STAR Academy

Chapter 1

Amanda Forsythe watched with a mixture of nervousness and excitement as the judges of the Downview Public School science fair examined her display. She had spent every evening of the past month putting together her exhibit. It had been exhausting, but worth it, she hoped. She knew that photonsail space travel was a difficult concept to convey to anyone who didn’t have a sound knowledge of interstellar flight and quantum physics. Still, she believed that her explanation was simple enough that even the judges– Mr. Murkly, the principal, and Mrs. Wheedlbum, her grade-six science teacher– could understand. And this was the moment of truth. Staff, pupils and parents packed the school gym, within which was an array of displays from the senior students, all competing to win the coveted annual science fair trophy. Amanda tried to read the expressions on the faces of Principal Murkly and Mrs. Wheedlbum– every furrowed brow, every squint, every head scratch– wondering if they were favourably impressed.

Finally, Principal Murkly spoke: “Laser-powered interstellar travel. How . . . creative.”

He looked at Amanda’s diagram showing chains of planetary-based laser stations transmitting power beams out to a spacecraft equipped with photon sails. Principal Murkly cocked his head like a dog that was confused at hearing a human voice coming from someplace unexpected, like a refrigerator or a wastebasket.

“I’d be nervous travelling in a spaceship that people were firing laser beams at!” exclaimed Mrs. Wheedlbum.

“Yes,” added Principal Murkly. “You’d want to make sure that whoever was shooting the laser had good aim! Otherwise, kablooey!”

Amanda decided that she’d better help them out. “Actually, they’re not firing lasers at it, but to it, as a power source. NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts has done work on this already. So has the Russian Space Agency. With the research being undertaken, it’s possible that within two or three decades, photon-powered interstellar travel will–”

“Strange, I don’t remember reading about it in our new science textbooks,” interrupted Mrs. Wheedlbum, as though she hadn’t heard Amanda speaking at all.

“Well,” said Amanda politely, “that’s because our school textbooks deal with fairly basic science. Photon-sail interstellar travel is really cutting-edge.”

“Oh, I get it,” chuckled Principal Murkly. “You’re saying that the highly trained professionals who write our textbooks are not quite up to your level, is that it?”

He turned and winked at the audience. Taking their cue from him, the assembled students chuckled at Amanda. Many of the parents did too, in what they thought was an “isn’t she cute?” sort of way, which Amanda found even more irritating, because it was so condescending yet so utterly ignorant. Amanda felt her temper beginning to rise but let it go. She realized that new science concepts were often greeted with skepticism. People once thought that Earth was flat. And even after they were finally persuaded that Earth was a sphere, you could get burned at the stake for saying that it was not the centre of the universe. So Amanda told herself to be patient. She could turn this around. She just had to make the concept simple enough for them to grasp.

“This kind of science–”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Wheedlbum with a patronizing smile. “Unfortunately, the presentations for this fair are supposed to be about science fact, not science fiction.”

Mr. Murkly only partly suppressed a smirk. “Why do you need to go off into space in a device like this protein-sail space thingy of yours, anyway?” he asked.

Photon sail, Amanda thought to herself. “Photon, not protein,” she wanted to tell Principal Murkly. Amanda wanted to correct him so that he didn’t make her exhibit sound totally ridiculous. But she had observed that some adults responded badly to being corrected by kids, no matter how wrong the adult was. And after his reaction to her comment about their science textbooks, she knew that Murkly was one of that kind of adult. So instead, Amanda just answered his question as though “protein-sail space thingy” wasn’t a completely ludicrous description of the astonishingly advanced devices and concepts featured in her exhibit.

