The main body of the space shuttle was long and narrow. It was occupied by 127 participants of the stupid game, a handful of wealthy tourists, some journalists, and poor little Sophie. Even to her, the central aisle felt narrow. Thanks to the weightlessness, the seats could be rearranged and raised like bunk beds. This helped things feel somewhat more spacious, but the back still felt cramped compared to the first class section where Sophie sat.

Each seat could flatten into a bed and slide up the curved walls up to the ceiling. Zero-gravity environments helped use of all the available space, but it still felt unnatural. At regular intervals, to change the monotony, passengers were asked to get up from their seats and watch an elegant ballet where each seat was reoriented in space. First-class seats stayed in first-class but moved around similarly.

The flight from Earth to Mars took just under two weeks but four of those days were spent accelerating and decelerating. Few passengers could seamlessly transition to weightlessness without losing a meal or two. To make things worse, each person had to monitor their weight, exercise regularly in the gym, and even give blood samples. Her father’s private doctor, a great lady named Susie Shin, was the busiest person on board. She agreed to serve during the flight as she already was dragged along. As this was the first non-governmental flight to Mars, if one did not count Georges and Electoral's immigration, everyone on-board was a tourist, unaccustomed to space.

Still, everyone but Sophie understood these hassles were nothing when compared to the harsh everyday conditions of living on the red planet, even as a tourist. Sophie felt just going to the bathroom was a pain, pee floated and had to be sucked into bags and pouches. In these close quarters, privacy was nonexistent. A third of the people snored, which was something she could have done without. As time went on, arguments broke out between passengers over the simplest of issues.

"On the way to the medical bay, let's stop at the gym, you need the walk," said the attendant. She hesitated, then continued “And some...time to get back some color on those cute cheeks of yours." The lady was kind. Sophie wobbled in her pink boots.

Like most children, she did not understand gyms and why adults loved them. To her, simply standing on a machine, like a hamster in a wheel, was nonsensical. As they walked, everyone stopped whatever they were doing and smiled at her. She always smiled back, but this was getting to be annoying. At this point in the game, everyone was a known individual; this high level of attention to her had to stop.

They quickly arrived at the airtight doors of the gym. The pictures of smiling, sweaty adults on the doors were ridiculous. With a tilt of a lever, the doors slid aside, and she felt a breeze at her back from air being sucked in. Who would force people in no gravity to sweat on purpose when the drops flew off in every direction? Air from the cabin entered the depressurized gym. The place was so gross. They ambled leisurely, and Sophie tried not to touch the machines while avoiding any drop of sweat.

Passengers on a long interplanetary flight were encouraged to exercise. The energy produced by the gym equipment was recycled to the main batteries. Sophie knew people in gyms made money; payment to the user for their kinetic energy, converted to electricity was now the law. To buy a chocolate bar from the gym's concession from exercise took half a day of labor. At best, a good weekend athlete could pay up to half of their gym membership fee by exercising regularly. Gyms with hundreds of members could produce up to 100 kilowatts and sell some back for use on the power grid. In New York alone, the four thousand gyms produced as much electricity as a small power plant.

Sophie stopped at the bathroom on the way out of the gym. She grabbed her bag, unlocked the door and slid in. There was no getting used to the pumps. The bathroom was very elaborate; the walls had infrared heat lamps designed to evaporate moisture. This bathroom also served as a shower. It included a fun mist machine. Sophie loved the mist-maker, it was so cool.

As a person entered for a shower, he or she was given a sealed pocket of water. Once inside the machine, the door was sealed. Water from the pocket was slowly pumped into a cute device called the mystifier. Mildly heated aerosols were released into the shower area. Sophie loved when the cloud formed around her. Moving around in the weightlessness, you grabbed the tiny droplets. The water in the pouch even came in different perfumes and flavor. She liked the apple one. After a few seconds of standing in the aerosol cloud, dark and dirty pearls of condensation formed on the skin.

Using one's hands to gently rub the skin, the pearls were collected like one wipes a shower door to see through it. Then, using the bag itself as a small towel, the water was sponged into another plastic pouch. Maybe adults hated wearing the swimmer goggles you had to use, but Sophie didn't mind them. Back on Earth, a shower used a lot of water. Here, a glass was enough.

She looked at herself in the mirror of the bathroom. Things were improving. She left the room and reentered the passageway of the main cabin. The attendant smiled. The gym was strange, the last notice on the way out read:

-- Exercising while using Screenlenzs is dangerous. --

-- Please wipe equipment after use. --

-- Do not jump. --

Who would be foolish enough to jump in space, wondered Sophie. "Can we go see my dad directly? I'm not strapping into one of those machines. You can't make me exercise," said the world's sweetheart defiant. The attendant smiled. The girl was right. This was Sophie Lapierre, who would question her choices? She had already proven wise beyond her years.

