To the Stars -- And Beyond

by Robert Reginald

  Of course Joey hadn’t always been my brother. Mom told me that when I was just a baby his directing intelligence—what made him him—was imbued into the controls of my crib, then my playpen, and later my stroller.

  When I was old enough to understand, Mom and Dad told me that every Spacer child had an andy guardian. They had been created to watch and protect the specific child in their care, to be an unflinching advocate for that child no matter what the situation, and to ensure their charge grew up healthy, educated, and safe, regardless of their environment or the adults around them.

  That included parents.

  Sometimes, especially parents.

  Guardians became android childhood pals, fierce advocates programmed with the child’s protection as their prime directive. That’s why our leaders tell us that after a couple of generations the people in our space colonies have advanced far ahead of the people still down on Earth. Joey tells me Spacers are just more stable, well-adjusted, even happier than our Earther counterparts.

  Earthers call us Spacers, and they don’t like us very much. Joey says it’s just jealousy and that I shouldn’t worry about it. But I do. There’s talk of war coming someday, and it scares me.

  Dad told me that the Earthers could have changed their society like we did but they decided to keep their old ways. They said that the old ways made them what they were. Special? Human? I don’t know for sure. They kept all the old problems too. Crime, war, violence, out-of-control population growth. Mom says they have a world full of maladjusted individuals, dysfunctional families, inadequate governments. She said today Earth is just a sad planet full of pain, rage, jealousy, greed and, now, hopelessness.

  At least that’s what Mom told me the other day. I’m only ten years old so it’s a lot to understand, but Joey told me not to worry about it, and if Joey says there’s nothing to get upset about then I listen to him. Joey is my best friend in the whole world. I love him and respect him. And he loves me and respects me. We’re brothers. We’re even more than brothers.

  The guests came the other day and among them was an Earther boy my age named Eddie, and his father, who was some kind of Earther big shot. Joey said he was here to negotiate treaties and to get trade concessions from my Mom and Dad. You see, my Mom and Dad are the Co-Controllers of our colony. They’re cool people, they’re cool because they love me and they’re so smart, and they really care about our colony. They have a hard job. They have to be tough sometimes to make sure things are run properly and done for the benefit of everyone in our colony. That’s their job and they take it seriously, and sometimes they get a temper.

  Whenever they get a temper Joey knows just when to take me outside to play so that they can have “room to think,” as he says. Joey knows everything. He says he knows all the warning signs. I don’t know exactly what that means, but Joey always does what’s best for me. That’s why he was created, and that’s why I listen to him. Sometimes even over Mom and Dad.

  For instance, guardians always seem to know when kids should take themselves out of the way of adults.

  Joey says, “Sometimes adults need to be alone, or just with other adults.”

  That’s okay with me.

  Not that my parents would ever hurt me. They’re cool. They’d never hurt me like what I saw in those vids in the Children’s Museum, or like what we hear goes on down below on Earth. We get their news up here and a lot of it scares us. Anyway, if anyone ever tried to hurt me, Joey is always there to protect me. And Joey means business. He is very strong. No one messes with me because of my guardian. The same is true for every Spacer kid. Joey never leaves my side and he is smarter than any ten grownups put together. And he’s stronger than a hundred of them. And that’s the way Mom and Dad and all the other moms and dads up here want it to be.

  Joey explained it to me once. He told me how the only way to improve the world was to improve the people in it, and the only way to do that, was to protect and educate the young and make them better people.

  Eddie, the new kid from Earth, wasn’t as lucky as I was. He was sullen, and I could see he was scared of his father. Eddie’s mother was back on Earth—he told me his parents were divorced. I had to look that up in the disks. I found out that Spacers hardly ever get divorced anymore. There’s no reason because people are matched so well, and we’re all well-adjusted, we just naturally get along since that first class of guardian-raised children graduated into healthy adults long ago. Joey told me conflict resolution and family services are crucial in our society in order to prevent problems before they get out of hand. Situations that lead to anger, hatred, or violence are not tolerated and are resolved before they become dangerous. We don’t have a perfect world up here in our colony. I saw in the info disks that there had been a murder only last year. But violence is rare. Not so down on Earth.

