372 lightyears away from their home planet Hokara, the crew of the Remnant had recently arrived at their ancestor's system of origin to excavate what remained of ancient human civilization. Thanks to the exponential advancements to faster than light traveling vessels in recent history, the mission was far less taxing on its crew than previous missions to explore the cradle of civilization in the galaxy. A mission such as this one just a millennia earlier would have taken at least 3 generations. After several Earth months of traveling across the galaxy they would have a year to explore the ruins of human civilization before returning home. The trip to the ancient planet had been tough on the crew. The people of Hokara built some of the best spaceships in the galaxy. While the Remnant was not a luxury vessel, life aboard it was comfortable. There were ample resources and several amenities available on its habitation rings including pools, recreation centers, and even a garden. Still, after the first week life in the space station grew repetitive, and despite the seemingly unlimited amounts of media available in the ship’s database the crew grew quite bored. Perhaps no members of the crew were more bored than young Gork, the only child aboard the Remnant. The next youngest crew member aboard the Remnant was Xinto Koru, one of the apprentices of the head pilot, and he was a full 8 years older than Gork. Xinto did his best to spend time with the boy, as everyone else on the crew did, but Xinto was closer to Gork than anyone else, except maybe his parents. Back when excavation missions were generational, it was common for entire family units to embark on missions. Even then however, most of the volunteers who dedicated their lives to explore the ancient world were loners and people hoping for fresh starts. Now that the time commitment fits well within a human’s 175 Earth year lifespan, a much wider array of people are willing to accept the mission. There was much more interest in boarding a space station to the cradle of civilization knowing you’d actually get to see it and return home to tell the tale. Crew members of this mission were still allowed to take family. Resources on the Remnant were plentiful, and each essential crewmember received 2,000 square feet on the Remnant. While there were some couples, all the crew members who had children, aside from Grok’s parents, opted to leave them on Hokara. The Remnant simply was not the optimal place to raise a child. Grok’s parents did not have much of a choice. For Gorak, Grok’s father, and his wife Furak, this was a mission they could not pass up. They spent years of their lives dreaming of the opportunity to return to the cradle planet. This was an incredible career opportunity, and when they both got accepted to go on the mission they knew they’d have to accept. While there were backup plans to leave Grok home with his great-grandparents they knew they couldn’t leave him behind. If faster-than-light travel was more dangerous it would have been a tougher decision, but with the odds of this mission going wrong about as low as Hokara being hit by a sudden asteroid they knew it made sense to take Grok with them. It killed them to pry him away from his friends, but when he returned he’d have incredible stories to tell them. Viewing the cradle world with your own eyes and stepping foot on the ground where civilization first began is an opportunity of a lifetime, especially with Hokara and the Alliance of Planets continuing to lose interest in the ancient world. When the ship first came into Earth’s orbit both Gorak and Furak were breathless. They pointed at Earth through the viewport, but Grok was not nearly as enthusiastic. Much of the crew, even those who had waited a lifetime for this opportunity, felt the way Grok did. When the people of Hokara’s colony ship departed Earth over 100 million years ago it was a place with great towering cities, lush green forest, and vast blue oceans. Now, however, it was nothing but a dry, inhospitable rock. The last time a Hokara excavation mission had come to Earth there’d been a great supercontinent surrounded by the oceans. The seven continents had finally reunited into one. Now that the ocean had completely evaporated the temperature of the planet continued to rise. While human life had long gone extinct, there was much hope from the crew of the Remnant that there would still be some sort of life on the planet. Without its ocean that hope was all but gone. With it the reality that they’d left the beautifully lit planet of Hokara for this wasteland. Even if the planet looked as vibrant as it once had, Gork did not share his parent’s interest in ancient humans or even space travel. At his age, he was most interested in his favorite sports team the Pulsars, who played orbital ball, a game much like the Earth game lacrosse but played in a spherical zero gravity arena. After the Remnant launched Gork became aware that he could not watch any of the games as the signals could not travel to the Remnant and he was devastated. His parents did everything they could to try to get him into watching other sports, including some clips of ancient Earth sports games that inspired orbital balls such as lacrosse, hockey, basketball, and even football but none of them grabbed Gork’s interest. As a well-mannered child he did not throw any tantrums, but as the mission went on the rest of the crew could tell he was not happy. Sure he would smile but he would not laugh and play the way he would if there were other children to play with on the ship. It did not help that most of the media downloaded onto the Remnant was not quite optimized for children. At least the crew thought it was not optimized until Xinto was looking through some legacy media to do more research on his homeworld and found some ancient Christmas specials. Religion was not what it once was on Earth for the people who made up the Alliance of Planets. Many of the religions of Earth were left behind when the colonization missions began as many religious people believed it was not in their God’s interest for them to abandon the cradle. There were some efforts however to spread religion later on, including a late Catholic movement to spread the word of God to humans across the galaxy. The