luck.

It’s possible by now, this early into my story, an intelligent person might be starting to ask some serious questions about my predicament.

Like for a start, what happened to the Earth?

Or, what was someone thinking hiring a bunch of ranch hands to tend cattle, living, breathing, eating, shitting cattle no less, aboard a refuge class cruiser? Why not scientists? Why not engineers? Why not robots, for crying out loud?

And why me?

Though that last one might just be me, asking it every night, screaming it into the bleak void out the rear of the Foo with her aft engines flaring against the ether and burning up sparkles of interstellar dust in her wake, and not a sound to be heard out there, not even my raging voice.

The answer to all those questions and more is simple, now that I’ve got you thinking about them: bad luck. It was bad luck the Earth was in a serious bind. It was bad luck that there was only enough time and materials to build big hollow space freighters and not the complex machinery and robotics to operate inside them. It was bad luck there were barely enough smart folks to fly and fix the ships and they had to look to other folks with other abilities to do the grunt jobs. And it was bad luck I didn’t have the foresight to see what a shit show it would all become and that I didn’t just stay behind. Bad luck is all.