas, which has always plentiful in the US. Now, it is too late for the use of any flammable substance. The gaseous phase of portable energy use will be skipped. The US, having switched from solid fuel to liquid fuel, will now change directly to electricity. The introduction of Hybrid cars in the US was intended to dupe a poorly educated public. The poor cattle actually thought that they were getting electric cars!

A lot is left up to us {the citizens of the US}. We have a Hitler guy shouting for walls and wars. We really, really care about money right now. Money seems so important that we will go to war. We will fight for the money that we think that we deserve. We have rolled, almost unopposed into our Poland and into our Chekoslovkia. (Afghanistan and Iraq) Israel stands ready to be our Japan. Israel holds a US-made gun against the heads of any resource rich country that defies our might. We even have an Italy and a Mussolini! Saudi Arabia is our pet middle eastern friend!

I am glad that I did not fall off of one of my un-roped climbs without seeing this. It is an incredible time. The 2020 election in the US is Hitler's graduation from political leader to fuehrer. If Trump wins, we will find that we are already in ww3.

If Trump wins, I predict that the US will roll into another country with a little more  opposition from the rest of the world. And then, we will make some final error that will unite the whole world against the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, (and a few other US satellites).

Further, one of our allies will change sides as our leader becomes more and more demented and insane. The US will be conquered, rebuilt by a mighty China, Europe and Soviet power. US aggression will be discouraged by world law, and the US will be divided up, to make alliances between states more difficult.

[Or, we could elect someone besides Trump!]

my new short story, just the first bit

Our story
This is not the story of the humans who stayed on Earth. You know what happened to them. They allowed the greediest and most violent among them to make the decisions. They cooked themselves along with the surface of Earth.
It is the story of the doomed race's desperate escape into space. The Armstrong program was intended to locate resources outside of the solar system. It was not a mission of colonization, but rather a long term suicide mission for the crew. Perhaps, the mission parameters reflect the values of a culture in catastrophic collapse. Instead of bleeding off excess population, or an attempt to give the human race  remote outposts to inhabit, Armstrong would bring yet more burnable and fissionable materials back to a planet whose atmosphere was no longer breathable.
Armstrong 1 tumbled into the sea along with a long section of western coastline while it was preparing for launch. Armstrong 2 exploded before she could leave earth's orbit, and it was believed likely that a member of the crew had sabotaged it. So, Armstrong 3 was not a strong try, and it's crew was not composed of scientists or star athletes. Every human alive now is descended from a motley group of refugees who were themselves on the run from natural disasters and endless war. Their ship was put together from scraps: A section left over from the previous attempts, and some orbital maintenance craft. The ship's AI was a relic cell phone from a technology that was long forgotten.
So, keep this in mind as you review this account of the flight of what we will call A3. Neil Armstrong was the name of the first human to step onto a planet other than Earth. He stepped onto the Earth's single moon in 1967 AD. The date represents the number of years elapsed since the death of  a powerful political and military leader named Jesus. From now on, we will use the more common LE [LeftEarth] calendar, which started when A3 launched. The account itself is written using audio recordings, a personality profile from the surviving cell phone, scraps of the captain's log and fragments from crew members hand written journals.

