#master builder challenge

[spiderfire47]

World building June - Day 30 - Disasters

The Dying: The closest thing that Spero has come to a natural disaster is The Dying.  (See Day 5: History).  During The Dying, a disease was imported along with raw materials harvested from a world.  The disease wiped out approximately half the population.  It took several generations to recover.  During the recovery time, there was a universal conscription.  Everyone was crew.  Maintenance struggled to keep the ship going and things got more run down than they have been at any time ever since.  A lot of knowledge was lost, but fortunately all of the key information was kept in the databases, so future generations could relearn it.  

The worst thing that could happen to Spero is that something like this happens again. In the years since, the procedures for scouts and (mostly) tender crews who spend time on a ship’s surface have changed. When a ship returns from a planet a number of precautions are taken.

- Any non organic materials are irradiated and exposed to the vacuum of space before being brought aboard the ship. The goal is kill any microorganisms that may be in the material.  

- Any organic material is kept in quarentine. For their harvested material - algae or biologicals that are basically plant food - they are heavily tested by Science.  Then, a sample of the new material is introduced to the ship’s stock in a controlled, isolated way.  Eventually, after extensive testing that often takes weeks, the material is permitted in.  

- For people, once they are back from a planet, they are required to stay in quarantine for a number of days before returning to the general population. There is also improved medical screening for them as well.  Blood tests, breath tests, and scanners are all used to identify any contaminants they may have picked up.  Finally, there is a decontamination step - they have a scrubbing and cleaning that is exceedingly thorough - thus, while the conditions on the tenders themselves tend towards primitive (sponge baths are they best they can do, unless they are on a planet with acceptable water) once they get back into the general population, they are very clean.  Cleaner than most people will ever be in their lives - which leads to a certain mystique of the newly returned tender crew which, many will claim, makes the rest of the deprivations worth it.  Once they are out of their ships, their ships are exposed to death pressure for a period of time, also to decontaminate them.  

Once every half a dozen generations or so, the importance of these procedures are reaffirmed.  A crew comes back and gets sick. Most of the time they get sick and get better, but on one other occasion, about a dozen generations ago, they all died.  The importance of this procedure is clear to everyone.  Of course, it is only a matter of time before someone comes home with something that is very slow to incubate and escapes the sensors.  But what can you do?

Possible mechanical disasters that keep Ops awake at night: - The shield generators - The ship’s shield is essential.  The ship is moving through space at huge speeds and even bits of dust can cause damage to the hull at these speeds.  There is redundancy in the system and generators can be taken off line to repair while others do their job, but at some point, if there was multiple failures, or if a generator broke beyond repair, there would be problems. While they have made new generators in transit - non of the current generators are original at this point - there is no one alive who has made a generator.  There is always the fear that one is going to fail and they won’t be able to fix it.  Not only that, the ship is moving at such speeds, they won’t be able to stop it before space junk tears it apart.  

- The bearings that allow the axel and the wheel to move relative to each other - The wheel and axel are connected via a bearing system that allows the wheel to turn and the axel to not turn.  This keeps the living sections at effectively 1g and the axel at zero g.  The axel needs to be at zero g for training, but also to allow the docking of the tenders and scouts.  If the bearing seized, the ring would slow down a tiny bit, but the axel would spin up.  This would be a disaster because it would make it impossible for the scouts and tenders to dock.  The bearings are original to the ship. There is no way to replace them without bringing the entire ship into solid body rotation. It is also not clear to Ops that they CAN replace them.. They are structural components of the ship and no one is sure if they can manufacture new items of sufficient quality to withstand the stresses. 

  - Contamination of the yeast or algae colonies - this is their food supply.  They take every precaution they can, but their colonies - while not monoculture - do not have the genetic diversity of the actual ocean.  That lack of diversity is both a strength - they get solid yields of what they want - but also a weakness. For billions of bacterial generations, they have not been in an environment that drives healthy evolution of the algae and yeast.  The virus soup that is a natural ocean is not present in their tanks.  The predatoral pressures are minimal (aside from them).  At some point, there is a great fear that the tanks will become contaminated in a way that wipes the colonies out.  And that will be very, very bad.  

