It was a cry born of a nation's ancient wisdom. His voice crossed time and space and reached the ears of every human.
Everyone awake and on duty experienced the "space" he spoke of through their own eyes, because they knew they were crossing the Void. Everyone in hibernation personally experienced "time." Though they lay still with their eyes closed, they too were passing through the course of past and present.
The Great Voyage was always lonely, and daily life on duty was equally monotonous, consisting mostly of maintenance work performed alongside Strong Artificial Intelligence. Of course, there were still plenty of forms of entertainment aboard each ship for individuals, since every spaceship was larger than any major city.
So-called Residential Spaceships, warships, Engineering Spaceships, Factory Spaceships, and the like were merely classifications based on a ship's primary function. In reality, a single Sub-Civilization-Class spaceship contained virtually everything one could need.
If someone living inside deliberately looked out at the dark Void beyond the viewport, they might not even feel that they were traveling through it at all. The power of technology was beyond doubt.
The voyage continued, and the proper time of Human Civilization, along with that of all civilizations advancing atop meteors, continued to flow. Their speed relative to their point of departure approached the speed of light, but the rate at which their time passed remained normal.
The people of every civilization were the same, racing toward new destinations through long-term hibernation.
Ten years passed, then a hundred, then a thousand, then ten thousand, then a million, then ten million. When time was magnified to a cosmic scale, it seemed to pass with such joy.
Fortunately, the Great Voyage had chosen the right direction. After ten million years of travel, they had encountered no Catastrophe Zones along