The First Superhuman: Rebuilding Civilization from the Moon

Tom pushed off the deck. Blue ion flames erupted from the thrusters on his power armor, providing a brief acceleration roughly equivalent to standard Earth gravity.

Tom had seen spacewalks on video feeds countless times. He wasn’t afraid; instead, he eagerly shifted his weight to maintain his balance. Ten seconds later, the thrusters automatically cut off.

He was now coasting at a steady 100 meters per second, rapidly drifting away from Deep Space. His entire body felt light and completely unanchored, the true sensation of zero gravity. The sheer speed, combined with the rapidly shrinking reference points around him, gave him an incredible rush of adrenaline.

"Come on! I’m outside! Hurry up!" Tom yelled excitedly over his comms, spinning around to watch his classmates.

Fueled by his shouting and the teacher’s encouragement, the other students quickly overcame their hesitation. After all, someone had already taken the plunge! The teenagers eagerly jumped out one by one. The ion thrusters on their armor gave each of them a ten-second boost. Just as the teacher promised, the thrust was strictly limited to those ten seconds.

A minute later, Tom watched the rest of his class drift into the void, the blue glow of their armor making them look like a swarm of twinkling fireflies.

At a distance of six kilometers, Deep Space was perfectly framed against the starry backdrop. It was a breathtaking sight, fulfilling every childhood fantasy of conquering the cosmic ocean. Only a behemoth like that could traverse the vast distances between stars! It was the ultimate crystallization of human ingenuity and hard work, a magnificent symbol of humanity’s victory over the Great Filter.

Looking at the ship, Tom felt a profound sense of pride and belonging to the Federation.

This is what the teacher wanted us to realize, he thought smugly.

Beneath the mothership stretched a massive, narrow tether leading directly to the metallic planet below. Tom knew it was the space elevator used for hauling refined ore. But from out here, the colossal structure looked shockingly fragile. Occasionally, flashes of light traveled up the tether, indicating another massive cargo shipment. The more resources, the better, Tom mused.

Two minutes passed. He was now twelve kilometers away from Deep Space, yet the ship still looked overwhelmingly massive.

Tom spotted a tiny spacecraft darting out from the lower hangar bays, likely on a routine patrol.

That’s a Space Swallow! Tom thought, his eyes going wide. It looks exactly like the ones in the VR simulators—no, it’s way cooler!

Maybe joining the military and becoming a pilot wouldn’t be such a bad career path after all. Then again, pilots have to study a ton of theoretical physics, which sounds awful.

Slowly, the chatter over the communicator began to fade, likely because they were drifting past the localized radio range.

"Is anyone still there?" Tom called out, a sudden pang of anxiety hitting him as the static grew.

"Yeah!"

"I’m here!"

Hearing a few faint responses, Tom breathed a sigh of relief. Deep Space still looked huge, giving him a strong sense of security, even if he could no longer make out the space elevator.

There was no atmosphere here. The void was a suffocating, inky black, punctuated only by the cold, distant light of endless stars. It was an impossibly vast, empty world. So this is outer space.

Without any nearby reference points, Tom couldn’t even tell he was moving at high speed.

Three minutes passed. At eighteen kilometers out, Tom started to feel genuinely uneasy. He glanced back at the safety tether trailing behind him. It looked ridiculously thin.

A cable no thicker than an earphone wire, was he sure it wouldn’t snap?

He knew intellectually that the tether was woven from the exact same nano-carbon used in the space elevator. It was mathematically impossible for it to break; it could easily tow twenty of him without snapping. He tried to force himself to relax. It’s just a routine spacewalk. We’ll be reeled back in soon.

Four minutes passed. He could no longer see any of his classmates. The dim glow of their power armor was swallowed by the abyssal dark, and his headset was dead silent.

Even the brilliant lights of Deep Space were starting to dim.

A primal, suffocating terror began to claw at Tom’s chest. He suddenly realized the terrifying reality of a vacuum: there was no friction. Nothing to slow him down!

Because of inertia, they were continuously coasting farther and farther away from the ship!

What’s happening? It’s only been four minutes! Tom checked the internal chronometer on his HUD. Time felt like it was crawling.

Five minutes passed. Pure panic flooded his mind. At this distance, Planet GB131 still looked immense, unchanging and indifferent.

But Deep Space... it looked so small now.

He felt completely, utterly alone in the universe! The proud thrill of conquering a planet evaporated completely.

Yes, from this distance, the mothership was just a speck, and it was shrinking by the second.

It was too far! What happened to a person left alone in the void? How long would the oxygen last? Once the thought took root, it paralyzed him.

Desperate, Tom grabbed the thin tether and tried to pull himself back hand over hand. But it was useless! The cable wasn’t taut. There was zero tension; pulling on the slack did absolutely nothing.

This sparked a new, horrific wave of paranoia.

Impossible! The tether couldn’t have snapped!

The teacher wouldn’t abandon us! The security officers are right there! Tom chanted internally, trying to stave off a panic attack. He remembered the mechanical winch... the winch must be feeding out slack freely!

Six minutes. Seven minutes... Tom’s mental fortitude shattered. The crushing, infinite scale of the universe pressed down on him, and absolute terror took over.

His arrogance and excitement were completely gone, replaced by a suffocating dread and a horrifying realization of his own utter insignificance. No amount of rationalization could quiet the screaming instinct in his brain.

Panicking, Tom tried to manually fire his ion thrusters to reverse his momentum, only to discover his armor’s manual overrides were locked. The thrusters were strictly programmed for a single, initial burst!

He tried every command he could think of, but nothing responded!

Trapped in the silent void, a human’s natural fear of the dark was magnified a millionfold. Deep Space had faded into a blurry, distant shadow.

And even that shadow was disappearing!

What do I do? What do I do?!

Sweat stung Tom’s eyes. His heart hammered violently against his ribs. He thrashed in the zero-gravity environment, desperately grabbing at the slack tether.

Why is it loose? Why?! Did it snap? Did they leave me behind because I was too disruptive in class? Did the Federation abandon me?

Tom flailed frantically in the dark. His mind spiraled. Years of theoretical cosmology had given the students the intellectual knowledge of the universe, but they had never felt it.

In that moment, every single student shared the exact same, overwhelming emotion. This was the true universe outside the protective shell of the mothership.

What else could they do but cry? They had nothing.

Ten minutes later. Back on the observation deck, the teacher smiled knowingly and engaged the heavy-duty winches. The mechanical spools whirred, rapidly reeling the class back into the airlock.

When the doors sealed and the pressure equalized, the children were a mess. Most were sobbing uncontrollably; several had collapsed onto the deck plates in pure shock.

The teacher had anticipated this exact psychological breakdown. After all... it was a rite of passage everyone went through! The armed security detail was only there to ensure no one had a medical emergency.

In a mere ten minutes, this pampered generation had received a brutal, unforgettable lesson. It was a million times more effective than any classroom lecture!

Regardless of how tough, smart, or arrogant they thought they were, they had all been ruthlessly humbled by the sheer scale of the cosmos.

Yes, they grew up in a post-scarcity utopia, shielded and loved. But the second they stepped outside civilization’s protection, what were they? Nothing.

What right did they have to be lazy? What right did they have to be arrogant?

This was just the first of many such "practical" lessons initiated at age fourteen. Whether they liked it or not, every citizen had to face the terrifying truth: a single human being was impossibly fragile.

Only through absolute unity could humanity hope to remain a tiny, defiant spark in the dark universe!

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