There’s this girl on a ship in outer space.
Her name’s Anna.
The year is 200200 (two hundred two hundred).
On Anna’s ship, it’s 2020 (twenty twenty)
Her parents moved there for work.
Unfortunately, they were born on a new ship too expensive to live on.
So, like many others, they migrated to an older, cheaper vessel.
The older ships where mainly tourist attractions.
People looking to get a sense of time and place.
They were poorly built, shabbily maintained, and, had lower living standards.
That being said.
A pound (adjusted for inflation) earned on a 2020 ship, fed a whole family on a 200200 ship.
So, that’s what Anna’s parents did.
They moved.
They worked.
They sent money home.
And sure…
Every now and then, the ship’s gravity would fail.
A couple hundred people bonked their heads on the glass dome.
It would take a whole day for everyone to be grounded; the gravity turned back on.
Promises were made, but….
After a while, you just had rope around your waist.
Anchor points became the norm.
Then one summer a crack appeared.
On the dome.
People were concerned.
They were told “a stray piece of meteorite struck the glass!”
It was not a surprise for many when the dome broke for good.
Thankfully, the ships gravity held but the truth is….
Those without personal oxygen suit suffocated.
Those with, mourned.
Then they went back to work.
“Hadn’t we been told the glass was meteorite proof?” Anna wondered.
Most people had forgotten.
“Hadn’t we been told not to purchase personal oxygen suits?”
“That the dome couldn’t be broken?”
Most people had forgotten.
Anna had not forgotten but, before long…
Everyone was on their tethered way.
Including Anna.
One summer she was playing with her sister Cat.
They were outside an abandoned building.
An alarmed turn on.
The gravity turned off.
Cat’s rope broke.
Anna’s didn’t.
Anna didn’t panic.
This was a common occurrence.
Jet packed patrolmen are immediately alerted upon rope breakages.
Or, there is usually one stationed near enough.
No patrolmen arrived.
Anna’s rope became taught and began reeling her towards the ground.
She had no tools to cut it.
Her teeth grew bloody from gnawing at it.
Cat climbed higher and higher, further and further away from Anna’s reach.
The gravity turned back on.
Cat came down.
She landed on her neck.
There where protests:
The rope was faulty!
There are too few patrolmen!
Where was the promised dome!
Promises were made from manufacturers of rope:
Better tethers!
More patrolmen!
A new dome promised by next year!
Ultimately…
For the people…
It was one less person.
They got used to it.
Anna couldn’t.
Instead, Anna made a list of questions:
Who is responsible for the rope?
Who is responsible for the patrolmen?
Who is responsible for the glass?
The person responsible for the rope blamed the patrolmen.
The person responsible for the patrolmen blamed the glass.
The person responsible for the glass blamed Selina.
When Anna came for them, they all pointed to the next person.
Their deaths were quick.
As quick as her sister’s.
Some had children.
Some didn’t.
Anna had past caring.
Selina was next.
It turns out Anna had remembered correctly.
The dome was meteorite proof.
This came as no real surprise.
Selina was the surprise.
She was a weathered woman with leathery skin.
Selina was the person who broke the dome.
She was the meteorite.
She ran.
She hid.
They looked and in the meanwhile…
They lied.
After a while they kept lying and stopped looking.
Anna started searching where they stopped.
Her journey ended at the outskirts of the world.
Where land meets metal is where she found Selina.
Selina knew of Anna.
She knew of Anna’s sister Cat.
She apologised and she told her story.
“There wasn’t always a dome…
The oxygen suits where the norm at one point.
The dome came after the great float.
The first time the gravity gave.
Thousands of people floated off into space.
There were only so many jet packs back then.
So they saved who they could.
Many, like my mother, just kept floating.
The dome was built.
Compensation paid.
The people moved on.
I couldn’t.
I couldn’t bare the indifference.
So I vowed to break the glass.
I said to myself:
If they will not remember, then they will know
I see now that this was wrong of me.
I recognise the look in your eyes.
I’m sorry for giving it to you.”
This was not the story Anna had expected.
Nor the person.
Nor the apology.
Nevertheless, she accepted it.
The two of them sat there.
Just for a moment.
Taking in the cosmos.
Sirens approaching.
The authorities had followed the trail of bodies left in Anna’s wake.
Anna knew there would be a reckoning for her actions.
As did Selina.
Both refused to allow it to be at the hands of this particular authority.
Both had family to see.
An alarm went off.
Gravity went away, and, for a moment, they floated together, weightless.
They cut their ropes, and punctured their oxygen tanks.
The dome promised had not been built yet so…
Into the cosmos they went.
This is the story I found and it’s still, I think, the story most people believe.
Their bodies are yet to be found.
My father on the other hand.
His body was found.
There was a cheap rope around his neck.
This is how Anna left him.
He had been known to cut corners, selling faulty tethers to poorer families.
Even back then I wasn’t particularly proud of him, but he was still my father.
“Would I still have that drive to kill if I did not believe that she was already dead?”
I ask myself this often.
In all honesty…
This was not the story, nor the characters, I expected to find on my quest for vengeance.
I have gotten used to it though.
This story.
Not in the way I was used to the dome over my head that had never cracked.
Not in the way I was used to the rope around my waist that had never broke.
Not in the way I was used to the gravity at the my feet that had never gave.
It’s a different kind of used to.
Relatives of Anna’s victims still seek revenge.
Some still believe she’s out there.
What are they to do with their murderous intent?
They struggle like I struggle.
So…
Every now and then…
I tell them the story of a girl on a ship in outer space named Anna.
I hope it helps.
Stories 