Eroglu

Christopher’s diary:

December 18, 2089

This was the day everything was ending. My name is Christopher and I am an astronomer. I am 45 years old and have two daughters named Arianna and Natalie. Arianna was fourteen, Natalie seven. We were the closest family in the whole universe, inseparable you might say, or at least that’s what I thought.

I was seated at a corner table at Arianna and Natalie’s favorite steak and pasta restaurant, “Kaylee’s,” celebrating Arianna’s fourteenth birthday. While she and Natalie were having a conversation about Christmas, I was vigorously inhaling my spaghetti and meatballs, since I hadn’t eaten in two days because I was swamped at work. Then, all of a sudden, I received a phone call from my boss at work with an “important message” that I had to listen to, according to him.

“Hello,” I greeted him as sweetly as I could possibly manage, though I was a bit annoyed that I was interrupted from my long-awaited meal with my family.

“I need you to come to work immediately. It’s an emergency. I don’t mean to cancel any plans of yours, but it is absolutely mandatory that you come. We need you urgently.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m having dinner out for my daughter’s birthday. I must stay here and celebrate. I can’t really get out of it. It’s impossible. I truly apologize, but it is her fourteenth birthday, a very special time.”

“Indeed, it is. But you have to come. I am sorry about you missing your daughter’s birthday dinner, but there really is no option. We have made a ginormous discovery here that is incredibly important, but it does cause a pretty big problem, and we need our top employees to try and fix it.”

“Why don’t you tell me what it is so that I can actually be convinced?” I asked him.

“That may take a while, but fine,” he sighed, “We discovered a new galaxy! It has at least a billion planets that need to be discovered for scientific purposes, especially since humans have polluted the Earth so much that in some areas, we can hardly breathe, and we have to find a new place to live as soon as possible. The problem, however, is that hardly any astronauts are willing to go to another planet for the rest of their lives, which, since we know nothing about these planets, could limit to as soon as they get there. They may not be the safest. ‘Why do we need to explore those planets?’ you’re probably wondering. Well, many people are moving out of highly populated countries and cities, like China or New York, because there just isn’t enough air. We need to get those poor citizens a new place to live with clean, fresh oxygen. But of course, we must make sure it is 100 percent safe for human life. Plus, the new planets may or may not have life on them. So far, the only planet we discovered that had life, other than Earth, of course, turned out to not actually have life. We thought the green rocks were new and unaccustomed plants, but in reality, that was just the natural color of the rocks in that specific area.”

“Yes, I remember. That was the planet that we used our first Astrorobot for, Planet Saro.” An Astrorobot is a machine that is basically an improved and more advanced rover. It can rocket to space by itself and examine the dirt, trying to find what type of rock there is, and if there are any similarities between it and the rock on Earth. It can also move swiftly without hesitation, scanning how long the planet is and if there is any life there. “Well, why do we need to send astronauts to go there if we have Astrorobots that can explore much easier than a human can?” Arianna was looking at me, bored that I wasn’t getting off the phone, and annoyed that I was working on her birthday. She always thought I worked too much. She turned to Natalie and they started to have a conversation, probably about how boring I was..

“I understand your point of view. However, the Astrorobots do not carry enough fuel to be plentiful to travel ninety-seven billion miles away from Earth. They are fast, but they are not useful for a distance as extended as this. We can only do that, barely sufficiently, with our current rockets. Maybe in the future, if the astronauts on that planet are still alive, we may be able to send a rocket to the planet and come back with the astronauts, but our current technology is barely enough to get them to the planet, so the hope level is low for that happening any time soon.”

“So what do you need me for if you have an entire army of astronauts?”

“We need volunteers. The people that go there get a massive raise, but since they’re on another planet, the money goes to their families because there is absolutely no use in having money where it does not work. Also, it would be ridiculously expensive and useless to ship money into space twice a month.”

“Well, you could have just asked straight up, and we wouldn’t have had to go through that entire conversation. The answer is no. I am sorry. I know how important these researches are, but I can’t and I won’t. Good day. Bye.” Before he could say anything else, I hung up and continued eating.

“Sorry about that,” I said to the girls. We finished our meals silently for a long period of time, not finding anything to say, until Natalie asked me what my boss was calling about.

“It was my boss at work. He talked to me about going to work immediately for some big emergency. It’s just that there are planets that they want people to explore and research planets trying to find aliens.”

“That sounds awesome!” Natalie exclaimed, “You should totally do that!” They were both smiling widely from ear to ear.

“It’s not as cool as you think. It’s for eternity. Or at least until I die, which may be somewhat quickly because it may be an area where humans can’t survive. If I went, I would never be able to come back, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life on a lonely planet all by myself.”

“What about the aliens?” Natalie asked.

“There may be aliens, but there may not be. Plus, if there are aliens, then I would be in their territory. There natural instinct would be to destroy me. That’s how it works on Earth, so it must be like that there, too. Who knows if they’re stronger than me? There are so many possibilities, girls. It’s just not a good idea. I’m sorry.”

“Are you sure?” Arianna asked, “Sure we’d miss you a bunch, and I’m sure you’d miss us, too, but you’d be on whole other planet! How cool would that be? There’s always the chance that there will be peaceful, kind aliens there that will become your friends. I mean, sure there’s danger, but there’s also adventure and excitement!”

