Emily Shimako sat on the porch with a pair of binoculars. It was nine o'clock at night, and she was scanning the night sky. At least, that's what she'd intended to do, but instead she was sitting in her chair, gazing up at the stars, thinking.
As far as space exploration went, the news from the last several months had been all bad. The United States was closing down its space shuttle fleet, and seemingly closing down its space exploration plants entirely. China, on the other hand, was proceeding full steam ahead, with plans to put a manned space station on the moon, and probably one on Mars, too.
Where was the Federation of Planets...that great human achievement described in her favorite TV series, the classic Star Trek, going to come from?
Although Star Trek had gone off the air 40 years ago, to be replaced in the 90s and 00s with other space shows, Star Trek had still been the first science fiction show she'd ever seen, as it had been a favorite of her parents. Captain Kirk had been - and still was, for that matter, her favorite character, with Sulu a close second, although he really didn't have all that much to do in most of the episodes....
After Star Trek her parents had introduced her to Star Trek: the Next Generation and Voyager, but she'd never liked them as well. In Star Trek, mankind had seemingly worked together to solve all their problems, and the Romulans and the Klingons had been made, if not friends, at least noo enemies. The adventures were adventures of exploration. But in Star Trek: TNG and Voyager...the episodes were seemingly all about war, death and destruction...as it seemed there was no peace anywhere in the universe...that was just too sad a future to contemplate.
She'd been looking forward to Star Trek: Enterprise, which was supposed to tell of the early years of the Federation, but she'd been disappointed in that, too. She'd wanted to see a show set on Earth, that had explained how the star ships had been designed and built, and the United Federation of Planets created. Instead it was just more of the same. And they'd played fast and loose with history. Mr. Spock was supposed to have been the first Vulcan on a Federation starship, not a Vulcan woman named T'pol!
Emily sighed. All that had been fiction. And she'd thought she'd been born just at the right time to see fiction becoming fact. The International Space Station should have been a stepping stone to bigger and better things. Instead, it was going to be a monument to futility...
Well, maybe she was just being too pessimistic. There were a few civilian space companies out there...like Virgin Galactic and Space X. People weren't going to give up on the desire for space flight just because the US government was wimping out.
What it did mean, Emily knew, was that competition to become an astornaut was going to be tough - tougher than it had ever been before.
Which is why she didn't have time to waste, in her schooling or in her curricular activities. She didn't have dreams...she had ambitions...and if she was going to make her ambition come true, she'd have to work very, very hard at it.
It was nice, she thought, that she'd met two friends, Amber and Trelane, who felt the same way she did, about their ambitions. She'd always known she was unusual, having decided at so very young an age what she wanted to be when she grew up...it was nice to finally discover that she wasn't that unusual...that there were other girls who were willing to work just as hard as she was...but who were perfectly willing to spend an hour or so biking or watching an old black and white move with giant ants or moths or even (so gross) tarantulas.
Emily picked up her binoculars and focused them on the moon. "I'll walk there, one day," she thought to herself, and knew that it was true.
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