Two kilometers long from bow to stern, she carried eight hundred souls—half human, half synthetic—and enough antimatter in her containment spheres to bend spacetime for the four-year journey (subjective three-point-seven years, thanks to the Alcubierre metric’s time dilation). Her hull was a seamless lattice of adaptive carbon allotropes that shifted opacity and color with the crew’s collective mood; right now it glowed a soft, anxious amber. Inside, corridors curved like the chambers of a nautilus shell