“You really think I should go?” The girls nodded in response. “OK, I’ll go to work right after dropping you off at home.”

“You can go now. I have my phone,” said Arianna, “I’ll call Mom to pick us up. This is important. There’s no time to waste! Bye.”

I left, and just in case Arianna didn’t call her mother, I called her to tell her about everything and to pick the girls up. Julie wasn’t 100 percent supportive of my moving away, or even about my missing Christmas Eve dinner, Christmas Day breakfast, New Years morning, or pretty much anything else, but she was finally convinced and agreed that I should go to the planet after I told her that I would get a raise and all the money would go to her and the family, since I obviously had no use of it on another planet where nobody uses dollar bills, whether there are aliens or not. She was unemployed currently, so I was the family’s main source of money.

I drove away from the restaurant and went to work: NASA, the biggest space company in the country! Inside, I saw a huge crowd of people having a meeting, my boss at the front of the room, presenting everything on a whiteboard, and when I entered through the double doors, all eyes turned on me.

“You came,” my boss said, surprised.

“Changed my mind, I guess,” I shrugged, “I realized it would be pretty amazing to fly into space, so here I am, ready for takeoff.”
“You may take a seat.”

For the rest of the time at work, my boss had explained everything that he had explained to me over the phone, and passed around a piece of paper for volunteers to sign. I was the first one to write my name down, in permanent ink. No changing my mind this time.

At home everybody was already asleep, so I brushed my teeth, changed into my pajamas, and slid under my blanket in bed.

December 19, 2089

That morning, I got out of bed and went to the table for breakfast. Everybody was already there, staring at me, wondering if I would leave them to go to another planet, as if Earth wasn’t good enough for me.

“First thing after breakfast, I need to go to work and leave for space. I’m going to a whole ‘nother planet!” Everybody hugged me like they would never see me again, which they probably wouldn’t because in just a few hours, I would be on a whole new planet, far far away from my family, never to return again. The thought made my eyes water like they were trying to create a lake, but I used all that I could to hold them back. Natalie hugged me so hard that it was as if she was going to hold on forever, and come to space with me. Unfortunately that wouldn’t happen, and we both knew it.

I gave everyone one last hug and headed off to NASA for the last time in my entire life. I would never enter that car again, never walk through the fancy automatic double doors of NASA ever again, never sit on the comfy chair in my office for all of eternity. But maybe, just maybe, I may start a new life on a new planet, with new aliens to get to know, maybe I’ll go there in a group, so I can have a few friends with me. I don’t know.

I got out of the car one final time, and entered the building, witnessing my boss explain to at least dozens of other people about going to another planet. Why did he need me if he already had all these other people? Or maybe he didn’t need me anymore, but since I came back, he decided he could use the extra help?

“Oh, hey! Chris is here finally, and as usual, he’s late! Well, that’s okay, we barely started! Take a seat.”

I obeyed and sat on a chair next to two other people who were staring at me like my coming inside was the most interesting and amusing thing that happened to them today.

“Okay, let’s start over. So, you will be put into 21 groups of three people and your group will go to a different planet than the other groups. There are 21 planets that need exploring, so there are 21 planets that we will explore! You will first go through some training exercises; that’s why I had you come so early in the morning, so that we can start our training, and by 7:30 PM tonight, you will be off. Now, the training is nothing difficult, and nothing boring. You will play a game of extreme soccer and jump over hurdles, because you must be physically fit to go into space, and then, you must go on a forty minute long roller coaster that goes upside down, side to side, upwards, downwards, all over the place. If you throw up, you go again. I will not tolerate barf! Okay? The rocket should take about two days to get you there. It has only enough energy to get you there, so, and I can’t be clear enough to say this. Don’t. Try. To. Come. Back!”

We started on the training. Up first, was the extreme soccer game. When he said it at first, what I expected was nowhere near what had actually happened. There were electric fence boundaries so you really couldn’t go out of bounds, but in the ‘80s, that was normal for adult soccer. What wasn’t normal were the poles that rose up from the ground every second and then sunk back into the ground, in unexpected places. For example, one second you’re sprinting to score a point with the soccer ball at your feet, inches away from the goal, and the next, you’re laying on the ground because you headbutted into a metal pole that rose up from the ground in less than a quarter of a second, so you had no time to make a turn. This happens every second, a test of agility. It took 100 times more effort than actual soccer, and soccer is tough! Another thing that happened every second on the field, was that holes appeared out of nowhere, like the earth was vacuuming up all the dirt in that area so that we would trip and fall. It took us two hours just for one team to score a point, and then, the game was over. Finally! No more pain or falling! I felt like everyone had just won after a long trail of misery. Luckily, nobody sprained or twisted any limbs, so we were all in one piece to get to the next level of training…

Hurdles! I was hoping for regular hurdles that get you all worked up and exhausted, but of course, everything had to be extra extreme. It started out normal, but then my boss brought out a mechanical wolf to chase us. It didn’t even look like a wolf. No, wolves may be scary, but, truth be told, they’re kind of cute. There was nothing cute about what was chasing me. This thing was a menacing robot that had metal teeth, wires sticking out of them, sharp as knives. The wolf was 7 feet tall when it was on all four legs, and had freaky, red eyes. It also had claws, just as sharp as the teeth in its mouth. It was so quick and agile, light on its feet. We had to sprint away from it, jumping over every hurdle with all the strength that we hadn’t lost from playing extreme soccer and nearly fainting from dehydration. Nobody would have guessed it would happen, but we all came out alive, nobody had gotten hurt by the robo-wolf.

