A World Beyond
Selection Committee Notes
Selection Committee Notes
The following document is an internal record of the Pathfinder Project Selection Committee, recovered from the Orbis archive. It is not a final report. It is a working document — scratch notes, margin comments, unresolved disagreements. The committee was composed of representatives from Orbis, CNVR, and independent evaluators. They did not always agree.
Some names have been redacted. Others have been left as found.
PHASE 1 — INITIAL SCREENING
Date: 25.03.38 Applicants: 26,847,912 Threshold: Automated filter — basic eligibility, psychological baseline, skills alignment Remaining after Phase 1: 1,203,441
Note — C. Okonkwo (Orbis): The portal crashed at T+5 minutes. Twenty-six million submissions before the first hour ended. We expected maybe two hundred thousand. We were wrong by two orders of magnitude.
Note — K. Vasquez (CNVR): Filter held. Architecture scaled. No data loss. But twenty-six million is not a number — it's a message. People want to leave.
PHASE 2 — PSYCHOLOGICAL BASELINE
Date: 02.04.38 – 16.04.38 Method: Remote assessment battery — resilience indices, isolation tolerance, value stability profiles Remaining after Phase 2: 84,779
Note — C. Okonkwo: The resilience scores cluster around two peaks. One group scores high on independence, low on collaboration. Another group scores high on collaboration, lower on independence. The overlap — people who can work alone and work together — is small. Those are the ones we need.
Note — J. Han (Independent): We lost a candidate today because they refused to answer the "values alignment" section on ethical grounds. They wrote: "You don't need to know what I believe. You need to know I can hold a belief without breaking under pressure." I recommended they be advanced. The majority overruled me.
Margin — C. Okonkwo: Han is right but procedure is procedure.
Margin — K. Vasquez: Procedure can be wrong.
PHASE 3 — FIELD APTITUDE SIMULATION
Date: 20.04.38 – 10.05.38 Method: In-person evaluation at Aurelia Complex — 14-day isolation simulation, crisis response scenarios, team dynamics observation Participants Evaluated: 3,140 Remaining after Phase 3: 312
Note — K. Vasquez: The isolation simulation is designed to break people. It breaks most of them by day seven. The ones who make it to day fourteen without performance degradation — those are the ones who can survive the transit. But I'm watching something else: the ones who help others survive. Those are rare.
Note — C. Okonkwo: Candidate #4472 — engineer, Ceres-born. Scored in the 97th percentile on crisis response. During the simulated COSMIC failure event, she didn't follow the emergency protocol. She improvised a bypass using non-standard equipment and restored systems ahead of schedule. When debriefed, she said: "The protocol assumes the failure mode. The real failure mode is always something the protocol didn't predict."
She was advanced unanimously.
Note — M. Salazar (Orbis Ethics): Candidate #8153 — medic, age 34, Earth-born. During the team conflict simulation, she refused to participate. When asked why, she said: "You've designed a scenario where the only winning move is to let someone fail so you can look competent. That's not a team. That's a tournament." She was not advanced. I voted against. I want it recorded.
Margin — C. Okonkwo: Recorded.
PHASE 4 — FINAL PLACEMENT
Date: 15.05.38 – 30.05.38 Number of final placements: 62 Number of available slots: 60 (first wave) + 2 (reserve) Number of committee sessions held: 14
Note — C. Okonkwo: We have 312 candidates who passed every filter. We have 62 slots. Two hundred and fifty people who are qualified, trained, willing, and ready will not go. This is not a failure of selection. This is a failure of capacity.
Note — J. Han: I want to record a concern. The candidates we selected are overwhelmingly from Earth-based backgrounds. Of the final 62, only 7 were born off-world. This does not reflect the demographics of Sol. It reflects the distribution of access to training, resources, and application infrastructure. We have selected for privilege as much as for aptitude.
Note — K. Vasquez: Han is right. But the Peregrines leave on schedule. We do not have time to correct systemic bias before departure. We can commit to doing better on the next wave.
Margin — C. Okonkwo: There will be a next wave.
Margin — J. Han: Will there?
FINAL ROSTER — EXCERPT
| # | Name | Role | Destination | Ship |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Eira Lume | Xenogeologist | Tau Ceti f | Peregrine-? |
| 2 | Arin Voss | Xenobiologist | Proxima b | Peregrine-9 |
| 3 | Kael Idrin | Propulsion Engineer | Proxima b | Peregrine-9 |
| 4 | Nara Quill | Medical Officer | Proxima b | Peregrine-9 |
| 5 | Taro Lin | Systems Navigator | Proxima b | Peregrine-9 |
| 6 | Miro Chen | Pilot / Flight Lead | Proxima b | Peregrine-9 |
| 7 | Leora Anselm | Ethicist / Orbis Delegate | Proxima b | Peregrine-9 |
| 8 | Sela Kor | Exogeomorphologist | Proxima b | Peregrine-9 |
| … | … | … | … | … |
| 58 | (redacted) | (redacted) | Tethis-3B / AXYZ-11 | Peregrine-3 |
COMMITTEE CLOSING NOTE
Date: 02.06.38
The selection process is complete. Sixty-two names are on the roster. Twenty-six million people who applied are not.
We will send notifications to all applicants — selected and not selected — within 72 hours.
To those who were not selected: your applications were reviewed. Your qualifications were assessed. Your willingness was noted. The decision was not a judgement of your worth. It was a constraint of resources.
To those who were selected: the Peregrines are fuelled. The COSMIC cores are calibrated. The DXN relays are aligned.
The door is open.
Walk through it.
The full roster (with crew assignments and mission profiles) was published separately as the Peregrine Fleet Registry. This document is the selection record only — the paper trail of a decision that had no good outcome, only a necessary one.