  Eddie showed me the scars later that night. Eddie and I were playing spaceship in my room. Joey was the one who got Eddie talking. I don’t know how he did it, but Joey was good at getting kids to talk about things when they had been hurt. That was his job. Then he’d do something about it. I didn’t understand a lot of it, but I could see that someone was hurting Eddie, hurting him a lot somewhere deep inside. He began to cry when he finally talked it all out. I cried too. I couldn’t believe when I found out it was Eddie’s own father who had beaten him so badly, but Joey didn’t seem surprised at all by the news.

  That night Joey spoke to my parents, and they told us it was okay for Eddie to sleep over if he wanted to.

  I hoped Eddie would want to stay. When Joey asked him about sleeping over, you should have seen his face, it lit up like a nova. Then his face suddenly got dark and he grew sullen again.

  “I’ll have to...you know, ask my father,” he said quietly.

  Joey just hugged Eddie and told him it would all be okay. Then things were worked out with his father, and Eddie was allowed to sleep over for the night.

  “Really!” I remember hearing Eddie shout. “You mean it!”

  “Sure, Eddie,” Joey told him, “you’re always welcome here. We’re all very happy to have you stay here, you should know that.”

  “Gee! Thanks!” Eddie said and that big smile of his really lit up my room.

  “Okay, guys,” Joey told us, “time to hit the sack. Who wants the upper bunk tonight?”

  “I’ll take the upper,” Eddie said.

  “I’ll take the lower,” I added.

  “That’s fine, guys,” Joey said. “Now let’s all get some sleep, we’ve got a busy day tomorrow. Oh, I forgot to tell you, Eddie, if you want to stay here tomorrow, that’s also okay. Your father said so. It seems the negotiations will take longer than originally planned. Would you like to go out with us tomorrow?”

  “Would I!” Eddie shouted. He said it so loud we thought he’d wake up the entire household. We all laughed.

  “That’s fine. Now guys, get some sleep.”

  Eddie looked around the room, looked at me, then back at Joey.

  “What’s wrong, Eddie?” Joey said quietly.

  “I don’t know....”

  “You can tell me, Eddie.”

  Eddie swallowed, got all serious and said, “I get scared at night. Sometimes I have bad dreams of...you know…monsters.”

  Eddie looked at me and Joey, I guess he was expecting us to laugh at him or something, but we wouldn’t laugh about things like that. Eddie was our friend. He was in pain. Joey always taught me that you never laugh at anyone in pain.

  Joey said, “There are no monsters up here, Eddie. You’ve left them all behind, back on Earth.”

  Eddie gave a half-hearted smile, like he really wished that were true, then he looked at Joey.

  “Eddie? What is it?” Joey asked.

  Eddie said, “Joey, where are you going to sleep?”

  Joey just smiled and said, “Why, right here, Eddie, on the floor at the foot of the bed, just like I always do. I’m a guardian. That’s what I do tonight and every night. Guard both of you.
No one can hurt you while I’m here.”

  Eddie smiled at Joey and said, “That’s good.”

  * * * *

  Eddie stayed with us for a few more days. Joey said that political and trade negotiations could often be delicate and complicated—they could take a lot of time. They sure did. That was okay with Eddie and me, because we played and had a lot of fun together. Eddie, Joey, and I became great friends. We went out to all the cool spots in the colony, played sports and games, did freefall and everything. It was fun and I really liked Eddie, and I know that he liked me and Joey too.