[spiderfire47]

World building June - Day 29 - Weather

Inside Homeship: Spero is climate controlled. The control systems require constant maintenance at this point, but for the most part, unless something is broken, it is kept at a pretty constant high 60s F and a comfortable humidity.  There is no wind. No rain.  The extensive gardens are watered with a drip irrigation system, directly on their roots and dirt.  The halls are often higher humidity than the private quarters and workspaces because of the plants, so they feel warmer.  The halls are also brighter because of the lighting they use to mimic outside and daylight.  See Day 22: The sky.  

When life support fails, any of the following conditions may occur. Its not really weather, but all of these things happen with enough regularity that it is not news, but rarely enough that it is not a daily, or even weekly occurrence.  Also, most of the failures are fairly localized - limited to compartments - so while the failures do occur, any individual who is not in Ops maintenance may go months without experiencing one of them.   - Temperature anomalies - either highs or lows - Humidity anomalies - usually high, because there is a leak somewhere - Air mix anomalies - these are the most dangerous - CO2 and O2 detectors are everywhere - but places where there is either not enough oxygen or too much (when there is too much oxygen, you are prone to fires).  

As a part of basic life on the ship, everyone has training in how to handle these breakdowns from a young age.  The youngest learn to get out of the affected area and how to use their soft strip to summon help.  Older kids and adults are trained to give additional information, to help steer people away from the affected area until help arrives.

Outside the ship : As they travel through the galaxy, they encounter a variety of phenomena that we might as well call weather.  They are traveling through the Perseus arm and the stars are pretty dense - with one every 2 or 2 light years. Around any given star, there is a halo of junk that extends out at least a light year - including the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud.  For the massive stars, the junk band extends even further out.  Therefore, the area of interstellar space that they travel through is not empty - there is stuff in their way.

Part of the job of the scouts is to search out the junk that is in their path and part of the job of the tenders is to either remove or blast the bits that are too big for the ship’s shield to deflect or mass driver to consume.  (Basically, anything that is house sized or bigger needs to be dealt with before homeship gets there.  Some of the things in their path - comets, for example - are actually useful to mine for water, gasses and trace metals and, on occasion, even amino acids - though that is pretty rare.

The path of homeship itself steers clear of stars as much as possible.  Getting into the gravity well of a star, and into the more densely distributed mass within a solar system, is both dangerous and expensive in terms of consuming resources.  Therefore, it is rare that homeship has to deal with stellar weather.  On rare occasions, it has passed through the very low density remnants of a solar event but the density was so low it was no more than a curiosity.

Solar weather is absolutely an issue for the scouts and tenders, as is planetary weather.  Planetary weather can be terrifying to people who have spent their entire lives aboard the (mostly) climate controlled ship.  Wind is the number one reason that people quit tender crews - the unpredictable motion of the air on the planets freaks them out.  Rain is not a delight, but frightening for many - parts of the atmosphere condense and fall to the ground.  Water that is falling is a deeply ingrained emergency - that means a pipe broke. The leaking water causes damage. This is not good.  Solar weather also can disrupt communications for the scouts and tenders, cutting them off from their control and requiring them to act on their own.

[spiderfire47]

World Building June - Day 28 - Communication

Language - See day 10, language. At this point, everyone speaks the common language and a small percentage of people also speak Rendann.  There were once more languages, but not anymore.  Both common and Rendann have drifted over the generations, such that recordings and written records from the time of departure (which mostly would have been stored in Dohi) are comprehensible, but only with effort.  Modern language is a mix of the various languages that started, plus a substantial growth in idiom over the years, such that the idiom has, in places, replaced the once common words.  

Records are stored electronically and are accessible by all.  There is an AI who’s job it is to index and organize new information as it is stored. There are no books.  Records and the computer can also be accessed through tablets, though, for when the soft strip is an inappropriate way to retrieve information.  

Color is a profoundly important communication tool, as well. The uniforms are color coded.  Blue, the color of pilots, is synomous with go, with action, with doing.  Red, the color of ops, is synonymous with caution.  Green is used for life and hope, where yellow means curiosity.  These color codes are prevalent in paintings, but also in signage and warnings.  

