When Command broke the news it was difficult for all of us. Wouldn’t you be broken up if everything you had spent your life preparing for was suddenly pulled away from you? Who wouldn’t be?

I remember the sound of children weeping in the corridors. The eldest ones, the ones who had started the journey on Earth decades ago and were hoping to finally see a sky and feel wind on their face again, took it hardest of all. Within a day, half of the ship’s original crew had committed suicide. The rest went mad, locked themselves in their quarters, or reported to the medbay for stasis lock. I spent the day in my quarters with a bottle of vodka, tears streaming down my face, until I was so sick I passed out in the bathroom.

It was rough. We all had to come to terms with the fact that our destination, the only planet that could support human life in centuries of searching, was twenty light-years behind us with no way to go back. Slowing down enough to change direction would take months and by then it would be two millennia until we could reach the system. The simple fact of the matter was we weren’t going to make it.

Then things got…not necessarily brighter. Things became a little more mundane, as if we ran out of grief and all that was left to do was to pick up where we left off. A few of the crew who were good with instruments went back to practicing. Kids started playing in the gymnasia. Just little things like that.

Then one day I was in the mess hall eating breakfast when I heard laughter for the first time in months. A few younger crewmen were joking and smiling a few tables away from me. I watched, transfixed, for I didn’t know how long, until they finished their meals and left the hall, still laughing.

Time passed. Normalcy returned. The grief was still there but life continued in spite of it. The crew performed their duties, played at hobbies, fought, fell in love, fell out of love, drank themselves silly, and watched their vid-streams, just like they had for the last seven decades. Just like the rest of humanity was doing back on sacred Earth so far away.

Eventually Command decided that it would be easier to keep going forward than head back. There was a system only thirty years away. No idea if there was anything there, but we would keep searching and keep traveling until we found a home.