The year was twenty-twenty-six
A time of corporate reach
When stars were just commodities
And orbit was a job.
High above the atmosphere
On Station Omicron
Technician Heather watched the dials
While Duke managed the comms.
The handbook was specific
Section eight, verse four
“Fraternization is strictly banned
Between the shift rotations.”
But space is cold and lonely
And gravity was gone
And in the silent, floating dark
Rules tend to drift away.
So in a storage module
Between the crates of nutrient paste
A distinct biological error
Occurred amidst the stars.
The company was furious
The liability was high
They shipped the couple down the well
To deal with birth on soil.
They landed back in gravity
Heavy, hard, and slow
But Heather carried something else
A passenger from the void.
The labor was eventful
The doctors gathered round
Expecting something standard
From a typical human birth.
But when the boy arrived
The delivery room went quiet
He didn’t cry, he didn’t squirm
He simply floated up.
The umbilical cord was cut
And like a tethered balloon
He drifted toward the surgical lights
Until the nurse grabbed his foot.
He looked like a normal infant
Ten fingers and ten toes
But when they put him on the scale
The needle didn’t move.
One ounce and half
That was the tally
A biological impossibility
A child made of cloud
He had the mass of a letter
The density of a thought
If you didn’t hold him tightly
He would settle on the ceiling
And then there was the head
A cranium of note
Bulbous, round, and heavy-looking
Though light as thistledown.
His eyes were vast and dark
Like windows to the vacuum
Taking in the hospital room
With terrifying focus.
He didn’t want the blanket
He kicked the swaddle off
His skin turned pink and angry
The room was seventy-two.
“Too hot,” his eyes commanded
Though he spoke no verbal words
He gasped and panted softly
Until they iced the crib.
He settled at forty-eight
A happy, frozen babe
While Heather shivered in her gown
And Duke put on a vest.
They took the star-child home
To a life of compromise
Where the AC unit rattled
Twenty-four hours a day.
If the mercury hit seventy-five
The boy would start to swoon
He’d drift slightly to the left
And turn a feverish red.
So they lived in winter parkas
Inside their living room
Breath misting in the air
While the baby cooed in frost.
Feeding was a battle
Of geometry and tools
He looked at silver spoons
With deep, profound disgust.
He viewed the open bowl
As a hazard to the hull
He wanted sealed containment
He wanted pressure valves.
He would only eat from pouches
Squeezed directly to the mouth
Industrial slurry blends
That resembled caulking paste.
And then there was the thirst
The craving for the orange
The powder of the astronauts
The nectar of the fake.
Tang.
He demanded Tang.
Not in a cup or bottle
But in a foil sack.
He’d suck the straw intently
His giant eyes unblinking
Floating cross-legged in the air
Three feet above the rug.
He was exceedingly smart
Too smart for peek-a-boo
He solved the baby puzzles
Before they opened the box.
He rewired the toaster
Using only his mind
Or perhaps small, fast fingers
While his parents were asleep.
But the weather was the key
The ruler of his moods
He was a living barometer
Sensitive to the sky.
When the sun was shining bright
And high pressure ruled the day
He was grumpy, low, and sad
Hiding under chairs.
“The weight,” he seemed to signal
“The column of the air
It pushes on my temples
It feels like heavy lead.”
But let the clouds roll in
Let the cyclone start to form
Let the pressure drop rapidly
And the boy began to shine.
He loved a depression system
A tropical storm watch
The lower the millibars
The higher he would fly.
During Hurricane Marie
He was positively giddy
Doing backflips near the fan
Laughing at the rain.
Levitation was his walk
Why crawl when you can glide?
He treated gravity
As a mere suggestion.
He’d hover down the hallway
To scare the family cat
A silent, floating predator
Weighing less than a mouse.
Taking him to market
Was a logistical feat
They had to tie a ribbon
Around his ankle bone.
Duke held the string tightly
Like walking a helium balloon
For fear a sudden gust of wind
Would take him to the clouds.
People stared in produce
At the baby on the leash
Hovering by the frozen peas
With eyes like saucer plates.
“He likes the cold,” Duke muttered
Pulling the ribbon down
To put a pouch of yogurt
Into the floating hand.
The boy inspected labels
Checking for nutrition
Discarding high fructose
With a flick of his wrist.
Life with the space-conceived
Was distinct and bizarre
A lesson in physics
And thermal management.
Heather missed the warmth
Of a summer afternoon
But she loved her zero-G son
With his strange, giant head.
Duke missed the lower bills
Of a house not chilled to frost
But he loved the way the boy
Could float to change the bulb.
They were a pioneer family
Stranded on the Earth
With a child of the void
Who weighed less than a snack.
He was a corporate accident
A loophole in the text
A one-point-five-ounce miracle
Sipping Tang in the cold.
Watching the weather channel
Waiting for the storms
The little boy from orbit
Finally felt at home.