Within the ship - soft strip is used as a communication device.  Everyone wears a bracelet that allows them to interact with the soft strip.  The soft strip can provide information, tell you where people are, or act as a conduit for a “phone” like conversation. However, very little communication is actually done this way - generally people communicate face to face, unless one or both of them are off ship for some reason.  The ship is small enough that face to face is preferred.  

Between ships and the tenders/scouts - As FTL engineering was being developed, at the same time, FTL communication was discovered.  Between generation 5 and 10, they had functional FTL/instantatenous communication between homeship and the scouts and tenders.  The instantaneous communication is bandwidth limited, however.  No direct link - you can not talk into a microphone. The exchange is through compressed text.  Much of the telemetry between the two ships is handled by the two ships’ AIs interacting directly with each other.  The communication between pilot and control is always filtered through the AIs, but usually the AIs let it go through without editting.  

Grendan: The last communication with Grendan was less than a generation after departure.  At the time they were about five light years away, and Grendan, that had been giving them regular updates on their loosing war against the Others, just stopped. They have since tried continuously and repeatedly to communicate with Grendan - they have broadcast backwards, kept and antenna trained on their former homeworld. They have tried broadcasting in the FTL band. Nothing. There has been no response.  For all that they know, they are the last intelligent beings in existence - they have found no evidence that there is anything else out there.  

[spiderfire47]

World building June - Day 27 - Major Figures

(See also day 5, history)

Fitzroy Acker - Fitzroy Acker was the second master of the Spero.  Miressan, he was born on Grendan and even before they left, he was a larger than life person - a big man, with light skin, light blue eyes and a shock of dark curly hair. The man who had been the master before him had been an engineer.  He had not really understood the reality of creating the society.  Acker, on the other hand, understood what was going to happen.  He understood that they were in it for the long haul. He understood that things would go wrong and things would go right.  He would  ask his staff for the good news and the bad ALL the time.  To the point where the F/A report became the “good/bad” report.  

When something is “Fitzed” it is in good shape.  “Ackered” is in bad shape.   Laurette Coralie Schuchard - Coralie Schuchard was a Rendann who had washed out of her apprenticeship. She blamed racism for it.  Coral was a charismatic speaker, attractive, outgoing.  She appealed to the non-crew, especially the non-crew who did not have successful careers. She spoke to the crew who had the shit jobs and the lowest pay.  At the time, security and the master was on a less ruthless, more reconciliation style trend.  They tried to talk with her but it did no good. They tried imprisonment, her movement grew.  About ten years before the Dying (generation 50), she led a general strike  Her followers walked out of work. They held a peaceful protest, blockading the entrances to places of work for people who were not participating.  For days, nothing happened and command fretted and bit their nails, worrying about the maintenance that was not happening.  Finally, one thing led to another. There was damage that needed to be repaired immediately and the master had security act in brutal and decisive way.  

For years after, whenever something went wrong, it was blamed on the rebellion and the work that was not done during those days.  Their existence is so fragile, so precarious, that this underscored a need for decisive action and led to a lack of tolerance for any sort of rebellion. People are free to express themselves in art, in writing. But once you interfere with the operation of the ship, or even threaten to, the response is immediate and brutal.  

Someone who “talks like Coralie” is a good talker, good at convincing people to do things, even when it is against their best interests.  

Some current Important People Latina Seldon - The 247th master of the ship.  Latina Seldon had come through ops to command.  She is not Rendann, at least not sufficiently Rendann that it shows, but she speaks the language. She worked outside maintenance for a decade, before entering command and working her way up through the ranks to command first a tender and then into Homeship’s command structure.  She is tall, wiry and amazingly tough.  (Rendann’s perform a disproportionate amount of the outside work and tender crews, so she is unusual.  That she was promoted to master and not any of the Rendanns that came up through the ranks with her has been a point of contention and grumbling)

She held the title of master for longer than average - nearly 12 years.  She is now old - in her mid sixties - and the years of outside work have taken its toll on her body. She failed her physical six months ago when it was discovered that she has an aggressive form of cancer and is not expected to live much more than a year.  She stepped down as master at that time.  

