Nova Arcis C 10
The View from Varna Station
Cokas remained silent for a long moment, allowing the weight of Kovacycy’s ideas to settle. He watched as the camera drones shifted their focus, moving away from him and gently closing in on LYRA.ai. She had moved slightly, stepping closer to the massive, scarred hull of the colony ship, her hand raised as if to touch the cold, silent metal, though she stopped just short. Her posture, usually one of perfected composure, was now softened by a different kind of energy—something more personal, more reflective.
She turned her head slightly, her gaze looking not at Cokas, not at the camera, but through the viewport of the ancient ship, as if seeing a ghost on its silent bridge. When she spoke, her voice was different. The crisp, curatorial precision was gone, replaced by a softer, more intimate tone, a voice filled with the texture of a deeply felt memory.
“I made that journey,” she said, her voice a quiet murmur that drew the audience in. “Not this one,” she clarified, gesturing to the sub-FTL vessel. “Not the fifteen-year pilgrimage. But the one after. The fast one. My post-graduation tour, just after I finished my studies at the university here.”
She turned from the ship, her gaze now distant, seeing not the museum hall but a different time, a different place. “It was… formative. Even at 7c, it is a long time to be in the dark. You spend cycles in the non-space of FTL, a world of simulations and recycled air. The ship is your entire universe. But you know, intellectually, that you are hurtling towards something real, something new. You read the archives, you see the schematics, you study the history. You think you are prepared.”
A small, almost human smile touched her lips, a flicker of memory so nuanced it felt like pure emotion. “But you are not. Nothing prepares you for the moment the ship finally drops back into real space. The alarms, the jolt of deceleration… and then, the silence. And the captain’s voice over the comms, that simple, beautiful phrase: ‘We have arrived.’ Everyone rushes to the viewports. And you see it.”
Her voice became softer still, filled with a genuine, almost breathless sense of wonder. “You see Proxima Centauri. Not as a point of light, but as a real sun, a crimson star painting the ship in a light you have never seen before. And you see Amara, the planet, hanging there, a world of red deserts and strange, violet clouds. And orbiting it… you see Varna Station.”
Her description was so vivid, so filled with personal detail, that the museum around them seemed to fade away, replaced by the image she was painting with her words. “It is a jewel. A series of gleaming white rings, turning slowly in the dark. It is so much more beautiful than the schematics can ever show you. You see the lights of the habitation domes, the green glow of the bionical-fungai gardens. And you are filled with this… this overwhelming sense of… gratitude. Gratitude for the people who came here in a ship like this one. The people who spent a generation in the dark, armed with nothing but a desperate hope, so that you could arrive in a matter of months, welcomed by a thriving, vibrant city in the sky.”
She finally turned back to Cokas, her eyes shining with the light of that memory. “To stand on the observation deck of Varna Station, to look out at a world born from such a dream… it changes you. It makes you understand the true scale of what they accomplished. It makes the history… real.”
Her personal, heartfelt monologue was a stunning moment of television, a rare glimpse into the soul of an AI-Embodiment. It had, for a moment, made the abstract, 750-year-old journey of the first settlers feel as immediate and as real as her own.
Cokas Bluna looked at her, his own face filled with a deep, paternal warmth and professional admiration. He had known LYRA for years, had watched her grow from a brilliant but formal AI into this complex, feeling, and deeply insightful co-host. He gently brought the narrative back from her personal reflection to the historical thread.
“Thank you for sharing that, LYRA,” he said, his voice soft and genuine. “You’ve just given our viewers a more profound sense of what that arrival meant than any historical data-slate ever could.” He turned his attention back to the camera, his tone shifting back to that of the master storyteller. “And while those first settlers, the families like the Pepelinos, were on their long, slow pilgrimage, their only connection to the home they had left behind was the hope of a single, audacious mission racing to beat them there.”
The 3D-media-stream shifted, now showing the sleek, powerful schematic of the Chop Hop Voyager, the first experimental FTL vessel.
“The mission of Geen Grissom and his crew,” Cokas continued, the energy and excitement building in his voice. “To prove Elara Kovacycy’s theories right. To tear a hole in the fabric of spacetime and cross four light-years in a matter of subjective years. Their journey was not just a scientific test; it was a race to deliver a message. A message to those first settlers, a confirmation that they were not alone, that the rest of humanity was right behind them.”
He looked at LYRA, a shared, excited smile between them. “And our man, Gensher Kissinger, was right there on Oort Cloud Main Station,” Cokas continued, the excitement building in his voice, “not for the ship’s return—that triumph happened at Nova Arcis - but for the arrival of its iconic captain. Geen Grissom himself made the final, personal journey outwards to Oort, carrying the first messages from another star. Kissinger was there to witness the thrilling, emotional, and universe-altering conclusion to that first, long wait.”
The museum exhibit dissolved, replaced by the grainy, evocative opening of Kissinger’s final report on the Proxima mission. The shot was of a crowded, chaotic docking bay, everyone straining to get a glimpse of the ship that had carried the man who just returned from another star. The air was thick with anticipation, the feeling of a world on the very brink of a new age. The quiet, hopeful dream of the settlers was about to be answered with the triumphant roar of a faster future.