Chapter 1 – Restless

In the darkness of his room, eleven year old Alan Tagee opened his eyes for what seemed like the hundredth time. He rolled over in his compact foldaway bed, rose up on an elbow, and whispered, “Time.”

A small section of the wall dimly lit up and showed “0510” in bold fluorescent green numerals. “My stars,” he whispered noting the time, “Come on 0700.” There was a tone of anxiety in his voice. The soft glow from the monitor was just enough to show the outline of his small bedroom. Just beyond his bed he could barely make out the shape of his desk and small workbench. The inteli-drone he was working on perched silently on its stand. Other than that there was enough space to walk between the bed and the door. He noted that there was a deeper blackness where the door should have been indicating that it was open.

 “Nightlight.” Alan whispered and the whole ceiling glowed faintly illuminating the room and his twin sister, Lana, standing in the doorway. Even in the dim light, Alan could see that she was already dressed in her standard issue tan coveralls.

“You can’t sleep either?” Lana followed her question from the doorway to the foot of Alan’s bed where she promptly sat down with a bounce. Her voice had the same anxious tone as Alan’s and it was readily apparent she was also having trouble sleeping. She sat there with her hands clasped to keep them from fidgeting.

 “Nope!” Alan sat straight up in his bed and whispered back, “I can’t wait for school today.” He thought for a moment as if he couldn’t believe what he had just said and then rephrased his statement, “I mean the school trip today – to the Eclipse.”

“Me neither,” Lana agreed nodding her head, “I’ve never seen the inside of the Eclipse - except in pictures, of course. I’m so excited I can’t sleep.”

“The Eclipse is the most magnificent star ship in the whole universe!” Alan began, “It sure beats the Wanderer by a bunch!”

“Hey, I like our home.” Lana said defensively, “The Wanderer is a great place to live, but it – it’s not – it’s just not the Eclipse – that’s all.” then changing the subject. “Anyway, I can’t sleep and it’s almost lighttime in the park.  I’m going to see Hawk.  Wanna come?”

“Sure,” Alan answered eagerly, “I’m not sleeping anyway. Just give me a minute to get dressed.”

#

At first appearance, Alan and Lana seemed to be your normal red-headed eleven year-old twins. Normal for them is living on an interstellar starship named the Wanderer. Their whole lives have been spent inside a giant cylinder.

Their home, the Wanderer, is a multi-generational starship hurtling toward the Tau Ceti planetary system in hope of settling Tau Ceti Two, the second planet from the star. The Wanderer is massive at two and a half kilometers in length and a kilometer in diameter at the farm and living area sections. The voyage is intended to last for eight hundred years, so the three thousand crewmembers of the Wanderer are kept in suspended animation except for three hundred that are awake to keep the ship operational. Every twenty years a new ‘shift’ is awakened and, after a one year overlap period, the current shift is put to sleep.

Lana and Alan live in shift ten so they will complete the first cycle and shift one will be awakened to start the second awakening cycle. This will be the first shift transition where the ending shift original members and the starting shift original members will be about the same age. All of the other shift transitions will have an approximate gap of twenty years.

Because of the length of the trip and the limited resources, the only children allowed to be born are to replace crew members lost to the hazards of interstellar travel including suspended animation mishaps. Alan and Lana were the first of fifty-seven children born on shift ten. In the last year of shift ten, they will have to decide to chance the suspended animation chambers to sleep for two hundred years or stay over into shift one and grow older.

#

Alan emerged a few minutes later from his bedroom dressed in his usual tan coveralls that were standard issue for all the children on the Wanderer. He carried a half-meter hover disc under his arm. The pair quietly made their way through the small living room of their apartment picking their way through the sparse furnishings in the darkness.  They reached the entry door with no problem and as Lana reached to slide the door open, the lights in the living room suddenly came on! The pair of red-heads looked at each other as that could only mean one thing.

“Now what do you suppose two eleven year old twins would be off to at this hour of the morning?” an older, louder, authoritative voice boomed behind them.

