Colonists - Interlude 1: Zilla (2024)

So far the story of humankind’s first expedition to the stars has dealt with the practicalities, both physical and political, of getting there. But since it will necessarily be a one-way trip the travelers will be colonists rather than explorers or scientists, and their purpose will be to create a new branch of the human race.

The journey will take many years. If the travelers will not be too old to have children and do all the hard physical work that will undoubtedly be necessary when they get to wherever they’re going, they will need to start out as young adults. Let’s take a look at a few of them, and why they want to go. We’ll introduce them one by one in separate interludes.

INTERLUDE: ZILLA

Zilla brushed a strand of hair out of her face with an impatient gesture. Realizing just too late that she had paint on her fingers she swore abstractedly then forgot about it. Her whole attention was focused on the half-finished painting in front of her. There was something missing, some essential quality lacking which, if only she could visualize it, she knew would flow from her into the painting. It was like having a word on the tip of her tongue, not quite there yet infuriatingly close.

After staring at the painting for several minutes she decided she was getting nowhere and gave it up for the day. In any case she had promised to go to a party that evening and knew from experience that it took quite some while to wash the smell of paint off herself. As an artist she was talented, dedicated, and rather messy.

At eighteen, Zilla Star was a tall slender woman. Her face lacked that perfection of symmetry which has always been considered the hallmark of beauty throughout the ages, but there was a happy vitality about her which more than compensated. When everyone else around her was in their usual state of being weighed down by the cares of the world - lack of jobs, new taxes, gloom and doom in the media - Zilla breezed through it all with a smile on her face and an almost tangible aura of carefree enjoyment. It was positively indecent the way the younger generation carried on nowadays, as her elders remarked.

Having cleaned up, Zilla walked into the living room just in time to hear her stepbrother Stephan’s rather petulant cry of “What’s for dinner, Mom?”

Stephan was a jobless twenty year old with little education and even less inclination to get one, who spent most of his time in front of a holovision set watching anything that came up, but mostly sports, like his father. He was however the apple of his mother’s eye.

“I'm cooking your favorite tonight, Stephan dear, and we'll eat just as soon as Daddy gets home.”

Coming into the living room Maria caught sight of her adopted daughter and gave an exaggerated sigh. Miniskirts were back in fashion, and Zilla's long elegant legs seemed to go on forever. Maria's legs had never been that shapely and with middle age approaching they had lost most of their appeal. She felt a twinge of jealousy as she looked at Zilla, and the thought of her new name made her feel worse. What was wrong with Bronya, anyway? If it was good enough for Maria's mother it ought to be good enough for the little waif that she and Victor had rescued and given a new life, how dare she change it ...

When they had brought the little waif home, Victor and Maria (mainly Maria, Victor had very little say in their household) had named her Bronya, after Maria`s mother. However, as Bronya grew up she developed a pronounced dislike for her name which she considered impossibly old-fashioned and boring, and since very few of her friends could pronounce her last name, Wojnowicz, she changed both names on the day she legally became an adult to Zilla Star. To make it worse, Bronya, or Zilla as she now was, didn`t seem to realize how deeply this had hurt Maria. “It's just a name, Mom. Names don't mean anything nowadays, you just change them to suit your mood.”

The fact that this was largely correct was irrelevant as far as Maria was concerned. Although everyone was issued a 16-digit Personal Identity Number at birth, or in Zilla’s case when she was brought into the country, which was then your real identity for the rest of your life, it did nothing to assuage Maria’s hurt feelings. In any case, what a ridiculous name she had chosen ... (As Bronya/Zilla explained, the Star part was her way of telling the world what she intended to be, while as for Zilla, she just liked the sound of it.)

Maria’s objections to the name change hadn’t been helped much by Victor either. Although he would never admit it to his wife he felt a little in awe of his adopted daughter as she changed from skinny child into this tall earthy goddess on the brink of full womanhood and simultaneously developed an artistic talent that seemed to him miraculous. Not, as he admitted to himself, that he knew anything about art, but he was inordinately proud of the way Bronya, or Zilla as he supposed he should call her now, could daub paint on a canvas and make it come alive.

Victor was also proud that it was he who had encouraged Bronya to start painting. It had all begun when he had joined an art sponsorship group. It was the latest thing in those days; you bought shares in an organization that subsidized artists of one sort or another, and in return got tickets to exhibitions. Not first performances, naturally, they didn't subscribe that much, but they got there ahead of the common herd, assuming that the common herd bothered to attend at all.

