Firmament: Radialloy

He always said that I had measles when he found me on his doorstep back in 2299, and he also said that I was less than a year old. I believed him because, first of all, he was a doctor and ought to know about such things, and secondly, I would have had to be a pretty pitiful sight to induce him to take me in. He also said that it wasn’t until he’d nursed me through the measles that it even occurred to him to keep me. That made sense also, given his status as a relatively private bachelor with a small practice in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Adopting little orphan girls with measles probably wasn’t something he’d planned on doing, but he didn’t seem sorry that he’d found me. I know I wasn’t. He also probably hadn’t planned on going to space ten years later, but he didn’t seem sorry about that, either. I knew he’d had his doubts at first, but he’d felt it was the right thing to do. Since I’d spent half my life in space, it was more like home than Earth was. Our home now was the Surveyor, a class-A vessel, who, like the late-twentieth-century probes whose name she bore, was assigned to explore, document, and inform. Specifically, search the galaxy’s outer reaches and beyond for alien life forms. Here, we had friends and plenty of everything, and I could be with the Doctor and help him with his work all I wanted.