Ninety's Kids Remember

                       On the tenth day of the first month of the two-hundredth year after the launch of the Googol Space Colony, my brother James and I stood in one of its clothing stores near its port and stern side. I looked over the racks of clothes, which were all so blandly similar: full-body, skin-tight space suits, each sporting a solid, pastel color only broken up by the ugly metal collar around the neck that served as an emergency mechanism in case of an air breached. I had on a purple one, and my brother had a magenta suit. To someone who hasn’t known any other type of clothes, the different colors were enough variety. To someone who had seen the beautiful kimonos, tribal dress and Parisian fashion of Earth, which only my brother and I remembered, it was monotone and boring. My long, black hair streamed over my shoulders and down to knee-height in two pigtails. Trimming them would leave behind forensic evidence to find me. James’ formed a tangled mess on top of his dark face.

           The room, like every other on the ship, was sleek and pristine. A single speck of dust in the wrong place could clog the ventilation ducts and suffocate an entire room, if not cause an explosion from pressure buildup. On top of each circular rack was the colony’s logo, supported on the center post. Most of the residents would describe it as a blue triangle with silver borders, and a silver lowercase letter “g” in it, standing for the Googol Space Colony. However, my brother and I knew that the character was actually meant to be a number 9, because the logo was created by Samuel Ninety, a brilliant engineer who designed most of the ship’s important systems, including the one that collects free-floating subatomic particles from space to synthesize renewable fuel. His name was supposed to be given to the colony, until he openly opposed the popular idea of censoring any history of Earth. Because of this conviction he’d been kicked off of the colony before it even launched, and his name was censored. We were the only ones who still knew of him.

           A green, fanned-out beam of light passed from one side of the wall to the other, projected from a small, rectangular unit in the far corner near the ceiling. It was a forensic scanner, and I wore sunglasses which I’d specially modified to make sure that the scanner couldn’t read our irises. A woman came in with her son, and I checked her out for a child-sized suit for her son.

           “Tax brings the total up to nine – I mean eighty-thirteen credits.”

           That was close. She scanned her iris to transfer the money from her account and left.

           Next, a policeman came in. We froze, trying not to look nervous while watching him intensely, and he said, “Don’t worry, just here to run a test.”

           “What kind of test?” my brother asked. I tried to stay quiet.

           “Well, since public demand made the government legalize sunglasses to protect against cosmic radiation, our iris scanners are having trouble identifying people. We’re developing a new system to passively scan people’s ears for identification based on the grooves of the outer ear. As long as you aren’t a fugitive or criminal you have nothing to worry about.” That’s exactly why I began worrying. Our ears weren’t covered.

I was too afraid to say anything. James took over and said, “Of course, why don’t I help you with that while my coworker finishes re-organizing behind the counter.” He went and distracted the officer while I knelt down and quickly unscrewed the screws on a vent behind the store counter using the screwdriver that I’d picked up somewhere. I tapped on the floor in a secret pattern to signal my brother before crawling as quickly as I could through the dark and cold vents. He took a few seconds to shake off the officer and follow me.

The reason James and I know all of this forbidden history about Sam Ninety is because we are his children, James and Julia Ninety. The forbidden word is embedded in our names. After our dad was kicked off of what was practically his own ship, he worked, and had us help even though we were only 3 and 5 at the time, to build a new, smaller ship just for himself and us. We spent 10 years catching up to the space colony, with our father dying along the way, and at 16 and 14 happened to find the colony by contacting inside help. 200 years had passed on the ship, because our speed difference caused time dilation and made time slower for us.

We were open about who we were at first, which is how we got arrested for being a part of history, as history is illegal, before escaping their prison. They have our irises, fingerprints, and ear patterns all in their system, so we are forced to live as space fugitives.

We crawl through the ventilation system for hours. Every room we come to seems to have people who would certainly notice us if we crawled out there. We finally heard a familiar voice, and followed it to the ship’s engine room. The voice turned out to be the ship’s lead engineer, Eugene Gavveil, aka part of the “inside help” I mentioned earlier. As lucky as we were that he helped us, we were lucky again that we found him here. After taking a second to slow my breath down and make sure that nobody else was with him, I used the screwdriver to pry off the vent grate so that we could get out, and called to him.

“Who’s that?” he said.

“It’s us, Eugene. You don’t recognize us?”

He straightened his glasses on his pale face and said, “Oh, kids. Sorry, I haven’t seen you since you were arrested, weeks ago. I can’t believe that letting you out actually worked.”

