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Chapter Four : Darkness

As years passed by, Radha read more and more about all the dead crew of the IBSS ship. They all had families and their loved ones. They had memories. They had fear of death and fear of losing loved ones. Radha had none. For last hundreds of years she picked up the same food from the automated vending machine, sat on the same chair and table and ate it exactly same time. In fact the char and table was worn out because of this prolonged use. 

There was one topic which was restricted but she still managed to unlock it. It was the biological immortality program where the secrets of her own DNA were stored. Radha was not a doctor hence it was hard for her to make sense of all of it, however the IBSS had stored every medical journal ever published on its storage and Radha had infinite time to read all of it, hence she managed to self study a lot of it. 

As she watched the icecaps on earth melt and continents change shape it was clear that only very little life on earth could be safe. People loved earth. Every culture considered earth to be either a Godess or mother. Humans had created conservation zones, research institutes and have spent a lot of time making earth a great place to call home but a freakish accident of nature had destroyed that sacred bond. 

Radha wondered if she indeed is now responsible to repopulate earth. She knew basics of biology. If there was a man she coudl technically give birth to one or many children. With sufficient DNA modification techniques she could ensure that her children do not develop defects. But that science was hard and there were no men left. One of the cryogenics section though had frozen stem cells which could be used to create more Radhas and may be one of them could be male.  

Radha was now bored of the bland food on the ship. She looked at the videos of fruits and vegetables, ice creams and all sort of exotic items, she watched the old movied about love, war and adventure. She wanted to experience those things in real life. 

But then she started at the earth down, the large blue sphere with white and black clouds. Lifeless, it was not her home. It was probably not meant to be her adventure. She looked blankly at that sphere from the captain's cabin and made up her mind. She set the thrusters on and used them to put the IBSS out of Earth's orbit.