  When Eddie had to leave, it was a sad day for everyone. It was all the more unsettling because there had been a blow-up between the Earther negotiation team, headed by Eddie’s father, and the Spacer team headed by Mom and Dad. Joey told me the two sides couldn’t come to an agreement. There was one section of the Treaty that was insisted upon by Mom and Dad. The Earthers would not accept this provision, but Mom and Dad demanded that it be a part of any treaty package.

  Joey finally told me the negotiations were ending, and soon Eddie and his father would be leaving. Eddie was sad all that last day. You’d think he was leaving the best friends he had in the world. He told us later he was leaving the only friends he had in the world—or off-world. Eddie loved his father but was scared of him, and I found out later when Joey told me, the sticking point in the negotiations had been a clause mandating counseling for every Earther child and a guardian for all newborns. Earth’s position was opposed to that, being that their children were already too much out of parental control.

  “Your parents are pragmatic people,” Joey told me that night when I lay in my bunk looking out at the stars overhead. He had to explain to me what pragmatic meant. “The relationship Eddie has with his father is harmful to his healthy development. The amount of unhealthy and unbalanced national leaders down on the Earth is something to be minimized, not maximized. Years from now, you and your children will be the ones having to deal with all the Eddie’s down on the Earth, and all their children. Your mother and father are wise; they seek to sow the seeds of a healthy tree now, rather than have you find one spring up bearing bitter fruit in the future.”

  Well, Joey sometimes talked like that. Philosophizing, he called it. He smiled at me. Joey knew I didn’t understand a lot of what he said but he never talked down to me and he was always patient. I was only ten years old, but Joey said one day I’d understand, and that he would always be there to teach me the important things. That always made me feel good.

  That night, when Eddie ran away, there was a lot of alarm and stress in our colony. No child had run away from a parent in the colonies for over fifty years. When people found out it was an Earther child who had run away from his Earther father who was visiting our colony, they all nodded like they understood. Earthers don’t have guardians for their children. They do things the old way. Children are still the property of their parents instead of equal citizens. Earth children don’t have the protection and advocacy that a guardian gives them here in our colonies. Joey told me there hasn’t been a case of child abuse, of any kind, in our colony in over a hundred years.

  Security found Eddie before his father did. And that’s a good thing because Eddie’s father was furious. He has a temper. He scared me. He scared Eddie, too. Joey told me Eddie’s father was insulted by his son’s behavior. I couldn’t understand why Eddie’s father was so upset. Eddie was the one in pain. Eddie was the one scared. And now it was supposed to be all Eddie’s fault because he’d run away? That didn’t make any sense to me.

  Joey told me he’d explain it to me later. Then all of a sudden he told me there was a protection emergency and that he’d have to override his Primary Protection Program and leave me for approximately fifteen minutes for a personal, private conversation with my mother and father.

  Now I was scared. Joey had never left me alone before. A Child Protection Emergency was the one thing that could circumvent his program, and it was serious business.

  “It’s for a good reason,” Joey told me. “It’s for Eddie. I think there may be a way to help him.”

  I said, “Okay, Joey, we have to help Eddie!”

  Joey tussled the hair on my head. “We will.”

  PART II: When I Had Become A Man

  I was sitting in the Controller’s seat, the position held by my late mother and father. It was many years later. Much had changed. The War had killed my parents years earlier, like so many others. Pressures on Earth had finally erupted into confrontation and warfare. And it had just gone on and on as Earth continued to use up her scant and ever dwindling resources to mount attack after attack upon the colony worlds. Their leaders, as bloodthirsty a group of dysfunctional psychopaths and narcissistic tribal egotists as Earth has ever produced, told their people that the answer to all Earth’s problems lay in the conquest of the colony worlds. Of course, Earth was wrong about that, just as they were wrong about all their other outmoded ideas and attitudes.

  Joey came into my office, smiled at me, and said, “They’ll be here soon.”

  I nodded. Joey was still my guardian and he was still Joey, just older now, in the andy body of a full-grown adult male. As I had grown and aged, Joey had morphed his image into a similar adult form to match my own. He still looked like my bio-brother. I saw he was dressed in the uniform of a guardian officer, Joey always liked formality.

