Age of Cosmic Exploration

Zhang San returned home with great excitement. As he burst through the door, the smell of beef stew filtered into his nostrils, causing him to salivate almost instantly.

"You’re home? Go wash your hands, it’s almost time for dinner. I’ve prepared ox tail soup for you. I went to the market early in the morning to fetch freshest ingredients, I’m sure you’ll love it," a middle-aged woman’s voice drifted from the kitchen.

Zhang San rushed into the kitchen immediately and saw the woman ladling the soup into a bowl. He went to grab the bowl and said, "Mom, I’ll do it, you go sit there and rest, I have a good news to tell you."

The middle-aged woman smiled and moved to oblige. She cleared up the mess in the kitchen and was about to leave when the door was pushed open and in walked a middle-aged man. The man’s face was carved with tiredness and he grumbled as he walked in, "I’m home. What are you cooking? It smells so good in here."

The middle-aged woman who was walking out of the kitchen smiled and answered, "Ox tail soup. Just look at you two, always hungry no matter what. Go wash up, dinner will be served soon."

This was a normal family of three. After the three of them were seated at the dining table, the middle-aged woman served her husband and son each a bowl of soup before getting one for herself. All three of them took a sip at the same time and sighed with great satisfaction. The flavorful ox tail combined with the freshness of tomatoes created a soup dish that was not worse than the soup served at the best restaurant on the Hope.

The middle-aged man suddenly said solemnly, "The taste is indeed not bad. Honey, your cooking skill has improved again... but this appears to be ox tail from free-range cattle, so it must’ve been expensive, right?"

The middle-aged woman defused her husband’s question with a bright smile. "That’s where you’re wrong. Recently, the price for food items has been dropping. This ox tail was about the same price as reared pork and the tomatoes were cheaper by half compared to before, so they were not expensive."

The middle-aged man nodded and didn’t reply. He sipped the soup and grabbed a few of the other dishes when Zhang San announced suddenly, "Dad, the school has assigned me my job posting."

Both of his parents were shocked, but happiness gradually appeared on their faces. His father asked immediately, "So soon? You’ve been asked to stay behind at school for only a year, how can they give you a job posting so soon? What about your seniors?"

Zhang San answered with his mouth full, "Most of them got their job postings too. Some seniors have already started work, but I heard that many other students who were asked to stay back have received their job postings today too..."

Before the middle-aged man could ask for more details, the middle-aged woman chimed in excitedly and worriedly, "What kind of job it is? Don’t tell me it’s general maintenance, like the cleaning crew. I hear from others that those job postings have the least benefits and pay..."

"No, no," Zhang San corrected immediately, "it’s an apprenticeship at the engineering unit. The monthly H-coin is slightly better than dad’s, but by how much. I still have no clue. I’ll know the details when I go for the interview tomorrow. However, I hear that the benefits offered are very nice. After one year of apprenticeship, there will be government housing and other benefits."

Smiles broke out on both the middle-aged man’s and woman’s faces, but the middle-aged woman still asked with suspicion, "I remember that the daughter of our neighbor has stayed behind at school for two years already, but she still hasn’t received any job posting last I heard. So are you sure this isn’t some group scam?"

Her husband berated her with a laugh, "This is not Earth, where would you find a scammer group? If there is really one, you think the Chancellor and his team are all blind? I know a thing or two about this sudden development. They’re trying to build a moon base on the Light Moon, so they are in serious need of workers, especially those in the fields of engineering, mechanics, super electromagnetism, and energy. Thankfully, I was bright enough to tell our son to enroll in the study of super electromagnetism. Granted, he’s still only an apprentice and it is not a given that he’ll become an actual engineer, but if he does, you know the benefits provided to the engineers, right?"

His wife laughed and said a few words of praise before turning to her son. "San Er, you’ve worked so hard to get this job posting, so you have to focus hard at work, okay? We are so proud of you. This is wonderful news, come have some more soup."