Chapter 1 – The Launch From the log of 'Captain' Bess Staggart
What a friggin joke! The universe does have a sense of humor! We are launching Armstrong 3 on July 4th, which is the traditional holiday where folks watched things blow up in the sky. It is the 3rd try, and the number 3 also has traditional meanings. 3rd time lucky, 3 times a charm, but also: 3 strikes you're out!
Anyway, this morning after dawn, we were herded onto the ship at gunpoint, like condemned prisoners about to be executed. The launch location was Fort Collins, Colorado. It used to be the center of a vast country, but is now a sort of giant concentration camp. Joke of Jokes, I am designated 'Captain', as if a firework that will soon entertain the other prisoners by exploding over their heads actually requires a commanding officer.
As the countdown got down to double digits, I gave the order to 'light em if you got em'. The condemned get to enjoy one more earthly pleasure before they meet their maker. Our bridge was like a circus side show. Our fine crew is composed of fuck ups and murderers, with about a year of school between the lot of us. I am captain because I am able to write and to add numbers!
To paint the picture, I am strapped into the captains chair, which is a rotten old seat from an SUV. I am a tiny blond woman, so I look like a child strapped into a grown up seat. Just ahead sit our 'navigator' and 'pilot'. Jake is a sort of scarecrow pirate dude with a missing leg. He can repair any kind of machine, but his abilities to navigate outer space are not well tested. Jed is a fat little scary clown with one eye. He operated fighting robots in the final war, so he is actually moderately competent to fly the A3 in the unlikely event that she does not immediately blow up. There is some irony in letting the guy who can barely walk find our way, and the guy who can barely see hold the controls of the craft.
Our coms officer, Bareth, is a huge black woman who is formidable in a fight, and can actually hear! The Security station is occupied by a slender man with great dreadlocks. He is named Doll and is very gay. It is as if the least qualified person in the ship were stationed to each post. I guess that it is what you might expect, if scrappy, desperate soldier/criminals were gathered from the battlefield and forced onto a doomed ship.
We extinguish our smokes as the countdown reaches single digits, and tighten up the hastily rigged full body harnesses that hold us tightly to the motley collection of old car and aircraft seats. As the chemical rockets ignite, I realize that the harnesses are made of tanned animal hide with the fur left on.
The craft itself is a modified troupe carrier from the early days of the war. It holds the 5 of us comfortably, but I can not imagine how it can be used for a long journey. It is little more than a cargo container with some instruments strapped to the walls and the seats bolted where the soldiers used to stand holding their weapons.
We are slammed back into the seats, and the carrier pulls away from the ground. I realize that we are lifting unevenly, and shout “can anyone figure out what is going on?” I guess that  weak line was my first captainly offering.
Jed glances back with “this thing has 4 motors. Motor 2 is not getting enough fuel. I am starving the other 3 motors a little, and correcting with directional thrusters.” Sure enough, I feel little tugs to the side and the sounds of the little motor beside us operating intermittently. It is clear from the single view-port that we are still headed up, but in a slightly jerky, corkscrew trajectory.
Bareth speaks in the super calm monotone typically used by the radio operator in world war 2 movies. “ Bad news, ground control came under attack just after we lifted off “.  She switches on a speaker, and we hear the cracks of small arms fire and the roar of rockets. She repeated again and again, “can anyone respond” ? Finally, a panicky voice comes on the line: “they got the control tower with a rocket. This is James, the cook that gave you breakfast this morning. You guys better duck, because they are directing rockets at you now.”
Jake is staring fixedly at a screen fastened to the wall near his chair, which looks like a swivel chair from a fancy camper van. “holy shit!” he says “there are 2 rockets gaining on us … If they have enough fuel, they will hit us in around 20 seconds”
 Jed barks “are they jinking back and forth like the d6 heat seekers ” ? Jake responds with “yep, corkscrew trajectory, impact in 15 seconds....” Jed starts messing with the pilot controls mumbling, “I know what to do with heat seekers.... “ and announces over the ships intercom: “ brace for impact” He hits a large control, and the main engine quits instantly. He fires a attitude jet to spin us around, and we watch in amazement as both rockets pass us by and destroy each other! They had been looking for the hot engine, and when we killed ours and turned the hot metal away from them, each found the others engine.
After that strange zero g maneuver, Jed spins us back around, and relights the main engine. I, for one, am getting pretty queasy as the gravity goes from 4 or 5 Gs to free-fall and back again. Jake is keeping track of our position and velocity vector, and calls for Jed to cut the main engine. We are back to weightless again, but, this time, things are calm and quiet. This crew does not look like much, but they are actually operating fairly well! 
Having arrived at the altitude of high earth orbit that we have been given, we drift in zero g, and look around. Broken high tech junk is scattered all around, so it seems that the starship that we have been sent up to has already been destroyed. This takes the fight out of my brave crew, and the bunch of us start moaning and passing around a massive joint of very good cannabis.
We had been captured soldiers, astronauts, and now are stranded space-farers, all in a few hours time. We are just starting to plan out what to do to survive when a sort of giant robot drifts into view on one of the main screens fixed to the arbitrary 'front' of the troupe carrier. It is ungainly, with spindly arms folded against it's sides, and bins of tools and parts affixed all around it's thick waist. It looks like a space tick that attaches itself to fat ships and draws nutrients from them.
The tick ship has huge bay windows, through which we can see humans looking quizzically at our flying brick. I hold up my hand in the classic cell phone position, and Bareth gives them a call on the emergency frequency. When she points to me, I speak into the microphone built into the ancient cell phone affixed to a sort of console beside my car seat. “ This is captain Staggart of the …... ummmm, …. un-named and stranded star-ship. May I ask your business?
We see them scrambling around in there, looking for the source of the transmission. Finally, we see one of them lift an object, and hear : “Hey there. We thought that you had been destroyed during take off. We are the crew of the busy bee, and I am James Tibia, the acting captain. We were part of the entourage around the Gates space station, which was itself destroyed around a week ago. We have been waiting for you, and have been placed under your command.
Another absurd craft comes drifting slowly up, trailing puffs of visible exhaust with each maneuver. It looks like a bell, and also sports large windows. Who puts bay windows in spacecraft? In short order, there are 4 maintenance ships attached to our 4 personnel locks. It seems that lots of the maintenance crew were killed in the attack on the Gates station, and that our mission is to be scrounged together from equipment and people that survived the destruction here. I read  a lot of science fiction in my youth, where generation ships are constructed carefully over decades, and the colonists are hand picked from a large group of applicants who are highly qualified, and who wish to leave earth.
In this case, everyone wants to leave earth. The air is no longer breathable, The surface of the planet has been entirely ruined by 4 decades of nuclear, chemical and small arms war. Our normal attire on the surface is a sort of powered and armored space suit. We eat synthetic food, and food that was grown decades ago, before the land was made toxic. We hear little but explosions and commands, breath canned air, eat canned food, and our 'work' is the killing of other human beings. The human life span has decreased to an average of 36 years of age, and most people die in a battle, or kill themselves. There are almost no live births any more, so we have become a dead end civilization. It is only remarkable that folks keep fighting and fucking. I am the most stubborn person that I know, so I understand how this kind of situation can come about. I am always the last person to leave a party, and I can not stop striving toward some end, no matter how ridiculous and unlikely that end may be. It is like a very bad movie that one has watched for hours. It has become impossible to look away until the aweful movie ends.
The human race has been sorted. When the rest of the world declared war on the United States in 2026, the lazy, the obese, and the suicidal were the first to go. When the war went badly, like when the east coast was entirely lost, there was a cascade of suicides numbering in the tens of millions. There was some irony, because the folks who had best prepared themselves with equipment and supplies were often first to do themselves in.

From the audio journal of Jake Stevens: I guess that I am the science officer on this wreck, so I have been given an ancient voice recorder. I am well older than the other bridge officers, so my record of events might be slanted in a different way. 
A3, as we call her, was launched in the middle of a battle. Our side actually lost the battle decisively, and it turned into a gambit where we risked a small army to get this low percentage space shot off of the ground. We barely foiled an strong attempt to shoot us down, and are now meeting the rest of the crew. They were already in orbit, so, when we arrived in our own stable orbit, they docked with us. Captain Bess invited them aboard. They entered Armstrong from 4 distinctly different types of orbiters: a culinary unit loaded with  tasty food and a space garden, a maintenance unit with skilled techs and lots of tools, a pleasure unit that is like a space brothel that makes house calls, and a defense unit bristling with spy shit, weapons and ammunition. Gates station has been destroyed with a single unlikely missile hit that took none of the support craft. The craft had originally supported the Gates, Bezos and Zuckerburg stations before their respective destructions.
It was a bizarre meeting, with our crew still in our armored fighting suits, and the others clean and nearly naked. We were as filthy as it is possible to be, with our suits decorated in a camouflage pattern of soot, blood and shit. Many of us are missing limbs and organs, having seen countless battles, including the deployment of biological, radiological, sonic and energy weapons in addition to high explosive weapons. The other crews were composed of flawless physical specimens with perfect grooming and immaculate cleanliness. Their eyes were not bloodshot or squinted or wrinkled, because they had not been exposed to sun, wind, and the fearful weapons of war. I had only seen such humans in the pre ww3 movies. They had head hair and facial hair, while our bodily hair is shaved or worn off so that our suits can seal properly. Their garments ranged from g strings and decorations for the pleasure staff, to tailored work suits with lots of pockets for the maintenance workers.
Our mismatched group floated around in the zero g, meeting one another. I could not help but admit that the situation was comical. Stinking, beat up and heavily armored soldiers packed in with prostitutes of both genders, Cooks and high tech custodians. Most of our crew were still sick from the evasion maneuvers and the new sensation of zero g. All were shell shocked and exhausted from decades of fighting. The younger members of our platoon had all been born during ww3, so I was glad to see a few gentlemen and ladies that were closer to my own age.
As far as I know, only Bess and I were aware of our orders to eat the less crucial members of crew after our other rations ran out. In my mind, it hardly mattered. These remnants of a once great orbital community had lives measurable in days or weeks if they stayed in Earth Orbit with no space stations to receive supplies from earth, or to provide spin gravity and military protection.
After our meet and greet, Bess got us into a rough circle, and began a strategy meeting. When consulted, I suggested that make gravity by spinning our craft, and figure out how to leave our home planet before we were shot down. China, russia, and a few countries in Europe still had remnants of their ballistic missile batteries, and ground based rail guns. We were sitting ducks. We spun up the ungainly arrangement, but it was not at all balanced, and wobbled a lot. The spin gravity produced was weak, had Coriolis effects, and  varied in a cyclic manner due it's unbalanced configuration. But, it was a start, and allowed us to strip off our fetid suits, and get clean in the pleasure module. We allowed ourselves 6 hours to rest, eat, and relax after the stressful escape from Earth.

