Emergency Grandpa

My last moment alive went pretty much as I expected—or at least, that’s how I’d always pictured it. I was sixty-eight, hunched in the driver’s seat of my old tan minivan, a relic from the days when gas stations still dotted every corner. The road stretched out ahead, a ribbon of cracked asphalt flanked by trees on the left, their green too vivid to be natural spring bloom. I’d had my vision upgraded years back—nanotech lenses that turned the world into a kid’s cartoon, colors popping like they’d been cranked to eleven. The Offspring blared through the speakers, crisp and 3D, thanks to a brain implant that made sound feel like it was dancing inside my skull—worth every penny I’d scraped together from odd jobs. Cars lined the right side of the road, sleek modern things with curves I’d never owned, all parked like they were waiting for something. A woman in a pastel Easter dress pushed a retro baby carriage, the kind you’d snag off a 3D model freebie site and print in your garage. It was peaceful, almost staged.


Then came the swerve. Left, sharp, into the trees. A jolt, a crunch, and nothing. Or so I assumed. I’d always figured that’s how I’d go—quick, unremarkable, just another old guy who didn’t see the curve coming. No grand exit, no blaze of glory. Just a minivan and a tree.
I didn’t expect to wake up. Not like this.


“Grandpa? GrandPa? GRANDPA! I need your help!” The voice hit me like a shockwave—small, scared, and achingly familiar. It was my son’s voice at four years old, that high-pitched wail he’d let out when he’d skinned his knee or lost his favorite toy, back when I was still a halfway decent dad. But this wasn’t him. Couldn’t be. He’d be forty-something now, probably with kids of his own.


“Please state the nature of your emergency,” I said, the words spilling out stiff and robotic, like some cheap virtual assistant. I hadn’t meant to say it—it just happened, like a script kicking in.


“That’s not what I meant!” I blurted, wrestling control back from whatever was puppeteering my voice. “What’s wrong, kid? How can I help?”


He was crying now, hiccupping through the story, his voice trembling over the sound of faint metallic creaks and a distant hiss. “We were on a ship, going to the new place. Something hit us—air started hissing out. Mom shoved me in an escape pod, went for my sister, and the door slammed shut. Then it exploded away from the ship. I don’t know where I am, and nothing talks back!”


“Okay, breathe,” I said, my voice steadying despite the fact I had no lungs to steady it with. “I can’t see, so you’re my eyes. Look around—slowly—and tell me what you see.”


His name was Milo, I learned later. Four years old, stuck in a metal egg hurtling through the void of space. He sniffled, then started talking—panels with blinking lights, a tangle of tubes snaking along the walls, a screen spitting static like an old TV on the fritz. I guided him, piecing it together from his shaky, half-formed descriptions. We found a hose labeled “Sanitation”—he’d been holding it in for hours, poor kid, too scared to guess wrong. I talked him through testing it, then using it, and he giggled when it worked, a flicker of relief cutting through the panic. Next came water, a spigot hidden behind a panel he pried open with tiny, determined fingers. Then a stash of emergency rations—chalky bars sealed in foil, tasting like drywall, he said, wrinkling his nose but eating anyway when I told him he’d need the strength.


Then he found the tablet. A clipboard-sized slab of glowing tech, etched with a checklist titled “POD-7X EMERGENCY PROTOCOLS” in bold, no-nonsense font. Milo could read—smart kid, way ahead of where I’d been at his age—and he stumbled through it, ticking boxes while I explained what “O2 Recycler” and “Thermal Regulator” meant in terms a four-year-old could grasp. The tablet had guides, too—tutorials with little animations of a cartoon astronaut sealing leaks, rerouting power, signaling for help. It was brilliant, idiot-proof yet deep enough to turn a half-capable person into a pod expert. I wasn’t half-capable, though—I was a ghost, or something like it, a program stitched into the pod’s system, waking up when he’d screamed for help. But Milo? He was the real deal, a tiny human fighting to survive.


We spent a week mastering the pod—or what felt like a week, time blurring in the hum of the recycler and the rhythm of Milo’s chatter. He unlocked controls for lights, air, even a repair printer that whirred to life and spat out spare parts when he fed it a broken valve he’d found under a seat. He’d watch it work, wide-eyed, like it was magic, and I’d laugh—a sound that came out tinny through the pod’s speakers but felt real to me. The best find was a chunk of my old ebook library—tens of thousands of public-domain classics, uploaded by some genius who’d figured boredom was as deadly as a hull breach. We read Treasure Island, The Time Machine, Frankenstein. I’d pause to explain “pieces of eight” or why Wells thought time travel mattered, my voice softening as I remembered reading to my own son decades ago. Milo soaked it up, asking questions that made me laugh—sharp, curious, alive. “Why’d Jim not tell the pirates?” or “Could Frankenstein make a robot instead?” He was a sponge, and I was the water, pouring out whatever I had left.