"But it's good for you, can't you try even five minutes? We need your legs to hold up strong once we land on Mars. You have not exercised a single time since we left Earth, nor have you booted your school tutor, young lady. I'm afraid you will have problems walking around once we land. Measure yourself if you want to see; you're already taller from not having any gravity to pull you downward. Soon we will start the deceleration, and full Earth gravity will return for a day. I don't want your legs to hurt." The attendant's questions were mostly rhetorical. She was not trying to boss Sophie around. They both knew it, and Sophie never really listened to adults aside from her dad.

"Mars isn't like Earth; its gravity is like the Moon's. I will still bounce around. I don't like exercising; it's dirty. Why should I get dirty? I promise that on the way back I'll do it, okay? I really hate it." The attendant nodded politely; the young passenger had a gift. Antagonizing the planet's darling was not among the attendant's job duties.

While the young lady's story was compelling, Sophie truly had a unique, untold power on everyone. Opposing her was never an option. "I guess at your age, you will adapt. Just don't tell me I didn't warn you. Don't let Captain Judy know, okay?"

Sophie smiled and pushed the button to the medical bay. They passed a set of sealed double doors and entered the infirmary.

It was a small area with room only for two cots. One was occupied by Sophie's deformed father. The sight of Laurent was difficult to behold for even for an experienced nurse. All that remained was a pinkish portion of a body, lying on a small toddler's bed. The deformed shape had no arms or legs. Most of the skin showed severe burn scars, having been subject cauterization and skin grafting. A head and a portion of a torso were attached to artificial lungs and other life-sustaining equipment. The husk had no eyes, no ears, not even a mouth. Feeding tubes were taped onto him, making it seem even less like her father than a strange experiment gone wrong. Laurent's head was shaved. There was no apparent life in this body.

The final oddity was a round metal electrode attached to the skull above what was once an ear. This patient, whatever this was, needed to be put out of his misery. One little girl was all that remained between this corpse and a morgue.

"Daddy!" she said with enthusiasm as she entered the infirmary. Sophie knew the man could not hear her, yet she always spoke to him as if he was able to. She bent over and kissed the lifeless form, right next to the electrode.

Susie Shin, the doctor in the room, was in awe of Sophie's composure. The doctor caught herself several times positioning Laurent's remains in the bed so none in the ship would see this creature as they passed on their way to the gym.

"Susie, how is he today?"

"He won't stop telling jokes!" Pointed the nurse at a monitor. On it scrolled images of a large house house in the Bayou. In the distance a man rocked on its porch. The girls laughed. "As usual, wonderful," said the short Asian woman wearing blue scrubs, trying to bounce energy off the girl. Sophie picked up a wool scarf floating around the room and wrapped it around her father's neck. She kissed Laurent again and whispered something softly to him.

“Going in,” she said as the knot in the tissue was the only thing preventing it from floating away. The girl next turned to a large pair of dark glasses clipped on the wall. She flipped a switch and they lit up. She pulled them loose and put them on. "I won't be long," she told the doctor as she pushed a square green button on a small device resting on the bed next to her father’s horrible body. The machine beeped, and the screens on the inside portion of the glasses lit up. On her right hand, she slid on a little black glove that would serve as her guide in the interface managing Laurent's digital reality.

Sophie went from living in the space tube to a much different world. Within seconds, Sophie was immersed and looking into a limited virtual reality, where images of a made-up world generated for and by Laurent gave his mind a place to reside. What she saw was drawn from neuroactivity from the weak mind of her father, trapped in his feeble husk. The doctor knew not to interfere. Sophie, as she oriented herself in the new world, used her real hands to attach a little carabiner from her belt to her father's bed. The attendant, before heading out, unclipped Sophie's gravity boots so she could float freely as she spoke with her father.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

The girl visited her father several times every day. Since the launch from Earth, she had spent more time floating in the infirmary than resting in her first class seat. Each reunion was equally touching to the staff.

As the young girl floated, clipped to the bed, her fingers twitched inside the glove interface. Pushing her thumb with the other buttons, in a couple of seconds, she navigated through the menus and arrived in her father's private digital world. Dr. Shin could see Sophie's facial expressions below the large glasses. Here there was an artificial blue sky and Sun. The day was beautiful in her father's world.

The daughter saw an image of a lean man, sitting alone on the wooden porch of a large Southern colonial house. It was painted white. She smiled; this was a simplified image of her father. She recognized some of his features. He was sitting on a swing, rocking on the porch; there was calm and beauty in the chipped paint on these planks. Next to him a small table, on which lay an old library book and a large pitcher of lemonade filled with ice cubes and lemon slices. At his feet slept a tired long-eared dog.

