Space

October 17, 2072

34 days to the Sixth Attraction

The fabric of the Universe felt, strangely different. Yet no perceptible effect could put words or theory to a growing general feeling.

Sophie looked out of her small rounded spaceship window. In it, she could see the reflexion of her own eyes against the blackness of space. She had been trying to hide her emotions and was crying alone, in silence looking at the darkness away from the other passengers. Only a twelve-year-old could believe her sobs were private in the first-class section of the long ship. Sophie still had childlike moments, but most of the time she knew how to stay strong. Extreme circumstances had matured her beyond her biological age, but at heart, she remained a solitaire but a human kid.

Tears shed by any other young girl were no big deal, but because of who she was, each time Sophie dared to show emotion she became the leading story on the ten o'clock news. Right now she needed to stay strong; she had to keep her current doubt to herself. Her father could not learn from a journalist that she was unhappy to be on this ship, traveling to Mars because of him.

This voyage to the Red Planet as they called it was long, a little under two weeks. Adults insulted the travel was fast, but to a young pre-teen two days were an eternity. She didn't really care about the media or the masses, but the financial independence of her small family depended on her image in the media. Their home back on Earth was a payment away from what the bankers called foreclosure. She had been too generous with her money once the settlements came in. Now she was more careful. Losing control now was not an option. Most people thought she was rich, but the lawyers took most of the money from the hospital, and she had given the rest away to people who needed it more than them.

The good news was that the rest of the money was locked away in what the gray-suited men called "long-term investments." It made sense. All she knew was that she was a twelve-year-old having to manage finances and pay a mortgage. She knew what being "emancipated" felt like and longed for nothing more than to be a true child again. A child who could fall in love after looking at a picture of her favorite singer LO in a teen magazine or have slumber parties with her friends. I guess I'd need friends for that, first, she thought.

A year ago, she'd had a careless moment. Without planning ahead, she signed her father up for a virtual-reality game that everyone was talking about, Electoral 2072. Other games were meaningless and expensive, yet this one mattered in the real world, and surprisingly, it was free. While she'd known the game led to a very few people getting jobs, she could not have imagined back then that it would mean so much to everyone. At that time, she'd been searching desperately to find a way to cope with her father's depression. He was losing interest in life, and she thought some sense of purpose might improve his outlook. Who could fault him in his vegetative condition? He was locked in his own digital world and had no true contact with the outside world. So, she signed him up for this game, a game with over half a billion participants. How could she have known that her husk of a father, a man without a functioning body, could do so well? He was currently ranked second after so many rounds, with only seven final rounds remaining.

Registration for the game was very simple, a click only. She remembered how bad his morale was back then. Laurent Lapierre, had he been capable, would have pulled his plug. Due to the quality of the game interface, the complex election software was the only one capable of reading the faint mental activity of a man considered clinically dead. Experts told her that Laurent's brain produced less than a quarter of a watt of energy, as if she knew what that meant. She also hated the whispers of the media, or the canonical ghost theme used by the media to describe her father.

Sophie was crash-learning what adulthood truly meant. If only her childish self had heeded the warnings. The stupid Electoral software, the artificial intelligence also known as the smiling image of the 20th-century celebrity Marilyn Monroe, had tried to deny Laurent entry. Marilyn had reasoned the adventure would be too much of a toll. Electoral was Marilyn or Marilyn was Electoral; the distinction was pointless to Sophie. Her father's arbitrary rejection had infuriated Sophie. As Sophie mounted her resistance, the software then changed her mind and said that Laurent, a trapped shadow that resided in what essentially amounted to meat, would have an unfair advantage in the competition over the others.

Initially, that awful computer creature had the nerve to say "If your father wins in his current condition, I don't want fully bodied humans to hurt themselves thinking they could win once handicapped." Sophie would have none of it. At least this computer creature shared the human capacity to discriminate and lie. That put Marilyn in the same orbit as humanity in her eyes.