Victor tried taking his whole family at first, but Stephan had no interest and Maria always complained about having to stand around in high heels (why she had to wear high heels Victor could never make out), so in the end it was just himself and Bronya. It was fun taking his eleven-year old daughter, she usually had something to say about what she saw, and often her comments had that devastating accuracy that only the young can achieve. One day they were standing in front of a new work which seemed to be highly regarded by the cognoscenti.

“Er”, said Victor, trying to find the appropriate page in the program, “Oh, here we are. It's called, er, 'Dynastic Dream', and one of the critics said it was, er, 'a tour de force of psychokinesthetic symbolism', er, 'encapsulating the essential angst of today's society and the dynamic tension between our inner feelings and outer selves' “. The object in question was a double-sided canvas about three feet square suspended from a light spring so it bobbed in the breeze, painted a harsh, glittery white on one side and a soft peachy orange on the other.

“Looks like he's waiting for the paint to dry so he can get on with it” said Bronya, and they both started giggling. They were glared at by a large lady with a knife-like nose protruding above jowls that wobbled when she swung round to them, which caused Bronya to go red in the face trying to suppress a further set of giggles. In the end they had to leave because neither of them could control themselves any longer.

On the way home Bronya asked “Dad, what did artists do in the old days?”

Victor had a vague idea that they spent a lot of time painting things that you could see, sort of like photographs, although why anyone would want to spend time putting paint on a piece of canvas when you could just as easily click off a few camera shots, he couldn't say. But he was sufficiently intrigued to forgo his baseball re-runs that evening and switch a holo set to the Net instead.

It took a little while to find what they were seeking. Finally they were looking at a flat, two-dimensional representation of some flowers. Sunflowers, it said, by somebody called Van Gogh. At first, it was hardly worth looking at. And yet, and yet, there was something about it which demanded their attention. Victor had the oddest feeling that a bright summer's day was blazing its warmth onto the flowers, even though it was dark outside and the room lighting was subdued. There was a hypnotic quality about the painting which would not let them take their eyes away.

It was late at night before Victor shooed an exhausted Bronya to bed. So many paintings, so many artists. She had a vague idea that there were many, many different styles of painting, and that in each picture the artist somehow put a little bit of themselves into it. How it was done, she didn't know. But she knew what she wanted to do with her life. She wanted to paint pictures like the ones she had seen tonight.

And now, early on a Saturday evening seven years later the skinny little Bronya that had become the elegantly mini-skirted Zilla was standing in the living room of her home, listening to her mother's exaggerated sigh. She bit her lip to stop her usual disparaging remark about her mother's sigh, knowing all too well how easy it was to get into a flaming row that would ruin her whole evening.

“I suppose you won't have time to eat with us again” said Maria in her hurt voice.

“Of course I will, Mummy.” Calling her 'Mummy' usually calmed her down, and in any case she had an appetite like a horse. Painting always made her feel hungry.

At that moment Victor walked in. Short and balding with the beginnings of a paunch, he still retained an air of youthful innocence that endeared him to Zilla. She was somewhat taller than him and by standing on tiptoe could kiss the bald spot on the top of his head, which she proceeded to do. Victor gave her a quick hug while Maria looked rather sour.

After dinner Victor and Stephan parked themselves in front of a holovision set. Victor had recently gained his Registered Football Critic status and considered it his professional duty to watch all the major games, while Stephan just gravitated there in the absence of any other interests. Zilla cleared up, involving as it did little more than stacking everything in the dishwasher, then scooted out of the house, barely hearing her father's plea that she be home at a reasonable hour. Of course I will she said to herself, so long as I get to say what's reasonable.

Not that she had any reason to worry about being out late. The suburb of Salt Lake City where they lived was well lit and well patrolled, and in any case the party was at a friend's house a quarter of a mile away. Dad always wanted her to call when she was coming home so he could walk over and escort her back, but she felt silly having her own father fetch her. In any case it was much more fun to have one of her numerous admirers escort her back.

Zilla had decided recently that she was definitely heterosexual. Girls were nice as friends, but somehow they just didn't attract her as bed partners. This was not something one would want to be made known publicly. Young people were expected to experiment, and with population pressure mounting (The Problem, as the media usually referred to it), being a het was, well, not exactly frowned upon, but somehow not something you wanted to boast about.

