TO WISH UPON A STAR - SAMVIDA NANDA

Prologue
The stars are shining especially bright tonight. There is almost a definite pattern in the way they are twinkling. It’s almost as if they are trying to spell out a word. Or possibly a whole paragraph. In a way, they are.
In a drawing, you have a white canvas on which one can paint with shadows. Whereas in a photograph, you have a black canvas, on which one can paint with light. And now the whole sky is a giant canvas. Those stars are points of light. And each point of light is a point of information about another time.
Let me draw you a picture.

Me Sun


Earth

Even when the sun has dipped below the horizon, the atmospheric refraction allows the light from the sun to travel the distance into yesterday. What if some point in the future, we found a way to reflect the light off of that day, and send it out through the curve of space back to yesterday, which is today. What if those reflected points of light were the stars in the sky? What if every time we looked up to read the stars, we would literally be looking at our future?
For one, it would give astrology a whole new meaning.
Chapter1
Damn. My wrist just got twisted in the wrong way. Not in some physically bone breaking way. Just not in the way I wanted it to move. And now my bank is transferring eighty one point three million dollars into another bank account. Loose change these days, but it’s going to her. Why her? Now she’ll think I’m being petty or something. I take in a deep breath trying to calm myself. I fail, and decide to take a swing at the stupid banking machine. I fail at that too. And end up hitting the holographic wall next to the machine.
The wall crackles like a network of stars and then settles back into a regrettably solid wall. It’s one of those promotional gizmos. And the advertisement on it is about ‘freewill’. There’s a corny picture of a crystal ball sitting on a hand. A crowd of faces peers hungrily at the star set inside the crystal ball. But what catches my eye, is the big purple gem on the ring worn by that gnarled hand.
It’s my ring.
I stare helplessly at my hand. Freewill?
The world is run by machines that are so attuned to our movements, that our thoughts can be translated to any medium with a simple flick of the wrist. Draw a frigging Monet a minute. But if everyone already knows what’s coming tomorrow, and they can now change their actions if they want to, how is it that I can’t even open a stupid juice box without spilling it over myself like some baffled seven year old.
I realise I said the last sentence out loud and there is an annoyed seven year old staring at me. But I’m completely crazy. And I know it. There’s this reality out there. And I just choose to live in my own. It doesn’t bother me. But everyone else looks at me as if I’m an alien or something. That doesn’t bother me either. For one, I am an alien.
I wonder why I wanted to visit these carbon life forms again. These...Humans. But I know why. It’s because I wanted to watch all the episodes of Star Trek. They do have a knack for dramatisation. Their ideas of warp space and time are slightly childish. But the characters!
The slightly annoyed cough from my left is from the banking machine. It tells me to kindly take my receipt chip and have a good tomorrow. Even their machines have character, albeit annoying ones. I raise my hand to pull out the memory chip and glance at my ring again. I miss the chip completely this time. My actions are falling not short, but in the wrong directions.
I’ll never get used to this human form.
I find a set of gnarled hands begging me for a million or two. She is wearing a number of earrings and necklaces over her entire person. She is reminiscent of a gypsy woman that I read about in a history book, and I find myself giving her my ring. I’m almost afraid I might hit her by accident instead.
I pick up a copy of the seasons of Star Trek. And I move to the planet Mars. There’s an especially intelligent species there with three eyes and no hands.

Epilogue
There are no stars in the sky tonight.

AVY COMMENTS
Hmmm . so why is it I feel that something is lacking in here? Everything seems to be pat. And yet!!!! Something is there but a lot isn't. Can you figure it out?
Is it because some of it reads flippant? I don’t understand the epilogue. There are too many gaps in my view in the story line and otherwise. However, I might be interested in seeing how you can take this story forward as your final sci=fi story if you like. The title is really cliched.