The red planet, its atmosphere a blend of swirling noxious looking black gases and deep
red dust, hung in suspension in space. A Red Giant star, merely a pinprick off in the distance,
glowered. Two moons, mere white spots against the planets' backdrop, revolved slowly, and it
was from their position, counter to the Red Giant, that a spaceship appeared.
The Intl. Brenner, a vast, circular white object, moved through space effortlessly. Its tiny
port windows, set at ten foot intervals through out its main body, glinted deep red as it
approached the planet. Suddenly caught in the planet's gravitational force, it begun to revolve it,
following the same path as the moons.
Although everything outside the Intl. Brenner was silent and still, inside was a different
story.
Melanie 1484953 was just waking up and eating a small breakfast of oatmeal and an
apple when her spoon suddenly floated towards the ceiling. Her empty bowl accompanied the
spoon, and nary a second later, she had joined them in the air, along with anything in her room
that wasn't nailed down. Books, scrunchies, several headbands, framed pictures, and last night's
clothes all hovered gently. Her bed and dresser stayed on the floor, their legs welded to it.
"What the hell..." she exclaimed, trying to peek out her porthole window, when she was
dropped, quite unceremoniously, from the air onto her bed. She hit her forehead on its banister,
and howled as the pain of it made her eyes water.
"A.G. restoration in progress," came a calm voice from the ceiling speakers. "Restoration
in three..."
The young woman's feet flew into the air, while her torso was thrust harshly against her
bedsheets.
"Restoration in two..."
The pressure on her back was released and Melanie found herself suddenly doing a
back-flip through space. Her stomach clenched in queasiness.
"Restoration in one..."
Her head throbbing, Melanie struggled to right herself just in time to drop lightly onto her
bed. With a gently flop, she lay on her back, her heart hammering rapidly, while her body
accustomed itself to gravity once more.
"A.G. Restoration complete," said the voice. "Have a nice day."
There was a short burst of static after the announcement, then silence.
Glancing at the digital clock embedded into the wall above the foot of her bed, Melanie
saw that it was 7:05. She sighed. What a wonderful beginning to the new school year.
Slowly, she got up and got dressed, picking out a fresh new pair of black slacks and
white button down shirt from her dresser. She slipped into her black boots and began to rummage
for her nametag, which she had left on her dresser top last night, but was now, like the rest of her
things, lost somewhere in her room. She finally found it under her bed, and straightened up,
pining it smartly above the left breast pocket on her shirt.
She looked down at it, her chest swelling with pride.
Melanie 1484953 Year 12 Junior Representative Government it read. After three years of
Honors College, she was finally in her last semester, her twelfth year. There had been a brief
month long vacation between last semester and this, and Melanie had taken full advantage of it to
relax, catch up on some reading, see some friends and sleep in.
Smiling, Melanie checked her reflection in her mirror, smoothing down her dark auburn
hair. Her dark eyes stared broodingly out at her from beneath thickset eyebrows, and it was with
a cringe that she looked upon the bruise now tainting her soft caramel skin, right above her left
eye.
Thinking to herself that she should stop by the infirmary after school for a bruise remover
and pain reliever, she picked up her briefcase from beside the dresser and pressed her hand
against a small pad next to the door. The pad winked into life, scanned Melanie's handprint and
with a small beeping noise, the door slid smoothly sideways.
The hall outside Melanie's room was crowded. It was filled with other students in Year 12,
all who shared her auburn hair, dark eyes and caramel skin, as a way of differentiating those born
in particular year from the rest of the population. Although they shared several distinctive
features, the rest was left up to chance, so that no one shared the same types of noses, lips or
jawlines. At the moment, everyone was either blocking the passageway waiting for their friends or
rushing towards the elevators, located at the far end of the hall.
"Melanie! Mel!" came a yell above the din of noise out in the hall. Melanie turned to see
her best friend Sarah's head bobbing up and down in between their fellow students. Knocking into
several people along the way and shoving past a boy Melanie recognized as Nick from Record
and Filing so that he literally took a tumble onto the floor, Sarah hastily made her way towards
her.
"Mel! How funny was that this morning?" Sarah said, talking rapidly, oblivious to the
people she had ran over.
Behind her Nick stood up and shot them a contemptuous look. Melanie shot one back of
her own.