None of this worried Zilla. She just liked being in the company of boys (or men - when did they stop being boys and become men?). When she arrived there was already a crowd drifting around, in that aimless but expectant way that people have before a party spontaneously ignites. She burst in with her usual happy smile and whether by coincidence or whether she was the spark, the party seemed to ignite at that moment.

Jon's house where the party was held was larger than most of the others in the neighborhood. His parents were away for the weekend so they had it to themselves. Down in the basem*nt the noise was deafening and it was just as well that the rec room was soundproofed, else there would have been lawsuits flying the next day. Zilla and her friends could never understand why old people, over thirty or so, got so stuffy about a little bit of noise.

Conversation had been a dying art ever since the invention of television over a century and a half ago. Not that it would have been possible above the noise in the rec room. Hog thrash was this year's music, composed and played electronically. What it lacked in melody, harmony and counterpoint it more than made up with exuberant rhythmic volume. If, unaccountably, anyone at the party wanted a respite from it they went outside. It was a warm night so from time to time small groups would lounge around in the backyard, gossiping in the way of party-goers since time began.

“What are you working on now?” said a voice behind her. Zilla turned to recognize the slight, blonde figure of Tony. A few years older than Zilla and determinedly gay, he was one of the few people of her own generation with whom she felt able to discuss art. He had endeared himself to her by cheerfully admitting to playing with dolls as a boy, then discussing the aesthetic merits of various types of doll. Big hairy jocks were all very well, she thought, when you wanted someone big and hairy (although quite a number of those turned out to be gay), but the only people she knew besides herself who appreciated art were either slightly weird females with whom she had nothing else in common, or gays like Tony. Perhaps artists like me are meant to stay single, she thought in her darker moments.

“What am I working on? I don't quite know. I mean, I thought I knew what it was supposed to be, but it's not working out that way at all. It seems to have a life of its own.”

“Well, on the assumption that it's a painting we're talking about and not Frankenstein's monster, what was it meant to be in the beginning?”

“A sort of abstract essence of a flower. I know that sounds a bit corny, but I was trying to capture the flowerness of a flower without actually painting a flower. Trouble is, it wants to be something else, but I don't know what. It's hiding there, just inside my head somewhere, but it won't come out. I dream about it, I know exactly what it is I have to paint then, poof, I wake up and it's gone. It's infuriating.”

“The only advice I can offer is to keep on dreaming. Celibate dreams, of course. You have to maintain your virgin purity while the Muse is upon you.”

“No problem about that. Living at home isn't exactly the best way to expand your sex life, at least with a family like mine. And much as I like you, Tony, you really aren't of much use to me in that direction.”

“I know, sweetheart. But at least I'm not a rival. I have the feeling that any man you'd be interested in would have to be one hundred percent hetero. Come to think of it, they do seem to be getting a bit scarce, don't they? When I was down in the party just now I think there were more boys dancing with boys than with girls.”

There was a slight pause. “Why is that, Tony? It wasn't always like this was it, where the two sexes seem to be losing interest in each other? You read in the old books how men chased women, and as soon as a woman decided to be caught she just flopped onto her back and starting making babies.”

“I guess they did a bit too much of the baby-making bit in the past. Nowadays there are just too many of us. Maybe being gay is Mother Nature's way of solving the problem. At least nobody can accuse me of causing any more babies.”

Zilla's thoughts drifted to her own childhood. Maria had had Stephan and declared that enough was enough. Being pregnant was uncomfortable, it ruined her figure, and actually giving birth was something she wasn't going to go through again for anyone's sake, thank you very much. But Victor wanted another child and Maria had to agree that they would be company for each other, so they set out to adopt one. A girl this time, though - someone for Maria to dress up and fuss with. Boys were all very well in their way, but girls were so much more, well, ladylike than boys.

Adopting was easy enough. With the Third World bursting at the seams there were agencies practically begging you to take a child. Maria and Victor chose a sweet little one, almost white really, it could just be a slight tan, and Maria proceeded to convert the little waif into a real American child.

