There is an Old Earth myth that says stars are the souls of unborn children.
As Lindi sits in front of the medical station’s viewing window, she wonders about those stars and the souls of those children.
She can’t remember if someone told her the myth, if she had read it or heard it in passing, but it is there in her consciousness now, its sudden relevance begging for attention. Are the unborn children miscarriages, Lindi wonders. Stillborns? Those who died in childhood? Are stars what becomes of all souls when their mortal lives end?
Lindi’s musings are interrupted by the opening whoosh of the door and the return of the attendant. She is older than Lindi, but not by much, and she smiles in a way that makes Lindi believe she is genuinely happy to assist in today’s events.
It makes sense, Lindi thinks, as the attendant reaches her. They are both of the sterilized generation. If anyone could understand what Lindi is about to do, it is this woman.
“Here you go,” the attendant says, handing over a slim but heavy cylinder, still cold from its cryopreservation. The woman glances around the private viewing room, noting the chairs left empty where parents and siblings, spouses and partners usually sit. “Would you like me to stay with you?” she asks kindly.
Lindi smiles to show she is grateful for the offer, but shakes her head. She made her peace with her family long ago. The attendant pats her shoulder tenderly and leaves, shutting the door behind her.
Lindi regards the cylinder. The middle is transparent, revealing a bundle of straws suspended in a clear liquid substance. If Lindi peers intently, she thinks she can see the little black dots inside the straws marking her ova, her eggs.
She wonders how many of them there are. She only had the procedure done once, back when she was fourteen and had first entered puberty. Lindi had been born at the tail-end of the mandatory sterilization period, when humankind was still in the process of terraforming new planets and building civilian space stations for their out-of-control population. The world couldn’t afford any spontaneous pregnancies. Girls had their eggs frozen and their tubes tied. Boys stored their sperm and received vasectomies. Then the population stabilized, and Earth was able to make new homes on stations and planets and allow natural pregnancies to occur once again, mere decades after Lindi and an entire generation had been sterilized.
On her eighteenth birthday, Lindi remembers receiving a notice from the government informing her that her eggs were now available to use, store, or destroy. Like most teenagers on the cusp of adulthood, Lindi chose to leave her eggs be. She had been about to attend university, looking forward to living aboard a space station for the first time in her life. She had no time or thoughts for children.
Twenty years later, and now Lindi cannot stop thinking of children. She rolls the cylinder in her hands. She wonders if stars can also be created by the potential souls of unborn children, children who existed only in the hearts and minds of others, as unfertilized eggs or lonely sperm, tiny dots suspended in straws.
What is the life of a star anyway? What do stars do? Lindi knows the science well enough, but she can’t remember what the myth said about the star children. Do they watch people go about their lives? Is a falling star a child being born? What about the rest of space? Are the stars friends with suns? Do they play in the orbit of planets? Can they visit a nebula?
Lindi looks out the viewing window into the black of infinite space and thinks of what she wants—for herself, for her children, in the next five minutes, and in the next fifty years.
She looks and wonders what it would be like to be a star.
Lindi gently inserts the cylinder into its slot on the window’s console. She hears the machinery inside whirling and clanking as the cylinder is sent to the outer port. The viewing screen in front of her changes, lighting up and sharpening, preparing to provide her with a clear and unobstructed sight. A button lights up green on the console, waiting to be pushed.
Lindi hovers her hand over the button, hesitates a moment, and then presses it.
Air pressure whooshes from somewhere in the console, and then the viewing screen bursts into a shining aura erupting from the outer walls. Speckles of the cylinder’s substances react to the vacuum of space as chemicals freeze, boil, and break down, exploding into sparkling mist that catches the lights being projected from the station in a swirling rainbow prism. Its luminescence penetrates the window, bathing Lindi in a glow that grows slowly dimmer as the shimmering mass moves away from the station on its journey into the infinite reaches of space.
Lindi watches what remains of her eggs fly away into the vacuum, and she is surprised to find herself crying, overwhelmed with a dichotomous marriage of grief and joy. In a way, she feels like a mother, watching her children go forth into the world, into the universe, and she is proud. They will become greater than humans, living a grand and purposeful life Lindi herself could never provide. They will dance among planets, her children.
Her stars.
About the author:
Catherine Tavares is a speculative fiction author of the sci-fi and fantasy variety and a member of both SFWA and Codex. An avid reader, she spends most of her time haunting the shelves of her local library, but she can on occasion be persuaded to try a new recipe or work on a new knitting project. You can read her work and learn more about her at www.catherinetavares.com.
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