Fast Cars and Intergalactic Speed Dating

31: Stowaways

Richard had been on the Beyma for quite a while, but he hadn't been on vacation. From the moment he'd come aboard, he had been focused on creating an avenue to solar power for the ship. It hadn't exactly been a metaphorical walk in the park. Nor had it left him much time for actual walks in the spaceship's greenhouse, its equivalent to a park.

Now that they had put the solar work behind them, the first order of business was to contact their families, which they did using Aialo-El's communicator. Simple text messages were all they could muster, with nary an emoji in sight. They all advised their nearest friends and family members that they were "away on urgent business-related travel," which was accurate in its very loosest interpretation.

Having put this chore behind them, the humans devoted their free time to panicking about a sudden, unplanned space flight. Any time leftover was free for them to use as they saw fit.

Richard was now familiar enough with many parts of the ship that he was comfortable wandering on his own. As long as he could access one of the nav pods, he could find his way back to the residential wing, to the bridge, or to the dining facilities.

On the first day they spent in space, after a very fitful night's lack of sleep, Richard wandered the halls of the ship with his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He was musing about how the smallest of things could completely change a life forever.

Everyone knew that, of course. The theory of it, at least.

One glance at a text message while driving, and your life could change forever.

Take your eyes off of your child for a moment.

Leave a campfire unattended.

But days and years were not made up of tragic, life-altering games of chance. Every day was full of seemingly inconsequential choices that could mean nothing at all...

...unless they meant everything.

For example: once, as a uni student, Richard had met a pretty strawberry blonde in an introductory art course. She had laughed so hard at his strangely proportioned figure drawings that she had snorted. He'd fallen in love with that ridiculous laugh and that long, messy braid and that absolutely brutal sense of humor.

Had he chosen photography instead of drawing, would he ever have met Charlise?

And his career. The seed of his entire career had been planted when Richard was only ten years old. His grandfather had bought him a telescope for his birthday, along with a book on astronomy. That book, with its kid-friendly articles and gorgeous pictures, had pointed him toward one class after another and before he knew it—well, after more than a fair sum of all nighters, nearly lethal finals, and a capstone project that he hadn't even wanted to survive—Richard had graduated with an aerospace engineering degree.

And now, he was traveling through space.

Actual outer space.

This game of chance hadn't hinged completely on a single conversation with Kavita at a coffee machine back at AeroNautica, but that innocent conversation had sparked this whole series of events, hadn't it?

It boggled the mind.

What if Richard had done one thing differently that day? If he'd had a late breakfast? Taken his coffee to go?

What if he'd decided to stick around at his desk to catch up on a few extra emails?

If he'd decided to keep his place in line, not offered to let Kavita go first?

Maybe the critical moment hadn't been in the coffee line at all, though. Maybe it had all started earlier, with the innocent conversation between Kavita and Brenda at a holiday party to which Garth had, for some reason, invited his own mother as his plus one. What if he had brought a date instead?