Sophie's lawyers prepared for this new fight. This time things proved much easier. Marilyn Monroe, aka Electoral, quickly caved, but all the other players were warned that Laurent was advantaged and self-mutilation was grounds for dismissal from the game in the future. That made Sophie's eyes glaze as well. As if her father had done this intentionally. How could existing blind, deaf, dumb, paralyzed and deformed provide Laurent with any advantage whatsoever? It was absurd.

Electoral’s warning initially fell on deaf ears. No one seemed to care, but now that Laurent was runner-up to the President himself in the rankings after more than twenty-five rounds, the media was singing a different tune. It turned out that the computer bimbo was right -- her father was good at the game. Sophie did not care how well her father ranked, this was a game, and as a child, she found the obsession with it rather pointless.

Sophie was now far down a winding road, sitting on a spaceship taking her away from where she desperately needed to be. She was going to the planet called Mars. The red dot in the sky. She really needed to be in a school in front of a challenging teacher. She wanted classmates, a dog, and a mom. At a minimum, she should be in their little home taking care of her father and spending time with him in his digital world. She did not care about planets and space. Adults annoyed her these days.

She looked out the small window and used her breath to fog part of it. Once the fog dissipated, all she saw was darkness. In space, the ship was moving in a straight line; there was no road, just darkness. She was in a long tube called a spaceship, where outside the adults called emptiness, vacuum, or space. To Sophie, this was just night, but a dark and cold one for sure. It was a long night, as well. A two-week-long trip without daylight, sunrise, or sunset in relatively close quarters with so many strangers. "Uncomfortable" only began to describe Sophie's mental state.

The fact the floor did not stick to her feet was a big deal to everyone, Sophie included. She had magnetized pants to stick to her seat, which was mildly amusing. She was alone, so alone. Her subtle tears made her nose run. Every couple of seconds, she tried to breathe in through the nose without making noise. Nothing worked, she needed a tissue. Adults were so complicated, they did not like when people sniffed and made noise with their nose; it was considered rude. Talking was fine, burping was not. Adults had so many arbitrary rules.

She had to be strong for her father; she was all he had left. He was all she had left too, and she loved him so much. Thinking about him did not help hide the tears. She used her sleeve to wipe the drops.

The notion of day and night inside the long cigar-like ship was long gone. To protect humans from solar radiation during the trip, the ship was rotated away from the sun. So inside, it had now been night for five full days. However, in the main cabin, lighting was used to simulate Earth solar cycles. This was strange to Sophie. Once in a while, the crew pretended it was night and lowered the lights in the cabin. Their charade did not seem to be particularly effective. At all times someone in the tube was either napping, snoring or eating.

Days were long gone. Sophie missed fresh air, blue sky, and what she now understood was gravity. It was a force that kept her hair down, the water in the glasses, and the pee in the toilet. The gravity was gone, and she hated it. She was told that travel in this ship would be the most comfortable portion of the trip to Mars. If this was true, her father owed her big time. None of this was any fun.

She looked around. The nearly 200 passengers included 127 of the 128 finalists of the game. They were sitting in the back of the tube. Journalists assigned to cover the last seven rounds were in the seats around her. Here, the seats were wider. It was illogical to sit her, the smallest person on the ship, in the biggest seat. The others did not seem to mind.

The racial diversity of the players was refreshing to see. But most of them were men; she did not like that. They were all trying to win this stupid game. They were reading, studying videos of the game, and watching the past performances of other players. The obsession struck her as unhealthy, if not dangerous. They said it would give them an “edge,” whatever that was. Sophie found the group sad, but she knew how to be polite and kept her impressions to herself.

