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  The process of selecting the first colonists unofficially began the moment the GSA first started kicking around the idea of permanent settlements. Friends and relatives of GSA employees, and even several GSA employees themselves, submitted unsolicited resumes, references, essays, videos, letters of recommendation, and every other conceivable form of self-promotion and endorsement. But with 10 years of lead time, the GSA decided to throw it all away and take a chance on a brand new approach to selecting volunteers for the most dangerous and ambitious set of missions in human history. The problem with the traditional method of opening requisitions, then screening applicants through automated questionnaires, background checks, polygraphs, psychological evaluations, aptitude tests, medical examinations, genetic analyses, and various scare tactics, was that at the end of the process, you usually had a group of people who, in addition to being extremely intelligent and accomplished, were also unbelievably competitive, incapable of forgiving themselves for making even the most insignificant of mistakes, and just a touch insane for actually volunteering to do something so crazy. For short-term missions, such profiles were workable, but the GSA had serious reservations about putting these kinds of people together in a single confined and inescapable space for the rest of their lives.

  So the task of selecting the initial 1,000 colonists and their 100 alternates fell to the GSA's team of information architects and data miners who temporarily became the most sophisticated recruiters in headhunting history. Just about every detail of everyone's life (grades, major accomplishments, medical history, employment history, financial history, criminal history, genetic makeup, physiological profile, sexual orientation, marital status, political affiliation, hobbies, etc.) was either directly available for analysis and cross reference, or could be extrapolated using the right algorithms if you knew where and how to look — and assuming you had the proper authority. It only took four programmers three weeks to come up with list of 3,000 of the best qualified people in the world to represent the human race on another planet which left almost an entire decade to train and shape them into precisely what the GSA wanted them to be.

  There were four initial phases of Project Genesis executed over the course of four consecutive launch windows. Venusian launch windows are about a year and a half apart, and last about a month. During the first 30 days, a total of ten heavy Sagan and Vega rockets were launched. The first nine carried supplies and equipment, and the tenth carried the first 20 Venusian settlers to their new home planet. The next three phases consisted of an astonishing 20 launches each, with 15 dedicated almost entirely to colonists, and five reserved solely for massive amounts of equipment and supplies. At the end of the first four phases which spanned a total of a little over six years, there were exactly 1,000 humans living in Ishtar Terra Station One. Not a single life had been lost, and although there were plenty of emergencies and unforeseen events, hundreds of thousands of the smartest people in the history of the human race were on hand 24 hours a day to help solve them.

  The job of the first 20 settlers was primarily to establish the site, get a few simple structures assembled, and organize equipment and supplies. With weeks to spare before the arrival of the next wave of settlers, they also found time for a little research in the form of recovering an early Russian probe that sent back some of the first images of the surface of Venus. The question on everyone's mind was whether any microbes from Earth had survived the harsh Venusian environment, but the probe turned out to be as lifeless and sterile as Venus itself. The technology, as obsolete as it was, was still awe-inspiring to the early Venusian settlers, and they kept its remains in the corner of a warehouse as a reminder of the progress and incredible will of the human race.

  The second, third, and fourth phases of the project were about expansion and establishing critical systems like water purification and waste management. The third phase brought components for the construction of a massive aeroponic life support system beneath one of the largest plastic geodesic domes ever built on Earth or anywhere else. There were huge tanks of compressed oxygen on every flight, but it was clear that the V1 colony would need to establish a self-sufficient environment if they were to expand and prosper on their own.

  After the first four initial phases of Project Genesis, the amount of fresh supplies and new equipment gradually decreased. The colonists were able to synthesize plenty of food, purify water, and maintain a perfect environment. Everyone worked, and a more or less routine — albeit labor-intensive — existence had been firmly established.

  The amount, quality, and flow of air throughout all of the individual pods in V1 was very carefully monitored, recorded, and controlled. Huge tanks of compressed oxygen could automatically be added as needed in the event of a level zero oxygen lockdown, and redundant systems of pumps and valves were always ready to balance the atmospheric pressure. In the event of a catastrophic failure, there were over 25,000 perchlorate "candles" distributed throughout V1, each one capable of producing enough oxygen for one human for one week once ignited and placed in a special reactor. As a backup plan, the GSA maintained three rockets on three different launch pads in three different parts of the world which could be launched in a matter of hours, all filled with nothing but emergency supplies. Two of the many satellites that orbited Venus were also capable of being remotely instructed to drop capsules of emergency supplies close enough to V1 to be easily retrieved via robotic rover, or with a short trek in an environment suit.

