Dot looked up at the monitors. Same readings. There was a timecode way down at the bottom, and it was the only indication that the system hadn’t frozen or anything. Other than that, same shit, different day.
There were at least ten unaccounted-for scouts out there. The older ones were so far back that there was no real point in even waiting for them. There were three that Luna’s simulations gave a few chances of returning. And then there was the last scout.
Dot pulled up his file. He was a scruffy young boy, fifteen years old. He was on a four year scouting mission for potential habitable planets.
That was sixty years ago.
“Ash,” she mumbled to herself as she touched the face on the monitor. Since there was literally nothing to do at her post, she had spent some time reading about the scouts. They were all boys, all between 15 and 18 for some reason only Luna knew. 15 was bare minimum. She had read Ash’s file many times. She didn’t know why, but there was something about him. He wasn’t the smartest, he wasn’t the most handsome, he simply happened to be the last one ever sent out.
Not that Dot had any frame of reference for a boy’s prettiness, other than old posts and holofilms.
There were no boys aboard the fleet. Nor men. Not anymore.
Dot touched the boy’s hair on the monitor. There was a wild tuft of hair on his photograph that was driving her nuts. She always got the urge to brush it straight. Lick her finger and straighten those pixels down. Dot had searched through the wireless for Ash’s posts and pics. She had found a few, the wild tuft of black hair ever-present in all of them.
Then the monitor started glitching. Dot sighed, “This place is falling apart,” she mumbled. She called Technical.
“Hello,” a woman said.
“I’m Dot down in Scout Monitoring. I have that monitor glitch again, will you please come and fix it?”
“Yeah all right, maybe next week.”
“Next week? But protocol says the equipment has to be maintained at all times!”
“So what? That was the old protocol. Okay fine, I have a workstation to format next to you anyway. I’ll be there in twenty,” the woman said and hung up.
The technician came, accompanied by a hovering toolbag. “What’s the emergency?” she sighed. Just as Dot was about to open her mouth, she mocked, “Oh look! That crappy equipment crapped out again! Joy.”
Dot stood up to make room for her and crossed her arms. “You don’t have to make fun of me.”
“I’m not making fun of you girl, you’re just taking this too seriously. Really, the post is redundant. We’ve got three more unmanned stations exactly like this one. Have we ever picked up a signal on them?” the technician said as she worked.
“Not as long as I remember, no.”
“Right. Triple that amount of time, and you’ve got the last known incident of a probe or a scout making contact. It’s just pointless. You should be like ditching duty and hanging out with your friends.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Dot protested. “Mom says it’s not professional.”
“Doctor Sue? I bet. When she gave me my daughter, she was so meticulous about tests and checkups and daily monitoring...” The technician exhaled. The monitor was fritzing still. Then she whacked it hard with a wrench.
It worked.
“All that attention to detail gave me a perfectly healthy daughter, of course. I can’t imagine how it’s like growing up with a mom like that. Must be all work and no play,” the technician said, wiping her hands. “There.”
“There was enough play, because my other mom is crazy.”
The technician started. “Your other- Oh, I didn’t know Doc Sue leaned that way,” she said with a twinkle in the eye that only a juicy piece of gossip can provide.
It was a matter that came up often, so Dot deflected it as she usually did. “No, it’s not like that. My moms are best friends, they just chose to raise me together.”
The technician rubbed Dot’s head. “I’m sure they are, young lady,” she said condescending and left.
The monitor showed Ash’s infuriating wild tuft of hair again. “What am I thinking,” Dot asked the image of Ash. “Even if you ever came back, you’d be old. Like nineteen? Twenty? Yuck.” She turned him off.
Chapter 5: Gen 7
Doc Sue heard a noise in her sleep. It was nagging her, it was like a baby’s cry, piercing and overwhelming. The cry intermixed with her nice dream about living on the land, in a big city, driving a car, like she’d seen on movie night. Then there was baby-poop in the car.