Bess: Our platoon had been hounded across much of Western Utah and into Colorado in the last weeks. Our numbers had dwindled to our present handful. The conditions for us were pitiable, with almost no ammunition or food, and many injuries. I now found myself in a bubble bath! And, I could see my vagina for the first time in those weeks. It was surrounded by a shadow of fine hairs, that had grown since I last viewed my own piss flappers. I smiled when I saw that Jake and Jed were looking hungrily in the same direction. Hahahaha, I was once quite a good looking woman, but my breasts have melted away, I am covered with burns and scars, and my blond hair is 5 mm long. My very last injury was a bunch of shrapnel in the helmet, so my face and scalp are covered with zipper-like scars.
I have a burning joint in one hand, and a cold beer in the other! And, no one is shooting at me! I am beginning to feel as if we might pull this off. I regard my soaking companions. It is hard to look at Jed, as he has removed his eye patch, revealing a ragged hole in his head. He is in his mid 40s, and I notice for the first time that he is not actually fat. He is a compact muscle man, or would be if he got some decent food. He looks like a snail that has been pried from it's shell, and left out in the sun to dry up. He must have been beautiful in his youth.
Jake is more of less the opposite of Jed. He is well over 6 feet tall, and if that is normal, it is clear that people were much larger before the war. He is shriveled on his tall frame, like a statue of a man made from beef jerky. He is also hard to look at naked, because the stump of his missing leg is a total mess. I am to blame. He had stepped on a mine while we were trying to raid a Chinese camp for food and ammunition. The explosion and the screaming alerted the Chinese, and they provided us with heavy fire and gas. While trying to shoot back, I noticed that Jake was writhing on the ground beside me. His suit had deployed it's built in below-the-knee tourniquet, but the gas was melting the flesh from the protruding bits of calf muscle. I gave him morphine, cut away the flesh below the tourniquet, and tried to do something with the splintered bone that still protruded. The saw on my multi tool was too dull, so I used the serrated edge of my mini shovel. I put a spare glove over the result, and taped it up. After we had limped the remains of our platoon out of enemy territory, we found that the gas had melted the glove and the tape onto Jake's new stump. We were out of morphine and most medical supplies by then, so it was difficult to clean up the stump, and to fit a foot of oak to the result. I Sincerely hoped that our new crew included someone with medical experience.
When we were clean and relaxed, some gorgeous humans brought us thick towels embossed with the Gates station logo and colorful, flawless clothing. We learned their names, and were told that the pleasure module was also the medical module. No one was shooting at us, so we proceeded to the food module through the pressurized walkway that had been deployed around the perimeter of our wobbling wheel. The maintenance workers were going about their tasks with silent efficiency and skill. They had all kinds of tools that I had never seen. They were overjoyed to have something to do, and accepted direction from Jake with obvious relish.
We were seated at a table hastily rigged to the wall that was now the floor. It was a little hard to swallow with the gravity varying with time, and jinking a bit from side to side. But the food was amazing! I did not recognize the look or the taste of the vegetables that were tastefully arranged around the grilled fish and rice. Again, the culinary staff seemed overjoyed to have hungry people to feed, and a mission to accomplish. Desert consisted of real coffee and a baked goodie called a croissant. Jake knew about coffee, which is a stimulating soup made of burned beans. Doll and Bareth were seated with us now, and it gave me a warm glow to see the beat-to-hell remnants of our fighting group smacking their lips and purring with pleasure. I began to nod after the feast. Supported by 2 unfamiliar humans, I was led back to the pleasure unit where I was helped into a hammock, that rocked me to sleep in seconds.

