[ WP ] You were born on a colonizing spacecraft on your way to a distant star . You are the middle generation of history ; born to late to have seen Earth , and to early to live to see your destination .

Alarms shriek like lunatics. They would throw me off this ship if they could. My parents were smuggled on and hidden. When my mother got pregnant they had to get help. I was born nine months later. The first child born out in the dark. 
 
 There was no prison so they were kept on a lower storage level. All the stowaways were thrown down there and forgotten about. That close to the engine they would have been irradiated. They tell me no one could survive down there longer than ten years. I never got to meet them. I think I used to know their names. 
 
 No one talks about the stowaways. It was a thing best forgotten. Hard to forget when I am a walking reminder. The first child of the dark. 
 
 They tell us we have another one hundred years to go. In all we number two million. The population of a small city spread over four ships. Some of the older ones talk about cities and countryside and other things. I no longer listen. I try not to think about where they are from or where our children are going. For me and there is only the dark and the hum of engines. 
 
 They have each other. They have coupled up and made their routines. The olders laugh how even out here things are the same. They get sentimental about their ambition. They get torn up about how much the same we are as them. They wonder what new chance can come from such continuity. They talk about the dead. 
 
 I have no one. The fact of my existence is evidence of what was done. No talks to me unless they have to. They still keep Earth time. I sleep through their days and live while they sleep- a nightmare come out of their dreaming. I go down to the forests. Sometimes I wonder what a real one would be like. Mostly I think of all the forests of their Earth, dead. Now they have them on this ship and their kids will tend them on the new Earth. These forests will die too. The ones on-board and the ones they tend or discover. Wherever the Earth-born go, whoever carries their dreams, they bring only death. I am the evidence of this truth. 
 
 It is darkness that has raised me. They took me in, of course. They gave me a home and an education, groomed me for the work of raising the next generation. Endless lessons on the glory of our Mission. Everything we do we do for our future: The future of our children and our civilization. I ran away and hid in the service compartments. I think they were relieved. No place for the offspring of stowaways in their utopia. 
 
 Lately I have taken to coming to largest observation window on the ship. No one else comes here. They do not feel at home. They are only at home in their reminiscing and their deluded hopes. The window is an open mouth waiting to swallow them. They are afraid to fall into the dark. They look away from it and shiver. I stare out into it. It stares back. We soften in mutual recognition. We know that each belongs to the other. 
 
 The alarms have stopped now. No one is going to try to prevent this. They can see me on the cameras. They must have watched as I released the protections. They will watch as the smallest particle of ice tears through the window. They will watch my body blown into oblivion. They will not cry. The first child of the dark is going home.
