Clipped Wings
It turned out what they told you about coming home after a long time away was nothing but the unadorned truth. Initially you had assumed that this experience was either greatly exaggerated or downright made up from scratch to make the "baby-birds" afraid or to test whether they had the necessary resolve and mental strength for what was about to come. But now, after being gone from home for more than three years, each of your steps felt very much like you had to drag your whole body through thick mud, the invisible swampy waters fighting against each of your movements, stopping you from raising your feet and even pushing back against your chest with each strained breath you took. How silly you must have looked from an outsider's perspective, walking down this hallway to the visitors center, gasping and huffing and puffing like some old asthmatic owl. Well, to be honest here, the term "walking" was a far stretch for what kind of movements you made - dragging your feet over the ground while also managing to raise your knees unnaturally high with each step. All that janky flaying only because you were out of that stupid wheelchair they put you in, yet now you regretted not staying in it for a bit longer as it seemed like walking wasn't like riding a bike: You had successfully managed to forget how to move your legs in an orderly fashion. And why all this torture and embarassment while people stared at you flinging your limbs around like some idiot? Because of a letter that arrived years ago, and because today would be the last chance you got to see your family before your death.
You never expected it. It came completely out of the blue, literally and figuratively, as one fateful morning a messenger pigeon descended from the crystal clear summer skies onto the front porch of your family's farmhouse, carrying in his weather- and wind-proof bag a plain white envelope. An envelope that was addressed to your name, decorated with every possible stamp you could imagine: "Confidential", "High Priority Mail", "Deliver only to the addressed person!", "Do not bend!", and the wax seal of a government agency you remembered only little about. A very important piece of paper, both from the looks of it, as well from the fact that the pigeon was very dutiful and refused to hand over the envelope with heavy and loud clamour to anyone else but you, so your mother, the once originally answering the door, had to drag you away from your breakfast. After your arrival there, the bird produced a picture from a pocket in his chest, began scowling and raising his brows while carefully comparing the little polaroid with you wearing your dirty pyjamas until he seemed satisfied with whatever he was doing and finally handed over the white envelope. And then, the pigeon made a little bowing gesture and his escape, rising back into the endless blue firmament and towards the horizon. The commotion on the front porch did not remain unnoticed. Before you knew it, and before you could escape with the little piece of paper into a room upstairs to open it in privacy, you got ordered to the breakfast-table to present the letter to your whole family: Your mom and your dad, and your older and younger siblings - everyone readying up for another day on the fields of the farm. And after a bit even your grandparents showed up, even though the latter made it very clear that all this ruckus this early in the morning couldn't possibly mean anything good for this household.
With a slightly shaky beak, cleaned of any remaining pieces of your regular breakfast - oatmeal with copious amounts of raisins - you ripped open the envelope, careful to not destroy its contents in the process. You had never gotten a letter before and they never meant good knews if you considered your parents' experiences with them. Fighting against the irrational fear of being reminded that some bills you had forgotten about were overdue, your eyes wandered over the lines while seemingly every other beak under this roof began peeking into your field of vision to do the same task. So multiple times you had to shoo them away with your hands, only for them to slowly creep back after a few moments. Not that it would have mattered: Nobody else in your family could read or write, but neither were you very skilled at it or eager to stick your nostrils into a book in your free time. Analogously, you quickly gave up trying to decipher the high and mighty sounding language and announced that it was a lost cause, sparking a lot of angry chirping from all sides around you. Yet rather than discard this incomprehensible visitor in the fireplace, an unilateral decision was made to consult the holy father at the church about this mysterious paper, and the whole family started a march in a long procession towards the nearby village. Flying there would have been faster and easier, yet curiosity had gotten the better of the old ones who could no longer lift their bodies up from the ground on their own. Demanding respect for their high age, the elders made you all agree to walk there instead: You upfront, holding the white slip tightly to your chest to protect it against the dirt of the dusty road, followed closely by your parents and the little chicks, followed by all your older brothers and sisters afterwards and ending with your grandparents, whose curiosity must have given them the energy to keep up with the younger legs walking in front of them.
