The Crew of the Great Attractor Fleet

The crew of the Fleet are the best and brightest of thousands of races, living on spacious and comfortable starships with room for everyone, They live and work in a society that barely remembers racism, speciesism, and other isms. Sentient people come in all shapes, configurations, and cognitive base platforms — biological people using wetware brains, software intelligences in virtual brains, and robotic beings with hardware brains.

The Fleet is a post-scarcity culture. There is no need. The ships are roomy, with a clean, appropriate environment for the beings on board. There is power, food and drink for those that need it or want it. There is access to nearly unlimited computational resources. Matter printers manufacture components large and small, down to the atomic scale. Almost all of the raw materials needed for the Fleet are mined from asteroids, comets, planetary rings, and gas giant atmospheres, without harm to the surrounding environment.

It is no surprise that this amazing civilization on the move attracts new people to its ranks during its stops along the way to the Great Attractor. Some are accepted into the Fleet, but many more are turned away. This creates anger and resentment in those left behind, who don't always know when to step away.

The lifespans of the crew are far beyond the original lifespan of their species. Medicine, cyborganics, and nanotech mean that most biological species are healthy and active after a thousand years, and many for ten times that. When that lifespan nears its end, they can move easily into a virtual reality as a software-equivalent. Software species can move between hardware substrates as needed, and could theoretically live trillions of years, until there is no remaining harvestable energy in the Universe. Hardware minds are known to last for hundreds of thousands of years, and can also be moved into a virtual reality.

How does this change the outlook of someone with a nigh infinite potential lifespan? There is no rush. Life is there to savor and enjoy, doing what you enjoy doing.

In the Fleet, younglings study a base curriculum, but are encouraged to explore. When someone reaches the age of stable maturity, they are assigned to a small cohort of similar beings and ages. These groups live and study together, as they spend twenty years interning and working in the Fleet. They spend a year in Fleet Engineering, with the Doctors Across the Galaxies, in the Quartermasters Array, with First Contact, Second Contact, Cultural Engagement, and Diplomacy, Advance Scouting, and more. A small percentage are invited to a year on the Command Staff. There are also years where they can choose something specific to focus on.

A fifty year old Human finally completing their Cohort years would be unthinkable to us today. Fifty years in a thousand year lifespan is nothing, especially when one is completely healthy, with vigor and stamina. Fifty years to a hardware or software being is a blur of processing, a blip in their potential lifespans.

After completing their Cohort years, a member of the crew chooses which of the organizations they would like to join. These choices may last a year or a hundred years, before the crew member decides to do something different. They may leave the Fleet at any time, as long as they agree to live by Fleet protocols. Ex-crew members are not allowed to set themselves up as gods over less technological civilizations.

Crew members are expected to take sabbaticals of one to ten years during their Fleet careers. This is frequently done when the Fleet moves into a new system for an extended maintenance stopover. It is not unusual for some odd discovery in the remains of a long-dead civilization to result in a group of working sabbaticals in amateur xenoarchaeology.

Most crew members work through their lifespan, as it keeps them engaged and social.

Love or its equivalent always finds a way. Relationships between crew of different species are common. Any form of union between consenting adult beings is accepted, with at least as many variants as there are species in the Fleet. Children of these mixed unions may be possible with medical or computational intervention.

There are some software people in virtual reality who want to skip to the good stuff. They live in slow time, running one day for every thousand days in the real, or even slower. These pockets of slow time are difficult to communicate with from the outside, so there is little interaction between the two. Most groups of slow time synchronize with each other, to widen the potential social circles and contacts. They plan to return to normal time when the Fleet reaches the Great Attractor.

What kind of challenges remain for people in this post-scarcity culture?
How does their perspective on life change?