I am pleased that you picked the two original fics! Well, okay, the Sleeping Beauty isn't strictly original fic, but it might as well be--it's wandered a long way off from the fairy tale. It started with the idea: what if the hundred years' sleep was hibernation on a space ship? The other story, "Under the Mountain", will hopefully be posted fairly soon, unless my betas find major flaws in it.
Here's a bit from the Sleeping Beauty in space story:
***
It was a girl.
Or it would have been. The man who would have been her father read the message again, then wordlessly handed the reading pad to the woman beside him.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he said, his voice low and defeated.
She read the short, officially encrypted message, then made a low sound and hugged her rounded belly protectively. "No."
"Why didn't you?" he repeated.
"I was only seventeen. I didn't even keep him. And I had a different name then, in a different country. I didn't think they'd know."
"Of course they know," he said bitterly. He took the reading pad again, needing to see it in black and white:
Records indicate that you have already given birth to a child. Therefore you are required to abort your current pregnancy, according to paragraph 1.3 of the Population Restriction Law. For questions, please turn to your local government office.
***
"Look, if everyone had an exception, where would we be?" The official looked tired, yet sympathetic, as she sat behind her desk. She sounded as though she had said the same thing many times before.
"I know, but...she was so young!" the man said, even knowing that it was hopeless.
"It's still the law. Every country ratified the population treaty back in '29, you know that," the official said patiently. But something about the couple sitting in front of her, the woman with her hand on her belly, must have moved her.
"There is one solution I can offer you," she said. The sun shone in through the window, and in that moment the man thought that her blond hair glowed around her, as if she were an angel of mercy. But she held up her hand.
"Don't thank me yet. It's not a particularly good deal." She pressed a few buttons on the keyboard in front of her, looking like a middle-aged government official once more. "You could keep her for now, but at the age of five, you'd have to give her up to the space program. She'd be trained from an early age, and when she's grown up, she'd leave on one of the interstellar exploration flights. You'd never see her again."
She turned the screen towards them, to show them the fine print: the fetus would have to pass a strict genetic examination in order to qualify, and would be subjected to certain treatments in utero.
They looked at each other. Five years were better than none.
no subject
Here's a bit from the Sleeping Beauty in space story:
***
It was a girl.
Or it would have been. The man who would have been her father read the message again, then wordlessly handed the reading pad to the woman beside him.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he said, his voice low and defeated.
She read the short, officially encrypted message, then made a low sound and hugged her rounded belly protectively. "No."
"Why didn't you?" he repeated.
"I was only seventeen. I didn't even keep him. And I had a different name then, in a different country. I didn't think they'd know."
"Of course they know," he said bitterly. He took the reading pad again, needing to see it in black and white:
Records indicate that you have already given birth to a child. Therefore you are required to abort your current pregnancy, according to paragraph 1.3 of the Population Restriction Law. For questions, please turn to your local government office.
***
"Look, if everyone had an exception, where would we be?" The official looked tired, yet sympathetic, as she sat behind her desk. She sounded as though she had said the same thing many times before.
"I know, but...she was so young!" the man said, even knowing that it was hopeless.
"It's still the law. Every country ratified the population treaty back in '29, you know that," the official said patiently. But something about the couple sitting in front of her, the woman with her hand on her belly, must have moved her.
"There is one solution I can offer you," she said. The sun shone in through the window, and in that moment the man thought that her blond hair glowed around her, as if she were an angel of mercy. But she held up her hand.
"Don't thank me yet. It's not a particularly good deal." She pressed a few buttons on the keyboard in front of her, looking like a middle-aged government official once more. "You could keep her for now, but at the age of five, you'd have to give her up to the space program. She'd be trained from an early age, and when she's grown up, she'd leave on one of the interstellar exploration flights. You'd never see her again."
She turned the screen towards them, to show them the fine print: the fetus would have to pass a strict genetic examination in order to qualify, and would be subjected to certain treatments in utero.
They looked at each other. Five years were better than none.
And she would live.