It was known among the people in the starship fleet that the
Emperor had received a dream message of his death. This dream gave the people great hope and
great fear all at once because it was told that in this dream the emporer heard
the Great Voice whisper in his ear, “A boy-child will bring about the end of
your reign in his twelfth year of life.”
The emperor then came to the Great Stork, the one man
through which all children are birthed by.
He was the foremost midwife, the only trusted doctor, therefore known as
the Great Stork among the people in the fleet.
He helped the women give birth and was trusted with the care of all the
babes in their first week of birth.
Therefore the emporer asked that the Great Stork only allow the female
children to live through their first week and that all the male children be
neglected or else the Great Stork would find his life in the Emperor’s hands.
Despite this threat to his life, the Great Stork could not
compromise the oath he had taken to provide the best care for all of the
children under his watch. He could not
allow the Emperor to control the lives of these children, through which the
fate of the whole fleet was held. As
such he withheld the male children as long as he could, telling the parents
that a sickness had befallen the children and that they needed further watching
before leaving his care.
During this extra time, the Great Stork plotted. Then when the time came, he was prepared to
save these children. On the night he
promised to release the male children, a fire broke out in the hospital wing of
the starship. The Great Stork used the fire to cover the launch of an escape
pod that would carry all the male children he had saved. This escape pod would then be picked up by
another starship that was responsible for the production of food; this was the
farming starship known as “The Reaper”.
Inside the escape pod the Great Stork placed forged birth documents that
would make the children seem older than they were and would place them in the
care of families that were known for their large amounts of children.
This plan worked so well that as far as the Emperor was
concerned, all the male children perished in the fire. To the people who knew, the Great Stork
became the Great Savior, for one of these boys would end the reign of the
Emperor and would bring a better life to all people of the fleet. This one boy would be Krishna, loved by all
who beheld him, a boy of immense strength and wisdom. Krishna would one day kill the emperor and
his line and would bring great peace and prosperity to the fleet for a long
time.
Author’s note:
I used Sister Nivedita’s story of Krishna’s birth as the
base for my story. I made a lot of
changes. In the original story, Krishna’s
parents were related to the emperor and therefore were locked in a dungeon when
the emperor learned that one of their children would cause his end. In her story, Krishna was carried to a farm
by his father who walked all night through a river in order to save him.
In my story the Great Stork replaces the role of the
father. I wanted to bring the story into
a modern framework that would allow more creativity with the setting and
characters but retain the origins of the saved child.
