Prologue
Congratulations! You have been selected to become a citizen of Sanctuary Station. Sanctuary Station is an initiative created by the Originem to foster community, sustainability, and innovation. Integrating over a dozen species from across the galaxy, all descended from Originem colonies founded over a million years ago, our space station is the safest, most diverse, and most prosperous place to live in the known universe.
As you have learned over the last year on your “jump-start” satellite, humans are one of many races that call the Milky Way galaxy home. In fact, over thirty species have joined the Intergalactic Relations Association, and at least eighty percent of these species have been definitively proven to be descendants of the Originem.
Like many other Sanctuary Station residents, your home planet has been made uninhabitable by mass flooding caused by climate change. Due to the misuse of your home planet and its resources, planet-side privileges for humans have been suspended for five hundred years. We are sorry for your loss.
In this video we’ll go over various facets of life on Sanctuary Station. First, let’s talk about navigation. Our Station is divided into divisions, and those into subdivisions. You’ll find your apartment address listed by three numbers: first your division number, then subdivision number, then lastly your own apartment number. Elevators are located in the center of each division and have helpful navigational boards in the corridors.
Sanctuary Station is kept on a twenty-five hour day schedule. Twenty-five hours is considered the appropriate compromise for all our citizens, whose home planets have rotations from twenty-two to thirty hours. You will notice that the lighting in public areas will be dimmed or brightened to signify the time of day. As stated previously, Sanctuary Station is the safest place in the galaxy, so even when lights are low, you can feel secure walking around your new home.
Each apartment is equipped with nutritional printers. These have been programmed with several popular meals from each species represented on our station. We encourage you to experiment with new foods and cultures. All citizens are tested for allergies before arrival and the nutritional printers in their apartments will be programmed with this information. Sequence codes for all pre-programmed human meals and a sampling of meals from other species have been included at the end of this orientation video.
Prepare yourself for sights that are unfamiliar and strange. Remember, in the end, we are all part of the same genetic tree and we all have different strengths. Fraternization is encouraged on Sanctuary Station. We want to foster a true sense of community and even family in our citizens. Courtship and marriage between species is legal andencouraged. Later in this video, we will go over the different species that call Sanctuary Station home.
1
Destiny
This place is massive. Five football stadiums could fit on this landing dock. And five more could be stacked to the ceiling. It’s metal and glass, same as just about everything else I’d seen in space, and currently swarming with bus-sized passenger ships depositing humans like some sci-fi Disney ride. I crane my neck to take it all in. The landing dock takes up the entire bottom level of an absolutely ginormous—seriously, small planet sized—space station called Sanctuary Station.
Sanctuary Station is exactly what it sounds like. A place of refuge for not just humans, but all the intergalactic refugees. A group we were firmly placed in when Earth went full-on Day After Tomorrow and aliens rescued us in their UFOs.
I wish I was kidding.
We’d all spent the last year on a transitory satellite, learning about the galaxy and its many species, a large percentage of which we are apparently distantly related to. According to the Originem, our benevolent alien overlords, about 65% of the galaxy’s population came from their home planet. Several megaannum ago, the Originem’s ancestorsdecided to colonize on a galactic level and, well, let’s just say the apple doesn't fall from the colonizing tree.
When the Originem finally decided to clean up their mess and take a little responsibility for their wayward descendants, they found several uniquely evolved species actively destroying their adopted homes. Many, like us humans, were on the verge of extinction.
Which is to say, I can’t help but be grateful to them, despite their weird politics. I would be floating bones by now if they hadn’t picked us up.
“Destiny! Grab your bag, dear. We’re blocking the walkway.” Sounding exasperated, my dad nudges me gently, shouldering his own bag. I toss my rucksack over my shoulder, scavenged from Earth like most things we have with us, and follow him, craning my neck.
Spaceships are still flying in to land in an orderly fashion, like lipstick tubes neatly lining up in a cosmetic display. The open door of the hanger spans the entire exterior wall and beyond, I can see the inky blackness between the stars. I’m slowly getting used to the crazy advanced space technology, which means I’m not screaming in terror of getting sucked into space, just staring in awe like a landlubber. I peel my eyes away from the twinkling stars and rush after my dad, who is walking with a purpose towards the elevator bays. He hasn’t yet gotten used to the vastness of space, or anything since we left, really.
“Dad! Wait up!” I call out, but the walkways are really starting to get crowded now. I lose him for a minute before spotting his salt-and-pepper hair by an elevator off to the side. His gaze is down, stuck to his shoes, and I feel a familiar ache in my heart for my dad. He hasn’t been the same since we left Earth, understandably.
Really, he hasn't been the same since mom left, but I thought for a second he may finally be getting better… I signed us up for Sanctuary Station hoping it would be the thing that finally pulled him out of his funk. A new life, a fresh start. Something we both could really use.
When I finally reach the elevator, it has already been filled and is taking off. Dad is still standing next to the closed chrome doors, staring at the tattered New Balances on his feet, the same shoes he’d been wearing when they found us. I inhale sharply through my nose, willing patience to fill me along with the filtered oxygen. I know he’s having a really hard time adjusting. He’s been quiet, withdrawn, and disinterested for too long now. Trying to pull him out of his funk was a big reason why I applied for Sanctuary Station in the first place; that and the adventure, of course. We both deserve a fresh start. This is a good thing. I know it. I just wish I could make him see it.
“Good thinking. We’ll just wait for the next one. Hopefully less crowded.” I’m panting as I finally shoulder my way next to him, tossing him an excited smile. “I can’t wait to see our floor. Or division, I mean. Each level is like a whole different city. Division Five has the largest citizen’s market on the whole station.”
These are all things I’ve definitely said to my dad before, about a thousand times probably, but I can’t help reiterating.
“Still confused about how a market functions on a communist spaceship,” he grumbles back to me. I’m just happy to get a response, honestly.
“It’s not communism, Dad! Think of it as a perk of this experimental community. Over a dozen different alien races living on one station! Everyone gets basic living necessities so we can focus on making friends and building communities.”
I know I sound a bit dreamy, but honestly, itisa dream. As a kid, I dreamt of visiting far-off places, like the pyramids in Egypt, and making cool, eclectic friends there. By the time I was old enough to travel, infrastructure had been on the decline for a while. Only the uber-rich were able to access resources like airplanes, while the rest of us fought over the diminishing amount of canned goods on the shelves. Where I’d lived, in the Midwest United States, summers were so hot and dry, you could watch the lakes evaporate into thick, humid air, only to be filled again by the brutal wet season of autumn. I never got the chance to travel, to see our world. Now I have a whole space station to explore, though. And new friends to make from all corners of the galaxy. My fingertips tingle with electric excitement as I think about it.
“Whatever you say, Destiny. Let’s just get to our apartment, I’m tired.”
I don’t want to point out that he slept on the spaceship on the way here. Or that all he seems to do is sleep, lately. One thing at a time.
Just then the elevator opens up and reveals an empty car. We slip inside as a rush of humans follows behind us. Only five hundred humans have been admitted in the first wave of integration, but seeing so many people still milling around the hangar bay, it could have been five thousand for all I know. Our assigned apartments are spread throughout the station to encourage diverse relationships and when the bay finally opens to Division Five, only two other people get off.
The doors open to a nondescript chrome hallway with double doors to the left and right. In front of us, a screen flips through written languages until finally, Human English comes up, indicating numbers to the left and right. Each division is broken into subdivisions, andin this case, ours, Sub 14, is to the left. To the right, Subs 19-36 hide behind a nondescript door.
