My father bounds onto the shuttle. “Everyone’s here, we’re good to go,” he says to the pilots.
We strap in and soon Xinji is falling away along with my heart. Grief burns in the empty space in the middle of my chest. To fill the hole, I imagine inserting a titanium heart complete with gears and valves—functional and impenetrable.
The artificial gravity kicks in when we clear the atmosphere.
Yesterday, they transported supplies and equipment for Yulin to the Big Fat Frog in orbit… Oh, excuse me, it’s a state-of-the-art Interstellar Class space ship with a Bucherer-Plank Crinkler engine that just happens to resemble a big fat frog. Since it doesn’t travel through an atmosphere, there’s no need for it to be aerodynamic. But it would have been nice if it at least looked sleek.
This morning, they conveyed all our gear up. The trip doesn’t take long. Within thirty minutes, we dock with the Big Fat Frog. As I disembark and follow my parents to the passenger quarters, memories of my last trip bubble in my mind. All Interstellar Class ships have the same design. Cargo bays, medical bays, living quarters, dining areas, rec areas, etc… Of course the engine room, bridge and crew quarters are off limits to us. I remember how boredom drove my ten-A-year-old self to explore every inch. I expect this trip will be equally as boring. Well…maybe not. This time I know how to worm into a few restricted clusters of the Q-net. Maybe there’s some hope for excitement.
Our quarters have a common area, washroom, and two bedrooms. It doesn’t take me long to unpack. My room has a standard terminal and screen which is fine for doing school work, accessing my personal files, and messages. I can bypass some of my terminal’s limits. If I used my parents’ terminal, then I’d be able to go deeper, but if I’m caught I’ll be in big trouble. Hmmm….boredom might trump trouble.
The ship vibrates and hums as it leaves orbit. We are traveling to a crinkle point—or rather a safe place where they can engage the BP Crinkler engine. If the ship is too close to a planet or a sun or a black hole or another ship that is also crinkling space when it starts the engine, bad things will happen. When the captain engages the BPC, the space around us will crinkle and we’ll travel from one point in the Galaxy to another in seconds instead of decades. Then the engine is shut down and space smooths out. Warping space has a cost—the time dilation.
Yeah, it’s hard to imagine, so on the next page are a few diagrams drawn by yours truly (I need to find a hobby).
Since it’s too dangerous to crinkle a vast amount of space at one time, the ship does a series of small crinkles all in a row (crinkle, smooth, crinkle, smooth, crinkle, smooth, etc…). All of our Actual time will be spent traveling to and from the crinkle point—twenty days to the point and then seventy to Yulin. That gives me ninety days to see just how deep into the Q-net I can go without causing ripples. Fun.
* * *
I get my first nasty surprise on the second day of the trip. “I should be exempt from soch-time,” I say to my mother. “There’s no one my age on board.”
“It’s required by law, Lyra. You know that. Besides, some of the crew have kids. Maybe one of them will be older.”
I bite my lip—no way to win this argument. And I’m not going to tell her that I’ve no interest in befriending a crew kid only to be separated in eighty-nine days or she’ll lecture me on the scientific research behind the socialization requirement for children. Instead, I keep my comment to myself and report for soch-time in the recreation bay. The area is off limits to anyone over eighteen A-years old for the next two hours. The babysitter is the only exception—she looks about forty A-years old. Her face is creased with lines as if she’s already exhausted. I tell her my name so she can check me off. She starts to explain the rules, but I wave her off. I can recite the rules by heart.
As expected, the place is filled with noisy little kids, awkward pre-teens and the quartet of giggling girls from the shuttle. Oh joy. I head straight for the back wall. There’s a game terminal and screen there, but during soch-time you can’t play by yourself—that would defeat the whole purpose of socialization time. That’s okay, I’m aiming for the group of comfy chairs facing it, thinking of taking a nap. But I stop in my tracks.
A guy is already there. He looks older than eighteen, but he’s not wearing a crew uniform. And his black hair is longer than the buzzed fuzz of the other male crew members. He’s sketching a picture of something leafy in an actual paper book with a stick of some sort—old Earth stuff—and I wonder if he was born on Earth, but I’m not curious enough to actually ask, despite the fact he’s kind of handsome with his straight nose and angular jaw.
I turn to find another spot to nap, but the babysitter hustles up to me. She shoves a portable screen at me. The flat twenty-five-by-fifteen centimeter device can download files and run basic programs so you can do work without being entangled with the Q-net. ’Cause of that whole spend-too-much-time-and-go-insane caveat. You have to be in the Q-net for over twelve hours at a time for that to happen, but some of these scientists are serious workaholics.
“You need to state that you understand the regulations,” she says.
Reciting my name and the fact that I’m well aware of the regs, I hand it back to her.
She glances at the boy. Oh no. Before I can retreat, she grabs my elbow. “Let me introduce you.” She tows me closer. “Niall.”
He pulls his gaze from his sketch reluctantly. His eyes are a blue-green. Annoyance pulses from him.
The babysitter is not affected by his glower. “This is Lyra Daniels. She’s your age.”
A slight nod of greeting.
“Lyra, this is Niall Radcliff.”
I nod in return. The babysitter mutters something uncomplimentary under her breath about teenagers and goes to yell at two kids fighting over a toy. Niall returns his attention to his drawing and I search for another quiet corner. Except I can’t find one. And, after observing the kids, I notice that there is this invisible barrier between them and Niall. Even the kids from Xinji have picked up on this and avoid going near him. He’s surrounded by calm and comfortable chairs.
I’m not about to suffer with the younger kids so I claim a seat near Niall. He ignores me and I return the favor. Except, I try to imagine what it’d be like to live on an Interstellar Class space ship. Due to time jumping, I’m one hundred and thirty-four Earth years old. Space brats who grow up on the ships can be as old as the dawn of crinkle travel—about four hundred plus E-years. It all depends on where they go. Having friends on a space ship must be really hard. Lots of things can happen—crews change, parents decide to settle on a planet and the passengers are all temporary.
“Are you done?” Niall asks me in an irritated tone.
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“Staring. Are you done?”
Oops. I’d apologize, but his hostile glare pisses me off. “No, I’m not. What’s that you’re drawing with?”
He sighs—and on a scale of one to ten in teenaged aggrieved sighs, I’d give it a ten. “It’s a pencil.”
“Okay, now I’m done.”
“Good, because I’ve no intention of becoming friends .” He says the last word with disgust. “You passengers come on board and act like you own the place. You don’t. You’re a temporary nuisance and, as far as I’m concerned, the sooner you’re gone the better.”