Space Days

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Alice is starting to believe she will need more convincing. She is hearing a scream inside her head now. It is as real to her as the empty space around her as she floats weightlessly in her pressurized suit next to her family's space shuttle known as the Solarskipper. The scream doesn't relay any words, it is just one long high pitched scream. It reminds her of the screaming banshee stories her mother would tell her when she was younger. Her mother would imitate the banshee by making long sad wailing sounds. But the sounds Alice is hearing are clearly much louder than anything her mother ever audited. She has been hearing the screams more often. She will have to go back and get her head checked by the Medically Obligated Device (MOD) again before eating dinner with her family today. Her mother is not too concerned with the screams. Since Alice is sixteen, her mom thinks she is just going through puberty in space. But her father expresses more concern. He initially thought it could be a brain tumor. Now he suspects it is schizophrenia, which is common in space traveling youths like herself, inflicting up to five percent of anyone growing up in space. It is a side effect of living in a space shuttle with a tenth of earth's gravitational pull for too long while physically developing. Despite getting a negative schizophrenia reading from her last trip to the MOD, her dad insisted Alice should spend at least an hour long session in the gravity pod for every earth cycle. For now she is too immersed in mapping the positions of new stars and solar systems on her phone to go back inside and get inspected by MOD again. Despite the annoyance it causes her, few things can distract her from her most important spacetime task of helping mankind discover what lies in the vast expanse of space.

As the screaming starts to become louder she zooms in on what she is sure is a solar system but could also be an exceptionally large blue giant. Using geometry and light signatures, she determines it is indeed a new solar system with two seperate stars and at least five planets. Alice keeps applying different testing techniques on her phone to get a better read on the number of planets. By now the screaming is resulting in a small migraine which she knows will quickly grow into a large one if she stays out in space much longer. She takes a few more light signature readings before turning around and heading back into the Solarskipper. Once the door is shut behind her, Alice enters the pressurization chamber. As soon as she feels the pressure start to hug her spacesuit, the migraine begins to dissipate and the scream quiets down to a little more than a whisper before it vanishes altogether. Alice wiggles out of her spacesuit and watches it slowly fall to the floor due to the weak gravity field generated by the Solarskipper. She then makes her way to the MOD. The MOD is a small pod just barely big enough to fit an exceptionally large man. For Alice's small frame it is plenty roomy and she has to strap herself to the white pillowy cushions that make up the back of the MOD to keep herself in place.

"MOD," she says, "run a full body analysis with an emphasis on the left temporal lobe."

A bright blue fan of light appears on her stomach and it slowly works its way up to her head before heading back down to her feet. Once it vanishes she can feel goose prickles on her arms, legs, and scalp as the observational nanobots work their way over her body.

MOD speaks, "Analysis; a mild case of dandruff, acne infested pores, and an overproduction of mucus. No abnormal activity in the left temporal lobe detected. Would you like to begin treatment?"

Alice sighs in frustration before answering, "Yes." She can barely see the small movement of the dermatology nanobots scuttling on her arms. She feels the nanobots make their way over her skin as they remove sweat and debris from her acne infested pores and remove dandruff from her scalp. It is a very relieving feeling. Despite having used MOD her whole life, she could never stop wondering how the dermatology nanobots could detect issues on her body long before she could feel she had them. But she could feel the treatment. Her face tingles from the intricate work of the nanobots. Her scalp begins to feel suppler. Once the dermatology nanobots are done, she feels fresher than any bath could leave her feeling. Next came the pulmonology nanobots. She felt their little spherical bodies roll their way into her lungs. Within seconds she found herself breathing easier and watched as the now mucus filled pulmonology nanobots rolled their way out of her nose and onto the collection tray MOD had placed in front of her. Feeling refreshed, Alice hops out of MOD and heads to dinner.

At the table, Alice's whole family is waiting on her. Both sets of grandparents and her own parents are present as well as her twelve year old little brother Josh and her mom's twenty year old sister Lucy. They quickly bow their heads for grace as her dad leads them in prayer.

"Father," Alice's own father begins, "thank you for another wonderful day in space as we gather here to eat. Bless this greenhouse grown food to our body. We pray the screams from Alice's head vanish or for the MOD to diagnose her properly. Amen."

"Amen," the rest of the family echoes.

"Did you hear the screams again?" Grandma Josey, Alice's mother's mother, asks inquisitively.

"Yes," she replies, "I had to leave space because they were causing me a migraine."

"Alice, I don't want you to go space walking anymore," her father states gravely, "it is evident to me that whatever is causing these screams it lies outside in space."

"But Dad, the whole purpose of my existence is to help map out space!" Alice frantically exclaims, "You can't take that away from me. Why just today I was mapping..."

Her father interrupts, "I don't care if you found the legendary Second Earth, or the possibility that you might if you continue. You can find purpose in other things in life in space that don't involve you risking your health for the sake of human curiosity. Now pick out what you would like for dinner."

Alice glared at her father before looking down at her meal options offered on the food plate screen. Whatever had been harvested from the greenhouse that day would be utilized by the Computerized Healthy Eating Formation (CHEF) to generate any number of potential meals. Alice settled on vegetable pie. The screen replaced the options with a timer that said her dinner would be done in 20 minutes.

Frustrated, Alice looks up and angrily announces, "I will be in my room for the next twenty minutes then." As she gets up to leave she can hear her father start to protest before her mother interferes.

"She is sixteen Shawn, let her blow off some steam. When I was her age I had a tendency to blow my top just because there weren't enough persimmons available in the green house." Alice can hear her maternal grandparents start to go off on a tangent about her mother's old anger issues and she half hops, half stomps her way to her room. Once there she grabs a book about solar systems and lays down on her bed to read. While in her room she hears a knock.

"Who is it?" she asks. Her head jerks back in surprise when she hears the answer.

"Josh," her brother informs her, "can I come in?"

"Sure, I guess," she tells him. Josh opens the door and makes his way over to his sister and stands next to the bed.

Looking up in slight annoyance for her reading time, Alice asks "What do you want?"

Josh leans his face in close to hers and whispers, "You aren't crazy."

"I know."

"I mean... the screams, I hear them too sometimes."

Alice sits up and faces Josh. She looks at him curiously while he continues.

"I messaged my friend Zig about it. He has been through this way too. He heard the same thing. He thinks we are hearing aliens screaming at frequencies too high for grownups to detect."

"Well, if that's the case, how can we hear them? There is no sound in space."

"I know and so does Zig, but it may not be just sound waves. It could be a special type of radio wave our spacesuit helmet radios are picking up. When they get picked up, the frequency comes in too high for adults to register," Josh's voice is ecstatic.

"Have you considered recording the sounds and then showing the sound waves on a computer?"

"I tried but every time I tried the screaming stopped."

Alice felt a chill run down her spine, "Then we are being watched."

Josh nods his head grimly, "I know."