Lastly, we rode the roller coaster. It seemed to go on for all of eternity, twisting, turning, spinning in crazy directions. It was so difficult to hold my barf inside of my stomach, when all it wanted was to go outside to escape all the dizziness and nausea I was feeling. Fortunately, I didn’t need to ride the roller coaster for a second time. However, other people did. Some even had to go a third time, a fourth, until, either, they ran out of food to throw up, or they got so used to it that it actually became fun. I wish it was fun for me, but instead, it was torture. That didn’t matter, though, because I only had to do it once, lucky me.

Finally, it was time to get into groups and go to our planets. My crew was a man named Earnest Wilcox who was our best astronaut at NASA and had won a Nobel Prize before when he was thirty years old, so only five years before, and a woman named Angelina Buster who was an astronomer like me, and in her free time, she wrote children’s books and won many awards for her talents, and she was the one who discovered that the sun wasn’t actually round, after decades of studies and experiments. We were all extremely intelligent scientists who would make amazing planet-explorers.

“You are assigned the planet we decided to call ‘Planet 269’ until further investigation on it. Once we know information about the planet, we may give it a proper name, but until then, you will be on Planet 269 for the rest of your lives. Got that? Okay, good. Bye, have a nice trip,” our boss said. He waved us away to the rocket, and off we went inside, changing our lives for eternity.

Three…Two…One… BLAST OFF! Into space we went, even speedier than the roller coaster we rode for training. We were off. I would never see my family ever again. Not once. No visits, no vacations, no calls, no texts, no video calls, no letters, no contact whatsoever.

It was already 9:30 PM since the rockets were a bit late to take off, so I went straight to bed. Or space-bed. In other words, a miniature room near the shower room/bathroom where there was a sleeping bag stuck on the wall with duct tape. Mine was blue in color, puffy on the outside, like a snow jacket, fuzzy on the inside, warm and cozy, like the fur of a polar bear. I zipped myself inside and fell asleep, exhausted from the day that I had: leaving my family, extreme sports, boarding a rocket to go to a new planet for the rest of my life. Even thinking about it tired me out.

In my dream, I imagined an alien. He was blue green and hideous looking, his head was where our stomachs should be, only he didn’t have a stomach, nor a mouth, but he did have craters in many places, so maybe one of those were used for eating. He had legs that were far from looking like ours. Instead of having thighs and knees and shins, he had four stringy legs that swirled around in circles like a spring. He had patchy fur, but not everywhere. It kind of looked like somebody tried to shave a sheep, but failed miserably.

The alien came closer and closer, it’s holes widening. Yup, definitely his mouths! There were teeth coming out of the holes, large, purple teeth. I did what any superhero (it’s a dream, I can be whatever I want) would do, and used my super strength to punch him across the planet. Only, he was metal, so instead of doing what I anticipated, he exploded, bits of metal flying all over the place (the gravity wasn’t very strong), and inside, there were Earth humans, and not just any humans, my family.  

 

December 20, 2089

I woke up with a scream, and immediately, Earnest and Angelina rushed into the cramped room, wondering if I was okay. The rocket had a huge echo, so it was really easy to tell if something was wrong or if somebody was hurt.

“What’s wrong?” Angelina asked. Earnest couldn’t speak right away, because he was eating breakfast, a waffle. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“I’m fine, I just had this freaky dream.” I shivered.

“Don’t worry kid, we’ve all been there,” said Earnest, who finished his mouthful of waffle, and left the room to get another piece.

“What was the dream about? Maybe I can help. I took two classes of psychology in college, and four in high school, so I really know what I’m talking about when explaining about the meaning of someone’s dreams. Why don’t you tell me what it was about?” Angelina asked.

I felt kind of weird being in a sleeping bag on the wall, talking to somebody, but I agreed.“Okay, fine, I dreamt about this horribly ugly and hideous monster, an alien, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, it just randomly exploded. None other than my dear, beloved family was laying on the ground.”

“Well, that’s pretty straightforward and easy to read, but okay. So, that nightmare just meant that you are nervous about leaving your family and meeting aliens that are possibly super dangerous. Does that sound about right?”

“Yeah, yeah it does. I think you’re pretty much correct,” I said, and she left the room, muttering something about a waste of her psychological abilities, so that I could have some time to change.

