SinComics - Generation Ship 1

A space team is out exploring the cosmic planes, discovering, adventuring, finding exciting new phenomena to report back to the home world. Hundreds of these ships scour the unknown, on multi-lifetime journeys. Small teams of captain-navigators, science officers, engineers, and medical staff crew their ship and as they advance in years, the ship’s Synthetic activates its birthing matrix and produces the next generation of crew. By the time the previous crew is ready to retire and eventually pass on, the new generation has grown and been trained in the ways necessary to run the ship and the cycle begins anew.

Our young crew recently bid farewell to the last of the old guard, sending out the captain’s body so even in death, she would be one with the stars. There is no sadness in the ceremony and it’s a great honor. The crew celebrates their predecessor’s legacy and charts the ship for new discoveries. Such a discovery finds them quickly as they blast off. An unknown energy cluster sets off the equipment and the crew is filled with excitement. The science team gather around their monitors and relay what little they’re uncovering as it happens.

The energy is trapped in a gravity well formed by the planets and astral objects around it. Too bound to ever escape the forces keeping it in place, but slowly growing as new energy is caught by the gravitational pull and then added to the cluster. The crew is in awe, but suddenly the energy cluster crackles, tearing at the time and space in the system, reducing the planets holding it in place to mere particles and collapsing the once-balanced scene. The ship fires up its engines, but just barely has time to turn away when a bolt of energy rips through space and explodes against the side of the vessel.

The initial panic dies down as the crew sets to the tasks they were raised and trained to perform. Every form of protection they have is placed between them and the exploding energy cluster. As the ship hurtles through space from the force of the explosion, the crew mans the systems trying to regain navigational control. No fatalities are reported as the medical team rush through the ship performing lockdowns and checking on the crew. The energy continues to crackle along the outside of the ship, creeping towards the damage from the explosion. The engineers on deck and science team frantically postulate the potential outcomes of this new energy coming in contact with the reactor, but finally the captain makes the call and orders the reactor shut down to avoid the chance of catastrophe. The only crew member near enough to the reactor room, the medical officer, valiantly rushes in, shuts down the system, and diverts all functions to shielding just as the energy surge breaches the fractures in the hull. The surge crackles through as the shield closes, blasting the medical officer against the wall.

He’s placed in a medical coma from the impact alone, but the unknown energy is also eating away at his body, converting it to an undocumented substance that fizzles away to nothingness. The lone remaining medical member does the best he can, but there’s no saving the doctor’s body. And least not medically. The engineer offers a potential solution.

The doctor wakes to the bright lights of the ward. He’s disoriented but strong enough to lift himself up. He notices the medical bed is beeping and hears the crew rushing to him, but the sound is muffled and his vision is foggy. He hears his assistant reading off numbers, but they don’t match any tests he would have run and it’s not the assistant that moves forward to help, it’s the engineer. After a buzz through his body and some whirring noises, his hearing and vision refine and he’s able to see the crew around him. The captain steps forward and gives the medical officer the news. The officer’s heroism saved the reactor, and likely the ship and everybody on board, but his body was destroyed in the process. The only way to save him was to bind his nerves and brain to the ship’s Synthetic, its bio-organics able to host the remainder of the doctor. The doctor is stunned, but the story is confirmed when he looks in a mirror and sees the pleasant maternal face of the ship’s Synthetic looking back at him. A face every person on the ship has grown up with and treats as their only parent. The doctor panics, what about her?! The crew assure the doctor that she has been safely put in stasis and locked down to allow the doctor to control the body. The doctor’s mind spins, surely there were other options. The crew explain that this was the only choice. After the accident, they couldn’t let the doctor die, there are too many injuries and too great a need for medical care for just the assistant to handle. The crew is too young to have started raising the next generation so it would be almost two decades until the Synthetic could produce a new generation and train them up to be doctors. He nods, while not ideal, that is an understandable assessment of the ship’s situation.