Lana squealed and turned, “Daddy, you scared me! We were trying to not wake you or mom.”

“Well, you didn’t do a very good job of it – did you?” Tags asked the pair.  Their dad, Jacob Alan ‘Tags’ Tagee, a shuttle pilot and Council Member stood tall in front of Alan and Lana with his hands on his hips.

“No sir, I guess we didn’t.” Alan answered, “We couldn’t sleep, so we thought we would go see Hawk before breakfast.”

“But why in the universe would you not be able to sleep?” Tags asked holding back a smile. He knew that the twins had been talking about the trip to the Eclipse since it was announced two weeks earlier.

“Have you forgotten?” Lana replied, “Today is the school trip to the Eclipse! This is the first time ever in our lives we will have gone outside of the Wanderer – out into space itself! We have never seen space other than on monitors.” It was true that the one thing the Wanderer did not have was windows – or even viewports. It was just too much of a risk in the unforgiving harshness of interstellar space. In that respect, they envied the people still living on Earth. They could pick any clear night and look up and see millions of stars twinkling in the open atmosphere.

“You’re not actually going to be out in space,” Tags corrected, “you will be in a shuttle the whole time. At least, I hope so.”

“But the shuttle will have windows.” Alan stated, “We will be able to see stars firsthand.”

“I suppose that would be exciting.” Tags commented, “I remember my first time. But I was already a student at the University back on Earth when I spent a semester on the moon in a work study program.  By the way, while you are in the shuttle, please remember to be kind to the pilot.” Tags looked at the two with a big smile.

Alan and Lana looked at each other and a feeling of dread came over them, “No!” Alan burst in, “How could you? Why can’t Ian be our pilot?  I like him.”

“So you don’t like me?” Tags grabbed his chest, “I’m hurt.”

“Sorry daddy,” Lana responded matter-of-factly, “You’re our dad.  Dads aren’t supposed to go on field trips with their kids.  It’s a school rule, you know.”

“Nice try.” Another, more feminine voice came from behind Tags, not buying the school rule reference, “Your father has Council business on the Eclipse so he was drafted to be the pilot."

“Ian will be the co-pilot, though,” Tags interjected, “Besides, I will be in the cockpit the whole time and you won’t even know I’m there.”

“Okay this time.” Lana said, “But just stay in the cockpit.”

“I promise,” Tags said holding up his right hand, “Unless you start a riot that I have to put down.”

“Dad,” Alan exclaimed, “That wasn’t my fault! Id just took off on his own and started chasing the Ustophus boys.”

“Id?” asked Molly, their mother, “You named your – your – whatever you call it.”

“Inteli-drone,” Alan answered, “It’s a standard drone like everyone uses, except Rak and I added some new reasoning circuits. Besides, they had it coming – they were picking on Rak.”

“And that is why it is sitting on your workbench,” Molly sternly told Alan adding, “And it will stay there until I am satisfied that it is not a danger to anyone.”

“Yes ma’am,” Alan replied, “I’m working on it.”

“Can we go see Hawk now?” Lana interrupted before Alan said something that would set mom off even more, “It’s almost lighttime in the park.”

“I guess it’s alright,” Tags replied, “meet us in the East dining room at 0700 – and don’t be late.”

As the door closed behind the twins, Molly turned to Tags, “Well?”

“Well, what?” Tags answered confident that he knew what Molly was referring to.

“I think it’s time the twins knew the truth;” Molly said adding, “Don’t you?”

“I have been thinking the same thing lately,” Tags replied somberly, “Sooner or later they will find out anyway.”

“They both have been showing signs,” Molly said, “Just last week Lana was watching some butterflies flying in a single file formation across the corn field.”

“Is that so unusual?” Tags had to ask.

“As a matter of fact, it is,” Molly answered, “butterflies don’t fly in formation.”

“Tonight,” Tags affirmed, “after dinner. We will sit down with them after this trip is out of the way.”