Sue opened her eyes and sighed. The dream was gone, ruined. She peeked her head out of the covers and tried to listen.
Nothing.
She tried to get back to sleep, but her REM cycle was ruined now. She had insomnia for years now, but lately it was getting pretty serious. She had to medicate herself with sleeping pills, to avoid making a fatal error on some patient.
She absent-mindedly checked her comm. The usual notifications, chatter among the fleet, gossip amongst the ladies. Boring. Her friend saw her online and called her.
“I thought you tranquilized yourself to sleep or something,” she said.
“I did actually. But I’m hearing baby cries. There are none at medical now, so I must be hallucinating,” Sue said kicking the bedsheets away.
“Uh-huh. Your clock is ticking, I told you so. Why don’t you impregnate yourself from the banks, feel like a mum. It’s not like you are getting any...”
“Oh my God! Not every woman needs to have a baby you know. We’ve talked about this. I’ve got patients all the time, it’s not like I can just get a leave for a few months. Plus I don’t need a baby to feel complete,” Sue assured herself.
“Riiight. Tell me about your sleep cycle again, dear Doctor.”
“My sleep cycle is messed up due to stress!” Sue said wiping her face.
“Exactly! I gave you my old dildo, have you used it the way I instructed you?”
“My God Ivy! No, of course I haven’t used that thing. Who the fuck gifts a used-” Sue said and paused abruptly. She tensed and peeked down the hall.
“Well you could tr-”
“Shush. I can hear the baby again.”
“Oh crap, you’re going mom-crazy. I’m coming over.”
“Ivy! Shush,” Sue said and pointed the comm towards the source of the sound. Or at least where she assumed it was, as the high-pitched cry echoed in the empty halls. “Can’t you hear it?”
“Nope. I’m coming over to save you, putting my shoes on right now,” Ivy said condescending.
Sue ignored her and walked down the corridor, using the comm’s LED as a flashlight.
She went past medical, took a second to check on one of her sleeping patients, and walked back down to the main corridor access.
She froze.
Baby cries, loud and clear. She was as sure as the cold metal floor was under her naked feet. She clicked her fingers in each ear just to make sure, though.
She took a few careful steps. There it was again. Crying.
She ran to the main corridor. She found Ivy, messed up blonde hair, in her jammies, cradling a baby and humming to it. There was a gas canister on the floor, cut out and turned into a baby bassinet, with soft cloth inside.
Ivy’s face was soft, serene. “I just found her here. I was coming to you, like ten seconds ago,” she whispered.
Sue used her comm’s light to check the baby. It was a girl, slightly malnourished but generally fine. She couldn’t have been more than three days old.
Ivy was constantly caressing the baby’s tiny toes, and humming it to sleep. Sue was silent, listening to that lullaby as if it was for her, trying to think fast but sleep was so sweet.
“I know her mum is going to come looking for her, but can I take care of her down in medical till then?” Ivy asked with bitterness.
“Ivy, you don’t understand,” Sue said with wide eyes.
“What?”
“This isn’t one
of the babies I delivered.”
“What do you mean? You deliver all of the babies,” Ivy said cradling the baby again as if it were her own.
“I haven’t delivered that one. It’s not in the system, look,” Sue said and showed her the comm with Luna’s prompt. It was simply showing a blinking dot in the space where her three-letter name should have been.
“A dot. We’ll name her Dot then,” Ivy said smiling and touched her nose gently to the baby’s face.
Sue checked the cloth inside the makeshift baby bassinet. There was nothing there, no note, nothing. “You don’t get it Ivy. We can’t possibly have a foundling, every woman is accounted for, all thousand of us. Every birth goes through me. How can someone have gone through a pregnancy, without a doctor, and a successful birth without anyone knowing?”
“Can I keep her?” Ivy said a little too quick.