Trouble was, Bronya had not grown up in her adoptive mother's image at all. Maria wanted her daughter to be a ladylike credit to her mother who would have the glittering social life that Maria had never quite managed. (Wants me to be another overdressed bubblehead was Bronya's way of putting it.) Instead, she found herself with a tomboyish, scabby-kneed whirlwind who, if dressed in a pretty party dress could almost be guaranteed to come home with it dirty and torn, having got into a fight with some horrid boy. Maria finally gave up in despair, and was consoled only by the fact that Stephan was so much more dependable, so much more caring of his Mama, and so happy to spend time at home with her. (Never gets off his fat butt to do anything, in Bronya's words.)

She often wondered who her real parents were, but had decided she didn't really want to know. She guessed she came from some Third World country - certainly she had dark glossy hair, brown eyes and somewhat darker skin than her adoptive parents - but Victor and Maria said they didn't know where and she believed them. If she was from the Third World, what she saw of it on holovision made her quite content to be where she was now.

“Come back down to us mortals” she heard Tony saying. “You've gone all glassy-eyed. It must have been the mention of babies that did it. You're getting the nesting instinct, I can tell. Any day now we'll see you knitting baby clothes.”

Zilla threatened him with her clenched fist with mock ferocity. Then she grinned. “Someday I'm going to get down to it in earnest and have lots of fat little babies, and the hell with everyone’s disapproval of big families, but not for a long while yet. There's too much I want to do first. When I do though, I want you to be their favorite uncle. You can bring them presents and take them to the zoo.”

Tony hugged her briefly. “Come on, let's get down to the party again or someone will start spreading nasty rumors that I'm dallying with girls.”

There was little else to do in the party room except drink beer, smoke marijuana and occasionally smooch around the room with one of the few men who were neither intimidated by her nor interested only in their own sex. A couple of times she danced with girls just to show she was not rigidly hetero, but when the last one clutched her in a passionate belly-rubbing embrace she decided she had had enough and retreated to the backyard again. It was empty this time except for a couple of young men totally absorbed in each other, oblivious to the world around them.

Being alone never bothered Zilla. She was not a hermit by nature, but lacked that insistent need for the company of others which so often passes for sociability. If others were there, all well and good, she could enjoy their company, but if she was on her own then so be it.

Thinking back on her past, it had always been like this. The family had moved to Salt Lake when she was ten. Before that they had lived in one of the satellite towns that had sprung up around Chicago during the great exodus from that city in the middle of the century. She thought it was called Pleasant Creek, or something of the kind, but there were so many new suburbs with similar names that it was easy to be confused. Life had been a lot tougher in Pleasant Creek. They had been uncomfortably near Chicago itself, with its constant threat of raiding parties sent out by the gangs that controlled the city. At least she didn't have to report her movements in advance to the Patrol Centre here when she went out at night. Back in the old days in Pleasant Creek you mostly stayed in at night, so if you wanted to have a friend over they had to sleep over as well. Maria tended to discourage this; she always seemed to find some reason why so-and-so was not really good enough for Bronya, not quite up to our standards, you know.

Like most of their contemporaries, Bronya's parents had a great deal of leisure time. It was only quite recently that the education system had finally accepted that its primary function was to prepare people for what they did most of the time, which was leisure. Maria Wojnowicz had a diploma in holovision appreciation while Victor was both a Registered Baseball Critic and a Registered Football Critic, which represented quite an achievement. Of course, Victor had to spend several hours a day in an insurance company but he always felt this was somewhat of an imposition. “Most times I just check what the computer says. Maybe once a day I change something, but for all the difference it makes I might as well not bother.”

But Victor must have been doing something right, because when Bronya was ten he was promoted to a head office job in Salt Lake. When most cities had collapsed into lawlessness earlier in the century, everything worth moving had been moved to heavily guarded suburbs such as Pleasant Creek. Almost everyone now lived and worked in suburbs and exurbs surrounding decaying city cores, like planets orbiting a black hole. Yet there were always some functions which required humans to congregate together instead of talking to each other via holophone, and thus there was a need for a few functioning cities. Salt Lake City was one of the very few which had escaped the blight and by the middle of the century had become one of the major commercial centers of North America. A move there for Victor Wojnowicz was a definite step upwards.

Salt Lake was still a Mormon town, no doubt about it. Alcohol was frowned upon, tobacco was illegal and even marijuana was hard to come by. But at least you could walk out of your house at night without having to report your movements in advance to the Patrol Centre, and there weren't even any guards on the school buses. Maria never did feel comfortable seeing her children going to school without one or two armed guards in sight. However, the schools were used to mothers like her and faithfully reported the safe arrival of every school bus over the Net. For as long as her children were at school Maria could never relax until that reassuring message arrived that the school bus had safely reached its destination five blocks down the road.

