Expanse

The stars are endless, spreading across the blackness until there was nothing left. In the expanse of darkness, there drifted a small spacecraft, occupied by one family. The happiest family one could imagine, if that is imaginable. Inside the small spacecraft, if one looked inside, he or she would see a joyous mother and ecstatic father kneeling next to a bundle of cloth. In the bundle of white was the cause of all this euphoria. A baby girl, who burbled happily at the sight of her beloved parents. The parents were not hundreds of miles away from their home to spoil their child. No, they were the best the Earth had to offer. They were top notch astronauts, experienced spacewalkers, whose missions included finding any type of life in space. That sounds absolutely impossible, but if anyone could ever find any other form of life, it would be the Hutchins. They were under an extreme amount of pressure to find these impossible life forms, but even so, the couple found time to care for their daughter. She was the future. After the adults passed, she was going to be left alone, the only person on the craft in the middle of nowhere. The parents' job, besides searching for 'aliens', was to educate their children to take up their mission after. So they did. The girl grew up with stuffed animals named after comets and fairy tales set in far away planets. By age 10, she could recite all the planets and their moon, as well as the astronauts or space crafts that discovered each. By 15, she knew how to pilot the ship if the time comes, and how to fix any mechanical problems. By 17, she was as educated as any other elite astronaut in a space program. She could do anything, if she dared. She was her own role model, her own celebrity, her own self. Sitting in the pilot seat of the bridge of the ship, nothing in front of her but the expanse of stars, she smiled and knew, deep in her heart and soul, this is her present. Her future. Her soulmate. Her life.