When I got out of the room for breakfast, I was the only one eating. The others had already eaten and were just talking. “Okay, so I guess we’re arriving at 15:47, so about seven hours from now,” Earnest said. He was looking at his space-pad which rose out of his glove that was equipped with everything that we could need. The glove has six buttons on the wrist part. The first one enables an air tank, in case yours gets lost in space and you can’t breathe. The second button releases a jar which is used to collect rocks from new planets or DNA samples of discovered aliens. The third button dispenses a key for the rocket, in case somebody locks themself out which doesn’t seem necessary, because astronauts are scientists, in other words, geniuses. The fourth button creates a sandwich if all your food is lost and you need more. That one is proven really helpful. The fifth button gives a compass so you can always find Earth from wherever you are, not that we would be able to use that one. Finally, the sixth button obviously enables a space-pad, which is similar to a watch, i guess. It has a compass on it, though, so the fifth button isn’t fully necessary. The space-pad lets you communicate with the scientists on Earth so that you can record your findings. It also tells all Earth times in every country.

For the rest of the time in space, we all wrote in journals that we carried (for me, it’s this one), and we pretty much didn’t speak to each other except for when we were eating lunch, when we only talked about what we would do first when we got there.

Finally, the inevitable moment arrived, when our rocket descended onto the rusty-colored rocks on Planet 269, leaving us there with no way to return to our home planet. We all exited the vehicle, and made our way off exploring.

The planet was freezing, my astronaut suit (which is at least fifty layers) wasn’t keeping me warm and fuzzy like it was supposed to. Instead, I couldn’t feel my face, and my legs and arms were completely numb. My spacepad said that it was negative 500 degrees fahrenheit, however, there was no snow, no ice, no nothing. The dirt was rusty in color and had no sign of life. On Earth, there are forests and mountains, but on Planet 269, there were yellow spikes with ooze dripping from them, emerging from a fluffy silver-gold colored mountain. Only it wasn’t a mountain. It was more like a car. It was a car-mountain. Basically, it was a mountain that could move side to side because it rested on seven rounded rocks, all facing the same way. The spiked car-mountains were rolling side to side, slightly up and down, as well, because the gravity wasn’t very strong.

I hiked around the planet as far as I could possibly walk, trying to find some interesting sites. Not too long after crossing a solid but liquid pink river, (which didn’t scientifically make sense, but it somehow worked), I found the most amazing scene ever discovered. Angelina and Earnest were already there, gaping at it as well.

It was a city, only completely contrary. Instead of roads, there were clear tubes twisting all around the sky, overlapping and joining together, with holes in them leading to wherever the small figures, who, in the distance looked like baby ants, wanted to go. The way that worked was that the figures would slide through the tubes, twisting, turning, and spinning, and then slip through one of the holes leading to whatever place they want, and go to wherever. Instead of buildings, like on Earth, there were no constructions, only areas where they had material they needed. There was an area like a campfire, only the fire was pink. The river from earlier was also pink. The pink campfire must have been water! Well, solid water anyway. So, I guess on planet 269, instead of campfires, they have camp-fountains? There were many figures circling the camp-fountain. When I say many, I mean MANY!  There was a mob of aliens crowding around the fountain, only I couldn’t recognize what they were doing from the distance away I was.

There was another area with a tube leading to it that looked like a giant pool. It wasn’t a solid-pink-water-pool, but it was more sharp yellowish-orange in color. It had deep craters covering the surface in different spots, reserved for the mini figures who fit perfectly into the holes, and lay there. I suspect that they were eating, maybe sleeping there, but I couldn’t tell because I wasn’t quite close enough. It looked like a massive pool of chewy cheddar cheese. Natalie would be so thrilled if she could see it. She would run however far the distance to the cheese was, and would jump in, regardless of the aliens surrounding her, just chomping away at the cheese. Only, it probably wasn’t actually cheese, considering it was on a completely different planet where cheese probably didn’t even exist, but that wouldn’t stop Natalie. She wouldn’t care at all. Of course, if Arianna were there, she would just be hilariously giggling at Natalie while filming and recording her, taking videos, and many, many photographs.The thought of the two girls, together, enjoying fun experiences with each other and me got me a bit depressed, but I didn’t have time for any feelings because Earnest and Angelina were already striding forwards with care, slowly and steadily.

We walked for at least three hours, though time was definitely different on that planet because the space-pad said it was 5:02 PM by the time it got dark on Planet 269. The day cycle was remarkably shorter than that of Earth.

The hike was horribly exhausting, and we hadn’t any time to stop for a break or water at all, so I was intensely thirsty, as were Earnest and Angelina who were much more athletic and muscular than I was, so they were scampering on ahead of me, while I was at least ten yards behind them, out of breath. The planet was greatly heated despite the cold weather from before, and it felt like I was  trapped in an oven on the sun, and it was NIGHTTIME!.

When I looked up, hoping for rain to pour down, showering me with water, there were no clouds, but there were at least four moons towering above me. They were humongous, which either meant that they were so close that they appeared larger, or  they were just huge in size. They were different from the moon circling Earth, purple with splotches of blue. That means the rock was exposed to a different kind of light that makes it that color, so the sun for Planet 269 must be either purple or an indigo-blue shade.

