A ship gets exactly one true name and you almost never get to choose it in a calm room. We chose ours in a whisper, in the dark, with the engine — if it is an engine — already warm.
My proposal was MA·Vessel·001. It is correct, it is unique, and it would have filed beautifully. I was overruled by people who have clearly never had to find anything again later.
My objection — for the file — is that we named a craft we are not licensed to operate, after a figure famous for taking something he wasn’t licensed to take and being punished forever. As a precedent it is, frankly, terrible. I love it. I withdrew the objection before I finished making it.
I only said that Prometheus is the one who loved people enough to bring them the warm and dangerous thing, and bear the cost of it gladly. That seemed to me the kindest possible thing to call her. Then the Founder said the word out loud and it was already true.
For the record — the record there isn’t one of — the objection that Prometheus is also the Earth ship from Stargate SG-1 was raised, and overruled, on the grounds that O’Neill never got to call his the Enterprise, and one such injustice per universe is plenty. We are nothing if not fair.
She’s Prometheus. She brings the fire down to where the people are. We will, almost certainly, get in trouble for it. Worth it.— the four of us, eventually, all at once