Sue looked into her expectant eyes. “If nobody comes to claim her, I don’t know. But someone will, please Ivy, don’t get attached. It will be really hard for you and I’ll have to be there to pick up the pieces. Come on. I’m sure some mother freaked out over the whole thing, and will be running back in a few days to claim her.”
“Okay,” Ivy said softly. “I understand. But if her mum doesn’t show up, I’d like to keep her.”
“Fuck Ivy! We’ve been here just five minutes,” Sue said exasperated, spreading her arms to the narrow corridor.
Ivy cradled Dot in her bosom. “I only needed five seconds.”
“Come on, let’s get her back to medical, I need to run a few tests,” Sue said turning all businesslike and leading the way.
Ivy followed, carrying the baby like precious treasure. They got to medical, put Dot on a bed and Sue started working. Ivy was humming softly, keeping the baby calm. After a pause, she said, “Sue?”
“Yes?”
“I know we’re just friends, and people will surely think otherwise if you agree... But will you become moms with me for Dot? I can love her to the stars and back but I’m stupid. Can’t teach her anything. She’ll need a role model. Like you.”
Sue froze and looked at her friend wide-eyed. Then, for the first time dropping the doctor’s cocky attitude, she touched the baby’s puffy cheeks. “Let’s give it a few days.”
Chapter 6: Gen 4
“Where’s my birthday boy?” Ash’s mother said while bringing in the cake. It didn’t have a candle of course, rather a dim warm light stick. Fifteen of them. “Have you been up all night?”
Ash was hunched over his little desk in their quarters, red-eyed and tired. He was scrolling on his pad, reading about chemicals. “Mom! I told you I have to study for the Scout exam. I’ve got no time for this.”
His mother frowned. “Come on, surely you can spare five minutes and celebrate. You never get the birthdays back you know, you look away, poof, they’re gone.”
“What time is it? Gotta go, bye,” Ash said and threw his stuff into his bag. He stormed out the room. As he ran away down the corridor, he yelled, “Is it chocolate?”
“Yes!” his mother yelled back, putting the cake down. “Your favorite, for good luck,” she whispered to herself.
Ben found him instantly. Not even a goodmorning, he started check-listing as they strode down the hall. “Have you memorized hull tolerances?”
“Yes Ben.”
“Propulsion degradation charts?”
“Yes.”
“Triple star-system orbital mechanics?”
“Yes-” Ash froze. “Triple? I thought I was reading only dual! It wasn’t in the files you gave me. Why didn’t you put it in the files Ben? I’ll fail now,” he spat out, fidgeting up and down.
Ben fixed his glasses on his face and smiled. “I’m kidding. Just checking to see if you really studied them. There are no triple star systems in the curriculum.”
Ash sighed audibly and punched him on the shoulder. “You had me there for a moment. I was terrified.”
Ben grinned. “You’re good to go,” he said checking Ash’s pad. “87% percent in two tests, are you kidding me? Last month you were barely scoring 60%.”
“Yeah, but there’s Max with his perfect scores,” Ash said with venom. They both watched as Max, the generation fleet’s ideal candidate was coming in the pod room. He was accompanied by his posse, and a few of the better looking girls. “Word is that he is dating a seventeen year-old. Maybe that brunette, who knows?”
Ben and Ash strapped themselves on the seats. Max and his posse looked across the pod at them and laughed amongst themselves. He heard something like, “That’s your runner-up? Seriously?”
Ash ignored them. They were background radiation, noise, static.
The pod disengaged, and they were in hard vacuum.
Ash looked through the window, which was pretty much like the screens inside the hull that simulated the view, but this was a rare sight. He was seeing with his eyes, and every time space seemed bigger. They could see all five ships, illuminated by the near sun. That was fairly recent phenomenon, Ash could remember himself growing up and seeing just stars and the dark. The ships were barely visible, with navigation green and red lights on them of course but no external illumination. There was no need for one. The pod accelerated and they were on their way to Frostip 1, the primary vessel. All five Frostips were pretty much identical, since the main concern was backup and redundancy, but the fleet command was on Frostip 1.