Jake:
We were bathed and fed in the sort of luxury that rich folks enjoyed before the war. The young remnants of our fighting group collapsed into hammocks right after the meal. They are wonderful humans, but they are stunted and physically weak. People do not grow up properly without good air and food and medical care. I was by far the strongest of my platoon, even though I was senior by 20 years.
The coffee woke me up a bit, and I sleep about half as much as the 'kids'. So, after bedding down the rest of the bridge crew, I headed for maintenance. I was introduced to Vanessa, the captain of the unit and a very attractive little Asian elf. We first attended to the wobble, so that our absurd ship would not fly apart without needing any missile to assist it. Vanessa brought me to her office, where we used a computer with a wall sized screen. We assessed the wobble, and found that the maintenance section was as heavy as any 2 of the other units. The center of rotation was midway between maintenance and the troupe carrier that formed the central hub. The extra mass was mostly in spare parts. Her eager crew distributed the really heavy parts to the lighter units, and then shortened the walkways attaching it to the carrier, and to the adjacent pleasure and culinary units.
We got rid of most of the wobble, and then started monkeying with the lengths of the pressurized walkways connecting the hub to the wheel, and  connecting each of the 4 units of the wheel to the adjacent one. We got our wheel 'trued', and returned to the hub to spin us up to a really comfortable gravity so that the wheel units were somewhere close to 1 g. Of course, each area of each unit had a spin gravity that varied with the distance from the center of spin. The lightest unit was the military unit, so we had extended it's connecting tubes, and it's gravity was the greatest. The maintenance unit, still the heaviest, had the lightest spin gravity. The hub was a problem. Since the center of rotation was not in the center of the unit, the gravity varied a lot depending on a person's location in the unit.
At that point, I ran out of steam, and joined the bridge crew for my standard 4 hours of sleep. We all awoke at around the same time, and headed back to the food unit. On the way, I noticed that the huge windows of the pleasure unit provided a really disturbing view. The stars and the giant disk of earth sweeping by at a relentless pace. I solved the puzzle of the huge windows. It was meant for zero g sex! It would be quite a treat to look at the stars or the ruined planet while doing the happy space dance.
We had another big meeting, this time including the military, who had showed up last to our spinning junkyard. The big concern was how to move the 'ship'. The chemical fuel tanks were mostly empty, and no more deliveries were expected. Vanessa had a spare central power unit for the Station. It fused matter to produce electricity and thrust and heat. It could accept any matter at all, and the more that you fed in, the more power and thrust that it produced. We formed groups to work on various problems. Of course, I joined Vanessa and a few of the better educated techs to rig up the power unit. The military folks had a small armed shuttle, and most of them went out in it to scavenge stuff that we really needed. Anything left in Earth orbit was up for grabs. The maintenance folks had a bunch of repair robots and a few extra large space suits with thrusters and tools.
Jed de-spun the ship. Van and I went out in two of the suits while a tech used a robot to gather any usable materials from the cloud of debris that was once Gates station. We decided to create a superstructure of aluminum that would allow the fusion drive to push our contraption without breaking it apart. All of the units had standard air locks, as well as standard fittings intended to bolt on additional tanks and equipment. While a tech used the computer inside to figure out the best place to push on the hub, we got started welding and bolting. Several techs brought us aluminum struts from our stores, and several others sorted space junk and trimmed the best bits for use in our sculpture.
We got the thing built that 'day', slept, and attached the drive unit the next day. Our soldiers returned with scavenged parts, fuel, food and more. We put some of the salvage to use right away, and soon had the fusion drive hooked up so that it could be fed matter and controlled from a station that we attached to wall of the hub. The drive itself could be reached by crawling 'up' a pressurized tube when we were using spin gravity, and by doing a space walk in free fall or when under thrust. It was not safe to work on the outside of the ship while spinning, unless the worker was strapped tightly to the hull.
One day blended into another, as we connected the 5 separate units for power, water, communication and control. We heard nothing from the earth rotating below us. In the last few years, the atmosphere had been damaged so severely that smoke signals worked better than radio signals. We could see explosions, one of which put out the lights of the last city visible from space.
We watched as the last large ice shelf pealed away from Antarctica, followed immediately by mile-thick ice bergs that had been waiting just behind the shelf. The resulting waves were clearly visible, and the seas swelled to cover more coastline. Ordinarily, I would be reluctant to leave a perfectly good planet, but Earth was no longer that good planet.

Captains log: The parts of our ship are now connected into a fairly sturdy arrangement. By sheer luck, we are the only object that is left orbiting Earth that possesses military capability. Thus, we have been able to refill our chemical propellant and water tanks, and stock up on Oxygen and Nitrogen. We already had literally tons of food, but we now have a working grow room with all kinds of plant starts and seeds. In our last full crew meeting, it was decided that this mission was not to be a suicide mission whose purpose was to locate stuff to haul back to Earth. We have changed it to a colonization attempt. Hanging up here above the natural disasters and war has put our situation into perspective.
But which way to go? If we intend to head out of the solar system, the nearest systems with planets are tens or hundreds of light years away. We certainly do not have the equipment or support that would be needed to terraform a harsh planet or moon. We need to find one that already has an atmosphere and liquid water. We need not stay near Earth, which will require thousands or millions of years to recover from it's infection of greedy and warlike humans. We have to depart before someone is motivated to send a nuclear tipped missile our way.
Science came to a halt when the war started. Some planets are known to exist, because the star dims slightly when a cool body comes between the star and our telescope. We would be able to boost at 1 earth gravity using half of our matter supply. The second half would slow us down for our visit to the chosen solar system. We did not have a fancy generation ship built over decades. We had a flying scrap-heap. So, we picked a close one. If anyone was still alive when we arrived, we could at least find matter to continue the search if the first try was a dud.

