Aeon of Infamy

I grew up in the aeon of infamy. How many generations spanned the aeon depended on who you asked.

For Earthers held to the longest time, but then they were stuck within their sphere. Time plodded on for them in a steady rhythmic pattern.

But the shippers held variety whichever breed there were. The military flitted in and out of time as they plodded about. Merchants followed in their wake, taking advantage of the calm they established.

Varying generations had fled by for both wrapped within whatever relativity they embraced, but always fewer than Earthers. The variety was what caused the infamy to hang about. A settlement never knew which ship would drop out next carrying people with differing timelines and memories of what was.

But my ship, my ship bore the fewest generations. Mom and Dad both remembered Earth, growing up there, and the fall.

They’d been there as the governments crumbled into a boiling mass ready to redefine the world. Their departure had been hasty and early as a result. And their engine subpar.

I’d been born on that ship. All we knew of events after their departure was the few bursts of transmissions our ship managed to receive and interpret. None in the last five years.

So we were blind to events when the engines finally fell silent, dropping us back into time on an approach to Arcopia 85.

Or perhaps because that ship was all I’d known. That was the day I was truly born.

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