Pilot Map: Science Fiction

She was born with a constellation map wrapped along her collarbone and draped across her back, much to her mother's dismayed surprise. Sign of a pilot child, most said, and her mother was much in disgrace, since she was married to a butcher, and one who had never been a pilot. When the child was ten, the butcher confessed to a one-time fling with a pilot that must have somehow born her descendent map into his wife. And so, when I grew up, I naturally enough went to look for my not-siblings. After all, I had the descendent map, and I'd been assured that that would mean something among other pilots. I'd also, it seemed, gotten the full dose of aid and assistance from the nanos swarming in my blood. I was faster than anyone else, could jump higher, giggled like mad when I was spun around and up and down and could still walk a straight line with no difficulty, and I could stay underwater for a much, much longer time than most others would consider safe. Eventually my fingernails might turn purple, but my brain would be fine, and I always got my color back when I surfaced. So I decided to go in search of my pilot not-mother, to see what might be. And perhaps a little to yell at her for seducing my father and causing my mother so much shame for ten years. First, of course, I had to figure out a way to get into the major spaceways. I couldn't study to be a pilot myself, for such schools were all far away from the other trade routes, the pilots being as protective of their marked children (usually) as any other parent, and there being some specific dangers to being a pilot child that others didn’t have to face. A butcher's child wouldn't have slavers coming and sniffing around.


Inspiration: http://www.topit.me/item/1892627
Story potential: High
Notes: I really like the idea of this take on the whole "pilots are a breed apart" trope.