Chapter 50 — The Ship That Never Looks Back

Fear of People in Power

"More times than you two can imagine." Chuong Khac Dinh repeated, letting the sentence hang in the air for a moment before continuing. "Duan Vinh Khai was not the last person to discover the error in the Primordial Core. Nor were Dinh Khac Bat and his people. I have lived long enough to witness at least three times, including this one, when someone meticulous enough, courageous enough, reached the same truth. The only thing that changes each time is how we — those in my position — choose to react."

"So you admit it's true." Khe Lam said, her voice trembling but determined. "Lam Chu is the real destination, and it has been changed."

Chuong Khac Dinh looked at her for a long time, not avoiding the question, but also not answering immediately, as if considering how many truths he could give her and still keep what he believed was necessary to keep.

"Correct." He spoke at last, a simple word that carried the weight of two hundred years of silence upon it. "Lam Chu is the destination recorded in the original founding documents. Tinh Vong is a decision made later, by people facing a calculation with no good solution."

"What calculation?" Bach Van asked, his voice equally shaking.

"Fuel. Spare parts. The Prime Core's ability to repair itself over a journey far longer than this ship is designed to endure." Chuong Khac Dinh spoke, his voice now carrying an old tiredness, as if he were retelling a story he had told himself countless times during sleepless nights. "Doan Vinh Khai and his contemporaries discovered, some forty-one years after leaving Earth, that Origin was incapable of maintaining critical systems long enough to reach Lam Chu. Not a small error that could be overcome by saving or improvement. An insurmountable gap, according to all the calculations they had at hand at the time."

Khe Lam felt cold all over her body, even though she had somewhat anticipated this truth through months of searching. Hearing it confirmed directly, in the Council leader's own voice, carried a different weight than the speculations she had pieced together on her own.

"So they switched to Tinh Vong, even though they haven't fully verified whether it can survive." she said.

"Correct." Chuong Khac Dinh admitted, not avoiding the cruelty of that truth. "A gamble, based on low-reliability telemetry data, but still a much better gamble than a trip that is doomed to fail mid-way, leaving this entire ship adrift aimlessly in the void with no destination, no hope, until the system finally fails and no one is left to see it."

"Why didn't you tell everyone?" Bach Van asked, his voice was both angry and painful. "If it was true, if it was the best decision in that situation, why hide it for two hundred years?"

Chuong Khac Dinh looked at him, his eyes were both stern and begging for understanding. "How do you think a closed ecosystem, eleven thousand two hundred people living entirely dependent on a water and gas recycling system without any external backup sources, would react when they learned that the destination of their entire lives, of their ancestors, of what they were taught to believe absolutely, had been secretly changed, based on uncertain data?"

He didn't wait for an answer and continued, his voice now carrying an urgency he rarely let out in public. "I have read the transcripts from Duan Yong Kai's time. He was not a ruthless dictator like you two may be thinking. He was a man faced with a question with no good answer: tell the truth and risk a panic that could disrupt the very systems that keep everyone alive, or stay silent and bear the full moral weight of that lie alone. He chose to stay silent. Every generation of leaders that followed, including me, has inherited the same choice, and to this day, neither of us has been brave enough — or daring enough, depending on how you see it — to do otherwise.”

"The Night of Broken Roots." Khe Lam said, her voice choked. "My mother and the others just wanted to tell that truth. You shut them down."

A long silence covered the room. Chuong Khac Dinh looked down at his old hands, the deep wrinkles like grooves engraved twenty years of heavy weight since that night.

"I was young then, having been on the Council for less than three years." He said, his voice hoarse. "I believed, then, that I was protecting order from collapse. Your mother and Dinh Khac Bat intended to broadcast the truth live to the entire ship, with no plan to control the response, no preparation for what might follow—riots, panic, struggles for resources in an already fragile system. I made no excuses for the way we treated them. It was one of the things I carried heaviest over the past nineteen years. But I Nor can I tell you that the fears of my generation at that time were completely unfounded."

"Is your mother still alive?" Khe Lam asked directly, no longer patient to beat around the bush anymore, her voice was both shaky and tough.

Chuong Khac Dinh looked at her for a long time, and in his eyes, Khe Lam saw something more complicated than a simple refusal — perhaps a truth he didn't want to tell, perhaps something he really didn't know for sure.

"I won't answer that question today." He spoke finally, his voice heavy. "Not because I want to torture you with silence, but because there are things that once said, cannot be taken back, and I need to make sure you are ready for any answer before I speak. What I can tell you is this: not everyone who was taken away that night died. That is all I will allow myself to say for now."

That statement, although not a complete confirmation, was enough to make Khe Lam's heart beat faster, a fragile ray of hope had just been lit by the man who had participated in extinguishing it nineteen years ago.

"Directive Twelve." Bach Van said, taking advantage of this rare moment to ask more, even though he knew he was testing the limits of the meeting. "The tightening of the Roots in recent weeks — is it because of us, Elder?"

Chuong Khac Dinh gently closed his eyes for a moment, a tired look clearly appearing on his old face. "Partly." He admitted. "When we sense that someone is getting close to the truth, the first reflex of a system that has been accustomed to controlling information for two hundred years is to tighten everything around it, not just the specific leak point. It is not a decision I am happy with, and it is not my only decision. But you should understand, when a closed ecosystem senses the risk of losing control, it does not react subtly or selectively. It reacts by tightening everything. everything, and the most innocent are often the ones who suffer it first."

"So when will it stop?" Khe Lam asked, thinking of her grandmother sitting and calculating each sip of water on an old piece of paper.

"When we no longer feel like the truth is on the verge of being revealed uncontrollably." He replied, without making any more specific promises. "That's largely in your hands, whether you realize it or not."

"I won't arrest you two today." Chuong Khac Dinh said, standing up slowly. "I also won't promise that what awaits you two will be easy, or safe. But I want you to understand one thing, before you leave this room: there are doors that, once opened, will lead to other doors, and not all doors lead to where you expect. I have seen it happen before, with people more courageous than you two are now. Be careful with your own desire for the truth, because it can become The most dangerous thing you two have ever carried, not just for yourselves, but for everyone you love."

He walked out of the room through the same small door he entered, without looking back, leaving Khe Lam and Bach Van standing there in heavy silence, stunned by all that had just been said, and all that was still being held back.

"Not everyone who was taken away that night died." Khe Lam repeated, whispering, as if afraid that speaking louder would cause that sentence to disappear like a dream. "Bach Van, he just told me that my mother might still be alive."

Bach Van hugged her, the two stood there in the middle of the empty room of supreme power, no longer two trembling summoned people, but two people who had just been given a piece of truth big enough to completely change their next direction - a piece of truth that was both a gift and a hidden warning they would have to ponder long after leaving the Dome Floor, returning to a familiar world but now no longer the same.