Chapter 2
1567 Words
Chapter Two
Daniel watched as the stars disappeared around them on the view screen. Instead of individual stars, they looked like long streaks of white light. They weren’t just going light-speed, no they were far past that. They were going Captain Daniel speed. It was the way he liked it.
“Ben, you have the bridge,” Daniel said.
Now that Daniel didn’t have to worry about getting anything set up, he decided to wander around. According to the counsel, they had five days of travel before reaching the system. That meant he had some time to enjoy himself, or at least see some of the other crew.
“Yes, Captain,” Ben said.
Daniel strolled over to the door. When he reached it, it automatically opened, disappearing into the top of the door hatch. He stepped through it, took a deep breath, and walked to the elevator. The Ghost wasn’t a large ship. There weren’t hundreds of people onboard. It was a small, exploratory vessel. Three levels only. The bridge, of course, was on level three.
“Second level,” Daniel said.
The elevator started moving. Then it stopped. It didn’t take too long for the elevator to reach any of the three floors.
Daniel stepped out of the elevator and meandered down the hall. He had a yo-yo in his hand, and he began to play with it. It rolled down the string, then back up. He liked yo-yos. He wished he knew more tricks than making it go up and down and the occasional walk the dog. But he didn’t.
He reached the door he was looking for. There was a small black name plaque on it with white letters depicting Katie. Underneath her name it said Psychologist.
Daniel grabbed a sharpie out of his pocket, crossed out Psychologist, and wrote shrink next to it. He knocked.
The door opened.
Daniel stepped inside.
Katie was behind the desk. Her wavy blonde hair fell to her shoulders and her bright blue eyes sparkled in the dim light. She was pretty. Was she always blonde hair and blue eyes? Daniel couldn’t recall. It wasn’t like he paid much attention.
“Captain Daniel.” Katie smiled.
“The one and only.” He raised his eyebrows.
“What brings you here?”
Daniel shrugged. “Several of my crew tell me that I need a shrink.”
“A shrink?” she asked.
“A psychologist. Isn’t that what you are now? All official-like and such?”
“I have a degree in history with a minor in psychology, remember?” Katie said.
“Sure, I’ll pretend I was listening when you said that.”
Katie rolled her eyes.
“Anyway, the door says shrink.”
She frowned. “It says psychologist.”
“Tomato, tomahto.”
She shook her head.
“Besides, I see they didn’t let you put Historian on the door.”
Katie took a deep breath, then exhaled loudly through her nose. “Yeah, apparently Space Historians aren’t a thing.”
“They totally should be.”
“Right? There’s so much you can compare from history to planets we explore.”
Daniel scratched his chin. “And you totally missed the mission where we got to see intelligent life.”
She clenched her jaw. “Yeah. I’m not too happy about that. Apparently, I had some history to catch up on.”
Daniel laughed. “Well, it’s good to have you back.”
She smiled at him. “It’s good to be back.”
“Well, even if the Space Force doesn’t want to recognize your history degree, I’ll always refer to you as my Chief Historian Shrink.”
Katie raised her brows. Wrinkles appeared on her forehead as she stared at him. “I’ll take Chief Historian Psychologist.”
“Chief Historian Psychologist?” Daniel scratched his eyebrow. “That’s a bit of a mouthful. I think I’ll stick with shrink.”
“Is there a reason you’re here, besides to aggravate me?”
“Yeah, I was told I need to see a shrink about my experiences on the planet with intelligent life.”
“And how does that make you feel?” Katie asked.
“I feel you’d have a much better understanding if you’d of been here during that event.”
“I agree,” Katie said, “but I did go through all the files you catalogued of the adventure.”
“Is that enough to get a full understanding of what we went through?” Daniel asked.
“Not entirely, but it’s a start, and I do have a degree in psychology, so if there’s anything that happened during that adventure that you need to talk about, I’m all ears.”
“I was held prisoner.”
“Have you ever been a prisoner before?” Katie asked.
“I’ve always felt like a prisoner. When I worked at the shipyard, even my job felt like a prison. The hot, humid conditions, and the fact that I knew I was too intelligent for labor work. I just knew in my heart that I was meant for more.”
