Author: David C. Nutt

If I have any regrets, I wish they’d given me more time to mourn for my legs before they took my arms. I understand we were on a tight launch window but would one more day have made difference? After all, I have given more than my all-legs, arms, genitals, most of my torso, digestive system. Now, I’m sailing through the cosmos like some kind of living museum bust.
Still human? Hybrid? Some well meaning twit at NASA came up with the name “star children”, like we are some cute little big eyed cartoon babies hurtling through space, babbling our celestial babytalk until we can find a place to nap. Which actually is kind of what our mission is: find a place for all us earthlings to lay down our heads and call home. Our solar system is crashing faster than any of the astro-brainiacs figured, and terraforming is about four centuries away from making our nearest “Goldilocks” planet anywhere close to habitable. As luck would have it, there are three worlds that have atmosphere, decent temperature and are prime real estate to resettle as is, move in ready.
There are six of us, two to each target system, a redundancy built in to soothe the mission analysts. Even at light speed it’s going to take us close to twelve years to reach our target and once we’re there, we set up the new wiz-bang technology, the space folding gates, then we’ll open the door and let them all step over to their new home. Through all of it, all our sacrifices we held tight to one sacred idea: we were doing this to save our people. Our species. Our flora and fauna.
That was plan “A”. However, as we half dozen go on our merry way, time and tech advance. On year four we received word that there were exciting new breakthroughs in fold space technology. By year eight they said they were able to send probes to a little more than the half way point. By year nine we were told to alter course and begin breaking. At year 9.5 we all deaccelerated and the six of us slipped through a jump gate and wham bam thank you ma’am, we were all at the first destination. And we weren’t alone. They were all here. Billions of them. Settlements, forests, farms, game preserves, fisheries, all that we were supposed to help cross over, already here.
If I had the biology left to vomit, I would have right at that moment. One of us asked the question we all were afraid to ask: “Could we be put back together? Made whole?” The pause before the response said it all. Two of my colleagues pulled the pin and hit self destruct right then and there. Three were good soldiers and went into orbit like they were supposed. Me? I just took off.
And now I wander out here in the cosmos. Neither fish, nor foul, beast nor beauty. They want me to come back. A psychiatrist monologues me roughly once every two weeks. They’ve sent ships out beyond me but they never quite can catch me ‘cuz I am not really following any pattern. I don’t know, maybe someday I’ll wander back. As for now, second star to the right and straight on till morning.