Chapter 1. Almost Perfect Girl

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Brittany has always believed in it. At least until recent time.

Everything started several weeks ago when she heard the scream for the first time. It was rasping unpleasant sound. She thought something might happen to the starship but there were no any announcements or even mentions about anything being wrong that evening. And then she started to hear it. First once in several days and now each day, sometimes even twice. At some point she even thought she might have hallucinations as no one else seems to hear these sounds. But after deliberation with herself Brittany came to conclusion that they were not. She had several reasons for it. Firs of all the sound changed over time. It became more complicated and now she could hear different 'voices', there were at least three of them now which she could recognize. The second important reason was she heard them at night as well. At least once she woke up because of this scream. But as far as she knew people do not have hallucinations while sleeping. So it was not inside her head. It was not inside the ship also. Because otherwise some people would start panic, but no one did it. So the only source of the sound was outside the starship, in the space, in the vacuum. Where nobody can hear a scream as they say.

So the sounds must have been outside the starship. Starship... Brittany never wanted to be an astronaut, she never asked to be onboard... If only she had a choice, she would prefer to study plants in some well-known institute: to collect, compare, investigate, figure out history of one or another species... But as it is easy to guess Brittany did not have any choice. Her parents made a choice for her when decided to change their live and climb aboard more than 20 years ago. They decided that their children deserved better life in some other place than Earth. Their children... Brittany was their only child till now. She was 14 now and she have hated space, ship, people around as long as could remember. Her parents tried to make her life little easier, but now they got approve for the second child. Oh, probably, you do not know how it works on starships. Well, first of all no one gets pregnant on own will. You have number of frozen embryos, each carefully checked and tested for all known genetic problems. Because there are no extra resources to spend on ill or weak child. Then each embryo has a description of potential qualities: staring from eye color, ending with music ear or if future baby is going to be the morning person. Then when you decide it's time to have a baby the Highest Computer selects one of your embryos: the one to be most desired at the moment. They say diversity is on the first place at this stage. The only thing you are allowed to choose is baby's gender. Or 'allowed' it too strong word. You may specify preferred gender. But if the system decides that you do not have an embryo with 'applicable now' qualities, you may either agree to have a baby of another gender or wait... That's happened to the Brittany's parents: they wanted a boy, but their estimated wait time was about 2 years, or they could have 'almost perfect girl' immediately. They decided not to wait. But when in 10 years they faced the same situation again... this time they decided to wait. And have waited for four years to get permission from the computer. So now Brittany's mother was five months pregnant. And four of them Brittany could hear screams from the space.