Leaving the Nest — Part Six
By Robin Pond
I wake slowly, lying still for several minutes as the memories of my sculpting, my previous childhood, friends and family, trickle away. Easing out of my pod I set out to my assigned spot in navigation, where I survey the bank of monitors, displaying the outside of the ship from a myriad of different angles.
A few of my colleagues are already there, in their assigned spots, and they greet me cheerfully. I return their greetings, remembering each of their names, each of their distinctive characteristics. They are my family on this journey, the journey of a life-time, the journey which will greatly exceed any of our lifetimes. Mr. Wilde has told me, “Quem, where you’re headed, is seventy-four light years away. Even with all our technological advances, those of you whom we create are still mortal, slaves to the constraints of your own genetic clocks. Despite your ability to remain in stasis for parts of your journey, you’ll not survive long enough to witness the ship arrive at its destination. But your progeny will survive and your race will flourish on this distant world.”
So the journey is all that remains for me. But I now gratefully comprehend how wondrous this journey can be. The main monitor displays the view from the front of the ship, the view of what we are approaching, the final dwarf planet of our solar system, a mottled beige orb with ridges and depressions and shifting blocks of frozen gases. Even at this great distance from any main energy source there is constant activity, the shifting ices reflecting faint sunlight, winds blowing across the surface. I marvel at this frozen world’s rugged majesty as we cruise past. And as we sail farther away, adrift in interstellar winds, I observe the spiralling galaxy out through the darkness, an ever-beckoning beacon.
Robin Pond is a Canadian writer of plays and prose fiction. His mystery novel, Last Voyage, was published in 2018 and in the last several years he has published numerous speculative short stories in various magazines and anthologies, including Ginger which was voted Best Steampunk Short Story in the 2024 Critters Annual Readers Poll. Robin’s sci fi novella, Assimilation, and full-length novel, Canaan Within, are both available through Amazon.
Copyright © 2025 Robin Pond