Arriving in the small rural town, this procession of your whole flock, as well as the excited and loud clatter your entourage produced on the way, caught the attention of only a few people at first. But the word about this unusual occurrence spread quickly like a fire in a dry forest, and soon enough others began joining in from every house and every side-street, until a big crowd formed in front of the big portals to the small church. And you, at the front of this cluster of people, got pressed inside these holy walls without giving you the time to announce your entry first.
The holy father, an old dove in a black priestly robes and contrasting white feathers, welcomed you to his house, albeit not without a raised eyebrow as to why it seemed like you had managed to bring the whole town and even some random passing travelers to today's morning sermon - and all that an hour too early! The misunderstanding was quickly resolved and the father's eyes, stern and focused behind his thick reading glasses, only took a few moments to decipher your letter as they jumped from right to left, over and over, until a mild smile appeared on his face.
"My children!" he proclaimed loudly into the crowd, which momentarily fell into a sudden and eerie silence, only occasionally broken by some stray Shhh!'s and Psst!'s. The priest took some time, looked into the faces of each present person and then at you, unable to hide a clear expression of pride in his mimics, before unfolding his long white wings in one swift motion, sending a few of his feathers into the air and bathing the room in the light that got reflected from his pure white plumage. He placed his hand on your shoulder as if to signal who he was talking about and his booming voice managed to echo from the walls in this little chapel:
"This little fledgeling, from our middle, got invited to visit the heavens!".
A sentence that sparked a mixed reaction in the gathered crowd: While you and your family began cheering and chirping in all levels of volumes and tones, a cacophony of joy and excitement, the rest of the gathered people watched this spectacle unfolding with confusion, sadness and even shocked gestures. The father's words carried the truth openly in them like the wind carried you into the air up above when you took flight, yet for the uninitiated listener it must have sounded like he had proclaimed your future demise.
When, instead, nothing alike or sinister was going to happen. You were not going to the religious heavens, not bound to die of a looming sickness. You were going into the endless realm beyond the eternal blue ceiling of this world:
Space.
And from thereon, partake in the longest flight in the history of avian-kind on a journey between the stars.
After that spectacular announcement turned this originally rather private affair into the talk of the town, the days rushed by in a wild swirl, resulting in memories that only consisted of different, out of context pictures, the complete spectrum of emotions, and literal mountains of food. In fact so much of anything you had ever tasted that, in retrospect, everyone must have assumed you would never get to eat anything ever again and that you had to live off your fat-reserves. There was no ground and soil up there, right? Only the cheese of the moon, and who even knew how that tasted? So not only did you get extra-extra options at every meal, but were also celebrated at an impromptu festival at the village with more cakes and pies than you had ever seen. Even though you proclaimed multiple times that your real departure from this planet was still years in the future and that you couldn't possibly eat ANOTHER slice of cheesecake after your 7th or 8th one, your objections got ignored with benign ignorance.
You used the few days that remained to prepare yourself mentally, yet leaving home stayed exciting nonetheless - both for you and your family. Any why wouldn't it be? You would be gone for years and unable to see or talk to them in the meantime: Your family didn't own a phone and nobody could read any letters or postcards if you would have managed to write one without making the words look like chicken-scratches. So when your ride arrived in the early morning hours of the final day, the whole family had camped through the night on the front porch. You couldn't sleep, and nobody else dared to close their eyes for too long, afraid to miss out on seeing you depart and unable to say their goodbyes: Beaks got rubbed together in affection with your sisters, and your back got slapped so much it actually started to look like the main goal of your brothers was to tenderize your meats. Finally, a last hug for everyone else and even a few shed tears of joy with your parents - all under the watchful eyes of an impatient driver, tipping on his wrist-watch with increasing annoyance to signal that the time had now come to get your belongings into the trunk of the vehicle, as well as yourself into the back seat row of his car. And so, the small world you knew slowly shrunk in the rearview mirror while the rest of the world, with its big cities, broad highways and sprawling industrial complexes, grew all around you, only to disappear as quickly. Even though this drive over half the continent must have taken a whole day, all the unknown sights you saw with childish admiration made it seem like only a few hours had passed.
Arriving at the space port - that's what they called it in their letter even though it was neither in space nor did it look like a port with ships - a committee greeted you and all the other people that had followed their invitations: Scientists and Engineers, Doctors and Professors, Athletes and Models. And among this big variety of people and professions were you: A little farm bird.