On the outside of the vessel's shell was cold, deep space. She'd seen a video of what happened to a banana in a vacuum. It behaved like glass. She looked at her partial reflection in the window again and saw tears rolling down her cheeks. Her eyes were red. Enough, she told herself. She looked around, most of the other passengers were sleeping. Cameras were, for the first time in a month, not filming her. That was a nice change. Only a few travelers were standing or stretching. The majority were looking around with eyes open like sleepwalkers. Most wore those stupid contact lenses that let them watch television with their eyes open. Sophie hated the "zombie contacts," as she called them. She thought they should be illegal.

The big lady who had been seated next to her was now gone. Sophie knew she was a journalist sent by some news outlet to spy on her. She was not about to start a casual conversation with a journalist; she knew better. Ever since she won the custody case, each time she spoke on TV, she knew she was entitled to get paid. Journalists wanted free comments; her lawyers warned her about those.

Sophie was bored. There really was nothing to do in the ship, and there were no other children. Adults had told her a window seat was better, more expensive. Looking at her image in the window, she was no longer sure of that. The reflection was unforgiving. She got up and stood on the large reclining seat. There was no color in this ship; the walls were boring white. The youngest contestant on board was twenty-seven. In the game, she was told, younger contestants rarely did well. That was fine. Her father was old; he was well over forty.

The media sweetheart stretched and reached all the way up to the ceiling panel. She pushed a little yellow button. Her reading light closed. Part of her reflection disappeared; it was a start, she figured. Outside, the stars punctured the dark night sky. Earth's upper atmosphere gave stars a twinkle, but in space, stars looked like pinholes in the darkest of drapes.

There was a little red twinkle in space, then it went out. Her mind felt, for just a second, different. She had not been feeling truly herself these last months. Her mind wondered easily. She lost herself in thought again. The fat journalist in the seat next to her might return at any time, so she needed to cheer herself. She could already read the headline: "Sophie loses it well before reaching Mars." Her father in his lost world read the news, and even had all television channels so she had to be careful.

Nothing cheerful initially came to her. She needed to focus on something fun, something cool. She counted her few blessings. There was her dad -- he was alive, resting back in the infirmary of the ship, and that was a miracle unto itself. People all over the world now knew his name. Some even found him witty and wanted to meet him in the digital world. They referred to him as “the underdog” or “the next President,” and that cheered her up. His Facebook fan page had over a million followers, and he prided himself on answering as many posts as possible. From the prison of his mind, that meant a lot.

While she was only twelve, her own story was already long and exceptional. She was a functional orphan who had fought against all odds to resurrect her clinically dead father and gain legal custody of him. She alone kept most of the media lit with news during the year 2071. She was the youngest person ever named Person of the Year by Time Magazine. She liked that. But the media circus surrounding the accident and court proceedings over her subsequent emancipation and custodianship over her father was mostly over. She deserved a rest, and instead, she'd recklessly embarked on this new adventure. At that moment she'd committed herself to it, it felt like a mistake. It still did.

She opened her little bag and pulled out a crumpled-up paper magazine. It was a glossy teen publication called 'Yummy!' Most kids of her age loved paper magazines, and she was no exception. As with all the magazines these days, the pages were covered by a laminated white parchment and an animated screen. In its center span a large fold-out poster that came to life. In this issue, the centerfold was a live image of LO, the hottest Taiwanese singer ever. Sophie loved him. His music, his videos, his sheer presence brought her back to where she should be at her age. She opened the centerfold, looked at the moving 3D image and felt a grin begin to grow from cheek to cheek. LO was so hot. The way he held the guitar. Color returned to her cheeks.

She finally smiled.

Sophie was a Gemini and her mood, over time, kept bouncing around. Today, strapped to this seat, her changing mood was a useful quality. Then, she chuckled as she remembered her recent reaction on the Late TV Show. Because of her fame, she had been invited to discuss current events. The host surprised her by pointing at a curtain from which LO emerged. He walked out holding a portable keyboard. She felt so embarrassed. The moment she saw him with her own eyes, she fainted on nationwide TV. No sound, no expression, she just passed out. To her, that was bad television. It turned out that fainting live on TV was great and lucrative. Minutes later, when she finally opened her eyes, LO was standing over her. The moment she saw him so close, she jerked back and, with a loud thump, hit her head on the large wooden desk behind her. She passed out again, but this time from pain.

