Mom

Charles brushed his teeth. Not the normal way. He brushed the way Mom had taught him. Hard. Hard enough to scrape the enamel from his teeth and shred his gums. That was the only way to get truly clean. That’s what she had told him and he believed her. He believed everything he’d ever been told. By anyone. That was what was special about Charles. He was a believer.

When he was done brushing his teeth he pulled out his duct tape and pulled off a really long strip. Long enough to tape his heels to his forehead. There was a reason it had to be that long. It was because the next thing he did was tape his left heel to the right side of his forehead. Then he pulled off another long piece and he taped his right heel to the left side of his forehead. This was a proven way to keep bees from stinging, gremlins from biting, and also it kept him from getting acne. Mostly. He still had an annoying little patch on the left side of his forehead and another on the right side of his forehead. His heels were kind of itchy too.

Then he walked into the shower. Literally. He thought he was exiting the bathroom but he had gotten confused and he couldn’t see through all the tape, and it was really hard to walk so he shuffle-hunched straight into the shower door. He sighed. Not again. He turned the water on hot and he stepped into the shower. His clothes were on of course. He didn’t want the dirty water from the shower to make his sensitive skin dirty. His clothes would protect him from that.

Under the pressure of the hot water, the tape slowly unraveled and fell off of his forehead and then peeled away from his feet. Charles sighed contentedly and balled it up to add to the soggy tape pile in the corner of the shower. His morning routine never failed to make him feel better. Now that the water was good and clean he took off his clothes and hung them on the shower door to drip dry. He knew that drip drying was the only safe way to get your clothes clean. Otherwise the licelings would stay in the linings of his underwear and he would get oh so terribly itchy. After a few more minutes he turned the water off, put his wet (partly drip dried) clothing back on, and stepped out of the shower. He used a towel to dry up the floor, so that the vapors wouldn’t escape into the atmosphere, and then he hung that up so it could safely drip dry as well.

Hmm, what was next? Oh, right, breakfast! He couldn’t go through his bedroom, not yet, so he opened the hatch in his bathroom floor and he slipped down the pole into the eating room. It was pretty full today, all his imaginary friends were there. Paulo and Fredo and Marko and Mario, all fully dressed, dripping and ready to eat. He waved his hellos and headed over to the cereal bar. He looked over his selections of cereal (which was just one) and chose what looked best to him (the one selection available) and he poured it into a bowl and covered it up with some rehydrated water. He remembered milk. Well he remembered seeing it on a show once and he thought that it looked good on cereal, except that it was oddly white and what he was eating wasn’t really cereal it was a nutrified protein powder, but that didn’t matter, he still thought milk with cereal sounded pretty neat.

He plopped down on the bench next to Paulo, who was unusually quiet today, and started to munch. When he was done munching he swallowed. Then he looked at Paulo.

“Hey man, how’s your morning?” he asked.

The open, empty space next to him, filled with an imaginary Paulo, said nothing.

“Yeah, I hear you. That squeaking heater duct can sure get on your nerves. Did you sleep OK?”

Charles waited a moment, nodded and then said, “Yup, you got it. I’ll swing by later and show you my latest music pick. It’s pretty darn tootin if you ask me.”

Charles focused on his cereal and munched away for a while longer. He was feeling protein filled and nutrified enough so he stood up to recycle what was left. “I know, I know. I shouldn’t waste anything,” he said to the empty room and sat back down again to eat.

When he was done and he’d licked the bowl clean, he put it back on the cereal bar so he could use it for his next meal. Then he stood in front of the viewing screen and he contemplated the view for a very long moment. In front of him was the vastness of space. Inky black, pinpricked with sparks of light, each one a distant star. The brightest star was called Sun and orbiting around it was his origin point. Well not his origin point, but the ship’s origin point. He knew that because he’d learned it from the ship’s computer. They’d been traveling for a very long time. He liked to measure time in Charleses, so he knew the distance traveled was five thousand, three hundred and fifty two Charles.

He turned back to the computer. “Mom?”

“Yes,” she answered

“What time is it?”

“What does it matter Charles?” This was a game they liked to play.

“It matters to me because I’m human.”

“Yes you are Charles and it doesn’t matter to me because I’m not.”

Charles smiled at that. He liked that he was unique. He was Human and Mom was not. That made him happy.

He walked back through the corridors to his room so he could get dressed. At the access door he noticed that the light was a different color than normal. It was always green but today it was orange. He wasn’t sure what that meant. He shrugged his shoulders and pressed his hand on the pad to request access. When the door slid open he saw somebody was in his room. This gave him quite the start. He’d never seen anybody before. His entire life had been spent alone, in this ship, just himself and Mom. The imaginary friends didn’t count, he knew they weren’t real.

The somebody who was in the room didn’t hear him enter, so they didn’t turn around. They kept doing what they were doing, which was that they were looking through his drawers. Head inside, both hands digging, clothing flying everywhere. Funny, that’s how Charles got dressed too. Maybe this somebody was like him. Human.

“Hello?” he said.

The person stood up with a jerk and a shout and spun around to face him.

“Oh,” Charles 5352 said

“Oh,” Charles 5353 said

“I didn’t realize it was already time.”

“It’s not supposed to be. I think there was a glitch.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. It’s kind of a problem.”

Charles thought about this. He was looking at his mirror image. Of course he was. Every Charles was exactly the same since they were all clones of the original Charles. They all knew how to run the ship and how to repair what needed fixing. That’s why they had to stay awake and live their lives as the ship traveled. But there were only enough resources for one Charles at a time. They weren’t supposed to overlap.

“Oh,” he said again. Kind of sadly this time.

“Yeah, I know. It’s early, but it’s time.”

Charles shrugged his shoulders. It was OK. He’d had enough time to get to know Mom and to learn all about Paulo and Mario and even Fredo and Marko a little bit. It had been a good time. Now he had to do what was necessary for the good of the ship. It was time to go home.

So he got in a tiny little seed pod, let the systems shut his body down into stasis and then he was shot back toward Earth. A long range communication packet that would arrive back on the home world to report on the journey and let everyone know that the colony ship was still heading straight and true for their next world. A lovely little m-class planet 25 light years away that was going to make for a wonderful place to live. As long as it had no spiders. Charles hated spiders.