[ 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 .

Lilah's quarters were dim and cold. To be fair, the whole ship was dim and cold, except for the workrooms near the engine, which were dim and hot. Light cost energy, and in the unforgiving void between stars, energy was life. Any unnecessary expense could end them all. 
 
 
 It was night by the clock, but then again, it was always night outside. Her small porthole might as well have been painted black for all she could see; the ship's running lights drowned out any faint, faraway stars. Static fuzzed in her vision as she peered out the window; her frail human eyes unequipped to process the darkness. 
 Below her, the steady breathing of her bunkmate, already fast asleep. Above her, the soft buzzing of high-voltage conduit embedded in the ceiling. The reactor was three floors up, but every part of this craft was webbed with cable, machinery installed anywhere it would fit, consoles and lockers filling every last meter of space. 
 
 
 The walls reverberated with the pulse of the ion drives, the craft's heartbeat she would hear all her life. 
 Lilah was Generation 5 of 22. She had been born on this craft, in a tiny, hot medical bay above the port engine. She had grown up here, completed Accelerated Schooling ranked 3rd in a class of 20, and landed a position in Environmental Systems Management, where she monitored the air quality and the massive microbe racks that scrubbed the air of CO2 and pollutants. She would work here until she could no longer, and when her life ended, her body would return to the soil in the ship's arboretum. 
 
 
 In the cold, dark room, she smiled and flipped the lens down over her porthole. It filtered normally-invisible wavelengths of light into colors, lighting up the deep blackness with splashes of red and yellow. The faint blue of background radiation appeared, and the occasional hot white streak of X-rays, sprayed out by the violence of dying stars. 
 
 
 She watched the window until sleep overtook her. How blessed she was, to live in this universe. To be part of mankind's greatest effort, and see wonders no human had seen before. In a cold, dim craft hurtling through an endless void, she felt freer than anyone living out their life on Earth. 
 
 Edit: looks like reddit destroyed my paragraphs again
