“Mom. Dad. I had a dream. It was... horrifying.”
Eight-year-old Rohan stood at the foot of his parents’ bed, wide-eyed, hair ruffled like he’d fought through hyperspace turbulence. His parents, groggy and half-buried under a comforter, exchanged a look.
“Was it the one where we forgot to feed your Tamagotchi again?” Dad mumbled.
“No!” Rohan said, climbing into the bed like an urgent diplomat. “It started in deep space. I was commanding a rogue Federation scout ship—the S.S. Paperclip—running solo recon beyond the Orion arm. And then suddenly—I was under attack. Real bad. Like Episode V-level bad.”
Mom blinked. “Like Empire Strikes Back?”
“Yes! Except worse. These weren’t TIE fighters. These were living ships, like the kind from Farscape or Lexx. They screamed like whales and spit acidic algebra equations.”
“…Algebra?”
“Yes. They stuck to the hull and started solving for X. I had to reroute the shields through the forward replicator while also trying to figure out if 2X + 3 = 9 had any moral implications.”
Dad chuckled. “Heavy math in space. Terrifying indeed.”
“Then,” Rohan said, voice dropping, “the monsters boarded. And they weren’t aliens.”
Mom propped herself up. “What were they?”
“They were my teachers. Dressed like Klingons, with chalk-dust flamethrowers.”
Dad blinked. “You sure this wasn’t a Tuesday at school?”
“They were screaming about homework! Mr. Sharma was wearing Mandalorian armor and tried to give me a pop quiz in zero gravity while flipping through a Dungeon Master’s Guide. I tried to run, but gravity reversed and I fell upward into a tractor beam.”
“Dream physics,” Mom whispered. “Always sketchy.”
“Then I crash-landed on a moon that looked like Hoth but with tropical humidity and parrots in stormtrooper helmets. And I found a tower guarded by a genetically modified cyber-dragon. Its scales were made of discarded school tablets.”
Dad tried very hard not to laugh.
“I thought I was rescuing a Jedi princess or something. I fought the dragon using a lightsaber made of dental floss and plasma. But when I finally burst into the tower, guess who the princess was?”
“Let me guess,” said Mom, stifling a grin. “Rhea?”
“Yes! Rhea from next door. Wearing a flight suit, sipping juice through a curly straw, saying, ‘Took you long enough, nerd pilot.’”
“And then she kicked me out of the tower and stole my escape pod!”
At this, both parents gave in and laughed.
“You think that’s funny?” Rohan said, insulted. “Just wait.”
“Suddenly, out of hyperspace, came the dreadnought. It was shaped like our house. And it was captained by... you two.”
Mom gasped dramatically. “We were villains?”
“You were high-ranking Sith bureaucrats! You said I had broken too many household treaties and demanded I be tried at the Council of Parental Oversight. You had capes. You made me wear itchy formalwear and explain my missing socks in front of a Senate.”
Dad was howling now. “Were we... reasonable?”
“You sentenced me to life on Laundry Planet. Where everything smells like lavender and chores are mandatory. And you tried to download Mozart directly into my brain.”
Mom choked on her laughter. “That’s the best punishment I’ve ever heard.”
“But then, just as you were about to neural-zip my imagination, the Rebellion arrived!”
“The what?” Dad asked, sitting up.
“Grandma and Grandpa. In a retrofitted Punjabi missile rickshaw! They had thermal pickles and high-powered rolling pins. Grandpa was piloting like Han Solo with high cholesterol. Grandma yelled ‘Bachcha rahega azad!’ and knocked your ship offline using Ludo pieces converted into photon torpedoes!”
Both parents were in tears now.
“You got knocked into a black hole of boring YouTube tutorials, and I escaped through a wormhole made of old fairy tales and Bollywood dance numbers.”
“And then?”
Rohan looked down, serious again. “I woke up. In a cold sweat. My Star Wars sheets were soaked. And Rhea texted me ‘hi’ this morning like nothing happened.”
Mom pulled him close, giggling. “Sweetheart, I think you’re having force-sensitive feelings.”
“I think,” Dad added, “we might need to increase his access to nonfiction books.”
“Can’t risk it,” Rohan said solemnly. “Nonfiction was the fuel source for your empire.”
And with that, he got up, marched to the kitchen, and began preparing peanut butter toast with the same determination as a man preparing for interstellar war.
Because bedtime would come again.
And the Sith were always watching.
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