"I mean, I was already up and having breakfast, it was fun, walking on the ceiling, floating
through the air..." Sarah was saying, interloping her arm through Melanie's and walking towards
the elevators. Melanie laughed at her friend; an A.G. malfunction would definitely be her idea of
fun. Carefree and slightly chaotic, Sarah had been that way ever since they started Base school
together, when they were six. She had started a food fight in the lunch room the very first day,
somehow roping Melanie in with her. Both of them had ended up in front of the Head of the
school, Melanie crying and covered in potato salad, while Sarah merely laughed her way through
their detention. Even after eight years of Base school and three of Honors College together,
Sarah had not changed.
"So any idea what you’re going to be doing this year?" Melanie asked, as they reached
the end of the hall and crowded into the next available elevator. Sleek, white aluminum doors
enclosed them.
Sarah nodded.
"Yeah, we’ve been working on a new genetic engineering formula. Of course, with last
year’s breakthrough in isolating the gene for several mental disorders, it’s been rather easy to
eradicate attention deficit and bipolar- or at least we hope it will be," Sarah said. "We’ll know in a
couple of months when we stop incubation… So what are you doing in Government?"
Melanie shrugged.
"Don’t know… We’re meeting with the Head of the station today though…" Melanie said.
"The professors were hinting at interning with him at the end of last semester."
Sarah looked impressed. The elevators stopped on the twelfth floor and several people
got out, their spots immediately replaced by others.
"
Oh, that’s Hairen, he works in the A.G. facility," Sarah said, straining her neck to see over
the crowd. "Hey! Hairen!"
A young man with dull blond hair and green eyes who looked like he hadn’t slept in a
week turned around. Melanie recognized him from Base school; his class was only two years in
front of Melanie’s.
"What happened to the A.G. this morning?" Sarah asked.
Hairen looked harassed. Everyone in the elevator had turned to stare at him, possibly all
wondering the same thing.
"Nothing that happened in the center for the control of Artificial Gravity and Climate
Control is any of your business," he snapped, and turned away from them, staring bad
temperedly at the wall.
Sarah giggled. The elevator reached the eighth floor.
"See you later!" Sarah said, before heading off.
People filtered out through floors seven to three, until it was just Hairen and Melanie left.
Melanie fidgeted with her headband for something to do, because Hairen had suddenly started to
stare at her.
"So…" Melanie said, slightly awkward. "Why did the A.G. go crazy this morning?"’
Hairen sighed.
"You’ll know soon enough anyway…" he said. "I’m being sent to make a report… My
department has been working a week straight, had to, after we switched course towards the milky
way galaxy. Haven't slept in as much either... The ship was set to react to the gravity fluxuations
within another galaxy, not this one... We got too close to Mars, and for some reason, the
calibrations that the A.G. was set to went completely haywire when presented with the planet’s
gravity… We had to do fix it manually. Horror really…"
Only one word seemed to make an impact on Melanie’s brain.
"Did you just say Mars?"
Hairen nodded slowly. The elevator hit floor one and they got off. The hallway, brightly lit
as it was, seemed to dull in comparison to what she had just heard. The station, in all the
hundreds of years it had been operational, had never once entered its home solar system since it
had left. The last she knew, they had been making a trajectory to the Andromeda Galaxy.
They turned a left and walked down another aluminum hallway. Melanie could hear a dull
whine through the walls, from the stations mechanisms. They reached a white door midway
through the hall, and stopped. Melanie, caught up in her thoughts, didn’t realize that Hairen was
looking at her pointedly.
"Oh, right, sorry," she said, sticking out her palm.
She held it against a small keypad to her left and the doors smoothly opened inwards.
They walked inside a large room, one that took up most of the first floor. They floor was laid with
dark wood panels, there were bookcases that stretched the length of the walls, there were tables
with computers every ten or so feet, and above them, a ceiling of resilient glass, which opened to
the heavens.
Melanie glanced up, her eyes taking in a gigantic planet, a brilliant orange and red,
whose atmosphere seemed to swirl darkly around it…
She led the way towards an ornate table at the other end of the room, where several
other twelve years and were sitting with her last year’s professor and a man she had only ever
met once; tall, with dark hair, skin and eyes…
"Welcome," the Head of the Station said, nodding his head towards the two new arrivals.
"Now we can begin."
He looked upwards at the sky, his gaze upon the swirling red mass of planet. Everyone
mimicked him.
"As you may have guessed, we are currently in orbit around Mars… Suffice to say, this is
the first time that our station has entered the Milky Way galaxy in quite a long time. It’s been kept
under wraps but now… I guess the time has come to explain why we have returned…"
The room was silent. Hardly anyone drew breath. Melanie felt a shiver of anticipation,
and if she was truthful to herself, fear. They watched Mars as it made an arc, travelling across
their view of the sky. A gentle hum started from the stations machineries as it traveled up through
the floorboards.