Using her glove interface, Sophie pushed her index finger using her thumb and rotated the point of view. Her father's interface, as in most video games, used commands that assumed the player was on the ground, allowing her to walk in closer. As the images in the background that formed her father's chair were rocking unnaturally fast, it was as if Sophie had arrived in a world stuck in accelerated speed. But quickly, time adjusted and decelerated until the rocking felt normal. She knew it took time for Sophie's mind to sync with her father's faster mind. Each time she entered this strange place, the adjustment period was just a bit longer.

"Soph!," yelled her father, Laurent, "Come sit next to me." Laurent's virtual hand pointed at the wooden bench next to him. As if by magic, a flat pillow appeared out of thin air to cover the wood. This was the man's reality, after all. The digital sandbox, born from a chip in his brain was a strange world he alone controlled. If he wanted a pillow to appear, it did. "What is going on in the ship, are we on Mars yet?"

“You asked for me, daddy. We still have a day until we land I think or it’s the deceleration. Yeah, the deceleration begins tomorrow, you may feel that. Days they said. Can't you feel the weightlessness at least?"

"No," he said looking down. Her father's condition was deteriorating, and they both knew it. Sophie remembered a time, months ago, when he could still feel the real world inside of his digital one. Today, this electronic world was all that remained at his disposal. At least now he had the Electoral game. "It has been a while; the body is gone to me. This," he waved his hand at the decor, "is my world now. Not a bad place compared with the last one I was in, trust me." Doctors were unclear as to why Laurent had lost all connection to his body. Some argued that physical sensation was no longer reaching his brain because of neural deterioration from continually wearing the neuro-patch, a metal sensor connected to his skull.

Sophie, with a flicker of her index finger, directed the interface to move her virtual body on the swing next to her father. He stopped the swing long enough to pour her a glass of lemonade, and after putting the pitcher down, he touched Sophie's digital hand and looked directly into her eyes.

The girl looking down at her hand saw the touch of her father's digital hand, but she was unable to feel the contact. It took time getting used to this false and frustrating shadow world. She could not help but wonder if her father could truly feel in this interface. She couldn't bring herself to ask. Laurent deserved whatever little privacy he could be given. The house around them was large, and the sky was of a bright, cloudless blue. Compared to the spaceship, this place had its charms.

No one could witness or fathom such a deep and unconditional connection between daughter and father without getting emotional. A man on television had once said: "The only way to hurt someone who has lost everything is to give them back something broken." Sophie's father was beyond broken, he was a whisper of a human. Yet Sophie remained strong. Whatever road was ahead of her, she felt like this time with her father was a blessing. She was doubtless and utterly relentless.

"Soph, we need to talk." These were words a father use as a prelude to any serious conversation. Laurent had nothing but respect for his daughter, it was palpable in the tone of his voice. "I love you, you know that." These words were not helping. He continued, "I have destroyed whatever happiness you could hope for in your youth." Motion detectors in Sophie's glasses allowed the computer interface to paint on her digital body the real expression back in the real world. It allowed Laurent to see her actual expression as he spoke. "I cannot allow this charade to continue. I let you sign me up for the game, I played, but now the stakes are getting too high." He was genuinely nervous. "You are on a spaceship, flying across the system because of me. No child is allowed here, it is dangerous. What type of parent am I? This is beyond dangerous. I know you don't even want to be here. I really am the worst father in the world for dragging you into this." Sophie was fantastic at hiding her true emotions from Laurent. She kept her composure and even forced a smile.

Her father's fear and apprehension was more than justified. To Sophie, though, any emotions her father displayed were a reward. In the ship and Laurent's digital world, her facial expression changed to satisfaction. In his earlier depression, her father was unable to feel emotions. Now she felt like he was moving, perhaps not directly forward, but if nothing else he was stumbling toward the light. He had always cared about her, but there had been a time when he could not even express that much. He behaved like a gambler on the eve of his next big paycheck; Sophie would take that any day over dark, unrelenting silence.

Using stem cells, the doctors regenerated some of Laurent's organs, and at some point, a heart began to beat once again in the chest of his body, sending blood in the cauterize veins of his polymerized brain. Laurent's doctors, responsible for the miracles believed he had been recorded, as in gel. A frozen echo. Laurent would probably be the last: many laws were soon enacted to prevent his fate from reoccurring.

"Soph, I played this game because you asked," said Laurent in a kind voice. "At first, it was fun, but just imagine if I win. The world can't be ruled by a vegetable."

