The Well-Traveled Child

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. But screams take many forms and eight-year-old Ginny Fitch is only just beginning to learn some of them.

When one imagines guardians of the human race, extremely fit men or women usually come to mind. Robust, driven, often with a caped and masked uniform of some sort. One never imagines a wisp of a little girl who constantly forgets where she's left her dolls. But the hows and whys are in the past, a past whose distance is now receding faster than time itself.

Hang on a sec. There's a message coming in.

“This voice mess... the last due t... interferen... and acceler... reminder to be... Subsequen... text dat... only. Read all whe... ...ination.” The message is dated ten years, five months, three days, and nine hours ago. The time compression was anticipated. The senders know it referrs to the fact that the craft is about to transition to a speed which would require several decades to exchange data-rich messages, so simple bursts of minimalist binary data will now replace them and, of course, be ultimately decoded by the craft's onboard communications system.

So while a little over a decade passes on Earth, Ginny ages just over eleven days. Mason, the message's originator, retires about three years ago. Julie, his replacement, recently celebrates the births of a series of grandchildren but subsequently succumbs to a recurrence of her breast cancer. Alex, one of her grandchildren, asks if he might take over communication. Permission is granted, as Alex has trained extensively for this role, hoping he would get it. But he understands it is a terminal job. In roughly five years – less than a week for Ginny – communication with the craft in any form will no longer be possible

Now, Alex has been left with only about a dozen opportunities to accomplish the one thing no one has yet been able to do – to get Ginny into her hypersleep chamber so she might actually survive the one-hundred-and-fifty-three millennia her journey will take.

Okay, message received and stored. Well, the message fragment anyway.

This last message, originally sent by Mason, is stored in the craft's communications archive. Ginny may or may not eventually read it.

Meanwhile, Ginny has just finished replacing a section of yellow tape on the metal grating which spans the passageway to the cryo chambers – the portion of the craft devoted to the storage of the human embryonic material. She takes a couple of steps back and admires her work – an improvised hopscotch grid complete with numbers and letters fashioned from pieces of the same tape. The passageway below is dark now, so to Ginny, the floor appears more or less solid. Perfect for the solo game, though the tape often needs to be replaced after every pass since it's stuck only to the edges of the metal and Ginny is an aggressive hopscotcher.

Ginny lands a solitary foot on a square when, “Hey, sprout!” echos from seemingly far away. It's a young boy's voice and other young voices can be heard chattering indistinctly in the background. “Sprout! C'mon, will you! Wanna be last again?” Ginny is torn between continuing to test the repaired hopscotch layout and seeking out those voices. In the end, the voices win.

As Ginny works her way through the craft, the kids' voices grow louder and stronger. But the going is slow because there is so much equipment packed into a relatively small craft that from one section to another Ginny looks like toothpaste being squeezed from a tube as she struggles to free herself from one group of machinery after another. Her sneakers, which look a little too large on her delicate frame, make a popping sound as she pulls her feet free each time.

But as she continues to move through the spaces, the machinery she passes gradually changes to trees and bushes until, after a short distance, it seems as if she's outdoors and not on any sort of craft at all. Ginny shoves one final branch away then looks back toward where she just was. All she sees is a dense forest. She looks all around. Forest everywhere.

“'Bout time!” cautions Murray, a young boy a little older than Ginny. He cradles a large ball under his arm. Beyond him, in a clearing, several girls and boys mill about.

“I didn't think you'd come back,” laments Ginny. She checks behind her one more time. Still dense woods.

“I always come back. We... We always come back.”

“That's silly. Last time was the first time.”

“Yeah, but always is always. Until it isn't. Right?

“Huh?”

“So, do you wanna play or not?”

“How come you never get tired? Nobody ever gets tired.”

“What's tired?”

“You're weird. You're all weird.”

“Sure. So, Ginny, wanna play?”

“How come you know my name? You didn't know last time and I never told you.”

“Your name? Yeah, sure you did.”

“Uh, uh.”

“Uh, huh. That's how I know. We know. Ginny. Right? Of course you told us. Otherwise how would we know? So c'mon already. We're playing number circle. You're eight.”

“I am eight.”

“ Yeah, that's what I mean. What?”

“Eight years old. I'm eight years old.”

“Right. I know... We know that.”

“I think I'm supposed to do something.”

“Play first. Okay?”

“I just don't know what it is.”

“Number circle.”

“No, I mean I don't know what I'm supposed to do.”

“You're supposed to sleep.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do. So, sprout, ready to play?”

“I s'pose,” as she follows Murray toward the other kids.

##

Alex scrolls through data on his monitor. Fawn, his operations advisor, looks over his shoulder. “Hold it there,” she injects.

“The VR engine is likely operative. If it works the way it did in tests, it should respond to the in-the-moment circumstances. Right?” asks Alex.

