FTL Waiting Blues : a story by: GF Willmetts

According to the history books, every period of history has had a set of pyramids that has amazed archaeologists. Often as being seen as being for the dead but whose shape would stop people wanting to take them down for real estate. Their vivisection of corpses compared to the hibernating families today would be no contest if they had really known. The only thing they shared was no idea when they would wake up.

When we first had faster than light travel, there was a choice, send families as part of the crew or wait here. The size of the spacecraft rejected the former. No matter how fast they travelled, the time slowing down at either end would add a century to the travelling time. If they wanted to meet the family they knew and not future generations, then hibernation was the key. It wasn’t as though the crews weren’t hibernating in flight as well. Getting to full acceleration and destination deceleration all took time. Saved training a new generation every twenty years or so to replace them. They would both share the adjustment to the future but at least have something in common. Of course, some complete families were crews but many stayed on planet as well.

The only problem was not knowing when they were returning. The first trip was to find hospitable planets so future stellar craft could colonise them. Over the passing centuries, our technology developed and we could travel even faster than our first venturers but they were so far ahead we would never be able to catch them up and send them home, only use the buoys they left to know where they had gone.

Now, I’m the last curator of the hibernating periods. We were all travelling to the stars now to allow our planet to recover from the damage we caused it. If our ancient travellers returned far enough into the future, then they would a hospitable planet to live out their days. Equally, we could leave them a more advanced spacecraft so they could follow us. I doubt if they’d ever catch us up but with the fast spacecraft we have today they would have an improved chance. They might also decide they’ve run out of wanderlust. They are, after all, first generation ftl explorers. We are so far down the line since then. Who knows how they really think, let alone what they expect when they get back to Earth.

I made a copy of my personality into an aviator which no doubt would live longer than myself but who would tell the difference other than x-raying the body it lived in. I might not see it myself but one of me would.

Telling myself and my organic counterpart would be difficult without personality comparison. No doubt he would have changed as he aged off amongst the stars in flight. My pogam would stay as he installed it as I marked off the time waiting and caring for the families of the first crew to fly faster than the speed of light.

Always a grey area. How far did they go before slowing down. Could they navigate back against star charts that would surely have changed and make provision for the expanding universe. If they failed, then how many times would they try again before either unable to refuel or deciding their families would have finally been revived here and passed many generations since. I was not programmed for that as my pogam moved from body to body as time passed as my parts wore out. I serviced the software and very occasionally, the freezing apparatus itself just to ensure it would carry on. For the frozen families, their lives would be forever waiting but not knowing how long. I had no orders otherwise other than to watch the rise of other sentient species on this planet and finally concealing our presence lest some archaeologist decided what was in these particular pyramids. Moving them to Lunar would have been an option had they not developed space travel. Would they do the same as ourselves and freeze families when they discovered faster-than-light travel? Would I one day make myself known to the avatar they left behind and console it that we would have a long wait for their first pioneers to come back? Would this new species who called themselves human understand that? Would they also wait in vain?

© GF Willmetts 2025

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