But why and how did a country bumpkin like you, barely having entered adolescence and from a poor farmer's home, got into this? The answer was as easy as it was unsatisfying once you got to ask one of the scientists in their long, white lab coats: Heritage and luck.
Heritage, because the genome data bank of the government had valued your genetic make-up as the most desirable combination of different amino-acids. How did you end up in this data-base in the first place? Well, a few years back, you were the only one in your village brave enough to get a swab rammed through your nose into your brain when a government official visited the town to collect as many diverse DNA-samples as possible. All for some project you really didn't understand back then, only agreeing to this short torture to get your talons on one of the supplied bars of chocolate. That you had signed up to partake in what ultimately led you being brought here only crossed your mind when you recognized the wax seal of the space agency.
And luck, because of all the people you shared your DNA with, your uncles and aunts and brothers and sisters and cousins and nephews and nieces... and out of all the other genetically ample candidates who had applied all across the country, continent and world, you were chosen at random as there was simply not enough space to bring all of them along.
In the end, you weren't someone that was essential or mission critical. But then again, you were someone special for all the other reasons - reasons that took you three years of education and training to understand:
They didn't need smart owls and their degrees in mathematics or physics or engineering. They didn't need strong eagles, being able to lift many times their own body weight, or beautiful peacocks with majestically shining feathers. They didn't need birds who knew how to plant crops or build robots or do anything else. Because none of those things mattered on a journey that would take a timespan measured not in years, but in generations.
Nobody who got onto that ship would see their final destination.
All they wanted was to find the ones that carried no genetic damages within them to ensure that every offspring would be a healthy one. And in extension: That your descendants were even able to restart a civilisation anew from scratch on a new world. To achieve this, everything had to be learned and taught on that ship anew, over and over, for each new generation that was born there. And afterwards, everything had to be experienced for the first time again: The feeling of gravity pulling on a body, the wind running through plumage, the touch of the soil beyond one's feet, the mild warmth of a sun on the beak, the first raindrops falling from above and an unlimited sky to rise into.
After a few weeks at the training center, you noticed very quickly how wrong your first impression of the selected crew was: That all those models and doctors you first encountered at the space-port simply stood out of the crowd due to their fame and popularity, due to their natural charisma and charm. Yet each and every other person of that crowd you had assumed consisted of mere onlookers was also a fellow member: Barkeepers, gardeners, hairdressers, homeless... they all were the same as you: Special because of their invisible heritage given to them by their parents, their grandparents and everyone that came before them, passed along together with stories and tales of the past.
And they all had to go through the same training: A whole year of physical education, only to survive the hellish battle of the space-plane as it climbed with roaring engines through the atmosphere, fighting against the unrelenting grip of gravity, until it docked with something they called a "sky-hook" - some sort of rotating hook on a satellite that pulled the plane away from the planet. The technology that had made space-travel financially viable in the first place. Not that you understood how any of that worked or that anyone bothered to teach you about it. This information was neither relevant, nor important, nor would any attempt to explain something so complicated to someone who could barely read yield any results in the first place. But the first gaze out of one of the windows of the plane would have made you forget all of that technical yackety-yack anyways: A blue and white marble, ever so slowly spinning like a ballerina in front of a void-black curtain, a lone dancer in this grant cosmic balletts, admired only by a selected number of birds. Almost in instinct, you reached out to it, as it appeared almost as if within reach of your arm, yet all you managed to hit was the thick, round glass of the window. It was one thing to see this sight on a picture or in a presentation, but to experience it yourself ripped a veil off of your eyes and mind. Sure, your home was somewhere down there, not even the size of a dust-grain, but wasn't everything else down there also your home? Wasn't each and every other bird down there not also one of your relatives, even if only unimaginably distant and almost unrelated? As unique and powerful as this experience felt, from the looks of it, every other crew-member must have shared the same thought with you in that very moment, and surely some would have shed a tear or two if those watery marbles didn't float away from their eyes right away. Nobody, not even the seemingly all knowing scientists or psychologists, could explain why everyone who witnessed this sight felt the same way - regardless of age, gender, culture, upbringing, wealth, language. As if all those things to describe yourself meant nothing in the grand scheme of this world.