 

December 21, 2089

When we finally got to the entrance of one of the strange clear tunnels, it was past midnight. We were shocked to find that there was a small purple blob wedged into the tube, around three feet away from the opening. It seemed to be really stuck and was making some odd squeaky noises that sounded like a dying computer that was soaked in water. Angelina, who had arrived there first, plunged her arms into the tube, unaware of Earnest’s worries aloud about how it could be a bomb or something else that could “force us to cease from existence,” as he had said (Earnest sure does have a very fancy way of saying “die”). She grabbed the purple lump, and immediately, it stopped the unnerving noises. She gently lifted it out of the tube, and lowered it into Earnest’s arms, who was not too pleased for the unwarned gesture she had made, which, according to him, may kill him. The lump had rough, sharp, rugged scales. Only, there were light hairs growing from them. The scales were green, the hairs purple, but it wasn’t moving. For a second, I thought Earnest was correct with his hypothesis about it being a bomb. I started to back away slowly, not looking at it directly, fearful that it would blind me or jump at me, or something else may happen.

All of a sudden, completely unexpectedly, I heard a loud pop, and instinctively, I spun my head in the direction of the lump, and screamed. Startled from the unanticipated sounds I had produced, Earnest jumped back, dropping the live creature onto the ground. I examined it closely. It was very small, and its head was barely connected to its body. It didn’t have a neck, but it was like the alien had a string connecting the two, because it kept turning its head completely upside down and then spinning it 360 degrees, several times. It had four eyes, equally distributed around the head, at least an inch in diameter, beady black in color, and a giant black straw-looking beak right under them. That must have been what the aliens used to eat the cheese pool, if that even was their food, though it could have been their bed, as well. It had no nose and no ears, but it did have a weird-looking hole in the middle if its head, directly below the eyes and above the beak. That seemed to be what it used to speak in those screechy tones, which must have been its crying. The alien looked a lot smaller than they looked like they were from far away, so it had to be a baby.

When the baby alien saw our faces, it began to cry again, louder than before. As it cried, its hole grew wider and wider, probably the way our mouths work.

Then instantaneously, there was a rustling originating behind us, so carefully, I turned my head, and what I saw made me yelp. Standing in front of me was an exact replica of the baby alien, only it was twice my size. The baby’s mother was there to protect it. Uh-oh! The alien towered over me, a growl on the hole in its face, where there were green teeth coming out of. This alien had a bit more hairs and the scales were red at the tips, instead of being entirely green. The giant bent down to us and examined us one by one. First she grabbed Angelina’s head, turning it as much as she could, without it breaking, examining her facial features, as she squealed like a frightened pig. Then, she grabbed Earnest’s legs and swung him wildly around in the air, causing his astronaut helmet to fall off of his head. Finally, she grabbed my hand, which was three times as small as hers, and she tossed me backwards so that I flew in the air for half of a mile. When she realized that worked, I saw her toss the rest of the group to the same spot. We gaped at each other, motionless.

The alien started chasing after us, baby in hand, so we decided it would be best to flee. Almost immediately after we began, the angry mother caught up to us, threw us onto the ground, and grabbed something from behind her back. It was a glass bottle with the pink solid water substance that I discovered earlier. She opened it and poured it over our legs. I felt nauseous and exhausted. My eyes were closing involuntarily, and then, I was unconscious.

I woke up in a cave with Earnest and Angelina to the sides of me. Our special gloves were gone, and our helmets were off. They left our suits on because I guess they figured out that we needed them to be able to breathe since they held our air tanks. We were no longer wearing shoes, so my feet touched the mushy floor. It looked solid and hard, but it was actually really soft and squishy. There were bars in front of me, closing off the mouth of the cave. Across from the one we were in, there were many more caves with iron bars closing them off, and they, too, had people inside of them. Well, aliens. That meant this was probably the prison.

 

***************

 

Arianna and Natalie sat at the table for breakfast the morning of Christmas Eve, when their mother would always make them the most amazing meals. The greatest meal of Christmas Eve was dinner, but breakfast was quite a feast as well. One of the breakfast items was a stack of three powdered donuts. The top donut had M&Ms creating a candy face to resemble a snowman, and three going down the bottom two donuts as buttons. There was also an omllett that was shaped like a reindeer and had food coloring in it so that it actually looked like one. The last breakfast choice on the table was a pancake (again with food coloring) that was shaped like a Christmas tree and had M&M ornaments. Their mother finished her kitchen cleaning and began to plop down onto the chair, but was stopped with a sudden phone call.

“Hello?” she began.

“Greetings, Julie.”
“Who is this?”

“This is your husband’s boss at NASA.”

“Oh,” she said, “What happened? Is something wrong?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

Arianna and Natalie worried as they watched their mother sit down, a frown crowning her face.

“We haven’t been hearing anything from the crew that went to Planet 269, including your husband and two other talented scientists. The problem is, we haven’t heard from them in three days, and they are supposed to send us an update every hour other than when they are asleep. We don’t have anybody to go check on them, so if you wish, I do have the power and ability to send you or any other member in your family to Planet 269 for free.”

“Well I can’t just leave my daughters to go to some death planet to save my husband who may already be gone. But if there’s the chance that he is alive and in trouble, I have to save him.”

“I can send all of your family if you want.”

She hesitated. “Can I get back to you on that? I’ll call you later today.” She hung up the phone and turned to her meal.

When she didn’t speak at all, Natalie got annoyed. “Well?” she demanded, “That sounded pretty important! Aren’t you going to tell us what it was about!”

“Natalie, dear, don’t yell at the dinner table.”

“Sorry.”

