Lust on the Way to Vega

We are publishing "The Proteus Mission, Revealed" to end the secrecy. SpaceForce is not going to classify our lives forever. Let them try and court martial their "heroes" for "leaking" the complete truth. Personally, we're hoping they send us to Vega-4 instead of holding a trial. We were the first eight humans to see it up close, after all. Our first three children were born in the Vega system, making them legally citizens of the colony. We would love to live there as part of the colony. We clearly won't be able to start new lives on Earth, so long as SpaceForce is interfering in almost every move we make. Please help us to bring that to an end by contacting your Senator.

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Excerpt from "Vultura at 50", published by Blue Honey Press:

After "The Proteus Mission, Revealed" hit #1 on the Galaxon bestseller list on every human world and stayed there for two months, SpaceForce was ordered by the Senate to declassify all records related to the crew, their children and the mission, including the revelation of alien ice-mining activity at Vega-5, that the Kincaid and the colony at Vega-4 had never investigated. That discovery is what SpaceForce was truly trying to cover up. The worldwide panic they were expecting never materialized, however. When an investigative team landed in 2112, the mines were dated back to 130,000 years ago. Whatever civilization had been there hadn't been back, but no evidence indicating where they were from was found.

Because then-Captain Washington had disabled most of the ship's cameras, there were no video recordings of the crew's sexual activities onboard, just their personal logs and Darius Washington/Proteus's book.

The crew of the Proteus, now known publicly as the Proteus Family, got their wish. They were sent on the next passenger ship to Vega-4, which greeted them like the pioneers and heroes they were. Between investment of their salaries and numerous inheritances during their voyage, the additional retroactive pay they received on being promoted after their return, plus the proceeds from Colonel Sullivan/Proteus's book, they were suddenly the richest colonists on the planet, using that money to advance the colony, rather than themselves. They financed a series of passenger ships, including a retrofit of the original Proteus, which they ran as the non-profit Proteus Passenger Lines, bringing large numbers of colonists to Vega-4, eventually expanding their growing fleet to service other colonies as well.

In 2114, five years after their arrival, when the colonial population reached 50 million 10 years earlier than expected, the colony achieved Planetary Statehood under the terms of the Human League Charter, with Deirdre Proteus as its first elected Governor, for a single five year term. Jim and Nancy Proteus were elected the State's first Senators, the first to serve via Hyperlink telepresence, and have been reelected in 2120, 2126 and 2132. One or the other has served on the SpaceForce Committee every year since, keeping SpaceForce in check. They have helped guide the Senators from the newer Osiris and Gamble states as well. With five more colonies nearing the 50 million mark, the Space Bloc could soon be one of the major power groups in the Terran Senate.

During the leadup to Statehood, the Vega-4 colony wanted to honor the Proteus family for their role in growing the colony by renaming the planet Proteus, but the family successfully argued that they didn't want to be seen as a dynasty by sharing the same name as the world they lived on. Astronomers had already used Proteus as the name for the 2nd largest moon of Neptune in the Sol system, so they settled instead on Vultura, based on early names for the star Vega referring to it as the Falling Vulture.

Vultura in 2136, on the 50th anniversary of the colony's founding, is a thriving society of 290 million, spread across the planet's three continents. Vulturan blue honey is its leading export, most of its industrial production still for local use. Proteus Passenger Lines is now the largest non-military fleet in the human worlds, responsible for 10% of all passenger flights.

Darius Proteus, whose book still sells well on Vultura, was elected its fifth Governor in 2134. Jim and Nancy Proteus have each indicated they will not run again for Senate in 2138. As the remaining members of the family have indicated they will not run for office, Darius may be the last member of the family to serve the colony in political office. The second generation of the Proteus family are taking positions of prominence in the scientific and business communities, forswearing any political ambition.

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Author's Note: I probably came up with the central concept of this story (a malfunction of an emotional suppressor system on a long-duration space mission that can only be eased by giving in to the lust) a year ago, but couldn't quite decide how to tell it. First person, third? One narrator or multiple? One idea was tell the whole story through the interview that starts the story, but I decided to use the excerpt approach instead and make the interview into a promotional device for the book-within-the-book. The metaverse concept arose during the outlining process, when I had to define a power source for the ship to have constant acceleration capability, and then decided to have FTL depend on the same thing, but without successfully leapfrogging the Proteus, to make it both the first ship and last crew to return. I hope you like the resulting story.

M.R. Leenysman