UN Mission Command has been alarmingly silent on the the events of last week. I suppose this is protocol, until they have a solution they don’t want to worry us. At least I imagine that was the thinking when whatever contingency plan they’re following was written, but in the meantime their procedural consideration for our psychological states is driving us insane. Best thing to do is ignore it, because up here our highest priority has to be figuring out why everyone on board is so miserable. It is ultimately our problem.

I’ve been meeting with Dr. Saratoga, ship’s head psychiatrist. She says the problem is that everyone on this ship is disgusting filthy racist, and a narcissistic egomaniac to boot.

Some background. When choosing from candidates to crew of the UNSS Ennui and be the future colonists, there were several important criteria: They had to be able, willing and ready to have children, be a distinguished and successful professional in a field useful to the colony, and have passed a thorough screening for mental illness. Some self selected characteristics (found in anyone who would volunteer to be a colonist) are a lack of close friends, family, spouses or children, and a degree of impulsiveness.

I think Group G should get over A

Maybe you’re getting the picture. The ship is full of self-absorbed workaholics whose biological clocks are becoming increasingly prominent parts of their personalities. They think the only reason they haven’t yet started happy families is because they haven’t met any equally “serious” people. What do you think happens when these people are confronted by thousands of other people exactly like themselves and confined in a ship with them?

The mirror is very unkind.

Our population is a rich tapestry of statistically enforced and algorithmically maximized genetic and cultural diversity, which leads to the second half of the problem. Have you ever done a calculation of how many single people of the opposite sex, who are roughly your age group, who you find attractive and would find you attractive, and not currently in relationships exist in the population of, say, your city? Well that’s your city, where the cultural gap between you and other people is somewhat limited by geography.

Dr. Saratoga has teamed up with statistician Dr. Minoh and computer modeler Dr. Hakeem to identify 200 unique cultural groups that are only willing to date within two or three other groups in any significant numbers, and over 500 smaller groups that absolutely refuse to date outside of their own group. The largest group, about 7% of the ship’s population, is the group who will only date in a cultural group other than their own. While this group has the shortest relationships on average, they also have the most and are (so far) the happiest. We’ll see how they do over time.

For everyone else, once all criteria has been factored in, for the average person the number of acceptable mates is fewer than three people.

I’m not even considering the possibility of sending these findings to UN Mission Command.

Captain Richards out.

We’ve hit a milestone today! Due to complex nature of gravitation slingshots, we’re passing Earth for the second time today, more than half a year into our journey. Today’s flyby is much faster than the last. About half of the crew gathered in the observatory to watch it fly by over the course of about fifteen minutes or so. Truly a majestic sight, passing between the moon and earth. At these speeds you aren’t able to judge distances, the planet doesn’t feel any further away than a mountain on the highway. It’s the last time any of us will see the blue marble with our own eyes. Simply breathtaking.

Maybe I should get some introductory stuff out of the way. I’m the captain of a colony ship en route to Alpha Centauri, the UNSS Ennui. It should take roughly eighty years to get there, which makes this a generation ship. I, however, fully intend to still be alive when we arrive to bring humanity to the stars!

Aside from our last flyby, an odd thing happened today. About 15% of crew members called in sick, and another 10% simply didn’t show up for duty. Normally I’d be concerned about some sort of space-plague, but we have a sort of explanation: over the last two days, every last one of our escape pods has gone missing. When about half of them were gone, security was ordered to put the remaining pods under guard. Now all of the pods are missing, along with a disproportionately high number of security personnel.

Oddly enough, none of this would have happened if anyone had read the memos. Our velocity in relation to the Earth was very, very high. Far higher than the delta-v escape pod thrusters can achieve. This was all in a crew wide communique, which apparently nobody reads. Apparently nobody payed any attention in the mandatory orbital mechanics classes either. I think there may at least be a silver lining for the eventual human population of Alpha Centauri, in a Darwinian sense.

I need to decide what to tell the remaining crew members. Since this was our last Earth flyby, we don’t need to worry about this happening again. What we do need to worry about is keeping morale up. Which explanation for their disappearance would be worse for your personal morale, that a large number of your coworkers escaped successfully, or that all of the escapees certainly died and the beautiful meteor shower you witnessed this afternoon in the observatory was thanks to their sacrifice?

I think I’ll go with space-plague.

Captain Richards out.