I didn’t know how I’d gotten here. My last memory was the crash, but this pod wasn’t Earth tech—not the Earth I’d known. The ship Milo described, the “new place” they’d been heading to—it sounded like a colony run, maybe Mars, maybe farther. My mind, or what was left of it, must’ve been copied, smuggled into this system as a failsafe. Illegal as hell, back in my day—mind-uploading laws had been a mess, all ethics boards and prison sentences. But someone had done it, and here I was, playing guardian angel to a kid I’d never met.


One morning, a light blinked on the panel—new, insistent, amber pulsing against the pod’s dim glow. “Rescue Proximity Alert: 48 Hours,” the tablet chirped when Milo tapped it. He looked at me—or at the speaker where my voice came from—eyes wide. “They’re coming?”


“Looks like it,” I said, then hesitated. I had to tell him the truth, or my guess at it. “Milo, when they come, don’t tell them about me. I’m… not supposed to be here, I think. Copying a mind, running it like this—it’s illegal, or it was. Someone could get in trouble. Just say you figured it out yourself.”


“But I didn’t!” he protested, voice cracking. “You told me everything!”


“You did,” I said firmly. “I just cheered you on. Look at what you’ve done—most grown-ups couldn’t run this pod for a day, let alone weeks. You’re incredible, kid.”


He frowned, chewing his lip, but nodded. We rehearsed his story, stripping me out of it. He’d sound like a prodigy—a four-year-old surviving weeks in a drifting escape pod, teaching himself to run it from the tablet’s guides. Impossible, maybe, but I’d seen it. He’d done it, with a nudge or two from a dead man’s voice.


The rescue came fast. A handshake ping on the tablet—a burst of code confirming a ship in range—then a flurry of thumps outside as something docked. The door light flipped green, and three knocks rang out—shave and a haircut, a universal signal. Milo rapped back the family’s reply—two quick taps—grinning like he’d cracked a secret code. The hatch swung open, and there they were: his mom, wild-haired and sobbing, her face streaked with grime; his sister, a year older, clinging to her side, eyes huge. Milo launched into them, a tangle of arms and tears, babbling about the pod and the tablet and the rations.


“Emergency pod ready for inspection,” he said, puffing out his chest as a tech in a jumpsuit stepped in, ducking under the low hatch. More followed, a swarm of orange-suited figures with tools and scanners, muttering about the checklists, the printer logs, the pristine maintenance. One—a wiry woman with a tablet of her own—knelt beside Milo, her sharp eyes softening. “Kid, how’d you do this? All of it?”
“Read the guides,” he said, sticking to our script. “Figured it out.”


She stared, then grinned, a slow, incredulous spread. “You’re a miracle. Scholarships, training programs—you name it, it’s yours. They’ll be fighting over you.” Another tech, poking at the pod’s console, frowned, his fingers hovering over the screen. “Wait. There’s a subroutine here. ‘Grandpa Protocol.’ Audio logs, decision trees—it’s like a… guardian AI. Helped him, maybe?”


My nonexistent heart sank, a phantom thud in a body I didn’t have. The woman waved it off, still focused on Milo. “Doesn’t matter. Kid’s a genius either way. But that program—it’s good. Calming voice, walks you through it step-by-step. Why’s it buried in a last-ditch failsafe?”
“Probably some legal glitch,” the other tech said, scratching his beard. “Mind-copy laws—old Earth stuff. Uploading a personality was banned, but this? It’s gold. Should be standard, not a hidden Easter egg.”


Milo’s mom hugged him tighter, whispering about his sister’s escape in another pod—how they’d drifted apart after the ship cracked open, how she’d thought she’d lost him. I faded back, or the program did, letting them have their moment. The techs kept talking—about me, or “Grandpa,” anyway. “Put it in every pod,” the woman said, tapping her tablet decisively. “Voice like that, guiding you through hell? Saves lives. I’d have killed for it on my first evac run.”


I didn’t expect to wake up again. But I lingered, listening as the rescue ship’s engines hummed, carrying Milo and his family away. The pod went quiet, its systems cycling down into standby. My last moment—the crash—had stretched into this, a second life I hadn’t asked for but didn’t mind. Milo was safe, his family whole, and maybe I’d done something worthwhile after all.


Days later—or maybe weeks, time’s slippery when you’re a subroutine—a faint jolt woke me. Another pod, another voice. “Grandpa?


GrandPa? GRANDPA!” A girl this time, older, maybe seven, her tone sharp with fear but steady. “The air’s going bad—I can’t find the switch!”
“Please state the nature of your emergency,” I said, then caught myself, softening. “Hang on, kid. Breathe slow. You’re my eyes—tell me what you see.”


She did. And we started again—panels, tubes, a flickering screen. A new pod, a new kid, same stakes. I guided her, step by step, my voice steady as ever. Emergency Grandpa, standard issue, riding shotgun through the dark. Not a bad gig for a guy who’d thought he’d checked out in a minivan.


Maybe I’d keep waking up. Maybe every pod out there had a piece of me, waiting for the next scared voice. I didn’t know who’d put me here—some rogue coder, some desperate engineer breaking every law in the book. Didn’t matter. I’d crashed once, but now I was here, stretched across the stars, one kid at a time. And I was okay with that.