Jake's voice record: It took 3 months to get ready, and then we took away our spin, got the ship pointed correctly, and lit the fusion drive. It was a little hairy, because I remembered that a fraction of these prototype drives blew up instead of making power, heat and thrust. We had a good one! We now had a wonderful, steady 1 gravity that did not vary from 1 to 0 g depending on location in the ship. This proved too much for the orbital crew, many of whom had been born in space. We settled for .8 g, which was very delightful for the Earth born, and tolerable for the space born. And our velocity increased in a most gratifying way. It would be our children and grandchildren that would reach the star system, if it turned out that we could survive and reproduce.
As for fuel, we had changed the nature of the mission, so we did not put people into the drive. We used poop. Yes indeed! The first human mission to the stars flew on a plume on ionized shit. This really tickled my sense of Irony. Seeing how well mankind had done as stewards of our once lovely jewel of a planet, it was strangely fitting.
I had been raised on Science fiction novels and movies. In these, space-farers zip about from adventure to adventure, with some kind of major human or mechanical problem solved during each episode. Our trip was nothing like that. Most of our crew had been raised in a totally isolated gated community, and were accustomed to going to work each day. They had raised the children, washed the clothing, and repaired the 'homes' of the wealthiest humans that had ever existed. They had defended their space city against attacks from Earth, and from the defenders of the stations. And, other than myself, the bridge crew had spent their entire lives fighting an all out war that lasted for over a generation.
For us, uneventful ship life was like being in heaven. We were eating the finest delicacies, and we socialized with the well educated and physically flawless humans. To us, the space-born were like angels. They were not violent or crude like infantry soldiers. On the other hand, they had no real leaders, and needed us to make the sort of decisions that their mega rich employers had once made for them. It was a magical partnership. We were accustomed to tons of action and excitement, so we would have faced problems like obesity, boredom and suicide without the calming influence of the space-born. In short, they knew how to party!
If the trip had been filmed, it would have been a porno flick instead of a space opera. The fusion drive had a maintenance cycle of it's own. It would be shut down periodically to clean out the tube where the decomposed matter was accelerated to create thrust. It was a great time to get out of the ship and work on the various hulls that protected us, as well as the framework that supported the drive. A suited worker need not be tethered to prevent the ship from scooting away at .8 g. It was also a great time for 0 g sex. It was not long before we had some pregnancies, and our first big surprise.
Susan Brisk, a young member of the pleasure staff, gave birth a little over a year into the trip. The boy baby had breathing lungs and a beating heart, but was otherwise unresponsive. Dr. Jane Stoddard, also of the pleasure crew, could find no brain injury, and no evidence of a birth defect. Was it was sheer bad luck that our first in-flight birth was a perfect looking Downs syndrome baby? The drive appeared to be running clean, with just some low energy gamma rays and neutrinos leaking out. We were well out of the solar system, and far from sources of ionizing radiation.
So, when Heady Fry gave birth, we watched that second male baby intently. Alpha Fry had the same problem. As the months elapsed, neither Alpha Fry or Saturn Brisk recognized their Mothers, or attempted to raise their heads. While this was not an all out disaster, the Armstrong mission looked like it would be a flop as a far as anyone reaching the new star system with consciousness. Then, we had our first in-flight fatality. The military staff was being cross trained to perform maintenance, as there was no fighting to do. Steve Cross took a high energy particle through the midsection during a zero g space walk. It did not even puncture the suit, which could repair itself from such common events. But his heart was stopped for 15 minutes while we got him inside, and it could not be restarted. Simultaneously, Saturn gave his mother Susan a huge smile, and began to gurgle and wriggle about.
The timing was too coincidental to ignore. It appeared that we were isolated from the well of human souls. We had the 103 souls that we had taken from Earth, but could not obtain more souls. Someone had to die and give their soul up before a baby could become concious.
The Frisks wanted a soul for their baby. They wanted it enough that the father, Horace, offered to kill himself. He was of the military crew, and had a long standing feud with his superior. The two decided to fight a duel to provide the soul. Killing 2 birds with one stone, as it were. We used the largest chamber in the maintenance section, which housed the majority of our spare parts. The parts were re-arranged to provide a fighting arena and a viewing area. It was a very strange event, because the combatants had been raised around each other, and were really pretty good friends. Their differences had arisen over years, and they had been amplified by the close quarters of the ship. Everyone was pretty darn sick of their constant bickering, which had become a sort of knee jerk response for the both of them.
They chose to battle hand to hand, so we lit the drive to provide a steady .8 g. We set up a sort of fence around them, so that no spectator and no spare parts would be harmed. Both  fighters were in spectacular condition, and sturdily built. So, the contest dragged on for hours. It was really quite surreal. Their were many rest breaks, during which Horace  and Sam chatted amiably for the first time since launch. They still hated one another fervently, but were relieved to be dealing with the issue. Finally, Sam dashed Horace's head hard enough onto the deck plates to end the battle. Crew members  had begun to drift in and out of the audience after it became evident that watching people fight for such a long time was no more interesting that watching an all day porno film. But, of course, Alpha and Heady were present, and the infant began to croon at the exact moment that Horace breathed his last. The father's soul had migrated to the daughter.

Captains log: I thought that this was a mission of escape from a trashed planet. But, It has turned itself into a spiritual journey. It seems that we have only the exact number of souls that we left Earth with. If someone is born, they need to wait for someone else to die before obtaining consciousness. There are some open questions, such as 'what happens if someone dies and there is no empty baby to receive the soul?' and 'is it our velocity, or our distance from Earth that is causing this interesting complication?' If the souls are part of Earth, then there is little point in colonizing another planet. It can only ever have 103 conscious human inhabitants. If it is a velocity issue, we will have access to more souls when we slow down relative to Earth.
Since we were sent to find resources and not to colonize, we have a random selection of creatures and plants that can not create an ecosystem. We do have some very practical and skillful people. And, driving around in space with soldiers, cooks and space prostitutes is a lot better than fighting an endless and unwinnable war.  Rather than stranded in space, I prefer to think of us as enjoying a 4 generation long space vacation.
My own attitude has really shifted during the months of launch preparation. I was born to a migrating sort of scavenging and fighting tribe. It was also a bit of a cult, eschewing a strange mix of old time Judaism and native American nature worship. If I had to describe my own position in the tribe, it was assassin and spy. A small independent tribe's best defense plan is to penetrate and if necessary, behead the nearest large tribe. During my 3 decades of life and fighting, I have seen the war go from an invasion of the United States to a mad free for all. When we were driven from an area, we were just as likely to find our tribe fighting a more religious Jewish Tribe as opposed to a Muslim tribe or a remnant of the original Chinese or German invasion forces.
Yea, I am treating the official captains log of Armstrong 3 as a chatty diary. On the other hand, if the human race survives, future humans might be  curious about what happened here.  I am ready for some answers myself: When we slow down, will we have access to a supply of souls? If someone dies without a baby to inhabit, does that soul stay with the accelerating ship? No one has gone this fast before. We are not sure that it is safe to get close to the speed of light. Does matter turn into light at some point? We are exploring many aspects of reality at one time.
About babies, I am starting to think of that exact subject as the shell shock wears off. I have searched my workings to figure out what sort of daddy feels right. I am leaning toward my science officer, even though he is ancient. Compared with Jake, every other crew member looks deformed and stunted, and seems mentally handicapped.  I must look stunted and slow to him. Not to mention, shriveled and unattractive compared to the amazing, succulent women of his pre-war days.

