In the year 2169, humanity launched its first interstellar colony ship. The UEP Genesis had begun being constructed at the L4 Earth-Moon Lagrange point almost fifty years earlier, when the world governments finally agreed on a proper United Earth People's (UEP) coalition. The selection of a target destination had been entirely political up until that point as the technology to send people to the stars and the plans to do it had been prepared long before world governments could be made to agree on anything. Interstellar planets had been being catalogued for well over one hundred years by then, so there were hundreds of Earth-like worlds to consider, and dozens that may have their own life even. So the the nearest was selected... about two hundred light years away. The journey was then estimated, perhaps a bit ambitiously, as going to take about two hundred and seventy-five years.

First, Genesis would leave the L4 point under power of lightsail in 2169. Pushed along by the sun for the next sixty years or so, it would leisurely sail through the solar system while being constantly surrounded by a plethora of smaller, more agile ships finishing its production. Much of the mechanics would be done before the initial launch, but more time was needed for the biodome that would house the plant and animal life that the colonists would use to seed their new world. It was a massive forest of its own, full of several types of trees, grasses, fruits, vegetables and even animals. That included a few predators, admittedly, as it was dubbed easier to create a fully functioning biosphere that would self balance than to design a system that would self balance the environment itself. There was also a central lake and an artificial sun that was powered externally during the light sail portion of the trip, but would eventually be driven by a combination nuclear reactor and the runoff from the ship's interstellar ramscoop drives.

Once the ship reached the edge of the solar system, the light sail was to be deconstructed and packed away for the rest of the trip until it was needed again in its new solar system. The speed it'd given Genesis would be enough then to utilize interstellar hydrogen as a fuel source to push it the rest of the way to its new home: Ataraxia. The interstellar medium was sparse with atomic hydrogen, but enough speed and the amount pushed through the ramscoop engines in a short amount of time was still enough to perform fusion. Old, slow burn fission reactors would sustain the ship's other power needs, but heat run off from both was funneled into the light of the artificial sun, or otherwise radiated into space. By this method, the ship could accelerate under nearly one gravity (more accurately, about 0.9 G's), simulating an Earth/Ataraxia-like environment. And in one year Genesis would be at a speed of 0.93 c.

That seemed convenient enough for traveling about 200 lightyears, the trip could be done at that speed in about the remaining 215 years (although shipboard time would be closer to about 150 for relativistic effects). But as soon as that speed was met, and acceleration was cut, then the biodome would be in free fall and most of its animals would die. So another method was devised. After one year of constant "forward" acceleration, the ship would begin to decelerate with the same magnitude and return to its original, minimum speed where it would then begin to accelerate "forward" again. The bidome was on a massive gyroscope so that it could reorient what was "down" during each cycle of this process, and the same distance could be covered by the ship regardless of slowing down for half of it. Gensis would travel 0.93 lightyears per year, and arrive in its new system in the remaining 215 years allotted. At that point the lightsail would be opened again, the ramscoop shut off, and a new orbit around Ataraxia slowly made while the colonists used the time to do so to prepare their new society.

Of course, nothing ever went quite as planned. At the end of year one one on Gensis (which wasn't really a year of course) the first flip was to be made. The artificial sun was put out, and the lake was sealed over by metal doors to keep the water in during the following period of weightlessness. And that was the small mistake which changed everything. Apparently, no one had thought to prepare the lake doors for animals drinking at the time of Turn Over. Therefore, a few dozen animals ended up surprise decapitated, and that was just enough to put out the carefully planned equillibrium of the biodome.

Hurriedly, before the next Turn Over, a change had to be made. More than falf of the crew of the Gensis was volunteered to become the caretakers the nerds back at UEP had thought were too "simple" and "inconvenient" to make use of (we all know how engineers like to automate things). They would live in the biodome and observe the animals there, hunting or breeding them as needed. And of course since it was a multigenerational ship and that meant that their children and grandchildren would also be farmers of the same sort. And those not in the biodome would be a part of the technical maintenance of the rest of the ship, making sure that Turn Over happened appropriately, that their course was good, and so on.

As one can imagine, this sort of a setup has a great propensity for change after a single generation.

Alright! So I kinda left things off pretty opened ended there, and that’s because I was realizing as I wrote this that there really are a great many ways everything could change from here. I could pick one, but why do that when I can chat it out with one of you fine folks and we can figure out something fun and potentially long term? Maybe after one generation a social divide occurs, creating a class hierarchy to fuck across? Maybe the technical crew diminishes while the farmer crew population explodes and due to these effects, the farmer crew eventually forgets they’re on a ship and are at the mercy of the technical crew that act like wizards? Or maybe the technical crew falls to extinction and the sole survivor has to integrate to a several generations old farmer life style? Or some farmers have to be brought forward and elevated to maintain the ship? Maybe the famers turn to wild savages? All sorts of possibilities, and I’ve barely even spoken sex! I figured this would be a bit more story driven, but let me know your thoughts. And if you like the detail, but this just isn’t your story then please let me know. We could try something else, maybe even from my post history; I’m flexible.

Oh and if you’re in STEM, don’t look too hard into my numbers here. I did do some real calculations, but I also fudged several things as well so... take them with a grain of salt, haha.