Sophie hated that expression. "Daddy, you promised to go through with it." She could not push away the warm fuzzy feeling of seeing him so engaged.

"Not fair, my princess. I wanted you to go back to school; at twelve it's important that you go to school. You agreed to study if I signed up for this competition. Did you even boot the tutor this week?" He knew from her expression that she had not. Sophie was only good at hiding certain things from him. She loved this man with all her heart, irrespective of where they were or how damaged his body was. "The media...you know what these people say? One called me the 'suitcase candidate.'"

"Daddy, think about every handicapped person in the world. When they see someone like you, who has a total physical handicap and is able to express himself digitally only, their broken backs, their mental disabilities, seem less like the end of their lives." The digital image of Laurent reached out in his world, and kissed the forehead of his daughter. Her words were not those of a twelve-year-old. "You are the first disabled person to travel to Mars, and Marilyn Monroe promised me, of all the candidates, you will enjoy her new technology in the Electoral Center the most."

Laurent was not actually looking to quit the game. It was obvious that he loved the competition and the attention. He only wanted to give Sophie a way out if she needed one. Laurent, in his precarious condition, knew he was at the doorstep of death. He no longer cared for much in the real world besides the well-being of his daughter.

"My problem is you, my darling. For a year you have been fighting in court to get custody over my body. You won, and thanks to you, age discrimination around the world is over. Electoral told me she could appoint a full-time guardian for my body if I win." Laurent was unable to make the next sentence sound genuine, yet he said it. "I really don't need you." His voice was that of the proudest father who cherished every second with his daughter. No diploma in psychology was needed to see this last statement was a lie, and Sophie was not duped. The man could barely say the words without crying, had real tears remained to him. He loved his daughter with all his heart. Laurent's digital eyes began to approximate tears. He looked away. He was a proud man. No one could doubt their bond, and since the dawn of man, few had faced a greater strain. Out of this difficult situation, the bond between the two had deepened, broadened, and solidified. Time on the porch of the house slowed so that they both could savor this moment. He hugged her.

Sophie smiled. "There are 128 players left. You survived the first twenty-something rounds. You can go all the way. Just win for me. I only want you to enjoy the ride. I don't care about anything else at this point. As one of the last 500, you already get a nice little Congressional job. They told me you get 2000 credits each week, that's all we need. You even get a pension. I can sell your suitcase, that’s valuable now. If something happens to you, I get the benefits for a long time." Laurent had to constantly remind himself that Sophie was only twelve. She acted and spoke as if she was in her forties.

Dr. Shin, back in the infirmary, could only hear Sophie's voice and the girl's words were a doozy even for a doctor. The girl whispered, "Think about the technology Electoral must have in her Center on Mars. Maybe she can really plug us in, I may be able to kiss you one last time before...." The words were too much. The doctor failed to hold in her own tears. The young girl was talking about death with her father, specifically his. Sophie continued, "I need you to earn a living, to provide for me and maybe one day for your grandchildren." The doctor was in awe. How could anyone her age talk about grandchildren to reinforce the future? Sophie was in space, scared and alone, but she was reaching out to her father, guiding him, helping him. Dr. Shin pushed the door handle and walked out into the gym to regain her composure. "Daddy, this is much more than a game. You don't play Electoral; you are living it. You're a natural. Marilyn didn't want you in this game. With the Presidency comes a lifetime pension for you and me. It's something, at least." Her tone changed to that of a motivator or coach. "I want you to beat President Sanchez, you said last week you can't beat him, but I think you can."

"Yeah, yeah... No one can beat Sanchez, the guy is not human. He is leagues above the rest of us," said Laurent as he munched on a large piece of ice from his lemonade. Then her father stiffened, looked at her and asked, "Please watch the President's Round 7 performance." This was important somehow.

"No. You know I spend all my time in this machine with you. The game is addictive, it’s dangerous."

"You need to trust me. Watch it, please? There is a reason. Promise me that you'll view it in Full adult mode, okay? I feel in my heart it’s very important.” Then what he said felt different. “Isabella had some strange dreams here and that’s a bit strange. See if you still think I can win against this guy. Let me know what you think, it's really important. This means something to all of us, I just don't know what at the moment. Either he cheated, or the computer is the one cheating for him. I don't care what people say, no one is that good. It's as if he wrote the damn script himself."

Sophie hated to watch the Electoral game, but she promised her father she would make an exception, there was plenty of time and nothing to do. She was intrigued, a Dream, was he finally getting better. President Emilio excelled in each and every round. Why did her father want her to watch this one in particular? There had to be a reason.

There was.

Sophie's mind felt strained as she passed from her father’s strange digital world back to the real world. There was some energy, like a curtain in her mind between both places, then the energy passed.