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Dear Corinthia,
The system works! I received your canned response, telling me that you were
going to wait to write back until I had a chance to speak with dad. Well,
that’s what happened. He finally came home a few days ago after having been
gone the longest amount of time in my life. I gave him one night to sleep
off the jetlag, but then we spoke over breakfast the next late morning. We
sat down at the table together, but he knew that it was coming, and neither
of us ate much of anything. He admits that his wife—your mother—came to him
36 years ago with the idea to raise us separately. They were going through a
divorce, and his work was going to take him across the continent anyway. She
had this opportunity to be part of the first manned mission to Vacuus, and
didn’t want to go without any family at all. She framed it as her idea, but
my dad has always been pretty convinced that another man talked her into it.
Funny thing is, this other guy ultimately failed the mission qualification
tests, so he ended up not going anyway. I’ve not gotten a name yet, but I
would like to find out who he is, and what happened to him.
So anyway, it sounds like it was partly a social experiment, and partly the
solution to the calculus of there being two parents in need of at least one
child each, and having two children to divide into the solution. He says
that he doesn’t remember why she got the girl baby, and he got the boy baby,
but I don’t think that part really matters. He claims that he regretted the
decision immediately, but your ship had already launched. If that’s true,
why didn’t he tell me about you earlier? We could have known each other
since we were kids, and had some sort of relationship growing up. Yet he
played into the experiment. He could have made things a little better, but
chose not to. Not only did he deprive us of each other, but himself of you,
and you of him. He could have known his own daughter, and now you’re an
adult, but a total stranger. I also missed out on the chance to know my own
mother, though you would be a better judge as to whether that’s a bad thing,
or not. He was too tired to give any more details. He didn’t really paint
himself as the hero, but it’s clear that he considers her the villain.
Again, he did have some control. There must have been some argument that he
could have made in a court of law. Your mom had to volunteer for the Vacuus
mission. They weren’t begging for her to sign up. Maybe that’s not true,
though, because as I said, I never had the chance to know here. Before she
died, what—if anything—did she say about how this started for her? I’ll try
to find out more information for us later, but I wanted to reply as quickly
as possible, so you would have time to consider and process it. To be
honest, it was a rather disappointing conversation. When I think back to my
conversation with him, I realize that he said as little as possible without
allowing me to accuse him of being totally evasive.
Let down on Earth,
Condor
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