When she regained consciousness, they had moved her to a dressing room in the back of the studio. LO was gone. On a corner of a mirror of the green room was an autographed picture of her favorite signer. She now regretted her decision to leave it home, safe under her pillow. What good was it to her now? Sophie was a child forced into an adult world. She looked at LO's extremely low high-shirt on the poster resting on her lap. He was so cute.

Sophie flipped through the pages of the magazine for a millionth time to a very crumpled and over-read portion called Hot New Makeup Trends for Girls and Boys. Makeup was very fashionable this decade. She pulled out small boxes from her bag, placed the magazine on her lap and tried applying the cheap makeup from within these boxes to her face. The seat mirror was handy. The plastic boxes were samples that came with the magazine. The red box was a gift she had received by mail from someone she did not know. Fans, she supposed. That was fine.

Parents rarely let children below under age fourteen use makeup, but she could. She was legally emancipated. Sophie's vision of herself was quite contrary to the image portrayed of her in the media. There was, in her opinion, nothing special about her. Other girls had nice blond or red hair, dimples, straight teeth. Sophie was plain looking. Her hair was bushy, brown, and every feature on her face was average. Even her school grades were average. She could barely recall her teacher's name since she had missed so many days this year. Sitting on this ship, gone for months, she was sure to flunk the seventh grade. In the last week, she had not even booted her electronic tutor. The tutor box blinked with every possible notice available to it. Who could say anything to her? She was going to Mars. That was a big deal even for the adults.

She wondered why others looked up to her. She had no real house, no dog, and no friends. She sat in her seat looking at the vastness of the cosmos. Sophie put some blush on her cheeks to hide her pale skin. The girl was the adopted child of over 12 billion adults back on Earth. She could not understand the respect and admiration others held for her. A recent survey showed that 99.8% of the population would give her a kidney if they could. Sophie did not know what a kidney was, but it must be cheap for so many people to want to give her one.

She was a star on Earth and did not like how her status changed everything. Sophie was no role model. She liked to dress like a boy; she figured it helped her go unnoticed. Although she had to admit it had been a long time since she met anyone who didn't know who she was. Her father had been clear: she should not and was not accepting charity from anyone.

Once more she looked out the little round window. There was again a red blink but it came to her in a strange feeling of daze. The cosmos was still dark, but in it she could swear a little red dot flashed. For an instant, it seemed to be floating like a new star. Then it was gone. The sudden light reminded Sophie of a little red firefly, like those in the woods of her home in Indiana. She looked, waiting for it to return. It did not. Sophie told herself it probably was a reflection from something within the ship.

She looked around in the ship for the source of the red firefly and found none. This wasn’t a reflexion. The overhead lights were a yellowish orange.

But she was crazy. She sometimes heard her deceased mother's voice, but she knew dead people were gone, like wood burned in a fire. No one else heard the voice. It spoke kindly, guiding her through troubled times. The voice and a couple of pictures were all Sophie had left of her. She barely remembered her mother's smile and touch. The accident had not happened that long ago, but the images of that awful night were as crisp and clear as anything she could lay eyes upon this very moment. Sophie made an effort to hide those memories behind a door in her mind. She kept all her doubt and hesitation to herself; the adults would easily revoke her custody of Laurent and take her father away if anyone doubted her stability or sanity.

"Don't cry, you are not alone," began her mother's voice. "We are going to see wonderful things." The words made her eyes sting. "I am so sorry," hushed the soft voice, "Don't cry, this is wonderful, I am happy for you, I am here." Sophie tried to ignore the voice. She was a child forced to ignore her own mother's ghost. Sophie was strong. She had to be.