  But the life support monitoring systems weren't just designed for redundancy and reliability. They were also designed to constantly calculate how much air was being used, how quickly it was being recycled, and, most importantly, how many humans the system could support. When it first came online, the readings were in the negatives since all the air in the colony was coming from tanks and none of it was being recycled, but as the Environment Department started using aeroponically grown, genetically engineered ferns to recycle air, and as the valves of the oxygen reservoirs were gradually sealed, the numbers started climbing. At first they crept up slowly as the averages were thrown off by being in the negatives for so long, but it didn't take them long to hit their initial benchmark of 1,000. The predictions and calculations of the GSA's biologists and botanists and engineers had proven almost perfectly accurate.

  Now the Environment Department needed to push the numbers past 1,000 so that history could be made once again. They added additional aeroponic terraces until the massive greenhouse was actually slightly beyond its intended capacity, and they completely rewrote the airflow algorithms so that they increased or reduced oxygen levels throughout V1 in realtime depending on where people actually were and the amount of oxygen they were consuming. Everyone watched the stubborn numbers gradually increase until they peaked at exactly 1,100. After six months of minor fluctuations in either direction, it was definitively determined and then officially declared by Kelley himself that V1 could support 100 additional inhabitants.

  That night, the conception of Gen V began.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Homecoming

  Arik had always thought of people as being more or less static. Of course they were always changing, but the changes typically happened so gradually as to be almost imperceptible, like the erosion of a landscape. But also like a landscape, it was always possible for extreme and unanticipated events to occur which could transform a person instantly and almost beyond recognition.

  Cadie looked perpetually tired. Her hair was longer than Arik remembered it, and she wore it pulled back into a simple ponytail. She wore her glasses all the time now, and her complexion was ruddy and lustrous. She didn't fit into any of her dresses anymore, and usually wore synthetic pants with an elastic waist and one of Arik's shirts.

  Before the accident, Arik wore his hair long like most of the males in V1, but it was now kept short enough that his incision could be easily examined. He seldom bothered to shave anymore, and his face was often involuntarily contorted by the pain of his constant h
eadaches. His muscles were atrophied, and the last time he was weighed, he was told that he had lost 13% of his body weight.

  Cadie was getting bigger, swelling with life, and Arik was being reduced to a thin and brittle shell.

  They had hardly spoken in the three days since Arik came home. Cadie hadn't been allowed to see Arik in the Medicine Department after her initial visit because of fear of infection, and until Arik's emotional and cognitive states were better understood, she was asked not to communicate with him via video link. Arik received several recorded messages from her, but they always felt awkward, and rather than bringing them closer together, they only seemed to emphasize the distance between them. He never responded.

  The last three days had shown Arik a side of himself that disappointed him. He had always thought of himself as an objective and extremely effective problem solver. He was very good at detecting patterns, tracking down irregularities, getting at their root causes and repairing them. There was no reason for him to assume that problems with his marriage would be any different. Arik and Cadie always knew they wouldn't be one of those couples that let problems between them fester. They would immediately address any issues that arose, bring them out into the open, discuss them until they reached a mutually satisfactory conclusion. They felt bad for some of the Founders who they believed had unhappy marriages — couples who were not strong enough to be truthful and open with each other, and even worse, with themselves.

  But Arik was discovering that relationships were very different from other parts of his life that were prone to unexpected anomalies. Software could be approached objectively because software itself was objective. Computers were uncaring and, for the most part, predictable, assuming you knew what you were doing. But relationships were made up of complex analogue emotions rather than digital logical bits, variables which just led to more variables and unknowns rather than to well defined constants. Sometimes true evaluated to false in the context of human emotion which meant relationships were not problems that could be worked through using conventional logic. The complexity of relationships had the potential to increase exponentially until the only sane way to approach them was through instinct and intuition rather than calculation.

  Arik had tried several times to talk to Cadie about the baby, and he assumed that Cadie wanted to discuss it, as well, but there was always something easier to talk about or to do. Arik had daily examinations and physical therapy, and he spent his evenings trying to catch up on work. Cadie was learning everything she could about fetal growth and development while putting in even more hours at the Life Pod. It was easy for them to put their work ahead of themselves because the most obvious and measurable problem that the baby represented was that the dome wasn't producing enough oxygen to safely support an additional human life. But that wasn't the problem that Arik wanted to discuss. Oxygen production was quantitative and constrained. It was a problem with known variables that could be identified, broken down into individual components, and ultimately solved. The problem that neither of them were prepared to address was the fact that there was no way the baby could have been Arik's.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Biggest Wedding in the Galaxy

  It was no accident that Gen V consisted of exactly 50 males and 50 females. The 1:1 ratio was predetermined. Left to chance, the outcome was statistically more likely to be 51 males to 49 females which all of the Founders agreed could one day lead to all sorts of unpleasantness.

  Gender predetermination was a given, though several Founders proposed much more dramatic forms of genetic manipulation and intervention. What if a small percentage of the population couldn't find a suitable mate? Or decided to be celibate? Or was gay? The term "sexual symmetry" was soon coined and rapidly became a concern among those assigned to research the matter. Life on Venus was tenuous enough without having hormonally disgruntled teenagers among the general population.

