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could they have constructed a warp gate already? Ness knew for weeks aboard the carrier named New Horizon, that he would soon be on a desolate new planet called Flare. He knew for months that most all of humanity were going to board these carriers and set sail off into the future, but it was only now that it all seemed to sink in.
    “I thought they were going to announce when the pioneer squad landed?” Ness called out.
    Now buckled in, he again attended to his bleeding nose.
    “Were going to do a lot of things,” Lucas complained from below. “We were supposed to have chicken and biscuits for dinner last night but had slop like the day before and the day before that. We were supposed to be on the same ship as mom but we are going ahead because we are ‘young and fit’, we are supposed to be on a ‘carrier fit to transport over a million people comfortably’ but we have been living in three by ten bunks stacked five high for weeks!”
    Lucas was a talker, skinny and awkward in his demeanor. The messy brown hair, brown eyed boy of fourteen had gotten through life on his words over his looks or ability to do much manual work.
    Ness, eighteen, was a little taller than his younger brother. His hair, also brown, was much shorter and his eyes mostly observed rather than wondered. He had more muscle about him--broader shoulders and a face not quite as long and slender as his younger brothers. 
    After a few minutes of verbal silence, amidst the blue eerie lights that flashed brightly in all directions, Lucas called up to his older sibling, “Hey Ness?”
    “Yea, buddy?”
    “Do you think that we are slaves?” The younger boy questioned in a prepubescent squeak.
    It was probably the most debated subject since the creation of artificial intelligence. The fear was that anyone who could not afford a ticket off of earth had to meet the requirements to sign up for a worker placement program thus; essentially, selling themselves into a life of slavery.
    Ness wasn’t sure of the correct answer, so he lied. Way he saw it, he had a fifty/fifty shot of getting it right anyway. “Na, we aren’t slaves Lucas. You think Ma would have let us get on this ship if that were the case?”
    The younger boy began to quietly weep. “I miss mom,” he reminded his older brother, just as he had the day before and the day before that.
    “Yea me too buddy, but we will see her soon,” Ness lied once more.
    The last time Ness saw his mother she hugged them: squeezing them ever so tight as she cried just moments before they left for the carrier ship. She promised she would be on a flight down the line, but she did not meet the requirements of worker placement and living in poverty meant she would never in a million years be able to afford a ticket.
    Either you paid for your ticket, you were in the military, a political leader, or fit the requirements of the current controversial worker placement ticket program. One of the baseline requirements was being under the age forty-five. Their mother had celebrated her forty sixth birthday just three weeks prior to phase one ships launching off into orbit and thus she was left behind.
    The government promised that the next wave of flights to leave earth would have less strict requirements for worker placement: being that jobs will have, by then, been established in the new world.
    Recent grumblings amongst civilians planted the idea in Ness’ head that there was no phase two planned. He refused to believe it, but the point was raised-- if all the rich, political elite, members of the military, and young fit civilians capable of doing immense strenuous labor, all the AI drones, warp drives, and advanced tech had been rushed off of earth, then who was left behind to build more transport ships?
    The flaw in that cynical assumption is not all members of military, AI tech, and warp drive tech were within the fleet. Some did indeed stay behind, but comparatively, the numbers were minimal.
    The two boys