“The reason we need to build spaceships,” Amanda explained, “is that according to astronomers, the sun is gradually getting hotter due to nuclear fusion burning up the hydrogen in its core. As it runs out of hydrogen, it will begin burning the other element that makes up a significant portion of it: helium. Helium fusion creates much higher temperatures than hydrogen fusion. When the sun begins producing more heat, that will in turn cause Earth’s temperature to rise.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Principal Murkly. “Then we could stay right at home for the winter holidays, instead of having to fly south to get warm.” He mugged to the audience. “What do you say to that, everybody? Who wants to turn the school into a tropical resort?”

The children shouted their approval. Parents clapped appreciatively at his suggestion.

“It’s true that at first, the winters would be warm,” said Amanda, trying not to get flustered by Principal Murkly’s ridiculous prattle. “But eventually the sun will become so hot that it will boil away Earth’s oceans and rivers. Then the surface of the planet itself will become molten. It will no longer be able to sustain life of any kind. If you stayed at a resort on such a world,” said Amanda, fighting to conceal her annoyance, “the highlight of your vacation would entail being incinerated into a pile of ashes small enough to fit in a teaspoon– that is, until you were vaporized completely a few moments later.”

A hush fell over the hall. Many of the parents looked away from Amanda awkwardly, as if she had just shouted out something inappropriate in a crowded elevator. Others cleared their throats and shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

“If we are to save our species and the other life forms on Earth,” added Amanda, “we will need to build spaceships and seek out alternative planets that can support us.”

“Gracious me,” said Mrs. Wheedlbum. “What a calamity! I’m surprised I haven’t heard about it on the television news. When is this terrible event, real or imaginary, supposed to happen?”

“According to all the science journals I’ve read,” Amanda responded, “as well as the nasa website, about nine hundred million years from now.”

“Nine hundred million years from now?!” brayed Principal Murkly. “Why on earth would you even care about what happens that far in the future? We’ll all be long gone by then.”

“We will be gone,” agreed Amanda, “but our descendants will have to deal with the problem. We can help them by beginning our research now.”

“Well,” continued Principal Murkly in a mock-reassuring tone, “I’m sure we can safely leave this problem to the geniuses of the future, eh? That means you, grade ones,” he said, smiling and pointing to the six-year-old children at the back of the gym. “Or maybe your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren.”

Everyone laughed. Except Amanda.

Then Principal Murkly leaned in close to Mrs. Wheedlbum’s ear and whispered so quietly that his voice could barely be heard beyond the third row: “Remind me later to have a chat with the school psychologist. I think this Forsythe kid might be a, you know, whack job.”

As he said “whack job,” Murkly pointed to his ear, nodded solemnly at Mrs. Wheedlbum, then crossed his eyes and made a clockwise motion with his index finger to emphasize the point.

“Forsythe’s a freak!” a boy’s voice called from somewhere in the gym.

“Weirdo!” cried out another. “No wonder you don’t have any friends!”

That set off a wave of giggles and snickers among the students. Parents shushed their children, then sat there in embarrassed silence. Amanda felt her face turning red. Her throat tightened. This wasn’t the way she had imagined the judges and audience responding to her project, for which she had read scores of research papers in the most respected scientific journals.

Amanda opened her mouth to protest. But before she could utter a sound, Principal Murkly and Mrs. Wheedlbum had already turned away, clearly as skeptical of her project as if it were about the care and feeding of elves, or how to turn toenail clippings into precious metals.

“Now, what do we have here?” Principal Murkly asked enthusiastically as he sidled up to the next exhibit.

“Yes, this one looks very interesting,” added Mrs. Wheedlbum. “Tell us what it’s all about, young man.”

Behind the display table sat Stephen Chapman, a boy whose face was perpetually frozen into the expression of a surprised mole and whose soft, white body suggested a blanched sea slug. He enjoyed moving as little as possible, which was evidently the inspiration for his science fair project. Right now, Stephen was doing what he liked doing most: sitting in a chair, not moving any part of his body except his rubbery lips.

“My exhibit,” began Stephen, blinking into the gymnasium lights, “is about robots. Some day, robots will do everything for us. They will shop for us, dress us, prepare our meals and bring them to ...