The 21st Ark (Arks 3/3)

Humanity fled a dying world in the faint hope that they could find salvation amongst the stars. While this massive project was a huge collaboration between the remaining bastions of Humanity, it was kick-started by two people: Dorje Dhondup, who discovered the lost plans for space travel, and Elias Hodge, the scientist who spearheaded the project. While many of the humans who left on the arks managed to survive and get relocated to New Terra and Shangri-La, what happened to Elias and Dorje?

We've talked at length about the fates of a great many of the arks but there is one among them that still baffles historians and archaeologists to this day. The 21st Ark carried Elias and Dorje away from Old Earth but beyond that, no-one has any concrete idea what happened to them and the hundreds of other people that sought refuge with them. Despite the extensive effort of the Galactic Federation to try and reunite the Human diaspora, no trace of the 21st Ark was ever found. Some have postulated that there never was a 21st Ark, although the record data from several of the recovered arks does confirm that 21 were constructed and launched. With the disappearance of the ark and the importance of its occupants, rumours and theories about the 21st Ark have spread like wildfire. Some claim that Elias and Dorje stocked it with all the mysterious relics of Old Earth, hoarding the ancient coveted technology that had been lost to their civilisation. Such wonders as the ancient Faster-Than-Light (FTL) technology that Humanity was supposedly working on before their society collapsed. A great many subscribers to this theory purport truly wild assumptions, like that the 21st Ark contained the secret to creating wormholes, terraform barren worlds, or even multiversal travel. Nobody can verify that the ark contained these things or even that those things were being worked on before Old Earth's rising sea levels killed off most of the population. These more fanciful notions are often dismissed as wild ideas beyond any serious mind, but that doesn't stop people all over the galaxy from throwing these theories around a bar room or in public debate spaces like talk shows and fluff pieces in less-than-reputable news sources as well as more radical sects of Terranism. 

But what actually happened to the 21st Ark? How did a refugee ship carrying so many people, including some of the greatest minds of the generation, simply vanish into the big black without a trace? Sceptics would ask "If they survived, why have they not tried to make contact with other civilisations?", a question that has sparked truly endless debate amongst academics. The more pessimistic and practically minded amongst the populace might claim that the 21st Ark never actually managed to launch and was lost amongst the waves of Old Earth. For the less dour, there are a multitude more theories. For anyone who thinks the ship was carrying secret lost technology, they'll claim that the ark used the lost FTL drives and made a blind jump into the unknown spaces of the galaxy or even that it slipped into a parallel universe. Maybe they ended up on some kind of galactic Point Nemo, thousands of lightyears away from any inhabited planets. Others on the more fantastical end of the spectrum claim that some kind of gigantic space beast might have attacked and swallowed the entire ark. This is entirely predicated on the existence of gigantic space beasts which only seem to exist in the stories of old dusty spacefarers, live specimens having yet to be acquired by any reputable institution. Those inclined to distrust the government to a frankly insane degree will vehemently claim that the ark was indeed recovered but that the Federation and now the Alliance have concealed its many mysteries in a secret, prohibited system called System 42, in an attempt to control the population or advance their shadowy agenda.

To this day, the fate of the 21st Ark remains a compelling mystery. Devout followers of Terranism practically treat a search for the 21st Ark as a sacred pilgrimage. With their expanding influence over galactic policy, some Terranist churches have constructed their own deep space telescopes in attempts to search for the lost ark. Even without religious influence, treasure hunters and explorers are still plumbing the unmapped depths of the galaxy at least partially in the hope that they can unwrap this enigma & uncover the incredible loot within. More and more theories will rear their heads until the ark is found. What do you think? What could possibly have happened to this mysterious ship and the people aboard? And what riches might it contain? Might we only find the drifting carcass and dusty bones of the original crew? Or could there be a thriving human civilisation out there somewhere, descended from the crew, believing that they were the only ones who survived the fall of Old Earth while being truly, utterly, alone in the universe?