Space Historian

I was going to write something new, but then I remembered that I still have old works to regurgitate... this is one of them. I wrote this about three years ago, I was hoping to use the concept to a better end but there are no plans in the works. Paragraphing could use work... oh well.

“Good morning Baxter.” A computerized voice chirped over the ships intercom.

I am Baxter a ten year old, I have no belly button. I am a test tube baby created for the purpose of being the first of several “space historians.” I’ve been groomed for great things. Even before leaving my Pyrex womb, the scientists that raised me would play me training tapes when I was no bigger than a thumbnail. After being born, if you can call it that, I was made to train for my mission every day and every night mission plans would be played in my head while I slept via a small transmitter in my brain. It was tough training for one so young but it was also necessary. Even though I would be traveling several times the speed of light it would still take me roughly eighty years to complete my mission. I’m sorry, that last statement is misleading. I won’t actually be traveling at any speed. Instead, a warp drive will pull my destination towards me while pushing my starting point further away. In this way my clocks will stay in sync with those on earth. My mission is simple enough. The ships pre-programmed flight path will take me away from the earth many times faster than the speed of light, stopping at various points. I’ll then point a high powered telescope at the earth. The telescope will record what it sees and log it in the ship's computer. The idea is that I’ll be able to record the earth’s complete history by racing away from it, viewing older and older waves of light. It’s quite simple really or at least my training videos made it seem so. I pointed my telescope at the earth. The on board computer did some quick thinking a determined that we were viewing the planet as it had been six thousand years before the start of my journey. Six thousand years is nothing in the grand scheme yet we were already looking into prehistoric times. The earth was a much greener place, coated with more ice and less water. The computer noted things far beyond basic geography. It calculated the current human population on various parts of the globe and noted the building of some of mans oldest known structures. The computer could tell the number of ants within any given square mile if anyone ever thought that an important enough question to ask.

“Computer, it’s time we're on our way again”

“Yes Baxter, activating warp drive now,” responded computer.

“Computer, In the future please refer to me as Captain Baxter,” I demanded.

“Only if I can be Colonel Computer.”

“Not a chance,” I snapped back, “That wouldn’t even make any sense!”

If that stupid A.I. thinks it can get an ego with me it has another thing coming!

I looked out a porthole and watched space bend and stretch around the ship as we warped further from earth. Flash forward six months. We came to a stop well outside the Milky Way and I pointed my telescope at the earth. Computer did some figuring and decided we were viewing the earth as it was just over sixty five million years in the past. What I saw was shocking. A slug-like race of machine augmented aliens had flocked to the earth and where having a worldwide dinosaur barbeque. It was an alien Bonnaroo on a global scale. The aliens drank, ate and danced away their cares leaving a mess of bones in their wake. What they didn’t eat they zapped with shrink rays so they could fit the leftovers aboard their ships. I had solved the mystery of the dinosaur’s extinction but there was no time to celebrate. We had stopped too near a super massive black hole and had been drifting nearer this whole time. It was too late to escape, our thrusters were too weak and the warp drive would take at least twenty minutes to charge.

“You could have warned me computer!” I screamed.

“That’s Colonel Computer to you.” the computer quipped back.

“Dammit all!” I shouted as the ship began to stretch towards the event horizon. I braced myself for extreme discomfort. I didn’t even fire the thrusters against the pull. The shipped was crushed into a singularity in no time flat.

“Okay, this is really starting to hurt, get you big butt off me and my ship,” I ordered my older brother Thomas.

Me and my friend Sal were flattened beneath him.

“Mom!” Thomas shouted, “Tell these space nerds to get their smelly box out of my room!”

“It’s a space ship, not a box.” I said, straining under Tom’s weight. “You would know that if you looked before sitting on it.”

“Go watch your ''Universe'' DVD's loser.” Thomas said as he stood up to let Sal and I climb out of the wreckage.

“Let’s go play somewhere else.” I told Sal, “I’ll even be the computer this time.”

I pulled the duct tape off my bellybutton then together Sal and I dragged the ship into the living room.