Dear Jon, How are you? I am well. I am writing you this letter from the ship. Yesterday me and Maman and Papa woke up in the space beds. We had already arrived at the colonies! It felt like a very long time but we were still so sleepy. I had a dream about the caterpillars in our classroom and you were there, they finally left their cocoons and became beautiful butterflies. I wanted to tell Maman about my dream but she was crying so I think she must of had a nightmare. She said she misses Auntie Kay and grandma but papa wants us to be happy so we should try to be happy. Papa knows what is best for us. He says “we are lucky we can leave the past behind and have a fresh start as a family”. I asked Papa how long until we go home to Earth and I can see you. He patted my head and told me to go to the games room and make some new friends. Maman hugged me. I told her not to cry, we will be home soon where everyone will be happy to see us. I wish I knew how long we are staying here. Did you know there are no butterflies at all in the whole Proxima system? I think it is a very strange place. I hope Papa will take us back home to Earth soon. I miss you already Jon. Please write back when you can. P.S. I hope I will be back before the caterpillars finally turn into butterflies and fly away. Will you tell them to wait for me? Love, Tina

"A wish? I thought there were supposed to be three?"

The genie breathed on his fingernails--apparently inlaid with diamonds--and polished them on his tuxedo-clad chest. Then he turned to me, shrugged, and grimaced in a way that was meant to suggest sympathy at my situation but instead hinted at the sort of glee a real estate agent knows when he's suckered a first-time buyer into putting an offer in on a house that is beyond his means.

Alex came from a good family--the kind that sits straight-backed in the front pew at church and makes it very clear that they are listening properly to the sermon. Their father was a banker, who was very fond of meetings. Their mother volunteered for a charity for disadvantaged children. Alex's siblings were much older--a daughter and son who'd left home as soon as they could and seldom returned to visit.

Alex was adopted--a disadvantaged child from their mother's charity.

For the longest time, I didn't understand my older brother's love of storm fishing. Mom used to say it came from when Dee left his stuffed triceratops outside.

I can picture Dee's baby eyes widening upon realizing his beloved Spikey had been left outside in the rain, toddling through the plunging drops, but too late. Storms could always sense when someone left a treasure outside, and like a marauding dragon, they'd fly in with cold winds to blow items up, up, and away, into the hole in the storm where all its pirated treasures were hidden.

Ship about to explode, pilot gets flushed. Stripped, sealed, flooded with cryogen; all in no time. Then dreamless sleep. Maybe pilot gets picked up by scoopers roaming the solar system for living debris. Picked up by wrong side, not so nice: flushed again--without hermetic seal or cryogen in your veins. Picked up by right side, cleaned up and given a new battleship, sent back out. Not so nice either? Too bad--war not so nice.

Scoopers are saying something, but it's hard to hear. I still feel frozen, ears to brain. Thawing.

You do not exist. Dr. Stadler told me so, and I believe him.