The Voyager’s Return and a Note from the Stars
By Gensher Kissinger
The first message I received today was: “Urgent, Meet me in the docks, teahouse, level 2a, Geen.” Whom do I know, who’s called Geen, and I wouldn’t normally comply with such requests. “Sorry, just arrived, off-boarding is a crunch, in an hour? G.Grimson”
Well, the Oort Cloud Main Station docks were buzzing, a rare kind of energy filling the cavernous space usually reserved for the slow, predictable ballet of sub-FTL arrivals and departures. Today was different. Today, the hero of the Chop Hop Voyager was coming home.
More than 3 months ago the Chop Hop docked in Nova Arcis, last weeks news, or let’s put it in another way around. Nine years! Nine years since she’d left, a sleek, experimental dart aimed at Proxima Centauri, carrying four brave souls and humanity’s audacious hope for faster-than-light travel. A x-ship unlikely any we have witness before. Nine years measured by the slow calendars of our solar system, but for the crew… well, that was part of the story, wasn’t it? The “dilation paradox,” Elara Kovacycy had called it. A subtle, almost cruel reminder that even when you fold time and space, the universe still keeps its own score. For the crew the journey only took 8 years and 9 months.
I managed to arrive at the teahouse just right in time, around the corner stepped Geen Grissom a few hours after debarkation. He looked… good. Tired, yes, with that thousand-yard stare common to anyone who’s spent too long with nothing but stars for company, but vital. Younger, perhaps, than the nine years should have allowed, just as the eggheads predicted, or was I blinded by my imagination? We found a quiet corner in one of the teahouse’s open-air gardens, a bird’s song a strange counterpoint to the activities grinding grumble of the docks.
“Geen,” I started, my recorder discreetly on. “Welcome back. Nine years is a long time.”
He chuckled, a dry, dusty sound. “Felt longer, sometimes. Shorter at others. Boring on the ship. Time gets a flexible concept, out there.” He paused, looking past me, as if still seeing the time folded trails. “Proxima B. It’s, well, new, different, even the probes’ data streams could not tell the truth. And - they’re building.”
We talked about the technical details, the hum and thrum of the experimental drive, the moments of sheer terror and the stretches of monotonous isolation. He spoke of the planet, the tentative steps of the settlers, the sheer scale of the distance they’d conquered.
Then, almost as an afterthought, he reached into a pocket of his worn flight suit. “Almost forgot. Someone asked me to pass this on. A family. The Pepelins, I think the name was - Kraken and Missy and Zac? Met them just before we left Proxima. Said you know them.”
He handed me a small, folded piece of paper in an envelope. It was simple, handwritten, the ink slightly smudged as if it had been handled often. I unfolded it carefully.
Gensher,
If this reaches you, it means the Voyager made it back. We’re here. It’s hard, the dust gets everywhere, so does the rain, but our soil and the natural fungi and micro-biology are compatible. Missy shown the soil takes the tea plants and they are growing. Zac is growing like a weed, asks about the stars and life on earth every night. He is greeting you, too. Tell everyone back home it’s real. The dream isn’t longer a dream, it is reality.
Kraken & Missy & Zac
In the envelope the was a stack of old fashioned printed photos and a media-card.
I stared at the note. Kraken and Missy. Zac, a young teenager in one of the photos, I held him in my arms when he was a toddler. The family I’d interviewed years ago on this very station, the ones heading out on the first slow boat, the Amara Homework, 15 years drifting through the vast emptiness of space with their dream of tea on a new world. And thousand others’ dreams. They had made it. And their message, carried across 4.2 light-years by the fastest ship humanity had ever built, had reached me in - well, in what felt like an instant compared to any previous communication.
Geen was watching me. “Good news?” smiling.
“Good news,” I confirmed, “far better than these shortened, scattered transmissions, if they’re personal at all. The most data from Proxima is general and scientific. This is real.”
“Sure, I know. The settlers made a compilation for us. It was life saving for us on the return flight. Did you know, the newest movie they do know, is 20years old?”
A new thought sparking in my mind, bright and sudden as a jump transition. This note. This simple, personal message, delivered across interstellar space in a matter of just a couple of years, faster than light. The implications hit me with the force of a solar flare.
“Geen,” I said, looking up at him, the bird twirps fading into the background. “This! This changes things. Communication. News.”
He blinked. “News? We had the OCN bursts, when they could catch us.”
“No, not just the data bursts,” I insisted, my mind racing. “Real news. Stories. From the colonies, delivered at FTL speeds. Imagine. No more waiting years for updates. No more relying on outdated information carried by slow ships. We could have news from Proxima, from Barnard’s Star, from wherever we jump to, almost as it happens. A network. A news network that travels faster than light.”
Geen leaned back, considering. The thousand-yard stare was replaced by a look of dawning comprehension. “News faster than light. Carried by ships like the Voyager. I’d never thought about this before. For Proxima this will be true, though we will not on another star so soon. I think, you are looking far ahead in the future!”
“It might be,” I said, refolding the note from Kraken and Missy, feeling its weight in my hand. It wasn’t just a personal message anymore. It was a proof of concept. A time to come. The first interstellar news dispatch, delivered by hand, triggering an idea that could bind the scattered planets, stars together.
The dream isn’t just about settling new worlds. It is about connecting them, us. And perhaps, just perhaps, a journalist like me have a new role to play in this expanding universe.