Kai really had to wonder what was taking the others so long to get here.
Two hours ago, a redhead boy in a pinned-up blue polyester jacket and color-changing synthetic long pants had messaged his friends on his Inter-Pacific Communicator to meet in Harvan Park to discuss what career they were planning to pursue before the Assigning Ceremony next week. He'd been sitting on a bench viewing the marble-stone waterfall for a while now, and not a single person had shown up. Sure, they all said they would be running late for one reason or another, but this was just pushing it! No wonder the Earth blew up: humans kept pushing deadlines off until the very last minute!
...well, Kai assumed that was the reason Earth had blown up, or that it had blown up to begin with. No one actually knew what happened to cause everyone to abandon their home planet in favor of traversing the stars. The story tended to change based on political, racial, and sub-sector affiliations, and the details varied as extensively as the distance between the planets that orbited around their old Solar System. The Council said that "man's avarice and pride had necessitated the maiden voyage of the S.S. Pacific", but when pressed, most of the members proved to be rather evasive. Some within the ship had tried their best to put together a coherent timeline of what happened, but the Council didn't look kindly on historians as a profession. Ostensibly, it was because a significant chunk of the records on Earth's history had been lost to time, leaving only scare fragments to try to piece together something resembling a part of the puzzle, so the Council preferred not to waste time on what it considered to be a futile exercise when they were more pressing concerns to attend to.
All that could really be agreed upon was that somehow, someway, something happened that caused everyone to ditch Earth in favor of living their lives on a gigantic intergalactic spaceship a million strong that housed an entire city, and humans must have been at fault for it. Countless theories had been floated over the years, but in Kai's opinion, there was no grand tragedy to Earth's fate, no particular moral that could be gleaned from the bits and pieces of archived newsletters and recordings that had been preserved. For him, the reason Earth had perished was simple: humanity had had lived large and in charge, and then over a long, agonizing century, they had gradually worn down every last free meal they had, started and stopped every last war that hadn't been wared, and kept on going until the planet couldn't handle it anymore and they had no choice but to leave.
Personally, Kai didn't miss that hunk of floating rock one bit. Earth was long before his generation, and one thing that he'd realized over time was that destroying your own planet was a really good incentive for advancing your civilization. From what little he gathered of the scraps of info here and there, most everyone on Earth was content with squatting on the same old ball even when they had all the resources and capabilities to explore the cosmos, simply because there were resources that could still be exploited on Earth. Once they ran out, they had little choice but to go out and build spaceships and truly make their mark in the universe. In Kai's personal opinion, more species should really consider bringing ruin to their homes instead of firing lasers at them and them and calling them a living scourge. If they focused on doing that instead of being annoying pests, they would've achieved ascendance into energy forms long ago instead of mostly squatting around the same star systems.
Out of the corner of his eye, Kai spotted a black-haired teen wearing a red outfit that resembled his own rushing over to where he was with heaving breaths. It was about time Ravi showed up; he was usually way more punctual than this. He'd have to box him in the ears later for his tardiness, but for now that could wait. The others were arriving just behind him, and the last thing he wanted was to get distracted when there were bigger issues to attend to.
"Right, so you all know why I called you here." Kai began. "The Assigning Ceremony is in a week's time, so if we don't want to be punted off into a career that we'll hate, we need to set our stories straight. Do you all know what you want to do once before the year's over?"
"Dude, if you don't know what job you're going to take on by now, you've got far bigger problems to worry about." a blond-haired boy in a green outfit identical to Kai's and Ravi's sneered.
"Excellently observed, Reizo. That's why we're listening to you waste our time." No one could miss the acidic disdain infused in Kai's words, and Reizo quickly slinked to the back of the group, muttering to himself with a scowl.
"W-well, if no one minds, I'm going into defense." Ravi hesitantly offered. "We've been getting attacked by a lot of aliens lately, so I want to do my part to help out."
"You?" A girl with long brown hair and a polyester pink suit questioned. "No offense, Ravi, but you don't strike me as the military type."
"...yeah, Kat, I know that. Actually, it's why I've been saving up for personality modifications!" Everyone was all about modifying their personalities these days: men were purchasing abrasive dispositions to get ahead of the game in attaining opportunities, and women were purchasing calculating dispositions to stay ahead in pinpointing weaknesses and strengths to exploit for their careers. Though there had been some ethical concerns raised regarding allowing people to freely alter their minds on a whim, the Council had deemed it to be in the greater interest of democracy to ensure that everyone had the right to become the kind of person they wanted to be. The fact that it was much easier to handle your citizens when you could simply program them to serve the needs of the ship was merely a bonus.
"Ravi, you know it costs an arm and a leg to get those." Kai replied. "If you're gonna be stupid, at least be feasible about it." Ravi deflated a bit in response, but Kai couldn't miss the glint of determination in his eyes. Looks like he's actually serious about pursuing a goal for once. Kai could respect that. If nothing else, Kai might pitch in make up the difference in getting the modification done if it came down to it, but he'd have to box Ravi twice in the ears for good measure for being think-headed afterwards.
"Hmm..." Kat mused. "Well, I actually just got inducted into the Big Bang Church, so if everything goes well, I'm going to be a clergywoman." The Big Bang Church was a newly ascendant religious organization that had spread across the S.S. Pacific. They professed the belief that before the universe came to be, it was ruled by billions of swarming primordial beasts made of pure chaos that thrashed and warred with each other with wild abandon. In order to expunge these swarming bits of chaos, the spirit of the universe-to-be had chosen to compress all the beats into a single point before exploding them out as energy to create the stars and galaxies. What little remained of the beasts' psyches flittered out as bits and pieces of soulstuff before eventually infecting humanity, and now it was the sacred mission of the Big Bang Church to finish the job that the universe had started so long ago and rid people of the chaos that infested their minds as parasites. The religious sect had quickly proven to be a thorn in the Council's side, who preferred that no one possess any allegiance other than to the S.S. Pacific's needs. They couldn't simply outlaw the group, however: it was a democracy, after all, so they couldn't force anyone into following or availing any one belief. The most they could do was make it extremely inconvenient for anyone to practically follow their beliefs, and also make it extremely disadvantageous to do so on the off chance they actually maintain their faith. Regardless, the Church was rapidly gaining converts, enough that being inducted into their ranks had become an accepted career path for most educational centers.
"Um..." A blond-haired girl in an orange polyester outfit (Zina, Kai recollected. She tended to fade in the background for him.) suddenly spoke up. "I'm going into... I'm heading for a career in... agricultural engineering." In reality, Zina wanted to be an embroiderer. She found that she had a knack for it, but the S.S. Pacific was currently running short on personnel to help maintain their interior ecological spaces, and there was a lot of pressure to make sure no one chose any frivolous professions in the meantime. She was mostly going along with this career path because no one could possibly find any reason to complain about it. She supposed it helped that she was actually somewhat competent at it as well; that was a surprise to everyone, especially her.
"...I suppose if I must tell you," Reizo deigned to add after having licked his wounds, "I'm going to be a systems coordinator specializing in managing extant operations and subdivisions." Basically, Reizo wanted to be one of those high-position managers that didn't do anything. Kai had to admit, he couldn't think of a better career for someone like him.
"What about you, Kai?" Kat asked. "What are your plans?"
Kai closed his eyes in anticipation for what was to come. Here it was. The moment of truth had finally arrived. This was the real reason Kai had wanted everyone to come. He had big plans in mind, and if he wanted them to work out, he needed everyone to be on board. With a sharp inhale, Kai replied:
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