Carnifex

21 June, 2390, UEPF Spirit of Peace

The huge lightsail was deployed to brake the ship as it assumed orbit around Terra Nova. Down below the year was 334, AC.

Times there were actually pretty happy. The Federated States of Columbia, a generation past the bloodletting of the Formation War, enjoyed unprecedented prosperity. In the Volgan Empire the Tsar was experimenting with the freeing of the serfs. The continent of Taurus had not seen war on its soil for two generations, which was something of a record. Moreover, the Moslem and Salafi portions of the globe were, by and large, under the rule of the Taurans, a result of the crushing of the last Salafi jihad. The discovery of oil on the Yithrab peninsula was still a dozen years away.

The rate of technological progress, down below, was worrisome, though. This was why, after much hemming and hawing, the Consensus had finally agreed to build the last four starships—Spirit of Peace, Spirit of Unity, Spirit of Harmony and Spirit of Brotherhood—required to bring the fleet up to the strength that had been decided on centuries before.

It isn't so much that the Consensus acts slowly, mused the new commander of the fleet, High Admiral Jonathan Saxe-Coburg, as that it thinks so slowly. Something about the anti-agathics seems not to help with the mind after the third century, or at least it doesn't help with a number of us. His Excellency, the SecGen, seemed particularly badly effected when last we spoke. And the Caliph of Rome? Hopeless.

Or maybe it isn't the failure of the anti-agathics. Maybe it's the sheer stultifying boredom of Old Earth that slows the minds of the people who brought us to where we are today. I confess, I don't know.

And I don't know what I'm going to do about the problem of Terra Nova, either. We haven't changed, technologically, in centuries. You can watch the change as it happens down there. Sure, they're at the level of breech loading small arms, railroads and steam, right now. Where will they be in another century?