Lost

Trillions of Miles above another earth, a band of astronauts push forward into the darkening abyss, traveling deeper and deeper into enemy territory.

Above her were stars, stars which shown like golden flickers frozen in time, giving off life to those planets perfectly aligned in orbit. Every other minute, one or two would blot out of existence. All she could do was wonder whether life was lost. 

Cassie shivered in her cold, cushionless seat, as she looked around at her surroundings in a boorish manner, desperately wanting to be anywhere other than where she was.

“Jake…Jake, are you up?!”

“mmm? yeah, what sure, I’m up”

“Good, now get up her-”

“What?! Why do I gotta get up, I like just fell asleep two minutes ago.” 

“Ughh, Jake you’ve been out for hours. And we agreed on taking evening shifts, so get up here now before you wake the others up.”

“Fine, fine just… give me like oonnee more minute.” Jake shifted around in his sleeping bag, attempting to fall back asleep into his previous dream of space sirens.

“Jake? Jake?! Don’t make me pull you outa that sleeping bag, cause I will.”

(No response…)

In a magical realm of pure imagination, a twenty-seven year old brown-haired boy with a super cool red cape woke up from any other slumber to the sound of sweet angels singing softly all around the outside of the ship. Their voices echoed throughout all the steel chambers surging like pulses of unseen light. The brown-haired boy approached a window flooded in this image of both sound and light. The young man squinted and reached out attempting to grasp its beauty, but as he did so the opening collapsed and darkness engulfed the warm presence. The brown-haired boy was sucked out into the darkening depths of space.

Moments later Jake opened his eyes to the sheer dread of Cassie’s reddening face.

“Wake up! We’re in space, take this seriously.”

Jake gradually stood up and shuffled, still in his sleeping bag, past the body bags scattered all across the ground like sleeping centipedes and over toward the control panel. He placed his hands on the cold hard button of autopilot and then propped his encased feet up upon the front console. “auuuugghh, Caassiie, how much longer till we reach the outer rim? We gotta get outa here.”

“Going at this pace, I’d say we got about a week till we reach the galactic port. Till then we’ll just have to keep on course and-”

“Yep, got it, no need to bore me with onuses.” 

Cassie held back the useless words that hung on the outer edges of her lips before they propelled into the side of Jake’s face. Instead, she just glared out the canopy of the craft overhead. Stars and planets wafted about same as before, lives and families carried on, not stopping for any moment. Children played in the winding hills living in complete bliss, unaware, and uncaring. 

“Jake?”

“Yep”

“Do you think these planets will survive the bomb?”

“Depends, are we still 4,736 lightyears away?”

“Yeah.”

“Well then no, they’ll all be wiped out in about 20 or so years.”

(A foreign type of silence filled the cockpit of the space ship)

Jake muffled around in his sleeping bag and pulled out his portable typing instrument, and two sticks of gum. He handed one to Cassie. 

Jake had always, since he was young, wanted to be an astronaut working for National Space Corps and for their empire. Every bit of education he had received was earned for the eventual plan of outer space exploration. He had heard of galaxies with entirely different cultures and yearned to see them himself. When Jake was in his late early 30s he was given the ‘privilege” of going and seeing for himself planets hundreds of times bigger than his own, but after he left his home planet war broke out within his galaxy, his home planet and thousands of others were evaporated leaving him nothing to return to once all is said and done. Since then he hasn’t cared much for anything, nothing at all.

Cassie, since literal birth, was a straight-A student, envied by all her classmates and peers. Her parents bought her all sorts of exotic pets and she loved each and everyone unconditionally. Animals and other faraway creatures were her sore excuse for leaving her parents and her home planet, but thankfully her parents were understanding for being themselves, retired astronauts. Her parents funded her college education at the finest school in her galaxy for space exploration, The Princetonian College of Universal Perception. There she spent ten years preparing for excursions to nearby planets, but once the war broke out between her empire and an evil empire her shuttle was sent to a haven planet far away on the outer edges of her empire. Her home planet was soon after massacred along with Jake’s home planet in the first surge of attacks. 

Jake and some of his fellow classmates joined up with Cassie’s group at the haven planet and since then they have been missioned to work undercover as spies for their pitiless empire.

Cassie’s so-called justful empire set off a bomb in the heart of the other empire which will in time completely destroy every planet under their domain thanks to their undercover intel of the evil empire.

Cassie couldn’t imagine planet after planet, life after life being blotted out just like that. She loved her parents and her family, but she couldn’t possibly think that destroying so much life was right. Cassie questioned her empire's actions, but couldn’t stand up against it. So instead Cassie just looks off into the distance gazing upon all that is to inevitably be destroyed.

Jake slouched farther down into his seat still glaring down at the screen of his computer. He was on the very last level of Pac-Alien, a game that will forever be known as unbeatable. 

“Jake”, somewhat screamed Cassie from the corner of his seat. “Do you think word could get out that the bomb went off?”

“No, I don’t think it will, no scanner is powerful enough to report an explosion of this magnitude before getting completely wiped out themselves.”, said a slightly agitated, youngish aged man.

“Yeah, yeah I know that but what if someone knew the explosion went off and warned others before the explosion actually got to them”

“Impossible, the only people who could jeopardize this mission is ourselves, and why the hell would any of us undo what we’ve worked so hard to achieve. That just doesn't make since Cassie, do you seriously think anyone in the right minds would just throw away 4 long years of hard work. We did the right thing so don’t you dare start flaking out on the mission now Cassie…”

A figure darted across the hall past the surprisingly still asleep co-workers.

“Cassie?…”

She made her way past the corridors of the dark and eerie ship that she’d lived on for the past 4 years. Her mind wanted nothing to do with it. It was just a stupid piece of metal that had cost billions of lives. All Cassie could think of was her parents and how those billions would suffer the same fate. Yet each leap she took reaching closer and closer toward the escape pods was for some reason harder than the last. She began to wonder whether or not what she was doing was the right thing. The so-called people she was about to save put their kingdom through physical and mental hell. Before her people broke free of the evil empires clutches their rulers made slaves out of both the strong and sick. 

Slowly Cassie’s feat began to submit.

For Millennia they beat and tortured her ancestors, not caring whether anyone died. They were nothing more than expendable pawns at the hands of ruthless anarchists. 

Her feet eventually stopped only yards away from the escape pod. Minutes passed until she eventually turned away from the pod and began to make her way back up the long stretch leading her away from what she could barely resist. 

As she made her way up the eerie cone-shaped hallway she glanced for only a moment at a passing window leading outward to what was inevitably going to be destroyed.