Zhang San suddenly felt his eyes red with tears. He was reminded of the years he spent at school and that extra year he was forced to stay back. His family wasn’t that wealthy; his father was a simple electrician and his mother was sick. Even though the Hope provided healthcare for all its citizens, it was only for serious treatments; everyday supplements still needed money. However, he knew that his mother never once spent money on those. At the time, he was still a student, and his student stipend was barely enough to buy her any nutritious food. Thinking about it made his heart twitch with sadness, but now that he had a job, one with good benefits, he swore to throw himself into work so that his parents could finally enjoy a comfortable life...

This scene was happening all over the Hope. This was because the Hope’s government had been forced to ration all provided resources fairly and not based on needs. They were travelling in space, so their supplies were limited. The fact that they could find a system to abide by for everyone was already fair enough, and allocating supplies according to needs was simply impossible. This was especially true when the Hope was travelling long distances, when there might even be limited supplies. Under such conditions, most citizens on the Hope couldn’t be considered rich, they were barely surviving.

Furthermore, the Hope was only so big and there were only so many available job opportunities. No matter how hard the Hall of Communications tried to specialize and delineate the job scope, it was impossible to give jobs to several ten thousand people. Lastly, matching job scopes was also an issue. They couldn’t have a great physicist go clean up the streets, right? This was not only a waste, but also an insult on the faculty of knowledge!

Because of this, most graduate students from high-tech courses had to stay at school for years after their graduation and relied on government stipend. Even though they understood the government’s difficulties, saying that they didn’t feel any resentment was untrue. It was simply that the resentment still hadn’t reached a scale where it would explode.

Lastly, there was another reason... the population number increase. To be frank, the Hope had reached its maximum number of upgrades. After all, this ship was only meant to fit ten thousand people in space. Through multiple upgrades, the capacity had improved, but it was still not enough to fit the human population that had almost reach 400,000 people. The Hope was too small. They had been gone from Earth for almost 21 years, and as the ship that held humanity’s life, future, hope... it was really too old and too small.

In fact, there was no longer any empty space left on the Hope, but even so, there were still many families who hadn’t been given their own housing. Having three generations in one house was a common occurrence. Many newlyweds were forced to stay with their parents. Just think about it, the first batch of space babies was now 21 years old, some of them even already had their own children. Therefore, the Hope had become the biggest problem that limited humanity’s growth.

The human government’s officials of course knew about the importance of population numbers in space. As long as the population number didn’t reach a hundred million, then humanity was at risk of extinction. Therefore, planned parenthood was technically a taboo on the Hope. In fact, it was a sin by law to promote planned parenthood. In fact, if any government worker or representative mentioned planned parenthood at any public place, then they would need to find a new job as long as they survived the law.

Therefore... it was not that humanity had the luxury of choice. They had to stay at this solar system because they desperately needed to expand.

That was the current situation the Hope was facing. It had 400,000 people. Minus the newborns and children, the rest were all adults. In other words, there were about 300,000 adults, and that meant that there needed to be at least 150,000 job vacancies. The Hope could provide about 50,000 job postings, the Barracks could cover yet another 30,000 job postings. This meant that around 70,000 jobs vacancies were still needed, and the base on the Light Moon was perfect to fill that need. There were many open job vacancies in the fields of harvesting, smelting, manufacturing, and human resource management. As the moon base started to get constructed, a new breath of life was inserted into the Hope.

The first to notice this was not Yao Yuan and the government but the representatives. Their constituents decided their direction, and in the latest House of Representatives hearing, there was a new vote that requested the human government to expand the moon base before the 21 New Year. Other than manufacturing and smelting bases, they requested a residential area to be built on the Light Moon. They wanted the base to fit at least 500,000 people. The supplies and manpower exhausted for this plan would be enough to build several Hopes, but at the same time, this project was going to provide many job vacancies.

When Yao Yuan was reading this proposal, Guang Zhen came with a new proposal for the expansion of humanity’s military system. His heart was even darker and bigger than the representatives...

"What? The first human fleet contains 50 battleships the size of the Hope, 450 guardian ships that are one-fourth the size of the Hope, as well as 1,200 combat spaceships armed with space cannons..."

"Why don’t you just kill me now and become the Chancellor? That way, they’ll get built even faster!"

Yao Yuan roared in the captain’s room, and it was transferred through a message channel through the Hope and into everyone’s ears. Everyone smiled helplessly and kindly...

Hope, future, they were up for grasp!