Raltar Brin -Raltar Brin is the current master of the ship, having taken it over from Seldon a month ago. Unlike most of the recent masters and much of command, he did not come through Ops. He is a pilot. He was a scout, then a tender pilot, and, briefly, he even has piloted Homeship.  He spent some years training pilots, and also working with them when they returned from difficult or dangerous missions.  He has learned caution and patience, though at his heart he is still a scout.  More than anything, he wants to find a home. He spends countless hours, holed up with the astrometrics, studying the stars and planets ahead.  

Bobbi Seldon - Bobbi Seldon is Latina Seldon’s approximately 30 year old daughter. Latina washed out of Ops and now writes music. Her songs are bright, upbeat and catchy.  She puts on a good show and her shows are always packed.  She also will just show up places and busk, because she loves it.  She and her mother have reconciled in recent years. Bobbi was raised as a ship orphan as her father (also an exterior ops worker) when she was a baby, and Latina was off ship so much during Bobbi’s younger growing up years.  By the time Latina was on homeship full time, Bobbi was a teenager and did not want much to do with her mother.   Ariana Montelay - The current head of Dispatch/Control, Ariana Montelay is a member of the Ops Command structure. She has worked dispatch for years - first for her best friend Morgan, who was a scout, and later for tenders and as a relief worker for others.  She has grey hair that she wears pulled back in a  bun. At work, she is formal and stiff, but she cares deeply about every one of those pilots.  She is a hardass in public and cries in private for every loss.  She is Meredith’s teacher/coach.  

Protagonists/POV characters? - Skylar - Pilot who will find a homeworld.  Reckless, aggressive, competitive. Although her skin is darker, she has the Mirrassan blue eyes and lighter hair, which is unruly and curly.   - Meredith - Skylar’s best friend and control for Skylar’s.  She is an ops trainee. Very smart, strong coder.  Reserved and careful.   - Avery - Skylar and Meredith’s friend. He is a ship orphan with a mother who died a long time ago, and a father who is in Command, so works irregular and long shifts.  He tests into ops - more of a hands on maintenance guy, but he is really an artist at heart.   - Quinn - another friend, tests into medicine. - MRGN - The AI for Skylar’s ship. MRGN is based on Morgan who as Ariana Montelay’s pilot.  See Day 5 - history.  

[spiderfire47]

World building june - Day 26 - transportation

catching up! This one was fun, considering my whole world is a mode of transportation. :) 

On the largest scale, the whole world is about transportation and getting to a place that is better than where they were.  They are traveling on a giant space ship.  The space ship is moving at a pretty speedy half the speed of light rate, but the galaxy is a pretty big place and in the 100 generations they have travelled, they have covered around 1000 light years.  

Since they left, they have developed the theory to allow for FTL travel, and done the engineering to make it work.  (The science was hacked out by about generation 5, by generation 10 or so, they had working FTL engines.  Ever since, they have been improving and refining the engines.) FTL travel takes tremendous amounts of energy and moving something as massive as the Spero is just not practical given their limits.  However, the smaller ships have been outfitted with FTL engines and that allows them to explore the surroundings, adjust their course, and resupply.  

There are two classes of smaller ships.  

Scout Ships Scout ships are tiny, single person ships.  These have a crew of a single pilot and the AI (based on a former pilot that has since died one to ten generations in the past).  Scout ships are extremely fast, extremely maneuverable.  They are outfitted with tons of imaging software.  They are sent ahead and to the side of the main ship’s course to map out star systems that are promising for resupply of various components and to look for possible destinations.  They map out asteroid fields and oort clouds.  

The scout ship is, for all intents and purposes, an extension of the pilot’s body.  While they are in flight, they are laying on a couch that integrates with their suit and - through biofeedbacks - allows pilot and the AI to function as a unit.  Typically, the atmosphere in a scout ship is kept thin and cold. The pilot wears a suit that provides both oxygen and heat.  Depending on the mission, a pilot may emerge to eat and eliminate, but if the mission does not allow, they also use IV sustenance.  This is very hard on the pilot’s body and a lot of time back on the ship is devoted to maintaining a top physical condition.