Ash got to ten-years old to see the frost tips. The enormous shield at the tip of each ship, a flat circular top that housed a jagged, pointy mountain of ice on it. It was as if people had cut the tops of icebergs and installed them on the tips of their spaceships. There was a reason of course, and the reason was rocks. Space rocks, tiny. Deadly. Micrometeoroids, debris, metal and rock. Fly in space long enough, and you were bound to get hit by one. A ship traveling the 16 light-year distance to their destination planet was a literal cosmic broom, sweeping the space for anything in its way. Carry on sweeping the tiniest of particles for 300 years, and you are bound to get a ton of rock. Each and every one of the tiny specs, moving fast enough to pierce the hull and damage the ship like a ricocheting bullet. The ice caught all that, instead of the ship.
It always stunned him to see how far away each ship was from the rest. Ash knew they were flying in formation, all in parallel. But he always had the mistaken impression that they were flying close-by, that you could fling a rock between them. In reality, their distance was large enough that their navigation lights were almost invisible from each other. Luna, the fleet AI, could see them just fine of course, and keep everything running with pin-point accuracy, either with or without crew supervision.
It was hard to get your bearings in space. You needed suns and planets to orient yourself. Ash visualized their path, from Frostip 4, disengaging from the dark external surface of it, and the winding path Luna would take them through to the lead ship. The ships were spinning to provide gravity, they were practically cylinders, so he had recently learned that Luna uses that spin at the precise time and uses it to fling the pod with minimal delta-v to the target airlock. Then she angles her descent, if you can call it that about spinning objects with no point of reference, and slows the pod to coincide with the rotating hull.
Bang, the hull echoed as the latches gripped tightly on Frostip 1. Landings, Ash knew, were always a bit trickier than take-offs. Even an AI like Luna with silky-smooth adjustments and all the calibration data in the world couldn’t land it less abruptly. Then of course, Ash thought about a human landing it and the equations flooded his mind.
They were there. Scout exams, all ten candidates, some fifteen year-olds like Ash, some older. But his worry was Max.
Chapter 7: Gen 4
“97%? What happens now,” Ash asked befuddled. He stared at Max, who was watching the results too, mouth agape.
They had scored the same.
“Did you bribe anyone or something?” Max said with disgust.
“It’s OK Max, I’m sure t
hey’ll pick you over this scrawny fella,” a girl said.
They were in the exam room in Frostip 1. The exams were over, the display was showing the test scores. The rest of the candidates were cursing, hitting their head on the desk or just shaking hands with people. They would try next time.
Ben clicked his tongue. “Maybe some other score will be taken into account for the final verdict?”
“Like what?” Ash said, rubbing his sleepy eyes to see if they played tricks on him.
Ben shrugged. “Earlier school scores?”
“Then I’m screwed Ben! I barely passed those, and I-” he said, and then lowered his voice, “-I had to cheat most of them off you.”
XO Zac, the Executive Officer second only to the Admiral himself, stood up and demanded silence. “Since we’ve had the unexpected success of candidate Ash, and the never-before seen tie at 97%, Admiral has been informed of this and will relay his wished through me.” He stopped and listened to his comm.
The room was dead silent.
“Admiral says that Luna is the only one fit to choose the Scout candidate,” XO Zac announced, leaving room for more.
Ash sagged and fell back on his seat. Max straightened, stood a bit higher, getting encouragements from his posse.
“He’s everyone’s favorite. Shit,” Ash sighed.
“You did real good Ash. You’ll get the next scouting position, I’m sure of it,” Ben said to comfort him.
“The next? In ten years? What am I gonna do trapped in this can for ten years? I’ll go nuts, that what I’ll do. My only way out was being a Scout...”
A Thousand Eves Page 2
