Daily Flash Fiction Challenge

Note: Per Wikipedia, “A generation ship is a hypothetical type of interstellar ark starship that travels across great distances between stars at a speed much slower than the speed of light. Since such a ship might take thousands of years to reach even nearby stars, the original occupants of a generation ship would grow old and die, leaving their descendants to continue travelling.”


“Hope?”

“Yes, Keeper?”

Keeper dresses quickly in his atmosphere suit. He has been doing this since he was nine. At twenty, it is second nature to him.

“How long ‘til we get to Sagan IV?”

“Approximately nine hundred sixty-eight years and five months.”

Keeper sighs. “I’ll be dead long before we get there.”

“Yes.”

“What will you do when I die?” he asks curiously. This is the first time he has ever asked, though his predecessors had eventually gotten around to it sooner or later.

“When you die, another keeper will maintain the ship and tend to the passengers in cryo-stasis.”

Keeper nods and puts on his helmet, flipping down the tinted triangular faceplate. “How many keepers have there been?”

“Three hundred nineteen.”

His gasp is audible. “Don’t you ever get . . . sad?”

This is a question none of his predecessors have asked. For nanoseconds, no answer is forthcoming. There is nothing to say, because how can something built to simulate emotion, but not feel it, feel . . . sad?

“Yes.”

Keeper nods again. “I would, too.” He pats the bulkhead reassuringly, then gathers up his tool-kit and exits his quarters. “I wish I could make you happy.”

“You do,” simply comes out, as if programmed to. Yet it is as heartfelt as something without a heart could make it.

He pauses in the corridor and touches a sensor-panel, smiling. Strange that—having never seen another live human, let alone one smiling—smiling comes as naturally to him as breathing.

“You make me happy, too,” he says warmly, letting his hand linger. Inasmuch as a ship can appreciate touch, it . . . feels. . . .

If I had eternity of his touch . . . it still would not be enough.

If I had breath, it would catch.

If I had a heart, it would break.

If I were human I would—

Knock-Knock-Knock.  (13+) Use the first person voice, but hide the I. . . . #1548092 by beetle

Super  (E) Who saves the superheroes? Input appreciated. #1669395 by beetle

Tower At The Edge of All  (18+) "The worlds were renewed every morning, for I resided in the Tower of Winds." #1669429 by beetle

"We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realise that we are apes."--Richard Dawkins