Jake's spoken log: 2  years have passed, or the planet that we have left has orbited it's star twice, since we departed that solar system. We are between stars, and moving at .2 C. We have little to do except to look way ahead for bodies that we definitely should not hit. We would be lucky to see a unlit block 10 meters on a side for long enough to blink before hitting it. And, hitting an object one meter on a side should be enough to vaporize us. An object the size of a sugar cube could let the air out of many pressurized areas.
There is the small problem that nearly half of the crew wants to have babies, but apparently, someone has to die to animate each new person that is born. There is some speed or distance limit for the human soul, and this fact could only be discovered by the first fools to get going really fast.  This only seems like a problem because we have begun to decompress from the war, and can now think about other things besides avoiding land mines in a landscape of buried munitions, or drawing a few more breaths of canned air while remaining isolated from the scorched and toxic atmosphere.
That is what I remind myself when I feel at all low. Even if we had no destination at all, and were not loaded down with food, fuel and breathing gas, we would still be better off. I estimate that the earth currently holds just a few tens of millions of humans. Each day, that number drops. It is easier to count surviving species of mammals than to enumerate the lost species. Ordinarily, one could feel homesick upon leaving one's planet. I only feel relieved.
Another thing that I never again expected to feel is amorous. I have always had a tendency to dislike and avoid people. My mom said that I had been a troubled baby, crying at loud sounds and bright lights. I had difficulty sleeping, as the sleep state resembled the dead state a little too closely for my comfort. And, of course, I had trouble mating. I am a very vigilant monkey who is always looking for danger. And, since the start of the endless war, danger has been abundant. Other people are not potential sexual partners. Rather, they are sources of disease, injury and irritation. At best, they compete with me for food and air. At worst, they are sources of equipment and nutrients.
Lately, I have been feeling drawn to people. It is strange, because the wartime inhibitions are still in place. From a distance, the attraction seems like hunger. But, as I draw near, I find that I do not seek to eat the persons flesh. Instead, I wish to learn about the person's habits, and to understand what motivates the person to continue living. Male or female, they all look young and short and perfect to this old wreck. In fact, the younger crew members all look like the same person. It is only the older crew members that look like individuals. I really like to work with Vanessa, but I am not drawn to her. It is the captain that draws me toward her. Like a massive object in space, she bends space so that I wish to orbit her. My eyes go to her often, and it takes a massive effort to look in another direction. My body tries to occupy the same space that she is already occupying. Like a star, she radiates the wavelengths that I require for my well being.
For my part, I try to hide my attraction, and to supply an anti-gravity that keeps me at the proper distance. I can only imagine her distaste for her absurdly tall, wrinkled and one legged science officer. She hides it well, and continues to rely on me for my physics degree and mechanical handiness. She puts up with my pre-war anecdotes, and my fascination with bad ironic puns. I am going to try to speak with Bess about this topic.

NOTE: Jake recorded some of his lectures after he became a teacher. As the only crew member that had lived before ww3, he had certain frequently asked questions...
Jakes class notes:
student: why did you leave the sol system. Wouldn't it have been much easier to try to terra-form Mars, or even to hollow out an asteroid?
Jake: Great question! Why travel 4 light years to a strange multiple star system when the sol system still had bases on dozens of planets and moons, and there were still many unexplored asteroids and moons? The war had raged throughout the solar system, and there was no sign that it was letting up. When outposts are abandoned in wartime, they are usually booby trapped, and purposely despoiled. The outposts had not been set up as great places to raise children. They were mining and weapons making operations that were also military forts.
No matter where we went in the sol system, we would never be safe. Also, and this may not make sense at first, but we were a people that had only known war. It seemed wise to wander in the desert for 40 years, and raise a generation of humans that knew only peace. Lastly, we were shot at during the launch, and were not being given time to make careful decisions.

Student: What was it like at the start of ww3?
Jake: The situation took a long time to develop. WW1 and WW2 were both started by People in the European continent that wanted more land. They also wanted to gain control of the entire planet. But, the rest of the world ganged up on them and defeated them fairly quickly. Both times, it took less than 5 years.
WW3 was pretty much the United States and Israel fighting the rest of the world. The US was reluctant to switch from fossil fuels to renewable fuels. So, when the world supply of burnable hydrocarbons got harder and harder to pump to the surface, the US started taking over other countries. There was a country called Afghanistan, and then one called Iraq. It was a replay of ww2, where the aggressor, Germany, took over 2 countries before any other countries came together to stop them.
So, when the US took over the third country, the rest of the world had combined it's power to bring the bully country to it's knees. The problem was that the sides were actually pretty well matched. The whole world combined had crushing sea and land power, but the US and Israel kept control of space and the majority of the off planet colonies. This lead to a war that lasted for 4 decades. It ebbed and flowed back and forth, with the world winning decisively, and chasing the remaining US military into space. Then, the US would return to Earth with some devastating new weapon, and gain control.... When we left, this cycle had repeated so many times that humans had deliberately ruined the Earth and all of it's nearby colonies.

Captains address to the crew at year 10 event: We have been heading toward the Centaurus system for 10 years now, so we are a quarter of our way into the 40 year trip. We have been accelerating at 1 G, and will be for another 10 years. Then, of course, we will slow down for 20 years. We started with 130 souls on board, and have had to control our births and deaths so that total is constant. As you know, we have settled on a bout or duel per earth year, unless a fatal accident makes a bout unnecessary. Thus, we are proud to have 10 space-born crew members that have never known Earth. I wish that these children had not known violence, but, of course, their own births had been made possible by fatal duels.
We have been putting our dead into the engine, as well as any items that we brought that have not been useful. We need to make some pretty big decisions soon. It is possible to cut the engines at any point, and then spin the ship to create simulated gravity. When we are close enough to slow down and stop at 1 G, then we can figure out what else to convert to energy to create the thrust. We are already short of water, and some trace elements, so we have to reclaim those valuable materials before feeding matter to the engine.
As for our limited well of souls, We have many questions about this surprise result of relativity. Will souls be able to reach us after we decelerate to explore and settle planets? Perhaps there are souls already there? The physics of the human soul is not well understood. We are the first humans to go so quickly.
On that note, I would like to ask someone to take over the captain job. This is the official announcement that your present captain has a bun in the oven after patiently waiting her turn. The culprit is none other than Jake, who I coaxed using the very last bottle of single malt scotch in this area of space. Who ever takes the job can give it back in a few years if they do not like it. Due to my age, this will almost surely be my one chance to spring off an offspring. I like the job, but I would not be able to give it much attention while breast feeding. I see that no one is eager to accept the captaincy, which is probably a good thing. The job should not go to a person who craves power over others, but rather, to a person who can see the whole picture, and is reluctant to exert authority.
With that said, Beth stepped down from the stair that she was standing on so that she could be seen. Jake came over to her, and wrapped her in a big hug. It looked to the crew like an adult clutching a child. Jake and Beth were the largest and smallest adult members of the crew, as well as the two oldest.

