[ WP ] Within a year of birth every parent receives a small gift or note from their 18yo child via time travel . You do n't .

It's only a year, right? But my god, so much happens in a year. You notice every little variation in her laughter week to week. You could write encyclopedias on the evolution in her eating habits. You get so invested in when she sleeps, and how, you know her yawns, her cries, her midnight poops. And above all you imagine the person she'll become, all those myriad people, from astronauts to engineers to simple but happy data miners. Those beautiful young women all there, just waiting to bloom from that squishy little applesauce-smeared face. 
 
 And then the day comes and they're all gone, all cut off some time before age 18. 
 
 You wait that whole, black-hole-of-compressed-time day for that message from her, and it does n't come. And before you can get out of denial they come, and they take her. And there you are, before you can even get to anger ( at yourself, at her, at this horrible forced eschatology ) you're stuck in an endless cycle of bargaining. 
 
 They're putting her on the ship. Maybe she'll escape this. Maybe this really is a way to beat the timedeath; to just get her off this miserable planet and out toward Proxima Centauri with the other Pioneers. But she would still send a time message right? We do n't know how it works yet, we ca n't know, but surely the Pioneers, of all people, would be able to get their parents a message! Maybe the ship fails, and they all die anyway. Or maybe the message just gets delayed because of the distance -- maybe you'll get one two years late! You just do n't know and you ca n't know. 
 But for that at least you are grateful. You slowly come to accept that you'll never see her again, but you know that she may live past 18, though in the depths of space, on the way to a new world. You, like the rest of us, have hope.