  I had been the Controller of our colony for the last few years. It was so difficult trying to fight a defensive action against the Earthers, while at the same time attempting to open channels of communication and negotiate with them so we could stop this stupid war.

  Finally, there had come an opening. Another change of leadership down on Earthside, but this time their newest Great Leader had made a truce, and he was said to be coming up here to begin discussions that might end the war once and for all. Or so the messages said. I’d never seen or spoken to him. He was a mysterious figure, but one of the only Earther leaders who seemed to command respect and loyalty on that troubled world.

  I thought about my parents, killed years ago in a battle out by Luna. Their ship had been caught in the crossfire of an Earther trap that had almost spelled disaster for the entire Colony Fleet. That was also supposed to have been a peaceful meeting—but it had only resulted in the death of hundreds of our brave fighter pilots.

  I shrugged. Now the latest in a long line of Earth’s so-called Great Leaders was boldly coming here to discuss terms of...what? Not Earth’s surrender, certainly. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to surrender our colony to them, and have them take over our world and bully our people like they did their own.

  I looked over to Joey. He was still my very best friend. I don’t know what I would have done without him.

  “What do you think about this?” I asked. “Some Earther ploy to take us unawares?”

  “Is that what you think, Controller?” Joey never used my formal title when we were alone unless he was serious about something or in his teaching mode. Now he was guarded and blank. I’d never seen him like this before. If he wasn’t an andy, I would have thought he was...nervous. Maybe he was.

  I certainly was nervous about meeting this latest Earther leader. I wondered what new kind of monster we were to be confronted with now, and what the results of such a meeting would portend for the colony worlds.

  The entourages of both sides were kept small as per agreement worked out beforehand through interspace radio. Without visual, without personal contact. None was permitted. Neither side trusted the other.

  “If they try anything up here, they’ll never be able to pull it off,” I told Joey confidently, but I armed my protection shield just the same. There’d be no assassination of the colony Controller today, I told Joey.

  He smiled, obviously happy to see me taking the proper precautions. Then he startled me by saying, “I don’t think you’ll be needing much security today, sir.”

  “You can’t trust an Earther, Joey.” I told him.<
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  He did not answer me, but remained silent.

  I looked at him carefully.

  He didn’t look me straight in the eyes like he always did.

  Joey said, “I guess we’ll see, sir.”

  * * * *

  Earth’s Great Leader came into the chamber with a small entourage of generals and serious-looking officials. They all wore the black body armor, helmets, and shield-suits of the fully armed warrior. Our own people and security devices, hitherto on standby yellow alert, now immediately went to red alert.

  I began to fear the worst, that the Earthers might just be desperate enough to try something stupid after all. Not any kind of good sense, but since when did an Earther have good sense? Look at their society, their families, their governments. The way they do things. Is it any wonder we were scared of them? If they did try something here, my security people would cut them down before they could do much damage. But I prayed it would never come to that.

  As the two groups approached, one another Joey boldly strode forward between them, and from the Earther side another figure came forward to meet Joey.

  Joey and the Earther exchanged handshakes. And then formal bows. And then I knew. The Earther wasn’t human at all, he was another andy just like Joey.

  Then the Earther leader came forward and unfastened his protective helmet. This would negate his protective field, and was an astonishing indication of non-violence from any Earther. He was purposefully putting himself at our mercy. I sent out an order so that none of my security people would get trigger happy at the opportunity of having him helpless within their sights.

  Then the Earther leader lifted his helmet off his head. I was shocked. All I could see was the face of that ten-year-old boy that I had known so many decades before—a face that had aged and now grown into manhood—the face of a man of character. It was the face of a man who had seen and done much in his long life—but the smile of that ten-year-old boy still shone forth as he came over to me, “Yes, it’s me.”