From the Desk of Director Sarah Martinez, Entry 9
October 19, 2101
This is my last entry until Monday or Tuesday. Even got Friez off my ass about it.
Why, you may ask? Because myself, Connie, and three of the UN Council have to head out to Erias for fucking peace talks.
PEACE TALKS.
They want representation, guaranteed trade routes, and, get this, CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS in the UN. Not in any of the countries, oh no; they want to be citizens of Earth, whatever the fuck that means.
I should have seen this coming. Should’ve anticipated it. I mean, now I’m sitting here ranting, clearly this was going to happen. And I did plan for it, but I thought I’d have until 2110 until this sort of thing happened. By then they’d have all been self-sufficient and, if they went for independence, well… let’s just say I wasn’t going to push it at that point.
But we need Erias right now. There’s everything we need out there for settlement production as you’d expect from an asteroid belt made up of a shattered Super-Earth. Shit, there’s an entire 700 sq km slab of ancient volcano filled with the lithium we need for Shi Chi’s battery array and now we can’t access that?
Even if the Ladder was up and running again—latest estimates are a goddamned year or more, fuck me—Chile is damn near tapped out, Australia is screaming they don’t have enough for their own use, and China…
Don’t get me started on China.
Sorry, the public line is “China is an invaluable partner in Project Genesis.”
The reality is they haven’t sent resources in six months, pulled their science teams from the Hub, and, according the UN Security Council, have started construction on their own Ladder.
Just waiting for the day I walk into the office and there’s a classified folder waiting for me saying they’ve built their own ARK.
I’m sure that’s going to go just swimmingly with the press, even if I don’t really give a shit. Let them move their people off planet if they want, as long as they’re serving the larger goal on this one, I’m okay as long as we don’t have a repeat of that “offloading undesirables” bullshit that happened in ‘99, it’ll be fine.
Right?
You’d think saving humanity would be easier.
Okay. I need to go pack and start ferrying council members to the Wheel so we’re ready to launch as soon as ARK-3 gets back in system. They asked me why we won’t just jump in the Hope and… well, things are different on the Hope in FTL. Yes, the ARKs are starting to suffer from weird little delays, but not a single fucking person has reported… anything weird.
So, until I know what’s up, tiny in-system jumps and small transports to the Wheel are all anyone else will get to see of the Hope.
Just in case.
Anyway, wish me luck while I go mingle my way into the future of the human race.
Here’s hoping it goes the way we need it to.
If it doesn’t… oh, haha. hahahahaha. We’re all fucked if it doesn’t.
— Sayre
