23rd century dreamers
Robert Lefebvre
1
23rd Century Dreamers At its heart “23rd Century Dreamers” is the tale of two lovers who grow apart. It is about the strains of marriage and a man who leaves everything behind to follow his childhood dream. The setting is the 23rd century where the earth is too polluted and over-populated to comfortably sustain the masses. It is an earth whose smallest towns house millions, and people are desperate for something better. The main character (Don) is a child when the latest in space flight technology is used to send out a brave group of astronauts in search of a new planet. The leader of this mission is a hero to the child. Don longs for adventure and the sense of freedom a new planet may offer. As he grows older he attends college. It is here that he meets a girl (Ruby) whom he falls in love with and eventually marries. They start a life together and Don takes a menial job at a factory, working to support the two of them. Everything is going well until one day he reads news that after many years the space ship he watched take to the skies when he was younger found a suitable planet. The government announces a plan to send volunteers, and civilians will promptly have the opportunity to help start a new civilization. Ship after ship takes off, filled with passengers as Don’s longing for adventure comes flooding back. As he rushes home to tell his wife the good news he is forced to accept that her hopes and dreams are very different from his own. Ruby sees the flights as a new start for a less populated earth, not as a chance to escape. Determined, Don decides to leave everything, and sneaks away in the night to board a flight, bound for this new promised land. Shortly after his ship has departed, well out of the orbit of the earth, large bay doors that have been built into the ship’s hull open, dropping all of the passengers into the cold void of space. Returning to earth, the spacecraft prepares for another flight, reducing the human burden on earth one small bit at a time.