“And that made you feel like a prisoner?”
“Yeah. I definitely felt like a prisoner.”
“But you actually weren’t.”
“No, I suppose not. Though it wasn’t like I could just leave. I am an Unwanted. I was sent off of earth to join the Space Academy. I wasn’t wanted on earth. And I haven’t really felt wanted anywhere.”
Katie wore a pair of black horn-rimmed glasses. She pushed them down her nose as she made notes on a small legal pad. “Did you ever meet your parents?”
Daniel shook his head. “No. I’ve never been to earth. I grew up in the Space Academy, and I went from there straight to being a captain.”
“You didn’t serve on a ship before becoming a captain?”
Daniel shook his head. “No. After working at the shipyard for many years, and doing night classes at the academy for ship training, they offered me several positions on various ships. I was offered the position of a crewman on several occasions. But I always turned them down. I knew that serving under a clone captain as merely a crew member wouldn’t be fulfilling enough. I knew how they treated other Unwanted. No.” Daniel shook his head. “I kept taking the captain exam.”
“Did you keep failing it?” Katie asked.
Daniel shook his head again. “No. I never failed it.”
“But you suggest that you kept taking it?”
“I took the exam thirty times.”
“Why did you continue to take it if you passed?”
“It isn’t enough to pass it. Not for an Unwanted. I needed to make a perfect score to be taken seriously.”
“Do all the clone captains make a perfect score?”
“No. Less than one percent do. But they don’t need to. They pass it once and are given a ship. I had to do better than all the clone captains.”
“Have you ever thought about going back to earth to meet your parents now that you’re the captain of your own ship?”
Daniel rubbed his chin. “I’ve played with the idea in my head a time or two.”
“Do you plan to one day?” she asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Daniel met Katie’s eyes. “I am an Unwanted, Katie. My parents didn’t want me. I was conceived as an accident. I was an inconvenience. If we were still in the twenty-first century, I would have been killed. I can’t look into the face of the people who so easily discarded me like I was an inconvenience to raise.”
“If they saw what you became. A captain of an exploratory spaceship…they would be proud?”
“Would they?” Daniel asked. “Would they be proud? Would they even care? They could have reached out to me after all these years. They haven’t. I am a mistake that happened one night. After the surgery that removed me from my mother’s womb, I was sent off to an artificial womb to grow, then sent to space to grow up working in a shipyard, they completely forgot about me. I was nothing more than a bunch of discarded cells to them. Even if they claimed to be proud of me, I couldn’t look them in the face.”
Katie nodded. “Do you think growing up without parents causes you to reach out to any connection that is available, even if it is alien life?”
“What?” Daniel asked.
“Well, you are here to talk about the last mission you went on, and your struggle to come to terms with the fact there is intelligent life out there in the universe.”
“Maybe someone out there wants me. Maybe someone out there needs me. It isn’t anyone on earth.”
“And now that you’ve found intelligent life on another planet. Does it fill the void in your heart?” Katie asked.
“I don’t know.” Daniel leaned back in his chair. “Some part of me is excited. I want to discover more intelligent life. I want to find more people I can connect with.”
“Since you never had your parents to connect with,” Katie interrupted.
Daniel shrugged. “But another part of it is questioning my existence, and the existence of humans. I am a religious person, Katie. At least, I always thought I was. But after coming face to face with intelligent life out there…I haven’t picked up my Bible. I don’t know what to make of anything anymore. Why am I here? What is my purpose?”
Katie set her pen down and leaned back in her chair. “I don’t know what to tell you, Daniel. As humans, we have always asked the question what we are doing here. What is our purpose? Perhaps our purpose is to explore. I am agnostic myself, and I cannot answer the question of religion for you. That is a question you must answer for yourself. Don’t let anyone pressure you one way or another. I would suggest you talk to the ship priest to see if he can help you sort out your thoughts.”
Daniel nodded. “I will do that. Thank you, Katie.”
“Come back anytime. My door is always open.”
Daniel tilted his head. “No, it’s not. It was closed. I had to knock.”
Katie rolled her eyes.
Daniel grinned, stood, then walked out the door.
- Writer