  But nobody could agree on exactly what should be done, or even what could be done. They felt confident that they could manipulate levels of various hormones associated with sexual desire and attraction, and even stop the special auxiliary olfactory sensor called the vomeronasal organ from regressing at the fetal stage which, in theory, would make Gen V more susceptible than the average human to pheromones. But in truth, funding for human sexual research had been scarce enough over the years that nobody knew for certain what the results of such intervention would be. In the end, they decided that there was nothing evolution favored more than a good hardy immune system which was already standard genetic procedure, so the rest would have to be left to chance.

  Would-be parents were allowed to submit gender preferences. Arik had heard several times the story of Kelley personally guaranteeing parents one of their top two gender choices. The story also went that enough couples didn't have a preference that those who did got exactly what they wanted. Gen V was supposedly the most thoroughly researched, best planned, and most widely anticipated generation in the history of the human race.

  Arik was sometimes skeptical about elements of Gen V's little creation myth. Although he had no proof, he suspected that certain couples did not want children at all, but assumed the responsibility for the overall good of the gene pool and advancement of the colony. He suspected that some children were conceived more out of duty than love.

  Since everyone in Gen V had known each other essentially all their lives, Arik had no memory of meeting Cadie, but he did remember the first time he felt attracted to her. They were drinking hot sweetened soy in the Play Pod where they sometimes spent a couple hours after school while waiting for their parents to pick them up on their way home from their shifts. The top layer of the soy was aerated with nitrous oxide to make the high-protein treat more of a novelty. Several of Arik's friends were experimenting with drinking from the backs of their mugs which left white foamy beards on their chins. Unlike foam mustaches, foam beards were out of range of most of their tongues which pretty much just left their shirt sleeves for getting them off. Nobody wanted to waste precious soy foam, however, so while watching the other kids stretch and strain their tongues, Arik realized a more practical solution was to lick each other's chins. Arik and Cadie teamed up, but Cadie's father happened to walk in at precisely the moment Arik was fulfilling his part of the bargain. Although the two of them were yanked apart amid a flurry of commotion, Arik still managed to get a taste of her salty flesh beneath the sweet foam. He never forgot the sensation.

  He proposed to her for the first time the next day. Even at such a young age, they all knew that they would grow up and intermarry, so proposals were frequent among the children. But her only answer was a coy and ambiguous smile which Arik interpreted as the need to impress her and keep her as close to him as he could. He tried his best to get on her team when they played cricket, and to hide with her when they played ghost in the machine. If she had a problem with her workspace, he would solve it before a teacher could intervene. As they got older, they worked on projects together, ate with each other's parents, and participated in the V1 version of dating.

  By graduation, everyone in Gen V had been paired up. Although the process was long and certainly not without its share of drama, fears of incompatibility, alternative lifestyles, and accidental death proved unfounded. Most couples had been together since their early teens and had plenty of time to develop strong friendships as well as romantic relationships. As the number of commitments increased, those remaining tended to come together out of necessity. There were certainly fears that 100 healthy young adults confined to such a small area would eventually lead to some level of mingling and indiscretion, but none of the couples believed that it could happen to them.

  The Infrastructure Department used any spare time they had over the years to configure 50 additional double occupancy home pods. V1 was not a religious environment, and therefore its citizens were not governed by traditional Puritan morality, but when it came to relationships, there were two rules which were considered gospel: first,
you had to be married to move into one of the new home pods; and second, you always used birth control.

  Arik proposed to Cadie again 13 years after his first proposal, and this time, she accepted. They were in her parents' home pod during a break from their work at the Environment Department. Rings weren't expected on V1, and neither were weddings, necessarily. Kelley had the authority to marry, but Arik didn't have access to him, so he talked to his father about helping him make the arrangements. Apparently, Arik and Cadie weren't the only couple putting in requests for Kelley's time, and it was decided in the interest of efficiency that Kelley would marry multiple couples simultaneously. Once the couples who weren't yet engaged discovered that their friends would soon be moving out of their parents' pods and into pods of their own, they hastily proposed, as well. Kelley then proclaimed that all the marriages would take place at once in what would be, as far as anyone knew, the biggest wedding in the galaxy.

  The couples were allowed to move into their new home pods the day before the wedding since saying goodnight to your new spouse after the reception and going home with your parents would be unbearably anticlimactic. All fifty couples were able to move in a single day since moving in V1 basically consisted of carrying a couple of cases on the maglev from one home pod to another. Most of what people owned were clothing, a small amount of equipment, and their data stored in the central solid quantum storage grid. Since the doorways in V1 were too small to cram most pieces of furniture through, all the new home pods came fully furnished.