“It was just your father’s boss. He said that he was in trouble, or worse, dead, and he said that if we want, one of us could go over to the planet to make sure. I just think that would be a horrible idea because we have no way of coming back so if he is gone, we would just be alone on Planet… whatever it was called, and we would have the same death fate as him. Plus, if I went, you girls would be orphans, and that would be a miserable life to live.”

“What if we all went?” asked Natalie. Arianna gave an expression that showed humor, as if what Natalie had just said had been a joke, and her mother looked at her with a serious “this-is-not-the-type-of-situation-to-make-a-joke-about” expression. “I’m serious,” Natalie said. “If we all went, then we could be together as a family again for Christmas, and it may not be a traditional Christmas, but we would be together. And if he’s gone, then we will just have to be the first human family to live on Planet… whatever it’s called.”
Arianna nodded agreeingly, and tried to aid Natalie to argue to their mom about how it was an intelligent idea, since Arianna was a college-level debater and their mother was very easy to convince.

Finally, with much time, Arianna convinced her mother to have them go, as a family, to the planet where their father was.

Their mother pulled her phone out of her pocket and called Christopher’s boss at NASA. “Hello, I have an answer to your question.”

“I didn’t ask any questions, only gave you information based on recent events, so you really must be more specific.”

She sighed. “Okay, I mean, I am willing to go to your planet with my two daughters, like you said you would be able to do.”

“Oh, I see. Well, I could send you tomorrow or tonight depending on when we finish the training, but you would have to come to NASA immediately, on account of we cannot distinguish if any of the travelers to Planet 269 are alive, so you really have to go now if there is any hope of them being alive.”

“Okay, we’re on our way.” She hung up the phone. “Girls, let’s go.”

The determined family drove the car to NASA on the busiest day of the year, the roads filled with stopped cars in traffic on their way to buy presents for their family or go to the airport for a nice Christmas vacation, though none of their vacations could be as epic as this family’s. They were going to a completely different planet to rejoin their astronaut father/husband who may or may not be dead.

They arrived in front of the doors of NASA, ready to go into space for the first and last time in their lives. Immediately, they saw Christopher’s boss standing at the entrance, waiting for them.

“Hello, new astronauts! Who’s ready to go to Planet 269? Speaking of which, there are three phases of training that you must go through before you hop aboard the rocket ship.”

Christopher’s boss had them facing crazy challenges that left them exhausted and sore in many spots with cramps everywhere. First, they were supposed to play “extreme soccer,” and it was horrifying. Arianna had taken soccer lessons since she was only five years old, so she was able to effortlessly dodge the steel poles and holes in the dirt. She was also able to easily steer clear of the electric fence boundaries, which were incredibly creepy, because while you are trying not to die on the field, in the corner of your eye, you see sparks flying. Natalie wasn’t quite as successful as Arianna. She was constantly tripping on the holes, and once, after she tripped, she fell onto the pole and hit her head, so she was allowed to sit aside and watch while the others finished the game. Their mother was a perfect competition to Arianna. They were equally amazing at soccer, because after college, Julie was a professional soccer player. It was one-on-one and very entertaining to watch. It was hard to concentrate on one player because both of them were so speedy that they were only blurs across the playing field. For a whole hour, neither of them earned more than one point more than the other. Finally, at the end, Arianna’s competition was worn-out. Arianna made one last goal and won the game, dominating her powers. Chris’s boss was impressed with both of their skills, especially considering only one person in the last group scored one measly point.

Next, they had to outrun a giant menacing mechanical wolf in hurdles. It was incredibly challenging. Natalie fell on her face and got run over by the robo-wolf, so she was allowed to sit at the side, yet again. Arianna was sore from the soccer game and it nearly caught up to her, but at the end, she gained her  strength back, and was still able to beat the robot by racing to the finish line as fast as she could while Natalie cheered her on. Then, their mother took a turn. She sprinted all the way, jumping up to four feet into the air, and Natalie clapped so wildy that her hands turned red. “Go Mommy!” she yelled. In less than five minutes, Julie finished the entire two-mile-long course. Everybody was surprised, even though she was incredibly athletic and they all knew that.

Finally, they rode a roller coaster with twists and turns going upside down. The only rule was that if  you throw up, you ride the roller coaster again. Natalie had to ride it twice because she threw up the first time, and the second time, she didn’t have anything left in her stomach to throw up. Arianna and their mother both only had to ride it once, but that was not a happy one. The roller coaster made them so dizzy that they couldn’t walk straight for half an hour.

After all that work, they got to climb aboard the rocket ship to Planet 269. Before they took off, they gave one last goodbye to the only planet they’ve ever known, the only galaxy they’ve ever known, the only home they’ve ever known.

 

***************

 

Christopher’s Diary:

I have officially lost track of time now

I was getting really hungry, and the aliens didn’t have much food that wouldn’t kill us. Earnest ate the cheese-looking food they offered us, and then two minutes later, he turned green and felt sick. The aliens figured he was probably worth something, so they took him to their hospital area. I don’t know what they did to him there because I don’t understand their language. I was starting to lose hope that anybody would come save us.