Bronya's new school in Salt Lake was a progressive establishment which had recently instituted a program to teach all its students to read and write. Of course, anyone taking an advanced university degree was generally expected to learn reading and writing, and certainly Victor would have to improve his skills in this area if he wanted to advance further up the corporate ladder. But learning as young as ten years old was almost unheard of. Maria was doubtful at first.

“I don't know Victor, I mean, is it going to stunt their development? All this memorizing enormous amounts of things by rote with no chance to do anything creative? After all, I've never learnt that stuff and it hasn't done me any harm.”

“Well, children used to learn it at a much younger age a couple of centuries ago.”

“Oh, that doesn't count. That was in the dark ages and you simply can't compare what happened then to today's world. I do wish you wouldn't wander off the subject when I'm trying to discuss serious things.”

“Well, er ... “

“Besides, if you ever need to write anything you just tell a computer to do it for you and it makes those funny little squiggly things, you know, letters or whatever you call them, and if you want to know anything you just ask the Net and it tells you. Who needs all this reading and writing?”

“I guess there are some things you need to know which aren't available on the Net.”

“Nonsense. Anything worth knowing is on the Net somewhere, always has been, always will be.”

It was the art book that Victor bought for Bronya a year or two later which finally convinced Maria. It was not so much the reproductions of Impressionist paintings as the creamy sensuousness of the paper which exuded a feeling of voluptuous luxury. If this is what books were like, maybe reading wasn't such a bad thing after all, she thought. She even thought about learning herself but somehow never found time for it.

When Bronya was twelve, Maria finally ceased thinking of her as a little doll and started to refer to her as a trial and a disappointment. “Look at the mess in your room, your grandmother would have a fit if she saw this, and you've ruined your new blouse.” This last with a wail of despair as she saw that her daughter for some incomprehensible reason had liberally rubbed paint into the offending article. (Bronya had been experimenting with a way of spreading background color and had used the frilly blouse her mother had bought her with savage delight.) Where was the delicate little china doll that she had worked so hard to mold in her own image? Maria's thoughts oscillated between maternal misery and feral dislike at such times.

But there was always Stephan to console her. You could always count on Stephan to do the right thing, dress the right way, say the right thing. Manly little fellow too, used to sit with Victor often and watch baseball. None of this running around outside and getting dirty like Bronya.

The final confirmation that Bronya was a Problem Child came one afternoon when she had as usual been running around outside. Maria received an indignant phone call from her neighbor.

“ ... ought to be ashamed of yourself, letting that disgusting child of yours assault my poor Richard, his eye is so bruised he can hardly see out of it, we're going to sue you for this, if I ever see that child of yours near mine again I'll call the Sector Patrol, how can you live with yourself knowing what a monster you've raised ... “

At this point Bronya walked in the house. Maria swiped off her phone with an extravagant gesture.

“What have you done now, you stupid child? Richard's mother says he's going to lose his eye.”

“Oh poo, mother. I just socked him one 'cos he grabbed my ass, and then he ran off screaming to his mummy. He'll be OK in the morning.” Since Richard was older and heavier than Bronya, Maria was a little confused. Admittedly, sexual fumblings with pre-pubescent girls were rather frowned upon, but one didn't like to be a prude about these things. Heaven forbid one should get a reputation for prudishness. But to physically assault a person with such little provocation? Besides, what was she doing playing with boys anyway? Maria determined to have a long talk with Bronya that evening but then dropped the idea with a mental shrug. So many long talks already, and they slid off her daughter like water off a duck's back.

What irked Maria was that Victor in his quiet way seemed to be able to talk to his daughter whereas Maria and Bronya apparently lived in different worlds. Maria knew only too well the glazed-eye expression that would come over her daughter whenever she tried to explain to her how she ought to behave. Victor on the other hand could chat with Bronya on easy terms about anything. More and more nowadays the talk would be about art, and Victor was bemused at times to realize that his twelve year old daughter knew a lot more about it than he did.

