Cogito

The Trillium Project by Zenaida Gómez

“Spectacular! … [Gómez’s] prose delights with sophistication combined with good-hearted earthiness. … The machinery of the plot is well crafted, with momentum and surprise. Great bad guys!”
– Jeffrey Scott Johnson

Eight hundred years in the future, Esty Ramirez, 17, is selected to join the first starship crew. The next day she is the bloodied victim of a killer drone. ¿Who wants to prevent the colonization of other worlds? and why?

This is Zenaida Gómez’s vision of a future where a homicidal rampage wipes out 80% of the world’s population and plunges the globe into a vicious dark age; a future where the human spirit rebounds and crafts a war-free, compassionate world – with deadly exceptions.

¿Can humans reach and colonize an exoplanet? Gómez answers that question with science and imagination.

Zenaida Gómez: This “project” began after physicist Bob Park posted that interstellar travel was “energetically” infeasible if not impossible. I took this as a challenge which led to notebooks of facts, formulae, and calculations. I eventually arrived at solutions I could not find in print.

Without thinking about writing this information in the form of a story, I tried to envision myself living in the future and involved with such an attempt to colonize another star system. In time, my imaginings became text; essentially a diary. I hope you enjoy the diary of Estrella Ramirez which begins with Chapter 2.

I thank Tom Pierson and Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute for permission to use their names.

Chapter 1: The Selection Committee
Chapter 2: Revelations: Part 1
Chapter 3: Anecdote: Birth of ISTRI
Chapter 4: Anecdote: The Family Party
Chapter 5: Revelations: Part 2
Chapter 6: A Trip to the Zoo
Chapter 7: The Decision
Chapter 8: African Home
Chapter 9: The Beanstalk
Chapter 10: Trillium Project
Chapter 11: Complications
Chapter 12: MomDroid
Chapter 13: Kampala
Chapter 14: Leaving Earth
Chapter 15: Elevator to Space
Chapter 16: GEO Station
Chapter 17: ZERO Station
Chapter 18: Departure
Chapter 19: Accelerating Boredom
Chapter 20: The 7th Crewmember
Chapter 21: Secret Friend

EPILOGUE
GLOSSARY
NOTES

Cover art: “Supernova” © Codi Grafiti. Used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

Lettering by Steven Newton.