"Mr. President, I think everything is ready." the professor said. "Also the admiral reports that all ships are in position."
"Great." I said. "I will be there in a few minutes."
"Alright. People are waiting."
After Professor Yamamari left the secret vault, I turned towards the probe. Deep within the underground city, the 'asylum seekers' we have met four months ago were being protected and hidden in the best way. No kind of emissions could reach them tens of kilometers under the surface, and they could resume their 'process' uninterrupted; to stop the massacre one day and help us return to our motherland, planet Earth.
In this secret vault, the probe was guarded by an elite force which only allowed me, the professor and a few selected scientists to enter. The very existence of the probe itself was a government secret.
"Thank you." I typed into the probe interaction console we had built.
"For what?" they asked me. During their six months here, they had learned human languages better - not only the grammar and vocabulary, but they could also 'read the atmosphere' those words created. I had no idea if they could actually feel or not, but I was sure that they understood feelings and emotions in their own way.
"For allocating some of your resources to help us finish the colony ship, despite your need to finish the process urgently."
"We didn't do it for you. We did it for us. We did it for every life form you are going to carry to relative safety." they answered. "We are thankful to you because you provide us with power and safety. But regardless, you are welcome."
Now that they could read emotions, I smiled at them before leaving the vault and taking the kilometers-long elevator ride up to the underground city.
Up there, at the spaceport, a shuttle was waiting for me. It would take me to the recently completed interstellar colony ship, where I would make a speech to the public before the ship set sail.
Professor Yamamari was already waiting for me there, inside the shuttle.
"Pres, we are going to be late if you keep walking this slowly. Come on, jump in."
The shuttle took us to the space station. The large colony ship was surrounded by our warships, and tugs were flying around in an organized fashion, making the last preparations for the ship's departure.
We docked with the space station, and walked to the colony ship's boarding gate. Some of the people who were about to go on the sacred journey were waiting along the station's corridors. The rest of them had already been put into cryogenic sleep capsules long before, and perhaps even placed into the ship's cryogenic chambers by now.
As I was passing by, I was looking at their faces carefully, trying to memorize at least a few of them. They were the people who would carry our civilization to distant stars, which the rest of us could only admire as mere decorations in the sky...
"The broadcast is ready." said the professor. "You are a bit late already, so I suggest you start."
"Okay." I said and got in front of the camera.I cleared my throat before starting my speech.
"Once again, as we rapidly did in the recent few years, we have reached another major milestone of the history...
A long time ago, mankind observed birds flying in Earth's skies. Many wondered how they could fly the same way, yet many more thought that it simply wouldn't happen. Those who dreamed of flight, and worked hard, managed to rise into the skies with their own creations. And then, that became the norm before anyone noticed. Some time later, people said that spaceflight, let alone human spaceflight, was an unrealistic dream; they said that rockets would never be powerful enough to carry us above the atmosphere. Soon after that, humanity first launched rockets, then animals, then humans above the atmosphere. And we didn't stop there - we made our presence permanent by building space stations and bases on distant worlds. We've chosen another planet to be our second home, and became a multiplanetary species. All by dreaming and hard work.
And today, our own creation will carry us to distant stars. Even in this dire situation, we, humanity, found a way to make it happen. We pushed the limits and we are no longer confined to traversing our own solar system. There are billions of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, most of which have multiple planets orbiting them, and they are waiting to be explored. Who knows, one day, maybe we will find alien life on one of them.."
Then I suddenly wandered away from my script.
"Let's be honest here, there is not many of us left. Our headcount used to exceed tens of billions across multiple planets; and we were a prospering civilization on the edge of post-scarcity. But now, here we are, stuck on this tiny space rock, trying to survive with no atmosphere, no soil, no oceans, constantly being bombarded by cosmic radiation. I bet half of us already got some sort of cancer already, and we just don't know it. I'm not reminding you of this to be pessimistic, but to give you an idea about how important this journey is - not only for those who will set sail, but also for those who will stay behind. Look up, and don't fret; we made it this far, and we will eventually prevail!"
I made a sign to the cameramen, indicating that my speech was complete.
"That was a lot shorter than what you wrote down." said the professor.
"No use talking so much." I said. "And also, I can't wait to take a look at the ship."
I went through the boarding gate to enter the gigantic ship. It had two giant rings around a central structure - when the journey came to an end and people were woken up from cryogenic sleep some thousands of years later, these rings would start rotating to provide artificial gravity. The interior of the rings were designed to resemble regular buildings on Earth rather than a spaceship's utilitarian style. On some walls, I saw some photos from planets Earth and Mars, as well as some abstract art. They were affixed in a disorganized fashion, using office grade adhesive tape.
'The Blue Marble: Earth'
'A couple walking down a quiet street'
'A student studying an Intel 8080 chip'
'The Sphinx'
'Leaves in fall'
'Obsidian City at night'
'The Alps'
'The Kansai Platform (8 days before the accident)'
'Olympus Mons from space (the light at top right is the Pavonis Orbital Shipyards)'
'Relativity - M.C. Escher'
Without knowing, I had spent a very long time just staring at the art instead of looking around the ship. The professor touched my shoulder lightly.
"It is time."
I walked back towards the boarding gate as some scientists were carrying in the cryogenic sleep capsules with people in them.
"Sir, Admiral Mei is asking for you. She came aboard the station."
"Where?"
"Here I am." she appeared right next to me. "Come."
I followed her to a shuttle docking port. She went into an empty shuttle and sat in the pilot's seat.
"What are you waiting for?"
I walked in after her and sat on the co-pilot's seat.
"Power on, APU start-up, generator on... Hatch closed and locked, engine power on, RCS powered on and pressurized... Avionics calibrated, flight control good, we are good to go."
Mei flew us away from the station and turned the front window towards the colony ship before coming to a stop.
"What are we doing out here?"
"I think you deserve the best view." she said. "The colony ship will undock soon, and we will watch the engines glow blue. It will be a light show."
I looked at her. She understood my confusion.
"You are the architect of humanity's future. You've made the right decisions, because otherwise, none of us would exist right now. Okay, there were a few mistakes as well; but believe me, this is a victory, and you deserve a celebration."
"I'm... I don't know what to say."
"You carried humanity forward at their worst times. History will remember that."
"It is everyone's victory. This wouldn't happen without the hard work of the whole-"
"The leader has a special place." Mei interrupted me. "Tell me, who was the best horse-rider in Attila's armies?"
"What? I wouldn't know."
"But you know who Attila is."
"..."
Mei leaned in and put a kiss on my left cheek. I was frozen solid against this unexpected move.
"Look!"
The chemical rocket stage attached to the colony ship fired up, emitting shiny blue colors specific to hydrogen rockets. Those rockets would be detached once the fuel was used up and the ship had reached escape velocity from the Solar System. The rest of the journey would use electrical propulsion, which was much less impressive.
As the colony ship went farther away, the seven blue lights merged to become one. And after that, they merged with the background stars, becoming invisible to our naked eye.
We had won the 'Generation Race', and even if we failed here, humanity still had a chance to survive.