Scout pilots are selected for, among other things, size.  Small, light people are used because the demands of their bodies for oxygen and food are smaller.  As a result, scout pilots are often still apprentices.  (Teenagers.) The death rate for scout pilots is very high, but that does not stop people from wanting to do it - being the one who discovers home is a tremendous draw.  

Tenders Tenders are larger ships, crewed by about 10 people of varying skills.  Exact crews vary depending on the mission.  Tenders typically have FTL engines but since they are many times larger than the scout ships, operating the FTL engines is very expensive and it is not done except when there is need.  Tenders do any and all of the following: outside maintenance on Spero itself, moving/blasting space junk from Spero’s path, supply runs to planets/asteriods that the scouts have already identified as being a good candidate for supplies, or taking experts out to planets or places in space to do scientific research.  

Tenders will always have a pilot - often an older pilot, three people from Command.  Usually tender crews are heavy on Ops, but they also usually have a medic of some sort and a science person.  There are usually multiple AIs in the tender system - one to assist the pilot, plus one or more to assist in the running of the ship and the completion of the mission.  AIs are often former tender crews.  

On Spero The vast majority of the transport within Spero is feet.  People walk where they need to go.  There are electric motorized carts that are used sometimes to move people, but far more often to move supplies to places where they need to go. Ops has entire fleets of carts.  There are also maintenance robots that move themselves around the ship and do constant low level inspections and cleaning. When there is an issue, they alert Ops.  

[spiderfire47]

World building June - Day 25 - ART

More art?  Seriously, I feel like I know more about the art in this world than I know about the art in my own world. :) Spero is saturated in art. It is something they value, something that is widely participated in.  Art is their spitting into the wind (even though they have no experience of wind), their defiance in the face of millennia of evidence to the contrary, that their faith that Spero will eventually get them (or their great, great, great grandchildren) to a home that is not a spaceship, is more than just hope.  Anything that can be turned into a work of art, is turned into a work of art.  

There is the obvious art (more on that below) but there is also the less obvious.  The maintenance workers are craftsmen, valuing work that is functional and astethically pleasing, or at least not ugly if beautiful is not possible.  The hallways, in addition to being spaces for murals, are also gardens and plants have been bred over the millennia to have variegated leaves, interesting flowers, different foliage patterns and so on. These are used to varying effects by different people in different places. Their palate of different flavors is limited, but food is valued and effort is put into making it tasty.  Meal time is more than just sustenance.

(It’s not pottery but…) For day to day pieces of functional ware, bowls, plates, combs etc, there are a few of the ship’s original complement left - passed down family lines and carefully treasured. The original stuff was made from some impossibly strong extruded material - smooth and cool to the touch - with interesting colors swirled through it. Whatever that substance was, they can not make it on Spero. There are other plastics that they can, and do make.  And there is a limited supply of wood from the gardens. Most of those functional daily-ware items are now made by non-crew artisans, rather than crew.  Though there is a group in ops that work in forming plastic to various uses and if there is a need they can and do make these items.  

Writing: There is a rich tradition of storytelling that spans re-tellings of folklore and ancient stories from Grendan, tellings and re-tellings of historical events, and flat out fantastical.  Stories are written and archived in the ship’s database, but there are also oral storytelling and poetry performance events.  

Some notable writers - Gina Constance Ianson : Writer from ten generations ago or so.  Wrote a series of stories about two men: Alexandre and Flynn.  Alexandre and Flynn were lovers and haters and cheaters and they had some epic fights and some gut wrenching reconciliation. The stories were written as a serial, but they have become iconic symbols of what is both best and worst in a marriage.  Contemporary of muralist Tillie Tennyson and Willie Dresder.   - Herbie Robynne Stacy: A poet who wrote a poem about the empty blackness of space that makes everyone’s skin crawl, but it hits something so true. - Domenic Joaquín Zimmerman: A modern writer that the kids are reading now. Writing the equivalent of Percy Jackson, but retelling a series of classic Grendan folktales.  (See the Magic day.)

