drifting through space-part 3

drifting through space

parts 1, 2 and 3 is new

fiction
edward w pritchard

part 1
I am the sixth Doreen and I have been drifting through space for twenty seven years. It's time for me to reproduce soon. I will raise my daughter to age 13 and then she will become Doreen the seventh and I will die. Forty years being deemed the ideal lifespan for a female space explorer headed for the far edge of the Kuiper Belt. That's a journey of 465 years at the chosen speed we travel at for peak efficiency so God willing the eleventh Doreen should be the one to reach the far edge of the Kuiper belt. What awaits my great great great granddaughter at the far reaches of the Kuiper belt is a secret of sorts. We do it for science and for the benefits of humanity back on earth. Our origins as a species lie out in those distant Kuiper belts. It's necessary for eleven of us Doreen's to suffer a bit of loneliness and ennui in space to reach there.

Me I mate soon, and i fulfill my destiny. Drifting through space headed for the Kuiper belts as a space explorer for scientific discovery.
end-part1

Part 2

They aren't just lucid dreams. My unborn Granddaughter Doreen the eighth has been coming to see me in my dreams to advise me on how to survive this illness of cancer. It's real Doreen the eighth coming to see me.. I think it is time travel; my Granddaughter Doreen  the eighth coming to advise must mean I reproduced like normal for a space-explorer, hence I had my daughter who had her daughter, and since my granddaughter is advising me I must survive this cancer and reproduce. For now I am very sick. Being sick in a small spacecraft traveling toward the Kuiper belts is difficult and discouraging.

I have never been sick before. Genetically I am immune from most earthbound diseases, My artificial intelligence unit helps me cure anything else. Where did this cancer come from. I had a broken wrist once when I was four and My Mother Doreen the fifth was with me. I wish she were here. I would like to ask Mother if she thinks Doreen the eighth coming to me in Lucid dreams to advise me on how to cure the cancer I have that my artificial intelligence can't cure is real. Is it time travel by Doreen the eighth or am I Doreen the sixth imagining the whole thing. The medicine the artificial intelligence is giving me makes me sick and nauseous. Best sleep and rest again.
end part 2

Part 3

I Doreen the first are the famous original space explorer. The first woman to give up her life for science to travel the rest of my days through space. I left everything I had and knew on earth to travel the rest of my life alone in this small space ship. To the Kuiper belts I go. It sounded exciting at first. To find the origins of our species. Somewhere in the  rocks out there at the far edge of our Solar systems was the ultimate answer to how life started originally on earth. 

I am a farce. I just wanted to escape my life in Middleton Iowa. The personal life is dead for me. It worked. Preston abandoned me for another woman and I couldn't get over it. I volunteered to spend the rest of my life traveling in a small spaceship. My sin, I sentenced ten of my descendants, starting with my daughter  to be, her to be  conceived artificially and then nine generations of grand and great -daughters doing same.

Why am I telling this. Now they want to know if for my mate I want Preston. Apparently his DNA is on board. That bastard. He wouldn't take my calls at home before I left. He's a lot older than me now. I am getting younger compared to him because of space/time changes caused by space travel. It's not much but it adds up. Best not think of Preston again. I have experiments to do and then I have to do my aerobics before dinner. I wonder if Space command center Houston would let me talk with him just once. I am confused by a few things he said a long time ago. Maybe Houston would OK me talking with Preston if I said I needed to be courted before the insemination. Preston could be charming when he wanted to. It would be nice to talk about something besides space travel with someone.
end part 3