A Thousand Words
Breakaway + 10 years 11 months
John quietly closed the bedroom door and breathed a sigh of relief. All the kids were abed, and actually asleep. Eliza was such a trooper, sleeping through her older brothers’ bedtime antics. David had dropped off fairly quickly as well since he had been playing soccer in the hall until bath time with Etienne Fraser. Stephen, long since the one dubbed ‘he who never sleeps’ had been the last to succumb. John had already learned that if he lay down with Stephen, that the father was much more likely to drop off to sleep than the son. And tonight, he was on his own. Helena wouldn’t be in until nearly midnight. She had taken Kelly with her, standing second shift this evening as she eased her way back from maternity leave. Second shift was usually a bit quieter.
He looked around the small living area, wondering what insanity had prompted them to have four children, all still pre-schoolers. He remembered a time when he had told Jean he didn’t want children because his career took up too much of his time. Well, his workload had only increased, and Jean was long gone, their marriage stressed to the breaking point over his career and in this improbable and dangerous place, the children were here. And he couldn’t imagine being without them, the bright and brilliant Stephen, inquisitive David, who took everything apart, smiling Eliza and even dear little Kelly, so tiny, who had stolen his heart at first sight.
He’d been so worried about Kelly, so young to go through those operations. He was of course relieved that this mutation was something so easily correctable and relatively minor, but she was his little girl and he couldn’t stand the thought of her being in pain or scared. Helena had tried to assure him that she was neither scared and the pain was minor in a baby so young, but he had spent as much time with Kelly as possible as she recovered.
John settled in at his desk and called up information on the computer. There was always work left over after a day in Command Center. The advent of children had ended marathon work sessions, but there was still more on his plate than a regular eight hour shift. He did now save certain reports to read after the kids were asleep.
Most of the reports in his inbox were routine. Just projects he wanted to be kept up to speed on. After ten years together, the Alphans knew their jobs and how to do them. It was a matter of survival. He smiled at the short report from the team currently studying the gaggle of little ships that had followed Sandra’s Eagle home that time. Basically, there was still no sign of what made them tick.
He moved through the reports quickly, then glanced back through the queue to see if there was anything from the saved reports previously viewed that needed his attention. One from Sandra caught his eye, from months ago. It was brief and to the point. Per his instructions, the files under consideration had been vaulted with password until further decisions were made.
He frowned and stared at the screen remembering the discussion. He had a lot more questions than answers about those documents. Helena had been concerned about people’s reaction to messages from home. And, was it really their home? Sandra’s message had been from her mother, a woman who had died when Sandra was a teen and shouldn’t be sending messages to Sandra after Breakaway. And why did Helena have no messages? She seemed to think it was because she wasn’t on Alpha at Breakaway in that alternate reality. He shuddered at the thought. Being here with without Helena would be some kind of nightmare.
And who had sent him a message? He had left no one behind. His parents were long dead, and they’d been all the family he had, his father’s family lost to the holocaust, his mother’s parents gone when he was just a child. His brother lost in Viet Nam around the same time as his grandparents’ death. And Jean gone too. He had more family here, now, than he’d had since he was Stephen’s age.
Alan had also been noticeably upset about the message he had received. And unusually reticent about what had been in the message. He had been as adamant as Helena and Sandra that the messages remain concealed from the rest of Alpha.
Still. He sat back and looked around the quiet room. He checked the time. Helena wouldn’t be home for another couple of hours. He wanted to know.
He wasn’t the computer whiz that Sandra was. But he did have a full range of command overrides at his disposal. Within ten minutes he was staring at the video file marked with his name. Sandra had said the video files were some of the ones they had the hardest time decoding. But here it was. He took a deep breath and opened the file.
The background was so familiar, as was the woman sitting in the wicker chair, sunlight from the window that faced the lake streamed through, illuminating her with golden sunlight. Then she began to speak.
“It’s been five years and I still feel like you’re just away on a very long mission. When the phone rings, my first thought is that it will be you, telling me you need to be picked up at the airport.” She smiled. “And I should bring the ‘vette for you to drive home.” She looked out the window. “I’ve taken good care of it, just like you told me. I make sure I drive it once a week to keep the seals limber or the hoses lubed or whatever it is. I get the oil changed. I went to a show last month in San Antonio and drove it. I find I like driving it. It makes me feel close to you.”
She looked back at the camera. “Whenever you talked about Alpha, your eyes always shone so
bright. There was so much
enthusiasm. ‘A city on the moon’ you
called it. Someday we would walk among
the stars. And there you are now. And I’m here.
“They tell me it would be a miracle if you survived. Well, I prefer to believe in that
miracle. I hope you’re somewhere living
in your city on the moon, walking among the stars. And I hope you’ve found someone to remind you to have fun upon
occasion, to take a deep breath and relax.
You can be so intense sometimes, so focused. Not that that’s a bad thing.
But you’ve got to pace yourself my darling, just to give yourself and
those around you a break.
“I do miss you so.
But I know you are doing exactly what you love and I could never begrudge
you your dream, just as you always supported my own dreams, even when I was
certain I’d never be more than a starving artist.
“I painted something for you,” she glanced to her right
and up on the wall but the camera didn’t change. “I like to think you have a future out there and I had to get
this on canvas. I can’t think of you as
dead. You just had too much life to
live. So I prefer to think of you like
this.” She gestured with her hand and
looked straight into the camera.
“Goodbye my love. Find
happiness.”
The camera froze on her face then transitioned to the
painting on the wall. It was a large
painting, and filled the screen. It
showed a scene that could have been part of the conservatory on the
surface. There was a profusion of
plants in the foreground with a starry backdrop behind seen through the criss
cross of slender beams. A man stood
staring out the window, dark hair, beige uniform with black sleeve, the profile
was his. He held a small child, also in
the standard Alphan uniform. She had
curly blonde hair and was pointing at the brightest star in the distance. At the man’s side, a little boy with brown
hair leaned against his legs also looking out at the stars.
“Daddy?”
John started. It was almost as if the painting had come to life. “Steve. What are you doing up?”
“I need a drink of water. What’s that?” The little boy looked at the picture on the screen. “Is that you and me and ‘Liza?”
“It sure looks like us, doesn’t it?”
“I like it. Did Mommy paint it?” Stephen climbed into his father’s lap to get a better look.
“No, she didn’t, son. Someone I knew a long time ago on Earth did.”
“How did they know what we look like?”
“I guess she must have seen it in a dream.” He gave the painting a last look, understanding completely the message Jean was sending him through her work.
“Let’s get you that drink, then get you back to bed.” John stood, lifting his son into the air.
“An Eagle ride back to bed?”
John swooped the boy through the air. “Of course.”
The child giggled and John threw him over his shoulder and reached down to close the screen then they swooped off toward the bathroom. Jean’s wish for him had come true. He had found happiness.
September 2006
ECL