Seedlings Chapter 1

Seedlings

Starship USS Infinity sped silently through the center spiral of the Milky Way galaxy.  It was traveling at slightly less than the speed of light.  It had taken nearly seventeen-hundred years to reach its current velocity.

Riding the probability waves from quark particle strong forces, it could maintain this speed indefinitely.

A signal had come back from a nano-probe about twenty years ago.  A potential system had been detected with single M-type plant.  This news started a sequence of events within the vessel.  The ship's AI had booted up the fertilization chambers and eventually, a new crew was born. 

Today that crew had boarded a seed ship and broken away from the Infinity.

There were no formal goodbyes.  The crew had simply been tucked in and then sent on their way.

It would take decades to reach the new system, braking all the way.  Stasis chambers would insure the crew would be as good as new when the time came for exploration.  Their chances of success were minuscule, but not zero.

The designers had understood this.  The crew had been psychologically prepared for it almost from the day they were born.

Even the AI understood that you couldn't hit it out of the park if you never swung the bat.  All AI's loved baseball analogies. 

The AI surveyed the now empty ship like a mother wondering through her recently emptied nest.  All systems were functioning properly.  Nearly time to go to sleep.
It would be centuries before the next event.

That was alright.  The AI went to work.  It wrote a string of programs and put them all on an infinite loop.  A virtual smile crossed what would have been its face...if it had had one.

Do robots dream?

Sure they do.  They even get to pick the material.

Word count 300