What they did explain though was why you had to spend two years in this ship before it even took off on its maiden voyage: First of all was to get accustomed to the feeling of zero gravity, second was to understand how stressful it could be to perched in with other people in tiny hallways and quarters, with barely any space to spread wings or any appendage. Surprisingly, you got used to it kind of quickly, having experienced this type of closeness to other birds every evening when you had to share a bed, your room, and even the bathroom with your many brothers. Only the lack of room for indoor-flight was something you missed dearly, and in the first few weeks you regularly slapped your roommates as you "dream-flied", extending your wings and flapping them wildly as your mind tried to make up for the lack of flight by giving you dreams of endless blue skies and warm, uplifting winds that invited you to soar into the endless reaches above. Others did not fare that well - aggressions and tensions were high, and a good quarter of the candidates either dropped out voluntarily or were removed and sent back down to the planet, signifying their disqualification and their lack of ability to adapt to this unusual environment.
Those two years went by in the flap of a wing and you couldn't complain about a lack of activities: In these years, you single-handedly read more books than all of your ancestors combined, amassed knowledge in a broad field of topics, and finally caught up to what was described as "basic knowledge". Didn't feel "basic" or "essential" at all, as nothing about it was in any way or form necessary or applicable in the everyday live out in the fields, tending to the trees of orchards or sowing the seeds so that the barren lands may turn into swaying seas made of golden wheat.
Then, about half a year before the final departure date, you got your last chance to say your final goodbyes to your family by inviting them to the space-port to meet you in person there. Others regularly called their loved ones through phones or emails, but you didn't have that option. You only wrote a single letter, addressed it to the father in the church and hoped that he would relay the invitation to your family.
As a result, you were one of the very few that chose to fly back down one last time - less than a dozen out of multiple thousands crewmembers. And you immediately remembered the other reason why once the plane entered the gravity-well of the planet: You, or to be more precise, your body had forgotten how gravity felt like. Almost as if earth itself had missed you and now pulled you into a bone crushing embrace. Even your feathers, usually almost weightless unless they got wet, dragged on your skin like they had turned to lead, and before you could muster up the strength to push yourself out of your seat that had suddenly turned unwilling let you escape, a nurse came rushing by and transferred you with firm grips into a wheelchair.
Yet when you made your way to meet your family, you chose to walk there, even under the protest of the doctors and nurses present. You didn't want the last memories to be tainted by you being pushed in a wheel-chair like a cancer-patient, even though a quick gaze into a mirror confirmed that you surely looked like one: A lot thinner all around and wings that looked weak and emasculate, almost as if they had been clipped. But the worries about how your family would react to your greatly changed appearance got swept away when you entered the visitors center, loud and filled to the brim with people. Or, to be precise, your people. Everyone had come here today: All the young chicks, now not so young anymore, but each of them still eager to know if you remembered them while they dashed around and in between your legs. And all your grandparents, having aged not one single day since you had been gone and not one bit less as energetic as the little ones, leaning on walking canes and pointing fingers at you, exclaiming your presence to everyone else in the room over and over. Then, there were your brothers, all of them now almost twice the bird you were, and your sisters, more aware of your fragile state than your brothers and more careful in their hugs. And a lot of new faces all around who got introduced: New husbands and new wifes, now part of your ever increasing family tree. New nephews and nieces who were born after your departure and had thus never even seen you. And finally, in the back of all those people, your mom and your dad, as proud of you as on the day the priest had announced the wonderful news from the letter. Now unable to hold back their tears of joy as they saw you in the official space overall, bearing your name and crew-number proudly on your chest under the logo of the space-agency.
There was only so little time left, only a single day, yet so much to catch on: How the holy father had kept all of them up to date with the progress of the mission by reading more out of science magazines than from the holy scripture during his sermons. And that as a consequence, the little church was filled to the brim every day and sometimes even until people had to stand outside the portals, desperate to listen in on the words that got carried outside by the mighty and proud sounding voice of the priest.
How the old ones, usually dull and without energy, suddenly got excited like baby-birds on their first flight once the mission was mentioned in a newly acquired radio, clustering around the apparatus. And about that one time it nearly got pushed off its table when your name was mentioned in a news story about the origins of each of the candidates.
And how they learned that you were allowed to bring only very few belongings with you, and that any sort of communication would get more and more difficult the further the ship traveled, until it would likely cease completely at some point.