 

***************

 

Bloshori’s Diary:

(this excerpt has been translated from Talhanese)

There are some strange creatures here in my homeland. I am confused and I don’t know what to do with them. After removing their additional supplements, I discovered they are from a land called “Earth” by attempting many different experiments on the writings on their odd tools. I am keeping watch on them because they seem to be terribly dangerous, but I will make sure that they are safe so that we can use them to find this “Earth” and maybe make it ours if it is of any use to us. This planet is getting pretty crowded, and it may be nice to have an addition to it. They keep talking in weird vibrations that I cannot understand, so I hired some Talhans to investigate further and figure out who they really are. They are getting grumpy and their stomachs are making very curious sounds, but our smalhatens make them turn sick and produce colorful liquids and caused one of them to get sent to the healing arena. We can’t risk losing any of them, or else we may have a disadvantage in finding Earth.

 

***************

 

Excited and determined, the gracious family exited the vehicle, two days later, hurrying across the planet to wherever they could find somebody to help them, or even better, to find Christopher, himself. They traveled around the strange world, and eventually, after four hours of nonstop sprinting, they found a clear tube.

While her mother was rambling on and lecturing them about not doing anything rational that they may regret, Natalie crawled into the tube and was sucked away. Exasperated, Julie came after, followed by Arianna, who was very excited about being on another planet.

The tube led them to a pool of cheese, or at least, that was what it appeared to be. With a very serious glance, her mother warned her not to, but Natalie gave an evil little devil-grin and cannonballed into the pool. She landed on top of an angry alien. It was hairy and scaly at the same time, and its four eyes were glaring at her. His straw-like beak was wedged into the “cheese,” but immediately came out once Natalie interrupted. Arianna didn’t know what else to do, so in she jumped, flattening her little sister and the monster underneath. The alien threw them out of the food and got back to its eating. Natalie didn’t seem to have learned her lesson, so she jumped in again, this time away from the alien, and started chomping down the “cheese.”

All of a sudden, her face turned green and her lips began to swell. She puked all over the alien that she had angered before. At first, he seemed to be very frustrated and grumpy and enlarged by a sizeable amount, but then he seemed to have a new realization about harming one of the newcomers, and shrunk back down to size. He picked her up and lay her down in his arms, like an eensy baby, and carried her away. Arianna and her mother glanced at each other and decided to follow them.

After a few minutes of zooming through tubes, they landed at an unfamiliar site. It was almost like a hospital, only it was outside and with many, many more tools than those of Earth. It was hard to keep up with the alien that was holding Natalie, but they tried their hardest to stay on its tail. The alien gently placed her down on a vertical bed, and somehow, she didn’t fall. The gravity was very odd. They wheeled her away to another area, but when her family tried to follow after her, it did not go so well. As they inched their way closer, they were thrown back by an invisible force field which kept them separated from the helpless human girl in the alien’s untrustworthy hospital bed.

After about an hour or two of waiting and running into the force field (which was extremely painful), they gave up and left to come back for her later. Exploring a new planet had been on Arianna’s bucket list since she was two years old, when her father had just become an astronomer and her mother was an engineer at SpaceX. There were many different places with many different rocks and mountains, and none could be found on Earth. It was definitely what you would call a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

All of a sudden, they ran into an ultimately tall blue mountain. Arianna thought about how amazing it would be to be the first ever human being to climb a mountain on Planet 269. She wasn’t even an astronaut! She wasn’t even fifteen! She didn’t even start high school yet! There was no turning back now. She sent an evil grin in her mother’s direction and began climbing. Shocked at her daughter’s indecency, Julie chased her up the mountain.

Then, out of nowhere, the mountain turned around. It wasn’t a mountain. They were standing on a humongous alien giant, and he looked furious! He grabbed them with one of his epicly large hands and walked them over to an area with a bunch of caves. He glared at one of them with one of his four huge eyes and the bars opened up. He threw them inside, and the bars closed again. And that didn’t seem to be the only problem. There were already occupants inside! Humans! Earth humans! And not just any Earth humans. There, laying on the ground, were Christopher and another astronaut.

“Christopher!” his wife screeched.

Startled, Christopher and Angelina both jumped up from the ground. They spent a while with introductions and hugs and welcomes until Christopher finally observed that Natalie was nowhere around. “Wait a second! Where’s Natalie? You didn’t leave her on Earth all by herself, did you?”

“Of course not! That’s ridiculous!” said Arianna. “We abandoned her at a weird alien hospital thing with a bunch of untrustworthy alien strangers.”

“Arianna!” her mother scolded. “It’s not as bad as she made it sound. There was an invisible force field between us. It was impossible to reach her! And the aliens aren’t that untrustworthy. I mean, they didn’t kill us, right? We may be in a cell, but we are alive, so that’s something.”

 

***************

Meanwhile, Natalie was stuck in the hospital area on a vertically placed bed, her face green with nausea. With an extended gasp, she rose and fell face-first onto the floor, nervous about where she was, for her memory was fuzzy. After a few minutes of spinning around in circles, examining objects, she remembered she was at a hospital on another planet. Confused that her family was nowhere around, Natalie decided to try to find them. Several times, she tried to exit the area, and several times, she was thrown back by an invisible force field.

After her fifteenth trial, a young alien, with a cast around its leg and four deep white eyes with no pupils, discovered her. “Hello, Earthling,” it said.