The real world returned snapping her out of her fuzz. "Mademoiselle Sophie," said a flight attendant hunching over, "your father opened his light. He wants to talk to you." The distraction was welcome. The words woke her up from the strange feeling.

Interplanetary flights were rare and expensive. Commercial space aviation was in its infancy. Aboard this unique flight, Electoral had spared no cost. The flight crew looked fantastic. The lady was so beautiful; her smile was infectious. She was dressed in a black bodysuit with gold-colored highlights. Few had the shape to pull off the tight outfit without shame, but this woman did. Stitched below the shoulder pad on the left was a crest of Marilyn Monroe. The details of the embroidery were exquisite.

The attendant handed Sophie a very large pair of pink boots. "Shoes, then unbuckle," she reminded her small passenger. Sophie was already unbuckled. In weightlessness, moving around was a problem. The rule was simple: no one could leave a seat without being magnetized to the floor using the heavy boots.

Sophie was told that she had one of the best seats in the plane; in the front, next to the kitchen. The smells from the microwave often woke her, but that was fine. This first-class thing was really not for her. She did not like the extra attention. However, she still couldn't understand why the blond computer character was paying the bill for this trip. That surprised Sophie. In fact, the entire Electoral game was free for those competing.

She liked the black and gold-colored attendants. They were nicer than the ones wearing silver suits walking in the back of the ship. Looking back into the long body of the craft, she saw that there were very few people in her first-class section. She wondered again: why not give the bigger seats to the larger people? The service in first-class was definitely better. Sophie could not imagine how adults in the back could slide on these heavy shoes from their cramped space. Why not make the ship bigger, she wondered. That seemed easy.

The pink magnetized shoes resembled really tall ski boots. They even had her name printed on each side. "Why do others have black shoes? Mine have my name on them, why?" The lady smiled at her innocence. Sophie was so sweet.

"Because people love you."

"Even here?"

"Especially here. You may not understand, but pretty much everything you touch, drink, or use is sponsored," said the attendant. "The company from which we buy our shoes made a big deal about you being on board. They wanted to make sure that each time a video of you hits the web, their shoes will be recognizable. The CEO also personally loves you, just like everyone else."

"How come I didn't know about this?" The attendant felt uncomfortable. The girl was right, she should have been told.

"Well, don't you have an agent?"

"Yes, Tiphanie."

"Well, I would suggest you run this by her. In the meantime, your father still wants to..." The attendant stopped, hesitated, and corrected herself. "He wants to connect with you in the infirmary."

Sophie grabbed the floating pair of boots, rotated and poked them with her fingers to see how they behaved. On Earth, it was rather simple to know if an object was heavy: you lifted it from the ground. In space, things were quite different. You had to touch and push stuff to know. She slowly slipped her feet into the colorful boots and clipped them on. The attendant bent down to help.

Space travel was strictly forbidden by law for anyone under the age of twenty-one. Yet, Sophie was sitting in the craft, a testament to her tenacity. She was, by eight years, the youngest person to ever leave Earth's orbit.

Once Sophie's boots were on, the steward flipped a switch on their side, and the soles stuck to the floor. Sophie did not know if she liked or hated walking with the rounded soles. The curved heels allowed for the magnetic plates to easily lift from the ground with each step. The flat plates under her feet stuck like suction cups and were hard to pull off. On the first day of this long trip, walking around like a duck was hard. Now she had the hang of it but still felt stupid. Floating around the cabin would make more sense and was fun, but again, adults were adults.

"Can I get a tissue?" She refused to let her father “see” her this way. "Can he wait ten minutes?" The attendant smiled.

"We can walk slowly to the infirmary. Your father's light wasn't blinking, so there's no reason to think this is an emergency. Let's take our time, darling!" They slowly made their way to the back of the ship.

As Sophie moved, she alone saw the air warm around her. She looked at her hand and behind the hand the wall in the distance moved as if light bent around her fingers.

“You see this?”

Of course she did not.