“Letting us out? What do you mean? After our arrest the cell’s security turned off and we got out.”

“It turned off because I shut it off. I have access to the ship’s systems, including those, and I still support you.”

There was a nostalgic feel, looking around the engine room. All of the controls were just as they were in my father’s schematics, which I studied almost constantly for the years that I spent in his space capsule. My brother wasn’t interested in it. Instead, he studied history through my father’s chronoscope, a device that refracts light through time using quantum mechanics, allowing him to watch history like a TV show.

Buttons flashed. Abbreviated labels that to an unacquainted person meant nothing, but were just enough to jog my memory of what each thing did. The only thing off was an extra, cubical unit tucked away in the corner, behind the door. It had no buttons, no knobs, only a usb drive sticking out of one side, and a blue light near the top corner, blinking.

Before I could ask about the cube, my brother asked, “Do you have access to the forensics scanners, then?”

“Of course.”

“Then can you shut them off so we’re not caught?”

“Oh, of course not. I mean I could, but there are much more dangerous people than you that need to be searched for. Murderers and thieves still exist.”

           “Then can you remove our ear patterns from the database?”

           “That would still be seen as suspicious, since everyone on the ship is in the database.”

“Do the scanners give off any kind of unique signals?”

           “Well, they send the information to the central database using a signed radio signal of a unique frequency, optimized to reduce interference from other electronics.”

I looked around and found a handheld oscilloscope and some tools. I modified the device to be able to search for signals of a particular frequency, and measure their strength. After asking Eugene for the exact frequency of the signals, I had a way of knowing which rooms had the new system in it. The system was only being tested, so only select places would have them. As I was finishing my work, there was a knock on the door.

I hurriedly dropped the tools as James crawled into the vent, then followed him as Eugene said, “one second.” After we crawled in and far enough that the intruder couldn’t see us, Eugene let him in. We kept crawling until we found a larger duct that served as the junction of many smaller ones. It was just big enough for us to sit up in, which was more comfortable than a narrow crawl.

I told James, “Even if we know which rooms are relatively ‘safe’ now, we’ll get caught eventually. If the tests are successful then they’ll put the new scanners in more and more rooms. What can we do except put off our capture? We’ll never be anything but fugitives.” 

My brother had a thinking face for a few seconds, then said, “Actually, I’ve just thought of something. It’s risky, though.”

“Our entire existence is risky. What do you have?”

“Well, the policeman said that public opinion forced the government to legalize sunglasses. Maybe if we gain supporters, we could legalize history too.”

“No way that’s going to happen. We can’t trust anybody. Anyone who finds out what we are is going to turn us in and get a reward for it and that’ll be it.”

“We don’t know that.”

“We do. Everyone is brainwashed into their anti-history sentiment.”

“Brainwashing doesn’t work that way. Eugene supports us. There have to be more people that can be convinced. Every culture has a counterculture.”

“It’d be like looking for a needle in a haystack, except that the hay is on fire.”

“We need to take risks at some point, Julia. We’re already running for our lives. Our doors will keep closing until we open one up.”

We went back to exploring the vents, checking my device along the way, and finally judged a room safe to come out in. It was a stationery shop. I looked through papers and pens, trying to think of a way to recruit people, when I saw a marker and got it.

I made sure that nobody was around, took out the marker, and wrote “90=Ninety” on the check-out desk. It wasn’t much, but I figured if I could bring the topic to people’s minds, by people seeing it, they’ll at least have to ask why “ninety” is banned, and upon being given an answer, will have to decide whether they agree with it, and some would decide that they don’t, or at least that the reason given wasn’t enough. It was a longshot, but it was all I could think of.

I hid the marker in my pocket as a policeman came in. I acted like I was browsing. The policeman said, “Hey kids, this store is closed right now.”

I turned to him, and heard James say, “Sorry sir, we didn’t know. We were just browsing and nobody came get us.”

The officer gave us a squinted look. I looked eagerly to James, as I didn’t know what to say. He added, “We were really engrossed in the design of those folders.” He pointed to some folders that were actually pretty normal.

He told us, “You kids are lucky I don’t consider ‘punk kid couples goofing around’ to be high on my list of priorities as an officer.”

“We’re not a couple, we’re brother and sister.”

“I don’t care, and I don’t forget a face. Go home and don’t let me catch you again. I know you aren’t up to any good here.”

