Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“Nearly complete damage between the second and third thoracic vertebrae. Layman’s terms, son, you’re looking at paraplegia for life.”

“Shouldn’t the doctor be telling me this?” said Arch.

“Oh, he’ll be in soon enough with the proper diagnosis,” the suit said. “I’ve arranged to have a few minutes with you before that.”

“To gloat?”

The suit laughed an insincere laugh. “Of course not. So cynical! I’m here to offer you participation in a clinical trial. You’re familiar with lanxisol?”

“A little,” Arch said. He’d seen alarmist media reports, but hadn’t put much stock in them.

“Well, there’s a newer derivative we’re developing–lanxisol centlin. It promises far more potent benefits with fewer side effects. We’ve got the chair of the Senate Democratic Caucus breathing down our neck to get it approved so his little brother can walk again. That’s where you come in.”

In theory, the Pskov-Lindberg drive was elegant and simple. Every star and galaxy in the universe was in motion, and by adjusting the vessel’s position in time, but not space, vast distances could be covered in a fraction of the time needed for normal space travel.

The calculations were exceedingly complex, but the popular press rendered the Pskov-Lindberg “geting there before you left.” A normal spacecraft would struggle to pass 20 km/s even with a gravitational assist, while the universe is expanding at nearly 80 km/s. At 80 km/s, it would take 16 years to reach Proxima Centauri. But by shifting 16 years backward in time along the correct trajectory, a Pskov-Lindberg drive could make the trip instantly and arrive well before it left.

Tests with unmanned drone ships and laboratory animals were promising, but the world government was under immense political pressure and cut corners. The first hundred Arks–Pskov-Lindberg equipped starships with volunteer colonists–were constructed and launched before a single human test had been performed. The science community fretted over the lack of radio traffic from the worlds selected for colonization–which should have arrived years before the Arks departed–but could not prevent the launch.

What happened next took centuries to reconstruct. Through a combination of factors, the Arks arrived at their destinations not 20-30 years before their departure, but 20000-30000. The Arks were in fact assumed destroyed until the advent of the Higgs drive in the next century, when astonished surveyors reported contact with humans speaking an unknown language. The Arks had survived, with their descendents were now spread across the most desirable colony worlds with thousands of years of independent biological and cultural evolution.

Inevitably, conflicts broke out between the settlers arriving on fast, safe Higgs spacecraft and the people they came to call Arkers.