Great Northern (starship)
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The Great Northern was a starship in the Xeelee Sequence of future history written by Stephen Baxter. It was to eventually become the very last human ship in existence.
The Great Northern was a GUTship, designed by Louise Ye Armonk and launched from Port Sol in 3953 CE. Its designed mission was a one way mission (lasting 100 years) to Tau Ceti to create a colony. However before launch the ship was co-opted by the Holy Superet Church: a cult, and also an organisation concerned with the future history of humanity. Superet was also responsible for launching Lieserl, an AI who had been "artificially aged" as a human woman. In fact, Superet's history, as a corporation, then as a subculture, then a religion, is one of the more interesting parts of the Xeelee Sequence. Superet's monomania preserved the memory of information from the future, but the human cost, including the suffering of Lieserl and many others, was staggering.
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[edit] Initial design
The Northern was a four mile long vehicle. At one end were the GUTdrive ("Grand Unification Theory") engine and the ice that would form the reaction mass for the voyage. Next came a three mile long spine containing equipment, stores and most of the ships systems. Attached to this was the wormhole that would form one end of the bridge to the future. Near the end of the spine was hung the ancient steam ship Great Britain, over two thousand years old, which had come into Ye Armonk’s hands at some point. The front mile was the life dome divided into fifteen decks, each one hundred metres high, that would contain the crew through the voyage. At the base was a loading bay, while the final top deck was deck zero which contained a rainforest to recycle most of the ship's air.
The Northern could make most of light speed with a constant one-gee acceleration (this would take about a year at one gee). The ship was unarmed.
[edit] Mission
During the events of Timelike Infinity telemetry had been received from the ship of Michael Poole, the “Hermit Crab”, as it plummeted into the wormhole bridge that Poole had built connecting his time to that of the Qax occupation. When Poole activated the hyper drive of a captured Qax warship he collapsed the wormhole and (so Superet believed) had been flung along many more temporal wormholes with the last readings implying that he had arrived at a time where the stars were dying. Further more these events seemed to have occurred not billions but five million years in the future.
The new project for the Northern then was to create a new bridge with a thousand year mission into the future and allowing travel to five million years hence. Louise and others agreed though even with AS (anti-aging) treatments there was no guarantee that anyone would last the whole trip. The Northern launched, but a thousand years later it never reappeared… (Meanwhile the Third Expansion had occurred, and after wars against the Qax, Silver Ghosts and other baryonic life, humans warred on the Xeelee themselves, with disastrous results.)
Soon after the voyage began (less than two centuries) the artificial society inside the ship fell apart. A group led by the eugenicist Gerry Uravov, took over the forest deck to begin a non-AS based experiment in human longevity, while the main government was subverted by the Superet forces who took over the remaining decks. Louise and her lover Mark withdrew to the Great Britain. After destroying the main ships controls they rerouted everything to the Britain allowing them to retain control of the ship if not the people.
Nine hundred fifty years after launch Uravov became convinced the voyage was over and left Deck Zero to travel to the loading bay and so back through the wormhole. With him went his followers who due to centuries of selective breeding were pigmies with lifespan of around two hundred fifty years. In the meantime the decks below remained under the repressive Superet’s control and Uravov was forced to fight through the decks with the aid of a rebel against the government. Eventually they made it to the loading dock, but here Uravov’s mistake was revealed. Due to an AS failure he was blind and confined to a chair with possible brain damage, and he had sent one of his people to the top of the forest to check if the stars had returned to normal (in flight so close to light the stars are stretched into a “star bow” in front of the ship). However Uravov forgot that the dome over the forest compensated for this the ship was still at high sub-light speeds. One of his people, Arrow Maker, took a pod into the wormhole which due to the transit speed exploded stranding the crew in the far future…
[edit] Return to Sol
For the next fifty years the ship flew on during which time Louise gave AS treatment to the forest people most notably Spinner of Rope, Arrow Makers daughter, and the forces in the forest and on the Britain stayed apart from the decks.
Finally the ship dropped to safe speeds and coasted into the remains of the Solar System. The sun was a red giant, Mercury, Venus and Earth were missing presumed destroyed (In fact Earth was elsewhere see Resplendent). Mars was scorched of life and Jupiter was destroyed. The asteroid belts and comet clouds had been emptied and Saturn’s rings were gone. In the entire universe the crew detected only four signs of life.
Something was under the ice of Jupiter's moon Callisto, gravity waves were coming from Sagittarius, a beacon was repeating in the outer system, and modulated Maser radiation was coming from the sun. The crew quickly investigate the signals. The suns radiation proves to be a message from a virtual human named Lieserl deployed into the sun around the time of Northern’s departure, to study it and uncover the reasons for the sun's aging. They are able to download her.
Meanwhile the forces on Callisto discover the source of the readings: a Xeelee Nightfighter with hyperdrive capabilities (the story Reality Dust explains this event). They retrieve the vehicle and Spinner of Rope learns to pilot it. Louise and Spinner use the ship to visit Port Sol and then the beacon discovering a dead human colony on an ice moon. They then briefly visit Saturn where they discover all traces of human existence have been erased. During this period a short sharp assault removes Superet from power within the decks, and the two groups reunite.
From Lieserl the crew of the Northern learn of the Photino birds and the fact that their actions have aged the stars, the crew also discover that a helium flash is building in the sun, which will cause a major explosion (and the death of the System) in at most a few centuries. Knowing that there is unlikely to be anywhere safe from the Photino birds and that they (through the Nightfighter) now have the means to get there, the crew resolve to travel to the legendary Ring of the Xeelee in the hope that the Baryonic lords might be prepared to help them.
[edit] On to the ring
Over the next year the Northern was dismantled and the Life dome, along with a power source were mounted in the back of the immense night fighter, the Great Britain was also saved one more time, and rode under the life dome. With Spinner piloting the Nightfighter, the Northern left Sol and spent the next fifty days crossing the 300 million light years to the Ring which human astronomers knew as The Great Attractor. On arrival they found a cavity in space surrounded by galaxies, and in the middle a destroyed ring of super string material. They had arrived too late.
Northern encountered a neutron star system where they found evidence of human intervention (see Flux). While in the system a super string fragment strikes the Northern blowing a breach in the life dome. At this point Michael Poole intervenes.
Poole, it transpired, had been transformed into a quantum based life form by the Xeelee just after his arrival in the future and now he assisted Spinner of rope in flying the Nightfighter. Together they used the Nightfighter to circle a string fragment 100 times using the closed Space-time loops this created to travel back 100’000 years and leaving the Northern hanging above an intact ring.
The ship was quickly detected by the Xeelee and with no other choice the crew decided to use the Ring, which turned out to be a gateway to other universes. The Northern entered the singularity at its heart and left the universe behind.
[edit] New Sol
The universe they arrived in had exactly the same physical make-up as the home universe except it was far younger - less than a billion years old and filled with huge VMO stars, the first ones to ever exist. Since it was too early for planets to have formed the Northern’s crew was forced to mine the inside of a star for the higher elements they needed to live. The crew debates what to do next, Louise wants to build a planet but the younger ship born crewmembers have stranger ideas.
The human race is all alone (except maybe for the Xeelee) and begins to remake its new universe…
[edit] See also
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