The last time that Halley’s Comet made its regular appearance every seventy-five in the skies above Earth, its distinct lack of a spectacular show certified it as one of the greatest astronomical disappointments of all time. In 2061 the comet is scheduled to make its next appearance above an Earth that barely even resembles what it flew over seventy-five years earlier. That things will be far more memorable this time around is ensured when a solar flare ignites with just enough power to shift the comet out of its ordained orbital path. A devastating evolutionary nightmare will result from the unavoidable collision between the comet and the planet.
The Pleiades Corporation has, in response, constructed three spaceships that sit ready for the countdown at a facility in New Mexico. These interplanetary vessels are enormous and will be occupied by the best and the brightest from all fields, as well as their children. This includes Peñas, a husband-and-wife team of scientists, as well as their daughter Petra and son Javier. The destination of their ship is a distant planet named after legendary cosmologist Carl Sagan. The planet Sagan was picked for colonization due to its proximity and the potential to carry out the evolutionary process of the human species. Even though it is the closest planet thought to be capable of this necessity, the journey will take the equivalent of four hundred Earth years. Thus, those aboard will be required to enter a state of suspended animation.
A key element of his process is called Downloadable Cognizance. This is a program designed to provide children with a fully implemented education while in an unconscious state. The purpose is to ensure that by the time the ship reaches Sagan, the children will already have mastery over scientific disciplines. In addition, each child is given the option of one elective class. Petra’s choice will make her an expert in the entire history of human folklore.
To ensure the proper functioning of the animated suspension, human caretakers known as Monitors are chosen. Because they are not subject to the effects of long-term existence, Monitors are maintained through generational passage of the knowledge and skills required. Meanwhile, an Earth-based movement known as the Collective Forms advances a conformist agenda calling for universal groupthink as the only possible guarantee that the species will survive is to correct the fractured systemic flaws that stimulate conflicts and war. The Collective eventually inspires a revolutionary group aboard the spaceship bent on taking control. The means for this subversion is to hack the Downloadable Cognizance program capable of manipulating memory and ensuring that the unconscious minds purge all awareness of human imperfections and the flaws that inhibit unified thought. A particularly extreme failsafe measure should the memory purge fail is to ensure that the unconscious person with whom the program failed is also purged from the ship. This step will further guarantee the potential for collective thinking. The key to making this plan work, of course, is to further manipulate the learning process so the unconscious receivers of the hacked data mistakenly believe that the mission to Sagan is being conducted primarily to protect and facilitate the agenda of the Collective.
Almost four hundred years later, the ship reaches Sagan and the slumbering passengers finally are brought out of their suspended state. Due to the Collective hack, they awaken with no memories of the actual past. They are essentially a clean slate guided only by what the Collective has taught them is real. One small flaw in the system threatens the success of the entire plan, however.
The failsafe of purging the sleeper with whom the memory purge fails has not worked with Petra. When she awakens, she becomes the one single passenger who remembers the actual history of humanity. Because the other kids accompanying Petra are limited only to what the Collective has created, Petra becomes popular as a storyteller. At first, her stories of what she remembers are accepted merely as entertaining fiction. Soon, however, they begin to realize that these fictions are recollections of their memories which could not be completely erased from the deep recesses within their consciousness.
The expectation of life on Sagan as a simple reflection of life on Earth is undone by the reality of the unforeseen menace of trying to adapt to an alien environment. The Collective determines that evolutionary success can only come with another purge: the weak must be sacrificed for the strong to survive. This decision intensifies the philosophical conflict between whether evolution depends upon unity of thought and purpose or whether it requires space for individualism and imagination. Petra and her acolytes represent the idea of imaginative alternatives to an oppressive commitment to the status quo.
Ultimately, this division comes to a simple difference of opinion. Either Sagan is too unlike Earth to ever allow for it to become a satisfactory replacement using the foundation of uniform thinking or the colonists can adapt themselves to make Sagan a home for humanity in which it is accepted that life on this planet will not be a perfect utopian ideal.
The members of the Collective blast off from Sagan into space to begin their search for another planet to call home while down on the Sagan Petra wonders about the possibilities of the Collective ever managing to successfully locate their ideal Goldilocks dream of finding someplace where everything is just right to match their unimaginative and unadaptable demands for unified perfection.