The next emergency, as told by Jake:      Our next big problem is The mass crisis. We really wanted to get to the nearest star system to sol with some original members of the crew still living. We were doing our best with the physical and mental education of the young, but they were space born children of parents that had also spent part of their lives in earth orbit. We expect them to have some problems entering a gravity well, and have no clue how strong that gravity will be. That is the Nutonion way to state it. Einsteins new way of looking at gravity has the new star curving space so that the planets go around it, with each one thinking that they are going straight. Anyway, we need more mass to put into the converter if we wish to get to the Centauri system with living earth-born humans in the proposed 40 year time frame.
We have tried grabbing mass with a giant magnetic scoop, but the particles that we grab slow the ship when accelerated to the correct velocity to bring aboard. The lost velocity was not quite regained by the mass converter. We tried finding particles that are already heading in the same way that we were, but have failed to get anything but virtual particles that often pop back out of existence before they can be used. Killing half the crew would work, but no one wanted to be the missing mass.
The answer occurred to me in a dream. I saw the ship, reconfigured in a line instead of a ring. One of the units was missing. So, we shut down the converter entirely, got everything useful out of the pleasure unit, and cut it apart. We arranged the remaining units in a row along the direction of motion, and rebuilt the walkways between them. It took about 2 weeks, and then we started to burn the parts of the pleasure unit. We did some math, and figured out how much to burn, so that we would not have to sacrifice another pressurized unit to the converter. The quickest trip time with the fuel that we had would give us 2 years of free fall before we turned the ship around and pointed the converter the other way to slow down. That 2 years could spell disaster. The space-born were already pretty spindly, and it seemed unlikely that any of us could live on a planet after 2 years of loosing muscle mass.
This problem is no emergency, and we have almost a decade to figure out a solution. After all, we do not know if there is a livable planet in the Centauri system, and we can not guess what sort of gravitational field and magnetic field we would find if there is a planet the correct distance from the main star.
On a personal note, I have certainly never fathered a child. Not on Earth, and not while hurtling through space on a nutty mission to seed another star system with human beings. However, I plan to keep right on solving science problems, and filling the role of second in command of
Armstrong 3. Beth will be doing the heavy lifting in bearing and raising our star hopping infant. I hope that someone steps forward to take the captaincy, so that I do not have to move into that position.

A birth in space, as related by Beth Junior when she could dictate into the cell phone:
The duel has been held, and our half blind pilot is being fed into the mass converter, minus his water, phosphorus, and a few organs that were not too worn out. I am a week overdue, and getting worried about the size and increasing weight of my baby. What the hell? Is she trying to get to my size before making her appearance? We have few medical supplies after a decade of flight, so there will be no pain killers or anesthetic, and no complicated surgical procedures. I will push this child out, or die trying. I have been a soldier and in constant mortal danger for much of my life, so this is just another battle for me. The penalty is the same as an Earth battle, but the rewards are more interesting by far.
My water broke while I was on the bridge, watching Jake and his science team attempt a new method of capturing matter. The idea was to deploy a strong magnetic field in a funnel shape around A3, and coax charged particles into a spiral path that would bring them into a special strong tank that had been rigged to the hull. We got charge particles all right, but they got too heavy as they were accelerated to our present fraction of light speed. They turned the special tank into a colander. In less than a minute, the tank had been sawed neatly in half by the rapidly spiraling particles within. The birth started while Jake was talking about some kind of magnetic bottling inside of the tank that would allow the particles to slow without scoring the walls.
I retreated to my bunk with Jean, our midwife. I tried to push my daughter out for 3 days and nights. We tried our last muscle relaxants, but she would not emerge. Finally, the midwife made the incision to make my vagina larger, and the baby exploded out at the touch of the knife. I had a glimpse of the infant, but she was lying still in a giant pool of someones blood. I guessed that it was my blood, but before I could think another thought my vision turned red and the lights went out.
A moment later, I opened my eyes. Jean was holding me. I could not see properly, nor was I breathing. She gave me a little shake, and pulled some stuff out of my mouth. I spit up some more material, and was able to take a breath. It felt strange, as up until now, my lungs had functioned more like gills in thick fluid. My ears were plugged up, but they cleared a few minutes later. Jean was working with my mom now, who was clearly dead. She had split open, like the victims in the alien movies. Jean stitched her closed, mopped the floor and gathered the soaked sheets. I knew that the water would all be reclaimed. In fact, I knew a lot of things that a newborn should not know. I was the captain of A3, and partnered with it's science chief.
My thoughts were hampered by the newly made and mostly un-wired infant brain, but I knew that my soul had migrated instantly from Mother to child. The pilot's sacrifice now seemed like a waste of souls, and I wondered if Jed's soul would fly with us as we continued to accelerate at one Earth gravity. It would be a good experiment to skip the next duel, and provide no new soul for the next crew offspring. It was not that risky, as newborns could apparently be left soul-less until the next crew fatality.

Jake's audio log: I had no way of knowing that my new baby girl was also my wife. Apparently, the soul went directly from mother to daughter at the moment when she was orphaned. It was clear from her gaze, and from crude attempts at hand signals, that this infant was very special. But, her brand new vocal cords could create only stuttering cat's meows.
I was stunned for several days, as my very favorite person out of the few that had departed earth was abruptly gone. Every time that I turned a corner while moving through the labyrinth of the ship, I expected to see my sweetie coming towards me, with that slightly lop-sided grin. Then, I would remember that we had already recovered the minerals and water from her vacated husk. There had been some words as the remaining dust was fed into the converter. The only female person that I had ever really cared about had been traded for a little bit of velocity as we neared the flip around time.

Baby Beth: I soon gave up trying to communicate with the adults, and spent a few months watching the trip as a kind of movie. I insisted on spending days on the bridge with my dad and husband. It was amazing to watch him solve the many physical problems associated with gathering mass to keep us at one gee after the turn around point.
My mind was new, and it's wiring was formed while thinking about our current predicament. We were going so fast that we had begun to behave as light in some ways. We grabbed at charged virtual particles and single atoms of gas and dust with ultra strong magnetic fields that we had learned to create during the trip. We did not need to capture much of it for the mass converter, as bringing the particles to some velocity between their previous velocity, and our fraction of the speed of light, slowed us down just fine.
We found as we slowed, that more and more of the particles could be captured and fed into the converter. There was no problem maintaining the amount of simulated gravity needed to keep the bones and muscles of the crew strong. We proved Einstein's special theory of relativity, in that there is absolutely no difference between changing ones velocity in a steady way, and going near to a massive object. Gravity is not a force that pulls matter together. It just seems that way. Matter bends space, so that heavy objects seem to attract other objects.
Infancy is a waiting game, that one starts with no mobility and no ability to communicate. It might have been boring, except that I was still on the bridge of Armstrong 3. Following a crew vote, the captaincy had passed to the science officer. Jake had kicked up a fuss at first, until he realized that the additional work would keep his mind off of his loss. So, in a strange way, I was still sort of the captain!