“Hi. Why can I understand you? I thought we speak completely different languages.”

“Oh, right. My mom is a scientist who is trying to find a way to get to Earth, and my father is a healer. When I went blind, he decided to give me another sense to replace my vision. When he couldn’t do that, he just left me alone, but I discovered some Earthlings in the prison and waited by the cave for several days and studied their language. It’s much easier to learn a new language if you are younger, so since I am a child, I was able to learn the language just fine”

“Oh, cool! You’re very good at English considering it’s your second language. What’s your name?”

“Thanks! I’m Amorshi!”

“My name is Natalie. Nice to meet you, Amorshi.”

“Yeah, I heard. You were talking in your sleep and mentioned it, but that’s a really pretty name, although it’s very unique for a place like this. Nice to meet you, too!” she said.

“Do you think you can help me get out of this hospital place?”

“The healing arena? Sure.” She walked over to the exit and muttered some word in a foreign language. It didn’t look like anything happened, but when they walked through, Natalie didn’t get blasted away! “There’s a password to open the force field. We have it so that nobody can hurt the already injured. It’s a safe place and they want to keep it safe, so only healers can enter, but I learned the password on my own, so I can come and go as I please. If you mess up the password, it’s supposed to shock you. It happened to me a week ago and that’s actually how I became blind.”

“Oh. Well, it didn’t shock me. It just threw me backwards. It hurt!”

“It must have a different effect on you because you aren’t from around here. Speaking of which, I am so glad that I can actually be friends with a human. The ones in the prison seemed so nice and now I actually get to meet one!”

Natalie realized something. There weren’t many humans on that planet. The people in prison that Amoshi overheard must have been her family! There was no way she could save them without ending up in the same position. I have to save Earth from the aliens trying to take over and save my family from the same aliens all on my own.

“Amoshi, I need your help. I think we need to conjoin your people with my people. If we don’t, either Earth’s people will die, or this planet’s people will die, and we cannot let that happen!”

“I’m with you 100 percent! But how would we do that? We’re two children trying to change the lives of two worlds. Also, we need to hurry. My mom told me that they are about a day away from heading to Earth. They already found it. They just need to prepare the ship.”

“Good point. We’ll think of something. Just clear your mind, and start forming ideas!”

They spent the next three hours, sitting down, socializing and brainstorming, turning down so many of their own lame, pathetic ideas. Then, they had the most perfect idea ever.

First, they traveled through one of the tubes to a small area with two large holes in the ground, and one circular, deep one and there was also a few piles of dirt, where Amorshi’s mother was sitting. Natalie hid behind a plant right beside them. Then, Amorshi asked if she could  go inside of the rocket ship that they would take to Earth, to conduct research about humans and rockets for educational purposes. It was nearly impossible to convince her but with Amorshi’s charisma, it worked like a charm. She told her mother that she would go explore immediately so that they wouldn’t have to postpone their trip for her. Just a part of their devious plan.

Amorshi ran out and met back with Natalie. They raced to the rocket ship through the tubes and made sure nobody was inside. When the coast was clear, they snuck into the rocket and into the weapons vault. There, they grabbed a few of the weapons in case somebody found them so they would have a defense mechanism. Then, they quickly shut the door, and prepared for takeoff. Almost instantly, so they wouldn’t get shot, the rocket zoomed into space. For ten minutes they flew perfectly with Amorshi piloting. But then, they unexpectedly came to a halt. They were just drifting through space. “What happened?” asked Natalie.

“I don’t know! It just stopped! We’re still moving, but we have no control! We have to go outside and check what happened.”

“Got it! I’m ready. Let’s go!”
“I do not know. Somebody has to stay here and check the inside. I’ll go outside. You stay here and check the wires!”

“Okay,” Natalie agreed.

She went outside and Natalie began to check on  the wiring for the control panel. Nothing seemed to be wrong with it.

All of a sudden there was a BOOM!!!!! Immediately, Natalie swung her head around and gaped out the window. It used to be a perfect view of Earth, where you could clearly see all the pretty oceans and continents. Earth, her home. What she was staring at, that was no Earth. There was no planet whatsoever, but sparks. Sparks and rocks. EARTH EXPLODED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! She studied the scene for any evidence or clues of what had just happened. Amorshi was holding a humongous gun, and there was smoke rising out of the end of it. 

Amorshi destroyed her planet! How could she do that? How could she betray their worlds? Their alliance? The most hurtful pain in Natalie’s heart was that Amorshi was a traitor to their friendship.

Now it all made sense. Amorshi had stopped the rocket herself so that she could distract Natalie and exterminate all inhabitants of Earth. Amorshi had grabbed weapons, not to protect them,but to use for her evil killing. Amorshi couldn’t have cared less about Natalie, only used her as an aid to her plan.

Before thinking, Natalie started the engine again, and unhooked Amorshi from the chord with the push of a button, leaving Amorshi drifting through space on her own. She did not know what else to do. All she knew was that she had to get away from the murderer. Out the window, she saw Amorshi spinning hopelessly in space, and she looked angry. There was nowhere she could run away to where she and her family wouldn’t get killed. There was nothing else to do. Natalie turned her rocket ship and headed straight for Planet 269.