ACCESSING HISTORICAL DATABASE...

  Sourced from an old Cojoined Confederacy broadcast commemorating humanity's achievements. The provided material is an audio journal of unknown origin from the year 2061. It has been disseminated for public Stellarnet access to mark the 545th Anniversary of The Exodus.

  Please, enjoy.

  "My generation was born to a world already dead.

  Our first breaths drawn beneath skies choked by nuclear ash, poisoned by those that came before. In the future, they'll call us survivors—our elders said—as if not dying outright made us strong instead of unlucky. Truth is, we were kids. Frightened children born at the wrong time for the right purpose. Raised in soot-stained cities and rusted ocean platforms.

  We were thrust into adulthood against our will. Cruel. But necessary. Because our generation made it possible for the Arkships to rise into space. Towering colony vessels of durtanium and hope built by stubborn hands. We cheered loud enough to shake the stars when the shuttles came back for us. Though admittedly, strangely, boarding them felt like surrender in a way.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Our new homes were as lifeless as our thinning atmosphere, but a paradise compared to the bureaucratic existence we’d left behind. On Earth our bodies were numbered and euthanized by P.A.C.E.D.—an artificial necessity that reduced the miracle of birth to digits on a curated spreadsheet.

  I remember our planet growing smaller in the simulated sky of Brasília, the city aboard the Arkship Carrion. A dying ember veiled by dirty clouds. We wanted to cry, but our tears had long dried beneath the damaged sun of Sol. They'll praise us one day—our elders said—call us heroes. But I don’t feel brave. Just tired. Damned. We had no choice but to march toward the Felfield galaxy, our descendants’ new home.

  A place we thankfully won't live to see.

  Our hands may have shaped salvation, but the hands of our parents’ parents had burned the world to cinders. We were tainted. Our boots once muddied the same ground cursed by our forefathers. Those that come after won't live with that stain on their conscience, if humanity survives the journey.

  Our children’s children will rest easier beneath kinder skies. And maybe then, and only then, my generation, long dead in our graves, can rest little easier too.

  Stars, a man can only hope, right?"

  ...DEACCESSING HISTORICAL DATABASE