Jake's audio log: At several weeks of age, Beth can lift her head, and has begun to use her hands. Aside from the cooing sounds that she makes, her hands are often busy trying to form signs. She already wants to communicate! I followed a tutorial on American sign language, and found to my amazement that my newborn baby was already using it to create sentences. I only needed to learn to understand the signs, as Beth understood my spoken words perfectly. She was able to describe in signs the strange sensation of being born to ones-self.
Who would have guessed this strange conservation of souls rule that the universe seems to stick to? Will our population always be limited to the size of our original crew,  or will we have access to a larger well of souls once we have slowed down? I feel as if we have fallen off of the flat world. The physics of the human soul was something that we had cheerfully taken for granted.
Enough of my personal life. The mission is going better than we had any reason to expect. Try as I might to trick someone into being captain of the ship, the sons of bitches simply elevated me from first mate to captain. I did not forget my physics just because I was given another job. In fact, we had accelerated for too long to be able to slow down with the mass that we started with. We gambled that we would learn how to capture mass as we gained velocity. We did learn how to make much stronger magnetic fields, but we never really got much mass to put into the converter to provide thrust.
We will flip around and burn the other way, ardent in our hope that we will figure out how to gather mass enough to slow us down before we arrive at the Centauri system. We were having a big physics brainstorm on the bridge, with me holding baby Beth in my lap upon the captains chair. We had focused the strongest magnetic field that we could generate forward, into a funnel shape that we had worked out. Particles would be captured in the open end of the funnel, and were lead, in a spiraling and decelerating path, through a magnetic bottle neck into a container. This container had been attached firmly to the ship during the zero g period when we flipped. Sadly, almost all of the particles escaped as their tremendous accelerations were converted to furious spin about the inside of the magnetic bottle.
Beth suddenly started cooing and hand signaling with animation. The signals came too fast, and I only caught a few. The word 'Anchor' is the only sign that I remember. Then, she pivoted about in my lap, and began to work the controls for the magnetic bottle. I moved to stop her, and she let out such a squeal that I backed the hell off. She totally re-aimed the magnetic field so that it was behind us. She then changed the shape into a gigantic parachute instead of a bottle.
I shook my head because I was supposed to be the science dude, and I had no idea how the magnetic bottle could get any matter by dragging it behind in our wake. It was then that the new pilot, a blond teen named Abigail, announced that we were now decelerating faster than expected. She was able to back off the consumption of matter in the converter, so that we would have a good velocity for planetary maneuvers exactly as we reached our new star. I started to help Beth to adjust the shape and size of the field so that the most deceleration was noted. The best shape ended up looking like a pair of opposed hands dragging fingers as if to tear a hole larger.
So, yea, my Baby, who is also my wife, figured out that we did not need to capture any matter to put into the mass converter. Simply dragging at the matter without trying to bottle it allowed us to open the bottle shape into a vast reverse funnel that behaved like a magnetic parachute. By the time we were done fine tuning the field, our mass consumption had dropped enough to allow us some thrust after our arrival!

Baby Beth: I am no longer an infant. Now, I am a very agile toddler. My movements do not have the polish obtained from years of using one's muscles, but I have the skills of a lifetime at my disposal. Sometimes I forget which body that I am in, and make an error like tongue kissing my Husband/father. I can stay up for more than a few hours at a time, and my physical brain has developed enough to be used for abstract thought and long range planning. I can speak haltingly, but some sounds can not be formed with short vocal cords and no teeth.
Armstrong 3 is now so short of certain trace elements that members of the crew are dying from diseases similar to what ancient seafarers suffered from.
Fights to the death are no longer needed for 2 reasons. There are ample souls available, and women are no longer healthful enough to bring a baby to term. We still have years to go before reaching Proxima, and it is not clear that anyone will be alive when we arrive.
I am amazed at my own ability to do empirical science. The new brain has developed without the constant threat of war. Instead, it was nurtured in a loving and safe community, and challenged by sticky physics problems.  We have lost the instruction booklet for the mass converter, so that no one understands how it works. It is a black box that accepts matter, and gives back electricity and thrust.
But, I believe that the converter can do more. I suspect that it works by taking apart the matter at the atomic level, and exploiting the binding energy that used to hold the atoms together. It is worrisome to monkey with the drive before it is done slowing us down. But, we need a few males and a few females to reach Proxima alive.

Jake: We had a crew vote, and it was decided that Baby Beth would be allowed to modify the mass converter. It is liable to kill her, and to leave us hurtling along at high velocity with no way to slow down. But, our current projections show that 0 people will be alive when we get to our new planet.
There were some weeks of studying particle physics, and creating a custom space suit and a tiny tool-set that a toddler can use. Then, we killed the drive, and my life partner drifted over there in free fall. She used a power driver to remove a tiny round hatch, and crawled on in.

We had rigged a simple intercom, and were surprised when we heard peals of laughter from the toddler. It seemed that the device had been designed to be operated by nincompoops, and had very simple instructions printed on the inner surface of the unit. In less than an hour, Beth had turned it back on, and changed unwanted mass into buckets full of water and heaps of elements that we needed to return to good health.
The mass drive itself was a small sphere inside of a much larger anti- tampering shroud. There were other treasures within this shroud, including a very sturdy notebook computer, incredible tools, and a detailed manual for the converter. The manual, titled 'general purpose reactor, tamper resistant.' soon revealed it's secrets.
Not only could the drive transmute elements, by bombarding them with neutrons, but it could be used to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen, create vast amounts of heat, or to create a pretty large explosion. It had been factory preset to make thrust with a few percent left over for electricity. But, it could make power without any thrust and visa versa. Because of the method that it used to make electrical power, it was also able to release a tightly collimated beam of charged plasma. The beam resembled the output of early science fiction ray guns. It was useful for taking matter apart at a distance.
I let out a huge sigh when I saw my Baby/wife crawl out of the drive unit, dragging a big bag of tools and booty that she had found inside.

Beth: My mind is going at a mile a minute, as folks on Earth used to say. In my personality is still plenty of distrust of humanity, and the scars from the horrible struggle to survive on a ruined planet. But my brain is made of new mind meat. It's connections and wiring had been formed while slowing down at one G, and approaching a mystery solar system. All of our problems now are physics problems , and not problems with tactics or strategy in war. We have not had a fight to the death in a long time, because so many of the crew have died from nutritional difficulties since we started running low on potassium and trace metals.
In my bag are smaller bags containing a good supply of the needed elements, and we can easily do the chemistry to convert the elements to digestible powders that can be eaten and added to the water that feeds the hydroponic plants. We will be able to make other matter into oxygen and hydrogen, and make water! Finally, we can again have more than zero percent humidity in the air, and remain hydrated with tasty beverages that are, of course, our own recycled pee.