User:Nukeman8000/Mayflower II (story)

This is a short story by Stephen Baxter. It was originally included in the collection Resplendent, the fourth and final book in the Destiny's Children series

It was later included in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Second Annual Collection, published in 2005

Plot
In this story, Earth has overthrown an oppressive alien species called The Qax, and, free from the alien oppression, those on Earth are systematically cleansing the solar system of those who have collaborated with the Qax. The inhabitants of a planetoid on out on the fringes of the solar system, are waiting in dread as Coalition forces head their way : for they have been deemed to be collaborators.

For some of them, there is a chance of escape - five spaceships have been rapidly deployed, and they are to flee : generation starships taking a multi-millennial voyage to distant stars in the hope of evading annihilation.

We learn this through Rusel, a young man who had made the final cut for those to get a place on the ark, but was rejected because of spacial limitations. He is woken in the night to find that the person who had taken the last place on the ship has been ruled out due to a genetic defect, something there is no place for on a generation starship. Rusel, the next in line, gets place on the ship but has to leave behind his lover to save himself.

He plans to spend his last two weeks with his love, but suddenly the time for the starships to depart is brought forward as the threat from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Nukeman8000/Mayflower_II_(story)&action=submitEarth is closer than expected. Rusel has thirty minutes to get on the ship.

The five starships plunge into Jupiter's orbit, the better to slingshot them on their way. Rusel is on board the Mayflower, named for historical reasons which few on board recognize. But the Mayflower II has also been picked out of the five for a much, much longer journey - 24,000 light years - outside our galaxy.

Rusel gets the opportunity to become virtually immortal, using stolen technology from the Qax, and, while his brother rejects the option to spend his life with his wife, Rusel realizes he has no one and accepts.

Rusel is now and Elder, with a select few, and spends his days in their equivalent of a library. Turn a few pages and a decade has passed. Rusel's brother now has three children, and gray hair. After spending time with his family, Rusel retreats to the Enclave for reflection. The next time he leaves, a little boy comes and fetches him. Rusel thinks it is his brothers child and calls him by name. The boy replies that the person Rusel believes he is, is his Grandfather. The boy takes Rusel to see his great-grandfather - Rusel's brother, and curses Rusel for staying away for over 50 years.

After this upsetting encounter, Rusel goes back into the Enclave for centuries. He watches as his "subjects" regard him with reverence, then slowly turn on him. As the aristocrats of the ship seize power, through controlling the water supplies, the oppressed revolt. They drive the weak rulers back and then the leader goes to Rusels' Holo-emitter, which plays videos of him as a boy with his former lover, and as a fresh elder, and proclaim that he is dead, if he ever existed at all. Realizing this will not just go away, he leaves the enclave and passes judgment on the leader and the aristocrats, proclaiming that the leader of the revolt must die for heresy and that their must be no more water empires.

After this event, the inhabitants slowly devolve over the generations, believing that since the rebel leader was intelligent, this was his downfall. As a result, they choose mates, not for their intelligence, rather, lack thereof. Eventually, after over 2,500 years and hundreds of generations, the ship is boarded by travelers. they inform him that the war is long over and peace prevails. The travelers are in a FTL ship, and overcame the Mayflower II in a matter of weeks.

By now, Rusel is more tubes and machine that alive. His consciousness is intertwined with the ship, he IS the ship. The travelers cannot take him along so they take of the travelers, now little more than apes, and leave him. The story ends with Rusel and the ship turning into the darkness of space, to wander for eternity.