O P P O R T U N I T Y C O S T PA R T I short story Theron Camp // 12 Montana, 2019 Her parents were wrong, she decided as she flopped down amongst the long grass by the riverbank, but she couldn’t seem to convince them of this. It wasn’t that they were unreceptive. There were simply plenty of other bright, young, mechanically-minded American explorers who could go to Mars, and they didn’t see why their daughter should have to be one of them. Besides, they would miss her dreadfully if she went away, perhaps never to return. Annie Zimmermann would not mind this. She thought life on the farm was boring, domestic, and limiting. She’d made up her mind at a young age that she would grow up to live beyond the limits of civilization, where no one had gone before, and when civilization caught up with her, she would move again. Naturally, she’d been disappointed when she’d learned there were no more proper frontiers on Earth, but then, in 2011, she’d stayed up late (with her parents’ approval) to watch the Mars landings. From that point forth, it was her
sole dream in life to explore that new frontier herself. So she devoted herself to the study of space exploration, of its history and mechanics and economics. While her parents had encouraged her in learning about her passion, they had made it no secret that they expected her to grow up to work the farm alongside Peter when they retired. As she grew older, her parents and her brother taught her the running of the farm, the business behind it, the various tools and machines, their uses, and how to repair them. In this last task they found Annie a faithful student; she knew it was important to be a capable engineer if she was to survive on another planet. Matters came to a head that afternoon when a letter came back from a prestigious Institute of Technology on the east coast, congratulating Annie on being a finalist for a particular scholarship. She was ecstatic, but to her dismay, her parents didn’t share in her glee. It would always be, her father emphasized, her decision in the end, and Annie was a smart kid and surely deserved the scholarship, but they
“She was ecstatic, but to her dismay, her parents didn’t share in her glee.”
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