mission was expensive and the results were underwhelming, but it had reached a small devoted audience on a few planets including Xinto’s home planet Uran II. While he was on this mission to train to become a pilot, he also wanted to use the trip to Earth as an opportunity to reconnect with his great-great-grandfather who was a Catholic priest. In doing research about how Catholic practices were quite different on Earth than they were on Uran II, Xinto came across the holiday of Christmas, and how massive it was on ancient Earth. On Uran II Christmas was a small holiday, but back on Earth amongst the populations who celebrated it was a massive holiday celebrated with lights, festive foods, family, and presents. In trying to reconnect with his great-great-grandfather and his faith Xinto would watch the ancient Christmas specials with Gork, and to his delight, the little boy was fascinated. From there Xinto knew what he needed to do. The crew of the Remnant needed some holiday spirit. Xinto got to work, telling Gorak and Furak of his plan, and word quickly spread across the crew. By chance, the astronomers on board found that based on the orbit of the planet around Sol the date that Christmas would typically be celebrated in just a few days. The commander of the mission allowed the use of the Remnant’s sympathizer and the crew got to work. They strung lights around the corridors of the ship and printed Christmas trees and reefs. To decorate the trees the branches were decorated with ornaments inspired by the history of Earth. Gork’s face lit up as he ran around the corridor in awe of all the lights. On the night before Christmas Eve, he went to bed early excited about the presents Santa would leave under the tree in his unit. When he woke up the next morning he was disappointed to find nothing under his tree only to find that the presents were all under the large tree in the ship’s community center. Sata was there as well laughing all jolly and eating cookies. Gork could tell Santa was Xinto wearing a fake beard, but that didn’t matter. What did matter was he and everyone on the Remnant that morning were happy. Gork was delighted to open his gifts and find among the other synthesized presents an orbital ball stick. Xinto and his father received one as well! In the days after Christmas on the Remnant things went back to normal, but the boost in morale remained. When they returned to Hokara, the crew took the Christmas spirit with them.
aw man there's a podcast called Weird Christmas that has a short story contest every year, but the deadline is way passed! This would be perfect for that Also, a while ago I read "A lot like christmas" by Connie Willis, a collection of christmassy sci fi short stories. definitely recommend!
372 lightyears away from their home planet Hokara, the crew of the Remnant had recently arrived at their ancestor's system of origin to excavate what remained of ancient human civilization. Thanks to the exponential advancements to faster than light traveling vessels in recent history, the mission was far less taxing on its crew than previous missions to explore the cradle of civilization in the galaxy. A mission such as this one just a millennia earlier would have taken at least 3 generations. After several Earth months of traveling across the galaxy they would have a year to explore the ruins of human civilization before returning home.
The trip to the ancient planet had been tough on the crew. The people of Hokara built some of the best spaceships in the galaxy. While the Remnant was not a luxury vessel, life aboard it was comfortable. There were ample resources and several amenities available on its habitation rings including pools, recreation centers, and even a garden. Still, after the first week life in the space station grew repetitive, and despite the seemingly unlimited amounts of media available in the ship’s database the crew grew quite bored.
Perhaps no members of the crew were more bored than young Gork, the only child aboard the Remnant. The next youngest crew member aboard the Remnant was Xinto Koru, one of the apprentices of the head pilot, and he was a full 8 years older than Gork. Xinto did his best to spend time with the boy, as everyone else on the crew did, but Xinto was closer to Gork than anyone else, except maybe his parents.
Back when excavation missions were generational, it was common for entire family units to embark on missions. Even then however, most of the volunteers who dedicated their lives to explore the ancient world were loners and people hoping for fresh starts. Now that the time commitment fits well within a human’s 175 Earth year lifespan, a much wider array of people are willing to accept the mission. There was much more interest in boarding a space station to the cradle of civilization knowing you’d actually get to see it and return home to tell the tale.
Crew members of this mission were still allowed to take family. Resources on the Remnant were plentiful, and each essential crewmember received 2,000 square feet on the Remnant. While there were some couples, all the crew members who had children, aside from Grok’s parents, opted to leave them on Hokara. The Remnant simply was not the optimal place to raise a child. Grok’s parents did not have much of a choice.
For Gorak, Grok’s father, and his wife Furak, this was a mission they could not pass up. They spent years of their lives dreaming of the opportunity to return to the cradle planet. This was an incredible career opportunity, and when they both got accepted to go on the mission they knew they’d have to accept. While there were backup plans to leave Grok home with his great-grandparents they knew they couldn’t leave him behind. If faster-than-light travel was more dangerous it would have been a tougher decision, but with the odds of this mission going wrong about as low as Hokara being hit by a sudden asteroid they knew it made sense to take Grok with them. It killed them to pry him away from his friends, but when he returned he’d have incredible stories to tell them. Viewing the cradle world with your own eyes and stepping foot on the ground where civilization first began is an opportunity of a lifetime, especially with Hokara and the Alliance of Planets continuing to lose interest in the ancient world.
