The spaceship slowly began to depart from the orbit, the first phase of its long journey ahead. While it did so, three others mirrored its movements and began to steer their course away from the planet.
It would be a mission of great importance, a voyage longer than any other in the history of humanity. These four vessels would be sent out to colonize distant stars, a generational journey to push the boundaries of human knowledge and habitation.
Although the crews on-board knew the significance of what they were taking part in and had all volunteered for the journey, the departure was nevertheless marked by a feeling of sadness. The planet below with its billions of inhabitants had been the only home they'd known. And they would leave all of that behind, never to return.
The ships' communication systems were abuzz with messages sent back and forth between the ships and the planet. Messages pertaining to the nature of their mission, official farewells, personal calls and wishes of luck. Letters to families and friends from people never to be seen again. People updating their social medias for the last time while they were still connected to the network of billions.
The ships fired up their massive engines and the distance between them and their origin point becan to grow quicker and quicker. The communication systems were still active, sending and receiving messages from an ever-increasing distance away, the latency between a message sent and being received becoming longer and longer. Real-time communication became an impossibility.
Eventually the distance grew too vast for the short-distance equipment to get a message through and the system flipped over to long-distance radios. A price to pay being the decreased bandwidth, enabling only simpler and shorter messages to be passed back and forth.
The other vessels were the first to drop off the net due to their velocity taking them further and further away, until silence was all that the receiver array could pick up. The ship and its crew were all alone now, splintered off from that network of human chatter.
Expecting no further human contact, the radio transceivers were switched off to conserve the ship's power. All they could hear now were the voices of their own.