We thanked him and went off. After we turned a corner, I stopped to listen as the police called in the graffiti using his radio.

“What nature of graffiti?”

“It shows banned name #4, equating it to the number eighty-ten. No idea what that’s supposed to mean.”

“That’s a misdemeanor of graffiti and use of a banned name. Did you see anyone else in the area?”

           “Yes, I gave them a warning. Here’s their description if you see them again.”

They didn’t even remember what the word’s association with a number. We needed something a little less subtle. While he described us, I looked at my device. If we kept going the way we’d turned, we’d run into ear scanners. We snuck past the officer the other way, and kept going until we found a “24-hour public library.” We went in.

There was a sign in front advertising, “No staff! Scan iris when taking book out. Books will be scanned upon return.”

Along the shelf, each book had an eye scanner above it. Luckily, we had the sunglasses, and there was only one other person here. We avoided her.

The books included technical manuals for different things, science and math books, a few art how-to’s, and government-approved fiction by the space colony’s authors. After looking through, we found a spot in the back labelled “popular books”. There was a note there encouraging readers to try reading less popular books to support less well-known authors. I went to take a book out, but stopped when I realized that the only way to stop a customer from stealing a book is for the eye scanners to automatically go off when they take one out.

My brother asked for the marker I’d stolen, and wrote on the end of a shelf, “Learn History. // Ninety’s Kids Remember.” He wrote quickly, so his handwriting was poor, but readable.

It was better. It’d at least make our goal clear.

I took the marker, found another place, and wrote, “Sam Ninety was a good man. // Ninety’s Kids Remember.” The latter statement sounded great. We snuck around every store we could find. Few people were around, since it was “night” (an arbitrary definition of night based on clocks, since we weren’t on a planet in order to have a sunset and sunrise).

We wrote short reminders of history everywhere we could, always including the line, “Ninety’s Kids Remember”, to reinforce the phrase in people’s heads like a marketing slogan. Once again, these short blurbs weren’t enough to really convince someone, only to make them consider it, and hopefully decide on their own that hiding history is ridiculous.

It only took a day or two before we were caught, scanned, verified as fugitives, and put back into prison. There weren’t bars, but instead, electric fields at the entrance of the jail cells. According to my father’s blueprints, the field stops neuron signals from moving from one side of it to the other. When I put my arm through it, I lose feeling in my arm and can’t move it. If I tried to run out, as many have unfortunately done, the field would fry my brain as my head passed through it.

James was almost directly across from me, shifted one cell to the right. Directly across from me, adjacent to James, was a man who looked relatively normal, like he’d only been in here a short time.

He said to me, “Hey, what’re you in for?”

           “Graffiti and using a banned name.”

I figured that such discussion was the only entertainment I’d find until I found a way out.

“That figures.”

“What are you in for, sir?

“Insubordination. Yesterday, I started questioning why history was banned. A police officer made up some explanation about the ideas of Earth being dangerous, and not wanting us to return to them. I wasn’t satisfied by that and wanted to know what, exactly, are the dangers we need to avoid, but he couldn’t tell me. I argued with him and got arrested for insubordination. I’m starting to think that the graffiti I saw was right.”

“You saw graffiti about history?”

           “Yeah. By the way, my name’s Jim Burson. Yours?”

I figured it was safe, since the government already knew we were in jail. And he could be our first supporter. He also seemed like he was probably going to support us.

“My name is Julia Ninety. Adjacent to you is my brother James. We’re the daughter and son of Sam Ninety.”

“Wait, Ninety? So, you’re… Ninety’s Kids? The ones that remember?”

           “Yes. We want to help everyone remember, if you’re up for it.”

“If it’s worth hiding, it must be worth knowing. Any idea exactly why they’re hiding history?”

There was a reason I so vividly remembered Earth, despite only being 5 when we left it. At 5 years old, I watched on live TV as the first nuclear bomb fell on New York. Buildings melted. People were incinerated. Screams only lasted a brief second before being completely silenced by the roaring explosion. I wouldn’t understand exactly what was happening until later, but the bleak image is burned into my mind. It was a few minutes after that my father appeared, and informed us that we weren’t going to be able to board the space ship, and work started on the new one. I told him, “People made mistakes, and those mistakes destroyed Earth, the planet we lived on. The smart thing would be to learn from those mistakes, so we know not to repeat them, but for most it’s easier to hide it away and try to forget.”