Thus, all of them had pondered for weeks what they should give to you as a parting gift: So many ideas were collected, talked about and discarded again, until they decided on three items, carefully wrapped in old newspapers. But you weren't allowed to open them just yet. They were your parting gifts, and as long as you were still here on earth, the proper time had not come to reveal them.
Instead, you and your family spent the hours laughing at jokes, crying out of joy, celebrating everything anyone in your family had ever achieved, and enraptured by all the things you had learned and seen and experienced in the last years. And thinking about all the things you could do once the ship had set its course. You had your whole life still in front of you, and that was too many days and months to simply sit around idly and stare out the window into the dark void of the universe. Time flew by at an unrelenting speed, almost as if daring you to fight for each passing second in a battle you could only lose. Parting was not more but also not less difficult than the last time, even though it would be the final one. Yet, without any impatient driver in your neck, you took the appropriate amount of moments to say the last words, exchange the last formalities and gestures of love and affection with each and everyone of them. And after everything was said and done, you walked back down the hallway, listening to the last encouraging chirps and calls of everyone present, fighting against the urge to turn around as you suddenly were no longer sure if you could then step back onto the plane without any remorse.
Back on the ship, a lot of the crewmembers took the chance to present the mementos they were going to take with them onto their journey:
An albatross presented his golden medals - proving that he had managed to circumnavigate the planet without ever landing once. A symbol that birds had already undertaken similar endeavours and that this one was only another step in the natural course of things, the deep desire to venture further beyond than anyone else had ever done before.
A falcon showed his many speed records, proving over and over that he was the fastest bird alive. Yet, he warned with a dark glint in his eyes, in all of these stunts, he never could have escaped death in case things went out of control, and that not even this technological marvel of a ship could out-fly the great equalizer.
And a plain hen showed a picture of all the children she had given birth to. So many that one could hardly make out what was captured in the photograph until she provided each face with a name - otherwise, it would have just been a wall of beaks and feathers in all colours of the rainbows, every age and shape of body present. The photographer likely had to step far, far back to capture this whole family in one single shot. A proud display of the huge diversity your home planet had given birth to and harboured for millions of years until today. And, the hen added silently, her secret wish: That the new world may do so as well.
All you were able to present after unwrapping the little newspaper-bundles were a jar filled with the soil from your farm, dry and crumbly; an old, heavily used children's book that had taught you how to fly; and a letter, written in shaky and uneven characters by your parents, explaining the meaning of each of those items: The soil, as there was no such thing in space, and it should remind you of your home. And the picture book for kids, to show how far you had come and to what great heights you were able to soar. These things, simple and plain as they were, felt embarrassing and meaningless in comparison, but everyone of your fellow crew-members knew better than to make fun of those and instead were genuinely interested in the hidden stories carried in those items of yours.
Shortly after a grand launching celebration, likely watched by all of avian-kind all around the globe, the ship departed from its circular orbit and the blue marble slowly grew smaller through the windows, each of them occupied by at least one member of the crew to catch a sight of home for the last time. Meanwhile, you clung that old picture-book tightly to your heart. Even though home would remain visible to the naked eye, it felt like the umbilical-cord that had bound you to this place was cut through, the last live-line severed, and the consequences of your choices finally solidified in your mind.
You wouldn't see the end of this journey yourself.
And your chicks would grow up, grow old, and finally die, never having seen one of these big rocks called "planets". And so would their own chicks, your grandchildren, and those after them, and those after them, and so on forth for many, many, many generations. Well, the name "Generation-Ship" was very fitting in that regard.
You looked down onto this bundle of papers in your claws. This book had survived all your older siblings, yet would it also survive until the end? Here, on this ship, the knowledge it carried within the once colourful, now fading pages was useless. Non applicable. Needless. And the material was already brittle, used up and nearing the end of its lifespan - unlike all the other storage mediums on board, holding the entirety of knowledge of all civilisations, that needed to survive this thousand-year-voyage in working condition.
Yet you hoped its contents would survive in some form or another. It would be nice if not only your genetic heritage would stand the test of time, but also this little booklet that was, in some way or another, proof of what you had sacrificed. And when the time had come, when the final destination of this ship had been reached, then this heritage of a little farm bird from a planet far away, from a time long ago, would allow your descendants to spread their wings again.