Murals: I have written about these a lot, but here are some notable artists: Kristel Tillie Tennyson - Tillie (as she went by) had a thing for blue.  She painted in all blue. Dramatic, abstract murals in blue.  Now, “Tillie” is word for a particular shade of blue that she used a lot in her work.  Contemporary of Connie Ianson and Willie Dresder - ten generations ago.   Ilean Agata Arterbury - A current painter who paints works with musical artists to create visual versions of their songs.  Known for muted colors and great detail.   Judah Susuth Rhodes - He was a portrait painter from the time of the Dying (about 50 generations ago).  He survived but lost whole family. He devoted the rest of his life to painting portraits of as many different people as he could manage.  

Fibers: I have written about fiber arts on Day 16: Fashion.  Anything that can be made from scraps from recycled uniforms is.  The more colorful and swirly the better.  Clothing styles are non gendered.  

Song: There is a musical tradition that includes non-crew professional musicians and nearly everyone in a non-professional way.  When they left, they had a huge library of the music of Grendan in recordings. Over the centuries, the styles have shifted - periods of traditional revival, periods of instrumentalists, periods of singer songwriters, periods of improvisions, fusion, etc.  There is also a library of “folk” songs - sing along songs that everyone knows.  They may be drinking songs, or teaching songs or call and response songs that range from silly to serious.  People sing, people go to performances by singers, people listen to music, people make music.  

Some notable musicians include: Sarah Ciannait Specht - “Cindy” - she has a long standing collaboration with Ilean.  Her songs are quiet, introspective, and often ballads that tell intricate sad stories - sometimes from literature, sometimes original.  Most of her stories involved lovers or married couples and someone dies or is lost. Paint vivid images. Graciana Hedy Simon - Although few people know her name, is the creator of dozens of songs in the common repretoire. She is from way back around generation 10 or so, once they had been in space for a long time, but before they had any idea just how long they would be in space.   Ifan Wilfried Dresdner - Willie - His instrument of choice was a plucked string instrument like a harp, but he both played and composed for many different things, including symphonic ensembles (all strings and percussion).  He created and performed instrumental pieces with catchy melodies and intricate themes (think: Mozart). The melody of many of his pieces make the core of introductory songs (twinkle twinkle little star) but the full pieces are part of the advanced repertoire that any serious musician knows.   Contemporary of Tilly Tennyson and Connie Ianson, from about ten generations ago.

Performance - At any given time there are one or two professional or semi-pro performance troupes.

Food - food is art. It is art in presentation and in flavors.  See Day 13 food.

[spiderfire47]

World building June - Day 24 - The Backpack

I spent like 20 minutes with a single sentence.  Then I floundered around some more and came up with an assortment of different ideas for different jobs. I got up to 500 words eventually.  

In general what people carry is pretty minimal.  Money is electronic, so no need to carry a wallet.  There is no signficiant variation in temperature throughout the day or the ship in general, unless one goes into one of the specialty areas - the algea tanks, an operating room, etc so no need for a coat. No sunglasses either! Most people wear their jumpsuit (which has pockets) and the softstrip band.  That serves as ID, phone, and a way to access the ship computer networks anywhere.  After that people may bring person hygeine products (comb, lip balm, hair ties) but that's about it.

Kids - While in primary, kids add a tablet to their kit.  The tablet is what they do all their school work on.  

Apprentice - At the apprentice level, people are still students but they are beginning to take on the trappings of their adult roles.  Therefore, apprentices will both have their student tablets and often their equipment for their job.  In most cases, the job equipment is carried in a purpose-designed belt.  So, for example, a medic's belt may include a first aid kit - bandages, emergency meds like epinephrine, clotting agent, burn pads, a stethescope, a tiny aed, etc.  Within ops, people specialize a great deal, but for people who do maintanence, their belts have an assortment of tools, possibly including detectors for leaks, radiation, patch kits and lubricants.  Security's belt includes a club/night stick, taser, handcuffs - but unlike the other professions, security never wears their belts when off duty.  

Adults - Adults carry the carry the tools of their trade. For those who work around the ship - security, maintanence, medical response - those tools include a tablet for filing reports and requesting supplies and additional support.  

