The professor said the ship was humanities last hope and I believed him.  I worked with the professor to help build the ship. Dorothy, the name, that was my idea. Ok, well it was our idea. Honestly, it was the professor’s idea, but I was there when it happened. I had been working with the professor for eighteen months. He had become almost like a father to me. He invited me over every Sunday night for dinner with his family.  His family was very kind to me, his wife Mary Anne and his daughter Susan. 

Just hold on a second, I am getting to the part where he thought up the name Dorothy for the ship, just be patient. 

Like I was saying, the professor took me in and looked after me. That is why I waited so long to tell him. I felt like I was betraying him, but I had to. So I worked my way up to, slowly. I asked him if he ever watched the ancient video stories. He said he had seen some, when he was in college and studied ancient literature. I asked him if he had ever seen one called the Wizard of Oz. I think it was that very moment when the idea came to him. And unfortunately it was that moment that I had to tell him I saw it the night before, that I watched it with his daughter, that I wanted to be her husband. He pretended that he hadn’t heard me, that he was to busy thinking about naming the ship Dorothy. He pretended that he hadn’t heard me, but I knew he had. He stopped inviting me to his house for Sunday Dinner and he ignored me the last three months of preparing the ship to leave. He made sure to assign me to tasks that did not involve him. 

The day finally came when the ship was to launch. He asked me to join his crew for the pre-launch preparations. I thought he had forgiven me. That on the day when we were all going to set off for a new home that he could finally accept me as his son. I thought I was going to be the happiest man in the world. He kept me so busy that day. We were running back and forth, constantly on the comm line with other crews. I lost track of time. We were three kilometers away from the ship when I heard the final boarding call. I yelled at the professor “we better get going or we won’t make the ship”. That is when he looked into my eyes for the first time in three months. He looked into my eyes and said that we weren’t going on the ship. He said I wasn’t good enough for his daughter and that he was to old to be a valuable member of the crew.

He left me at the station all alone without any transport. I walked two days back to town. The town was deserted; there was no reason for anyone to be there. The ship had launched. The town was empty. It took me ten years to finally track down the professor. He had taken a consulting job on a nearby colony. It wasn’t a dark and stormy night when I finally found him. It was midday. The sun was shining bright. I followed him, he was returning from a lunch meeting. I followed him across the street and into the alleyway. I must have caught him by surprise. The expression on his face was one of fear. The years hadn’t been kind to him. He looked like he was suffering from the illness that so many others were. I grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him close to me. I looked at him in the eyes. He knew there wasn’t any point to beg for mercy. He knew there wasn’t a chance of me showing him that.

I held him, he couldn’t get away from me. I told him, I told him that I had loved his daughter and that he betrayed not only me, but her as well. I told him that she would never forgive him. That she was out there somewhere in deep space, the last hope of mankind, on a ship that she would grow old and die on, and she would do that without ever seeing her father again or the man she loved. I told him that what he did was un-human and unforgivable. He asked me if I was going to kill him now. That he was ready for death and he deserved it. I looked him deep in the eyes, he crying. Then I said the last three words he would ever hear from me.

I said “I forgive you” and I walked away.

Tags: Dorothy, Hope, NaBloPoMo '08, Oz, Sci Fi