Newfound

It is the twenty-ninth century AD, and Earth is dying.



Her atmosphere is filled with dust and smog. Rarely does the sun break the cover to reach her surface. Violent storms rage over the land.

Her oceans are bleak, long dead in many of the shallow regions. Life clings to the depths, fighting a losing battle against pollution, hyper-mutation and death.

Her surface is scarred and broken, forever marked and marred by human beings, the very fruit of her oasis. They have pulled the life from her, mined the land of all of its resources, harvested the soil of all of its nutrients.

She is barren, able to bear fruit no more. No longer the glimmering jewel of life in this young star system. But those who brought this about are a hardy lot. They take until there is no more to take, and then they move on. That is the way of those who call themselves human beings, those who fancy themselves to be more than just clever bipedal apes... those who fancy themselves the image of God.

Perhaps that is why they thought they could travel the very heavens, making themselves at home with the gods. Perhaps that is why they thought they could live with the gods, like the gods. But can they be blamed? They weren't, after all, responsible for the acts of their forefathers. They only left a sinking ship, as any sentient being would do.

This is the story of some of those who do leave the sinking ship of planet Earth, riding out boldly on the enormous star ships called Behemoths. This is the story of those lucky enough to have a shot in the dark, a story about a chance, no matter how slim or unlikely, to find a new life and a new world out in the cold void of space, and it all starts with a young pilot named Joewise Bentley.

Joewise wasn't over analytic, he was simply extremely critical. He wasn't a pessimist at all, no no, he was a realist. He had decided on this particular route of practical impracticality at a young age, and was convinced that it was the only way to truly make something of oneself in the world. The fact that "the world" as he knew it would be of no importance in a week's time didn't bother to cross his mind. It didn't matter anyway, because until then he would be making something of himself in the plumbing line of deck 4a, Behemoth-class vessel, "Novum".

"Wretched tubes. Wretched damn tubes! They can build a Quadtine Hyper-Ion engine to power this beast but they don't bother to toss in unfurled refuse tubes," Joewise yelled down the tunnel to Decker, his partner.

"Oi, ole Farney and Publy doin' us a favor, like," Decker replied as he scooped another shovel of shit into the center of the tube, hardhat sitting lopsided on his round, pudgy head. "They'll sponsor the colonization effort, aye, but what then 'uh?"

Joewise didn't reply and kept shoveling, frowning. He knew what was coming. He had heard it a dozen times from Decker, and would likely hear it a dozen more times before they found a planet worthy of colonizing, anyway.

Decker was a good guy. He was all there, more or less, but he took every excuse that he could to tear himself down... himself and anyone else around him.

"They promised jobs, jobs to people that never had 'em! People tha's ignant and unskilled, like us! They don't give a fook. I think were a snake without a boot to thems, like."

"Goddammit Deck, you never make any damn sense!"

Decker was irate and indignant, tossing his shovel aside and stamping with all his strength on the excrement covered tube in front of him. Brown and green goo splattered on his suit and face, dotting his bald head. Joewise burst out laughing.

"Oi yeah, laddo? I'll tell ya some sense! Now you answer me this'n if yeh make so much damn sense! Are we gonna be scrubbin' shite when we get planetside, too?"

Joe stood up and appeared to take some time to think this over. He stealthily readied a shovelful of excrement as Decker waited for his answer.

"Deck, I gotta tell ya... I happened to overhear Delton Frenge in that Wasteworks Management meeting the other day, and well..." Joewise said quietly, nearly whispering.

"Yeah? Yeah?! Whatsit?" Decker came a few paces closer.

Almost... there...

"It looks like one of us'll be promoted out first habitable planet. I didn't want to say, but I think I might know which of us is gonna be shipped out of sewage duty..."

"Oi shite! Fookin' shite, boy! Whoisit then? Huh? Tell meh!" Decker took a few more steps forward.

"Perfect!"

Joewise flung the contents of the shovel at Decker with all his might, splattering the face mask of Decker's hazard suit with sludge.















The "Novum", designed by a team of physicists and engineers from around the globe, was the crown jewel of Bentham Farnes and Wyle Publy, the notoriously wealthy business moguls who owned Farnes and Publy, the most convenient convenience stores found on planet Earth. They must have found that there was quite a bit of money to be made from this bologna about the death of the planet and the extinction of humans and all that. Now that Joewise had actually seen the wonder-ship that would save his species(from the inside out), he spent a lot of time musing on old Farnes and Publy and why they would agree to be the unlikely saviors of humanity... and why they installed the god-damned furled refuse tubes!

Furled tubes or not, Joewise still had to admit that is was a magnificent ship. Equipped for space travel to the ends of the galaxy(or so the soon-to-be colonists were told), the Behemoths had every amenity one could expect to find in a megalopolis of the twenty-ninth century; parks, universities, businesses, entertainment nodes, hydroponic farms, docks, hospitals, disfunctional refuse and excrement tubes, all contained within a thick, reliable alloy hull... but something about chiseling caked excrement from a refuse tube had a way of reducing his previously zealous anticipation to just that - caked excrement.