Working on the Axel - For everyone who has a reason to work on the axel (scout and tender crews, and the maintanence crews who work on both spero and the smaller ships) - a few more things get put in the kit.  Hair nets are commonly worn to keep their hair from being annoying.  They often carry small magnets that can be used as anchors.  Finally, the novices carry barf bags, but for people who work in zero g regularly are used to it - they would not do that job if they could not manage the stomach churning transistion.  

Scouts and tender crews  - For scouts it is all the time when they are in the ship, for tender crews it is when they are prepping to do an EVA, but they have soft pressure suits that the wear.  For this, they remove their regular uniform and just wear the suit. It is one peice, with detachable gloves and a neck ring to accept a helmet.  For scouts, who are in this get up for days or weeks, they also have bladders for elimination.  The pressure suits have heaters.  They can be either be used with a helmet or with an oxygen mask (commonly this is how scout pilots operate.) However, aside from the pressure suit and the supplies that go with it, there is nothing else to carry.  

[spiderfire47]

World Building June - Day 23 - The Frontier

This was fun - it’s all frontier!  

And I am enjoying this writing project so much, I am going to do Camp Nano in July and keep working on it.  I am going to spend some time building some good character backgrounds and then trying (for a third time) to get a rough draft going. The problem I am having is that I want this story to be kids vs. the nature as the basic story structure - with no sentient antagonist - but I am having trouble getting that to work.  

Anyway. The frontier. What they know about it, and what they are going to find out. 

This is what they know.  They know that that they evolved on the planet Grendan. Grendan was part of a star system with other planets, but Grendan was the only one to evolve life.  Grendan had all kinds of plants - those that flowered, those that did not, those that lived in every imaginable biome. They had animals with interior skeletons and exterior, placental and oval, things that flew, slithered and swam.  

They know that since they left Grendan, they have found tens of thousands of planets. Hundreds of those planets have had algae and bacteria.  Not one has had complex multicellular life.  

They also know that on every single planet they have encountered, the algae and bacteria use the same DNA base pairs.  It is the same DNA base pairs that they, themselves are built off of.  

They speculate a lot. Is there a reason for the base pairs being the same?  For some reason, are those four amino acids required?  What is wrong with other pairs?  

The fringe speculate that the reason they are all the same is that they were put there.  That they are not alone in the galaxy.  That there is, or was, another species that had gone by each of these planets and seeded it.  And that, for some reason, life never took off on these other worlds they way it took off on Grendan.  They point to the number of planets around red dwarf stars - too variable to allow complex things to evolve.  They point at the number of planets without moons - without tides, too stagnent - the tides stir things up.  They point to the planets with active volcanism (many) or the planets who have temperature extremes.  Or the planets in double star systems.  Maybe, they wonder, there is a goldilocks mixture, of just right.  Maybe Grendan had it and all these other worlds did not. Maybe they will find the right world next year - they just have to keep looking.

Okay - what they do not know is what actually happened.   There is an ancient race that evolved in the first billion or two years of the universe.  Ever since, it has been quietly wandering - at first their home galaxy, and now many galaxies, sowing seeds, leaving messages, and seeing what happens.  They seek companionship, and they have yet to have anyone join them.  In our galaxy, there are a few of these beings.  They circle the galaxy, seeding planets and checking on the progress, passing by every 100 million years or so.  The vast majority of their seeds fail to germinate.  Or, they fail to get beyond the most basic of life.  And that is fine with them.  Many of them will laguish at basic forms of life for billions of years before they move on to more complex life.  A very small number of planets really explode and those are the ones that the ancient race is most interested in because, they hope, from one of these worlds will arise a species to be their companions in the universe, their companions as time runs out and the universe spirals down into the heat death.   Grendan is a planet of interest to them but when it was last visited nearly 90 million years ago, while there was complex life, there was no significant intelligence yet.  

Ahead. There will be a some more including a planet I am going to temporarily call DinoLand - it has complex plants and animals, but not a lot of intelligence (aka like Grendan was when they last visited it)

And a planet with intelligence life that also has their eyes on Dinoland.  That planet is just hte next star system over.  It has space travel, but barely.  They have been eyeing that planet with an oxygen rich atmosphere from their perch, three light years away, for a generation - since they first figured out spectroscopy and now they are getting their on clockwork and hydrogen. Or something.  Much more primative tech.