The model of a spaceship was displayed inside a glass case.
Compared to the the planets used for scale, this spaceship was insanely large.
“It’s about the size of an asteroid.”
“Yes. This transport ship was created to collect refugees, who were born into war, from different planets. In a sense, it was a planet in of itself. It was fully autonomous and could theoretically continued to operate semi-permanently without being resupplied.”
It was a small colony of sorts I guess.
“Did it succeed?”
“To a certain extent.”
“Wasn’t it semi-permanent?”
“Not in the end.”
Well, I suppose so, since it’s displayed here.
“As you know, it is very difficult for living things to survive in outer space. It is necessary to adhere to the Cold Equation to the point of ruthlessness. If the amount of heat, water or oxygen deviates even slightly, people cannot live. There were not few situations in space where people had to be abandoned for the sake of the greater number. If there are five people on board a spaceship that only has oxygen for four people, they would have no choice but to ‘drop’ one of them.”
“So their calculations were off at some point.”
“Yes. The spaceship’s management computer had a malfunction and they had to keep increasing the number of people on board.”
“Increase?”
Not decrease?
“There was an abnormality in the oxygen management concentration and it couldn’t be used up. However,since this spaceship was operated with strict algorithm calculations, down to the 1 in 100 million level, it couldn’t just release the excess oxygen. The management computer, which was on the verge of a processing failure, issued an order to ‘keep adding people’.”
“So what did they do?”
“In a miraculous balance, the spaceship continued to operated for the next 30 years. Throughout that time, the computer anomaly remained confidential and the crew continued to desperately add new people to the spaceship. It was a suicidal act to board a spaceship with a malfunction, but the people on board would die unless new people were added.”
“Was there anyone who wanted to leave?”
“There would have been, but……there aren’t many planets where that many people could leave at the same time. And, if the number of people suddenly dropped, halfway through leaving, those who had yet to leave would die.”
“So they couldn’t get off……”
I could sense the awkwardness in the air.
“Then, after 30 years……”
“Well, you can probably guess. No matter how big the spaceship was, there was a limit to how many people it could actually support. Eventually, it wiped out a population of nearly two average planets. It was severely overcrowded by the end.”
I could imagine it, but I didn’t really want to think about it too much.
“I heard that the spaceship itself is still floating somewhere in the galaxy. I do not know what’s going on inside though……”