The ship was my home. Ma kept me close. If I wasn’t at school learning quantum mechanics, Brethern English, math, and engineering I could be found in the ship’s park talking to kids who hated school. Eeo loved music and wished it was taught in school.
“It’s frivolous,” I told him.
“Nothing frivolous about art,” he said. I thought about it and laughed.
Two years later we met a foreign ship. Aliens. Everyone emerged from their pods to gaze at the large ship. Our ship sent diplomats out. We were scared but the diplomats emerged intact and healthy.
“Dear Bretherns’, we have discovered life in the galaxy.” We cheered and then went about our day.
I couldn’t concentrate in school. I had an odd feeling. On break, I looked up and saw the alien ship. I went home and worked on calculations. As I calculated, I became suspicious. If the aliens were from where they said they were from then it would take them another twenty years to reach us. The aliens were liars. What did they want to from us? I learned three days into their visitation. They needed a food source and humans were the food.
On the fourth day, they began eating us and I drug my Ma to a mobile ship. “We must leave now I told her.” Just as I was about to hit the propulsion button, Eeo banged on the window.
“Let me in,” he said. I opened the hatch. All his family was dead. I locked the gearshift and we sped away. Ma looked stricken. She was a teacher of Brethern. She knew little about mechanics and science.
“Where are we going?” Ma asked.
“To a nearby wormhole,” I said. I kicked the pod into hyperdrive. Eeo was crying softly and began to sing. It was plaintive and very foreign.
“This song,” he remarked, “was sung by women in a remote part of Indonesia on Earth.” His voice was so moving. Earth was an impossibility to visit. It died nearly two centuries ago. “Where are we going?” asked Eeo.
“Wherever life can thrive.” That’s what humans do. Thrive. The egg of our life isn’t so easily cracked and surviving is easier with family and a friend.
THE END