Oddest of All Read Free

kids over the age of ten shows how powerful they really are. And I don’t see why kids, even fairly little ones, shouldn’t vote. It’s their world, too. It’s their future, even more than the grown-ups’, since they’re going to be living in it longer.
    Though some people say one person’s vote doesn’t count, I’ve been taking mine very seriously. My mind is spinning with all I have heard this week, all the words about the poor and the sick and the dying; about freedom and power and dignity.
    I don’t want aliens to run our world. But when I look around, when I see what a mess it is, I feel afraid for our future if they don’t. I just don’t know if we’re grown-up enough to take care of ourselves. Mom and I keep arguing about this. The thing is, half the time I’m in favor of the Lyrans and she’s arguing against them, and the other half of the time it’s the other way around.
    Last night she got out the family album and we spent a couple of hours looking at old pictures. The ones that really got to me, of course, were the photos of Dad. I can’t help but think he might still be alive if we had had Lyran science six years ago.
    What would he have said about all this? He was a proud man—proud and stubborn. Would he have wanted to live under someone else’s rule?
    Do I?
    Â 
    JULY 30
    I am sitting in my room, staring at the strip of alien material embedded in my palm. I am thinking of all I have seen, all I have done, all I want to do.
    I am thinking of the last time I saw my father, cold and still in his coffin, and how Lyran medicine might have saved him—how Lyran science might have prevented the air crisis and saved so many others like him.
    I think of our glory and our despair. I think of all we do to one another in the name of love, of peace, of freedom, of God—all the good, and all the bad.
    I think of how far we have come in just a few thousand years. I think of how far there is to go and how many people will suffer and die before we get there.
    I think of the stars, and of the worlds out there waiting for us to join them.
    I think of all these things, and I wonder what I will do in five minutes when the Lyrans force me to choose between the riches they offer and the freedom to find our own sad and starry path.
    I look at the strip in my hand, at the yes and the no, and I wonder.

What’s the Worst That Could Happen?
    I F THIRTEEN is supposed to be an unlucky number, what does it mean that we are forced to go through an entire year with that as our age? I mean, you would think a civilized society could just come up with a way for us to skip it.
    Of course, good luck and I have rarely shared the same park bench. Sometimes I think Murphy’s Law—you know, “If something can go wrong, it will”—was invented just for me.
    I suppose the fact that my name is Murphy Murphy might have something to do with that feeling.
    Yeah, you read it right: Murphy Murphy. It’s like a family curse. The last name I got from my father, of course. The first name came down from my mother’s side, where it is a tradition for the firstborn son. You would think my mother might have considered that before she married Dad, but love makes fools of us all, I guess. Anyway, the fact that I got stuck with the same name coming and going, so to speak, shows that my parents are either spineless (my theory) or have no common sense (my sister’s theory).
    I would like to note that no one has ever apologized to me for this name. “I think it’s lovely,” says my mother—which, when you consider it, would seem to support my sister’s theory.
    Anyway, you can see that right from the beginning of my life, if something could go wrong, it did.
    Okay, I suppose it could have been worse. I could have been born dead or with two heads or something. On the other hand, as I lie here in my hospital bed trying to work out