It was only when Maria finally faced the fact that she couldn't talk to her daughter that she swallowed her pride and decided that Bronya needed professional help. It wasn't as if it was anything to be ashamed of, as she explained to Victor that evening, lots of children needed professional guidance, in fact she was surprised the school hadn't suggested it already, but Bronya was really getting out of hand and there was no knowing what might happen next.

Victor's somewhat feeble protestations having been overridden, Bronya was duly deposited a few days later in Dr. Ostrofski's office. Dr. Ostrofski described herself as a Juvenile Social Adjustment Specialist, and prided herself on her ability to reach an easy rapport with almost any child or teenager. She smiled warmly as Bronya walked in, noting the child's rather hostile body language which was only to be expected in the circ*mstances. There was no desk in the room, just a few armchairs and sofas.

“Sit anywhere you want, Bronya, or stand and walk around if you want. I'm here to help you”, she said in her warmest, most comforting voice. Bronya returned a who-the hell-are-you look. Dr. Ostrofski realized she was going to have her work cut out with this one.

It is always distressing for a learned adult called upon to provide guidance and counselling to a child to realize that the child in question is more intelligent and in some ways more learned than herself. When this sunk in to Dr. Ostrofski during the third session with Bronya Wojnowicz, she nearly panicked. Children weren't supposed to be cleverer than her, she was the mastermind around here and had a string of degrees to prove it. Unfortunately, none of this impressed Bronya who went on alternately telling her about the Pre-Raphaelites, whom she had just discovered, and remorselessly dissecting her mother's personality.

Later that day, Dr. Ostrofski reported to Maria Wojnowicz that she didn't really think there was a problem with her daughter, that these apparent problems usually sorted themselves out with increasing maturity, and she didn't think much would be gained by her seeing Bronya anymore.

Zilla was woken from her reverie by a group of party-goers coming out to the backyard, presumably like her for some respite from the noise inside.

“Did you guys see that thing on holo yesterday about the starship project?”

“What, another one of those boring old sci-fi things?”

“No, this one's for real. They’re sending a spaceship to another star and they want volunteers to go on it.”

“I wouldn’t mind doing that as long as I could come back after a year or two.”

“No, you don’t get it – it’s going to be a one-way trip. You’re going to spend the rest of your life there.”

“You're kidding!”

“They gave a web address, so just for fun I input my PIN. You're now looking at an actual interstellar volunteer.”

“So when do we get rid of you?”

The conversation degenerated somewhat at this point, but returned to a more philosophical level later on. In the end Jurgen the volunteer brought up the website on his smartphone and most of the party, fueled by alcohol and peer pressure, input their PINs. They also added the PINs of a hog thrash singer whose number someone just happened to have plus someone else's ninety-year old great aunt.

And forgot all about it the next day.

Six months later Zilla received a message: she had been shortlisted for the Mayflower project.

She was never quite sure why the idea of making an irrevocable break with everything that she knew and was familiar with had so much appeal for her. She had the prospect of a promising career as an artist ahead of her and no lack of friends and admirers. Perhaps it was the thought of a world where babies were welcome, and the more the merrier. Perhaps it was simply an inexpressible urge to explore new frontiers, new ideas, new ways of looking at things in whatever form they might take. At all events, she went ahead with the next step.

Her family’s reaction was predictable. Maria expressed a formulaic regret that she would be gone but didn’t seem unduly upset. Truth to tell, it was a relief for Maria who was feeling increasingly uncomfortable with this cuckoo-child who was maturing into a glamorous and accomplished woman with whom she had little in common. Stephan hardly seemed to care, which was also predictable. Victor, though, was a different matter. He didn’t try to stop her, knowing it would only make her more determined to go, but he had a lost puppy air about him that made Zilla want to hug him and tell him that everything would be okay. On the day she left for her initial screening she did hug him and told him she would be back. This much at least was true. The launch date was still three years ahead.

It was to her friends, perhaps inadvertently, that she expressed her real reason for going. At another party at Jon’s house (same people, same music) the backyard conversation not unexpectedly centered around Zilla. Reactions ranged from awe – “wow!” – to cynical amusem*nt – “gonna have sex with those little green men out there” – to puzzlement – “ but why? your whole life is ahead of you here”. She listened to them for a while, not contributing much but seemingly lost in a dream. In the end, when the discussion had turned to what the rest of them intended or wanted to do with their lives, those of them that had thought about it at any rate, Zilla smiled softly and said

“And I shall be the mother of nations.”