“Wow…” she said.
“I know!” replied the child, AXC23M, now jumping up and down and clapping his hands, the scales on his temples flaring with anticipation.
“How soon until we get there mom?”
“Can I ride the binary black hole?”
“Pleaseeeeeeee!”
“Can I?”
She looked at him with that long annoyed look, so very characteristic of her.
“No.” she said.
“But mom…”
“No, you’re too young…1200 kilometers tall, that’s how tall you need to be. When you are we can discuss this again!”
“This sucks!”
“Why can’t I take an enhancement pill? ARC98F does it all the time.”
“You know these chemicals are not good for you. Anyway, this binary black hole thing is too dangerous in my opinion. That’s final!” she exclaimed decisively.
The child kicked the dust around his feet with anger. It was not fair…he never does the cool rides. He had seen the video on GalaTube. You would sit on this life-size star (with seatbelts and all, it was not like it was unsafe or anything) and you would be catapulted towards a binary black hole. The whole ride was quite fast, but that was the whole point! You would go once through the accretion disk of one of the black holes (not to be alarmed, there was protective exoglass around the seats) and then the gravity of the system would slingshot you away, where you would bounce off a fluffy planetary nebula. That was all…nothing dangerous, nothing extraordinary. It wasn’t like he asked to go to the wormhole ride. That was dangerous. He had read on the Blogohypersphere that people there went missing sometimes…Holy Quantumgravity knows where they had ended up. But still, supposedly the thrill was worth the risk.
“One day…one day, I will be old enough, and I will do everything.” he exclaimed more to himself than to his mother.
“Indeed you will…” she said smiling and handed him the fusion powered mini-star she had bought for him.