Where Did The Galaxy Go

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Most nights, the noises from the farm and woods augmented a young Kaye Hira’s slumber. Everything else from civilian Darter-flyovers to a camel drone up the road could set her off into wartime-like alertness. She grew up a naturally-light sleeper and a wailer, waking her family at odd hours of the morning with the effectiveness of a raid siren. No one liked it, but the habit evolved into something practical over the years.

She was up at the crack of dawn with the dogs and roosters. She was up in a hot minute at the first sign of augment-wolfdogs in pitch black when they came to poach the farm’s sheep and pen-trained Moa. She was the reliant one built-like-an-oxen, capable of doing roof work after that time her father fell off the second story and badly bruised his spine.

In the Hira household, Kaye was the youngest and yet the one responsible for all the chores. Two older sisters and older brother; they all left four years ago to pursue college and in-demand defense industry jobs deep in the human core worlds. That meant Kaye looked after the farm, her graying mother, and her hunched-over father.

To say she enjoyed the repetitive and dull farm work would be far from the truth. But she didn’t complain; most of the time. There was at least a six standard-year gap between herself and her siblings. And with the little income they were sending back to the farm, Kaye could at least be happy to have a refurbished farming drone fleet at her disposal and enough money to continue affording the augmentation treatments her parents started her on before she was even born.

The fourth child in the family, first in five generations to receive chemical augmentations as a Gattaca-baby. Her father was a near-cripple, her mother was getting too old for anything but household tasks. Kaye practically ran the farm, and at fourteen-years-old UEG-equivalent, she took pride in being able to draw a profit and then some. She had a chiseled physique, and an even sharper mind honed on early adoption of advanced mathematics and even some alien linguistics when the raptor-bird-aliens came knocking wanting to trade religion and wares for crops.

Her father referred to her as his “baby elephant,” while her mother called her “the family’s diamond Spartan.” She excelled at school and the neighbors would gush about her over gossip while in town. But underneath the veneer of praise and accomplishment, Kaye felt more like a prized pet than a valued contributor to the household, all the other factors withstanding.

She knew she played a vital role in keeping the farm running and profitable but sometimes that was just it, as if all she could be was a glorified housekeeper. Her siblings were out seeing the galaxy, and not once had Kaye visited space. She had the endowed-genetics for it, maybe even the talent to be a freelance cargo pilot. But she was left to care for the farm, and possibly their parents as they grew older and older.