It is the thirty first millennia and Earth’s natural resources have all but been depleted. The world has been plunged into total war as each nation scrambles to claim what little is left. Mother Earth, the cradle of humanity is nearing a violent destruction. The fighting wears on and countless millions are lost until one man comes up with a final solution. His solution is ascendance... to the heavens and beyond.

***

The dawn rises on a dying world, Mother Earth screams in agony as the untold millions of scars littering her surface festers with the blood of her children. Millions of ships scatter the vast continents of the world, all aimed toward the great darkness beyond. The signal is given and the thrusters fire. The crafts begin to ascend with an almighty roar as they shoot upward towards the blackness of space. Everything is on the table as these mighty metal caskets carry their precious cargo into the vast reaches of space.

Upon the surface stand the remnants of humankind all of them wishing for the same thing. Some cry, some wave and some smile. They look up and see the greatest sight ever recorded in human history. From any one place thousands of ships can be seen screaming through the sky. Mother Earth herself holds hope in her heart as she sees the ships safely from her care; she always knew that her children would make the right choice no matter how much they would fall. She felt a love only a mother could know as she watched her children ascend to perhaps their most dangerous pursuit yet and wished with all her dying heart that they would stay safe.

The ships broke orbit and discarded their primary thrusters. A signal would beam to all ships from the project A.R.K supermind AI Terra to each individual ship AI. With the order received each ship would lock onto a destination and lurch forward a destination locked and a coarse set. On board each ship, frozen in stasis was the entirety of humankind’s young with some being merely infants and others teens. For humanity had reached the decision in unity that to prevent another Earth only the children could be trusted to make the right decision.

One ship with the designation Cradle of Hope suffered a system malfunction and broke course. Leaving the main group it veered off into deep space on an uncharted route. The ship’s AI Oracle tries desperately to re-route the craft but fails as the ship veers further away from the main group she calculates the chances of her passengers survival and is unsatisfied by the odds. The systems that are used to run her complex routines would use too much power. If her precious cargo were to have any hope she would need to redirect the power used to run her into the cryo stasis systems and let the ship drift. She saved a copy of herself and left a portion of energy to maintain this copy.
The ship goes dark and begins to drift. There is a long journey for the children aboard the Cradle of Hope and little do they know how large their destiny will be.

Author's Note

This is but a prologue and also my first story. I'm working on the first chapter now. Please let me know how i'm doing. I know it isn't long but I poured my heart into this. There will be 2 of these little half chapters because I want the intro to be powerful and stretching it out would subtract from the intensity.

Also listen to some epic music while you read this. I worte it listening to this Rumble Head - Final Descent (Epic Powerful Vocal Uplifting)