Fawn stares at the data, then, “Up to a point. It can be overloaded if the decision tree grows too many branches. Sure, the AI mediator will keep learning. But like we experienced in sim, a child's mind is inventive. Doesn't edit. Much. There are too many roots. We can only predict so far and basing the predictions on grownup logic simply won't fly. The stakes are too high to hope for the best on this one. I'm recommending we skip two through four and execute five. Preferably sooner rather than later.”

“I'm uncomfortable with that,” warns Alex. “She's a sweet kid. I don't want the last thing she remembers to be a nightmare.”

“Agreed. But we only have a dozen transmissions left. And we're going to need at least half of them to make sure the hypersleep chamber, one, closes, two, seals, and three, activates. So in reality, we only have nine shots at getting her into her hypersleep chamber. It's not like we have a mom there.”

“What about Aunt Helen?”

“She hates Aunt Helen. Remember? And by the way, you hate Aunt Helen, too.”

“She was tough.”

“Too tough. Remember? She screamed at Ginny. Ginny screamed back then ran off and hid in god-knows-where in the craft. It took your grandfather five months to finally find her and coax her out.”

“Yeah, but it was only about an hour Ginny's time.”

“Still.”

“How do we know the speed isn't affecting her?”

“We don't. But we have the advantage.”

“How so?”

“Our decade is her week. Roughly. We have a lot of time to figure things out.”

“Assuming the time-dilation calculations are right.”

“Yes.”

“But a huge part of that time... Wait. No, we don't have much time. Not much time at all. Most of it's eaten up in message transit time.”

“All right. But we have at least twice as much real-time time as she does. Yes? We should be able to stay at least one step ahead of an eight year old. Don't you think?

“Hmm...”

##

“Eight!” shouts Mable, a tall eleven year old, as she fires the ball toward Ginny.

Ginny just lets it hit her in her chest then bounce off wildly into the woods. “This isn't fun anymore.”

Micah, about ten, chases after the ball. While the other kids argue as they wait, Ginny stares at the spot where Micah vanished into the trees. Suddenly a rustling sound in there gets louder and louder. The kids clam up immediately and just stare into the woods.

Now a growl. But a growl that sounds half human yet half something no one really wants to ever encounter. The bushes begin to shake. The trees, even the tall ones, start to sway every which way. A strong wind blows leaves and sticks out of the woods and into the clearing.

Then it happens.

A monster... No, a thing. A horrible thing. As tall as a house. Four legs with gigantic claws. No, two legs. Now three legs. Suddenly five legs. The thing... the monster, constantly changing second by second. Long teeth. No teeth but now a gaping jaw-less mouth. Now two fangs. Four. All green. Now brown. Red as it freezes. Stares right at Ginny.

Ginny screams.

She looks to the other kids for help. But they've vanished. Back to the thing. It's eyes throb. Then one by one, as fast as possible, eyes spread all over its face. Hundreds of them. Then they merge into two gigantic eyes. Then one. Giant hairs shoot up out of its skin then fire off in all directions like porcupine quills.

Ginny barely manages to dodge one, then two... three.

Another scream. Then the thing itself screams. So loud it blows the leaves off of nearby branches. As it claws at the ground it grunts so loud that it vibrates Ginny's whole body.

A moment of hesitation then the thing charges – right at Ginny.

Ginny screams then snaps around and runs headlong into the woods behind her. Faster and faster. Branches and leaves slap at her face. The sound from the thing behind her gets closer and closer. “Mommy!-Mommy!-Mommy!-Mommy!” as she tries to run faster than her legs and feet can move.

The thing is so close that the heat from its breath causes the air around Ginny to steam like wisps of fog in a breeze.

WHAP!

Ginny trips. Falls. Face in the dirt and underbrush. Bits of leaves explode in all directions as Ginny screams her lungs out. The shadow of the thing slides over her. Its breathing sounds like an idling old diesel engine.

Eyes squeezed shut, Ginny raises her head. A moment, then one eye barely opens.

It's all gone. The woods. The dirt. But most importantly... the thing. Instead, Ginny lies face down on another metal grating, elsewhere in the craft. The comforting hum of machines and electronics fills the air.

She pushes herself to her feet ever so slowly, looking around, half anticipating the thing will lunge at her at any moment. But she's safe. For now. She finally focuses down the long passageway, another one with barely enough room for her to get through. No way, she thinks, could that awful creature ever follow her through there.

At the end of the passageway is a hatch. And machined into the metal door skin are the words: “HYPERSLEEP CHAMBER.”

##

Fawn flips a switch. Her monitor's screen scrolls. “Well...”

Alex leans back in his chair. “Well, we'll know in about twenty-nine months if it worked. Or not.”

“Even if she's there, we still need to get her in,” cautions Fawn. “Perhaps we should design a cyclic test. Something, I dunno, where there's I guess some sort of redundancy where there's only ever, what, one outcome possible.”

“You mean like the perfect ideal process.”

“Yes.”

“Uh, huh.”

“Admit it. No one planned for this. I mean honestly, who could have imagined the survival of the human race would depend on a little girl getting to bed on time?”

###