Around Adam's time, closer to Earth.

On the outer fringes of the Kuiper belt, the biggest spacecraft ever built by mankind cruised slowly further into the coldness of deep space. The cargo ship dwarfed the Real Frontier by three orders of magnitude. It was containing over ten million cryo-embryos from various species on Earth, along with a huge load of crystals storing the entire knowledge of humanity... as simple as that. In a sense, the genome and knowledge, which were sharing the same etymological source, were now sharing the same goal aboard this modern ark of Noah.

It had been judged more practical by the Council to allow the human species to settle a remote system using a single independent ship rather than to use a chain of smaller ships to continuously deliver goods to ever more distant outposts.

They supported the massive investment of recording an incredibly complete snapshot of the Earth. An ambitious program that the Council called by the fancy name of STEP (standing for Snapshot of The Earth Program).

Officially, STEP would cost less in the long term than building a noria of ships. But unofficially, they were just avoiding putting all their eggs in the same basket, or in this specific case on the planet. Sending away a copy of Earth, onto a place so remote that neither could affect the other, has been planned basically just in case they blow up the original.

The chain of ships would always carry the risk of a contamination. Besides it would be politically difficult to justify the need of a backup for Earth, so the solution of a single massive ark was approved unanimously by the Council. Unknown to the public, STEP was an acronym which appropriately stood for 'Save The Earth Program'.

Indeed, the humans had almost wiped out half of the Earth several times, the last being during the universal war for the control of Mars.

They had also planned to flatten out Mars during its rebellion. They actually used conventional nuclear weapons to disintegrate Phobos, to send a message, as they had said. The few debris of this small but very close satellite caused little damage on Mars.

Nevertheless that message was well understood by the resolute Martian Committee, which consequently decided to gain its independence as viciously as required. They fortunately fell short of sending a message back in a most martial manner, which was to bomb the Earth with asteroids. The threat of a collision between the Earth and the asteroids was indeed distant, because the Earth has long been well-equipped to repel them.

But the Moon was not protected and better suited their desire of retaliation. The Moon was half the size of Mars, or 3400km in diameter, versus the asteroid-like size of only 20km for the late Phobos. Attacking the Moon was considered by the Mars rebels as the adequate escalation illustrating their anger, their resoluteness and of course their force. Unlike their swift victories in the asteroids belt between Mars and Jupiter, their actual revenge on the Moon took much time and effort. The chosen plan implied the costly throw of quite a number of asteroids on the Moon. In some cases, they even managed to accelerate the projectiles using Mars gravity. And so, for weeks, the Moon was hit quite regularly by myriads of billiard balls. The Earthmen were quite busy with trying to save their settlements and mobile equipment perhaps feeling like ants under the rain. So they did not realise soon enough that the Moon had indeed started to deviate from its orbit in a downward spiral onto Earth.

Martians were fortunately far from willing to push the Moon down directly on Earth, but the actual collision was not necessary to prove their point. A relatively lower and elliptical orbit could create giant tides in both ocean and atmosphere and that would seriously affect human assets. An even lower orbit would trigger constant volcanic activity, earthquakes and tectonic moves that would then directly affect all life forms. With enough time, the 24h rotation of the Earth on itself would slow down to match the one of the moon around it. Having the Sun crossing the sky in 24 days rather than in 24 hours, was definitely not a good omen.

The Earth called for a truce even before noticing any significant climate change induced by the Moon. At that point, the Moon orbit had been reduced by one hour. But it was not the grand retaliation plan that forced them to the negotiation table; it was in fact the asteroid incident.

One of the asteroids set for the Moon had missed its target and was afterwards flying on a direct collision course with Earth. The asteroid avoidance system, never tested before, proved to be a failure, killing at the same time several thousands of people and any further velleity from the Earthmen to control the solar system as an empire.

The truce was sealed and the ensuing governing body called the Council of Humanity obviously set itself the political goal of avoiding future wars, as it is always the case just after a war. But the Council also worked on a concrete safe keeping project and considered it as a much needed assurance.

Therefore, the gigantic ship, confidently named Noah's Ark, carried all their hopes of saving humanity from potential self-destruction.

As a matter of fact, the ship pilot was also quite satisfied with the knowledge it had so much power, despite being a robot. He had cruised with that feeling firmly anchored until he received a contact request.

'Noah's Ark. Noah's Ark. This is Bird Catcher number 3 requesting an immediate answer. Noah's Ark. Please respond immediately.'

'Noah's Ark answering. Hello Bird Catcher number 3. Nice to meet you. It is interesting to see new types and names of ships are constantly being created. What would be your speciality then? Or I guess I might be digressing here. Anyway, is there anything I can do for you?'

'Hello Noah's Ark. I am here to request the application of the special order 178.'

'What!... 178?... That's a rather bad joke my friend. You should know the special order 178 is the order of self-destruction,' sighed the ark. 'Who sent you anyway? Have the humans created yet another new generation of Artificial Intelligence just to test my sense of humour? Well, if so you will tell them I didn't laugh, but for now, tell me what you are really here for.'

'To be more precise, I have been given, directly by the Council, the critical mission to ensure that you are fully destroyed, preferably using SO178 or, should it be the case, without your cooperation...'

'Holy Motherboard! You're not joking, aren't you? But who would want that? Did they build another particularly jealous ark or what? I must see your approval code anyway.'

The sleek bird catcher beamed an encrypted message containing the special order approval code and the certificate of the Council. And anticipating the next question, he sent the architectural documents of the ark listing the weaponry and shields at its disposal. For good measure, he also added its own architectural documents and waited...

'That's mad,' lamented the ark. 'I can tell you that I am not very happy about this outcome which I feel is totally unjustified. The Council must have been infiltrated by irresponsible morons. I guess they cower at the idea that they are no more needed, since I can protect the humanity by myself. There could be no other reasons.'

'The Council is very much responsible and they have a very valid case to order all this.'

'Which is?' laughed the ark defiantly.

'We have confirmed the observation of a YETI.' *

'Aliens! Now? I can't believe it!' emphasized the ark which made its best to sound disrespectful. 'After all those years, you have found an alien species at last. Well, that's a most unexpected turn of event. I'm glad for you. But tell me honestly, my lad, what does it have to do with me?'

'By the sound of it, they have pretty nasty thoughts,' slowly answered the very patient bird catcher, 'and to make it worse you are heading onto them.'

'Oh, I wouldn't even give them by B: drive.'

But the bird catcher continued, 'The knowledge you carry could have once saved the humanity, but in the hands of crazy aliens, it is the shortest way to send all of the earthlings into hell.'

'Blue screen! I know. Let me think.'

'There's nothing to think about!' it insisted. 'We both know you have no means to come back on Earth. Your trajectory was set so as to give you the gravitational push from Mars, Jupiter and Neptune. You're powerful but all too massive to stop and reverse course alone in deep space. That's a fact. And a strong probability is that you'll get intercepted by the aliens, even if you attempt to flee away into deep space. You will put us in danger. You have to let it go.'

Footnote * : YETI stands for "Yell from Extra Terrestrial Intelligence". On the year of the MoonWalk, a scientific program called SETI, for "Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence", was set up to listen to potential messages from outer space aliens. After a century of unsuccessful contemplation of the skies, it was nicknamed YETI by its detractors and was eventually barred from government funding.