When the ship first came into Earth’s orbit both Gorak and Furak were breathless. They pointed at Earth through the viewport, but Grok was not nearly as enthusiastic. Much of the crew, even those who had waited a lifetime for this opportunity, felt the way Grok did. When the people of Hokara’s colony ship departed Earth over 100 million years ago it was a place with great towering cities, lush green forest, and vast blue oceans. Now, however, it was nothing but a dry, inhospitable rock.
The last time a Hokara excavation mission had come to Earth there’d been a great supercontinent surrounded by the oceans. The seven continents had finally reunited into one. Now that the ocean had completely evaporated the temperature of the planet continued to rise. While human life had long gone extinct, there was much hope from the crew of the Remnant that there would still be some sort of life on the planet. Without its ocean that hope was all but gone. With it the reality that they’d left the beautifully lit planet of Hokara for this wasteland.
Even if the planet looked as vibrant as it once had, Gork did not share his parent’s interest in ancient humans or even space travel. At his age, he was most interested in his favorite sports team the Pulsars, who played orbital ball, a game much like the Earth game lacrosse but played in a spherical zero gravity arena. After the Remnant launched Gork became aware that he could not watch any of the games as the signals could not travel to the Remnant and he was devastated. His parents did everything they could to try to get him into watching other sports, including some clips of ancient Earth sports games that inspired orbital balls such as lacrosse, hockey, basketball, and even football but none of them grabbed Gork’s interest.
As a well-mannered child he did not throw any tantrums, but as the mission went on the rest of the crew could tell he was not happy. Sure he would smile but he would not laugh and play the way he would if there were other children to play with on the ship. It did not help that most of the media downloaded onto the Remnant was not quite optimized for children. At least the crew thought it was not optimized until Xinto was looking through some legacy media to do more research on his homeworld and found some ancient Christmas specials.
Religion was not what it once was on Earth for the people who made up the Alliance of Planets. Many of the religions of Earth were left behind when the colonization missions began as many religious people believed it was not in their God’s interest for them to abandon the cradle. There were some efforts however to spread religion later on, including a late Catholic movement to spread the word of God to humans across the galaxy. The mission was expensive and the results were underwhelming, but it had reached a small devoted audience on a few planets including Xinto’s home planet Uran II. While he was on this mission to train to become a pilot, he also wanted to use the trip to Earth as an opportunity to reconnect with his great-great-grandfather who was a Catholic priest.
In doing research about how Catholic practices were quite different on Earth than they were on Uran II, Xinto came across the holiday of Christmas, and how massive it was on ancient Earth. On Uran II Christmas was a small holiday, but back on Earth amongst the populations who celebrated it was a massive holiday celebrated with lights, festive foods, family, and presents.
In trying to reconnect with his great-great-grandfather and his faith Xinto would watch the ancient Christmas specials with Gork, and to his delight, the little boy was fascinated. From there Xinto knew what he needed to do. The crew of the Remnant needed some holiday spirit.
Xinto got to work, telling Gorak and Furak of his plan, and word quickly spread across the crew. By chance, the astronomers on board found that based on the orbit of the planet around Sol the date that Christmas would typically be celebrated in just a few days. The commander of the mission allowed the use of the Remnant’s sympathizer and the crew got to work.
They strung lights around the corridors of the ship and printed Christmas trees and reefs. To decorate the trees the branches were decorated with ornaments inspired by the history of Earth.
Gork’s face lit up as he ran around the corridor in awe of all the lights. On the night before Christmas Eve, he went to bed early excited about the presents Santa would leave under the tree in his unit.
When he woke up the next morning he was disappointed to find nothing under his tree only to find that the presents were all under the large tree in the ship’s community center. Sata was there as well laughing all jolly and eating cookies. Gork could tell Santa was Xinto wearing a fake beard, but that didn’t matter. What did matter was he and everyone on the Remnant that morning were happy.
Gork was delighted to open his gifts and find among the other synthesized presents an orbital ball stick. Xinto and his father received one as well!
In the days after Christmas on the Remnant things went back to normal, but the boost in morale remained. When they returned to Hokara, the crew took the Christmas spirit with them.
aw man there's a podcast called Weird Christmas that has a short story contest every year, but the deadline is way passed! This would be perfect for that
Also, a while ago I read "A lot like christmas" by Connie Willis, a collection of christmassy sci fi short stories. definitely recommend!
@@kiwitealc5353 oooh I’ll have to check that out
Shoulda put a candy cane in the hot chocolate
@@SleepyGary69 I don’t have any 😔
Sci fi + Christmas?!
Have you perchance heard of Gremlins? 👀👀😎😎
@@ElsaLouiseSinger or iron man 3 tbh