Toliman
A screenplay in progress.
In 2012, Earth's astronomers made a discovery that changed the world. The Woomera Radio Telescope Array in the Australian Outback was the first to detect it, but within hours of that discovery every radio telescope in the Southern Hemisphere was pointed at our closest neighbor stars, a binary system called Alpha Centauri, which had suddenly begun emitting clearly artificial radio signals. For twenty years, we tried to respond, but the Centaurians showed no interest in our reply. Nor did we come any closer to decoding their signals. But we did manage to pinpoint their source: a lone planet, slightly larger than Earth, orbiting the larger star at a distance that would provide a perfect environment for terrestrial life. In 2021, Earth's four largest space agencies—the North American Aeronautics and Space Administration, the European Space Agency, Roskosmos, and the China National Space Administration—announced plans for a joint mission to the distant planet, using newly developed technology to place a crew in suspended animation for the thousand-year journey. Other space agencies began expressing an interest, and in 2022 the United Nations Outer Space Command Apella Programme was put in command of designing and building a ship that could make the journey and a crew that could make first contact and establish a human colony on the planet, which had by then been dubbed Toliman I after an old name for the star system.
No human creation had ever been designed to such exacting specifications as the colony ship Apella; it would have to traverse uncharted space for a millennium with its crew in suspended animation, protecting its delicate cargo from the thousand hazards of space, while conserving its precious fuel, oxygen, and water long enough to reach the planet. The crew was an international one, with six officers and 222 colonists representating thirteen space agencies and ? countries. All were rising stars in their respective fields, the best young scientists and engineers the planet had to offer. The Apella set its course for Toliman I at a mean speed of four and a half million kilometers per hour, thanks to the most efficient and powerful magplas engine ever designed, which would allow it to cover the 4.37 light year journey in a mere 1,048 years. The crew and colonists slept in their self-contained pods as their home disappeared behind them and waited for the first sight of what would be their new home. What awaited them would shake their entire concept of the universe.
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