Collision/Impact

I woke up gasping for air. Like I was drowning, and sinking. My eyes adjusting, taking in my surroundings, I knew I had to calm myself down. Focus, I told myself. I could hear alarms going off and make out a transparent screen on the glass in front of me. There was a crack running through it causing the image to flicker. It stated that I had been in a collision and power was at eighteen percent. I looked around as I pulled at the seatbelt and felt the release button in the middle. I looked to the center of my chest and popped it with my palm as I started to see sparks and smoke. Before I began to panic, I zoned in on the latch release and pulled. The top popped open and I jumped out, crawling away in case it exploded.

After a little over five minutes, I realized the pod wasn’t going to explode, so I walked back to it and sat, leaning against it. I needed to breathe. I needed to think.

What the hell happened?

The last thing I remembered was fighting with my mom about… not wanting to go to space.

“Be reasonable, Faith. Please!” She begged me as she packed.

“I am.” I countered. “I don’t trust him.”

“You don’t trust anyone!” She yelled.

“Trust is earned, Mother.” I say simply. “We’ve known him a few days and because he speaks with authority and knows how to mansplain the situation--" she groaned. “We should just believe what he says?”

“Faith, look around! This world is going to hell in a handbasket. There are thousands of different alternatives floating out there!” She gestured. “At least let us stick to the one we know is possible. Your daddy would have--"

“—would have wanted all the facts, Ma!” I threw my hands up.

“Dale was a friend of your father’s.”

“Yeah, a friend that you’ve never met before. Dad’s death was everywhere. The television, radio, newspapers… and yet, he’s here two years later with condolences, asking about some plans Dad may or may not have brought home.” I say cynically. “He wanted to look around your dead husband’s things, on a hunch! Hunch my ass!”

“That is enough!” she yelled as I turned to leave the room. Then chased after me. “I am not a fool, Faith Ann. I know what it sounds like.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.” She caught my arm, but I yanked from her as I faced her. “But, I also know that your father had vision. Someone finishing his vision so we can beat the clock marking the end of the world sounds better than dying like most. Dale will take care of us. He’ll be sure to protect us.”

I was confused, and disgusted all at once. “He’ll take care of us? Protect us? Are you serious right now?” I rubbed my hand down my face as if she’d spit on me. “We don’t know him!”

“I know him!”

I felt my face pull back more. “Wait, are you sleeping with him?...” I paused. “‘Cause the way you’re defending him makes me wonder why I didn’t see it sooner.”

My mother’s spine straightened, and she lifted her nose in the air. “My affairs are none of your business.”

I leaned back on the counter, shocked. “How long?”

She started to pack a box in the living room. “Almost a year…”

I shook my head. “And you already gave him the plans.”

She was quiet for a moment before stepping next to me. “They finished a few days ago. The plan was to tell you he’d found a hidden plan with the location on it, and he tracked it down. But since you didn’t budge on giving them up, and time not being on our side--"

“You thought I'd just jump to it because we don’t have many options?”

“This is the best one!”

“Why? Because you love him?” I cut my eyes to her. “I don’t care.”

“He’s a smart man. If it was time, and things were organic, you’d been able to see that yourself.”

“If he’s as smart as you say, why’d he need Daddy’s plans?”

“Because that’s what your daddy did. He drew up the plans.”

“My father didn’t just draw up plans. He was an astronaut. An astronaut that happened to be an aerospace engineer and a physicist, that piloted the crafts he was on. My father was a genius, who went to space four times.” I paused. “There’s no time to test if they missed something, Ma. How many times has Dale and his band of misfits done this?”

She placed her hands in mine. “We need to be together on this, Faith.”

I stood. “You shoulda' thought about that a year ago.”

The silence in the room was so intense we could hear the looting starting outside. She sat. Done packing the unnecessary, and sighed. “I did, Faith. I thought about it.” She held a picture of me and my dad at my first science fair. “Your daddy was your hero, through and through. You started following in his footsteps when you were ten. But, with my girl genius,” she glanced up at me. “I saw it by five. Fast forward fifteen years and you’re studying in almost every field of engineering they have.”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be dramatic, Ma.”

She gave me a watery smile, cocked an eyebrow. “I’ve been a bioengineer for twenty-three years, Faith. Worked for, with, and around smart people my whole career. That’s not counting my military daddy or your genius one. Your brain beats all of them.” The pride in her eyes was hard to be mad at. “At twenty years old you have three bachelor degrees. Electrical, Mechanical, and Aerospace Engineering.”

“But you still weren’t real with me, Ma.”

“Because even with all that brain, you’re still your daddy’s baby girl. You would have been on Dale’s neck. Twice as much if you’d seen us dating. You would have thought he was trying to be your father.”

“In a way he is. But,” I inhaled. “I guess you can say you have a type..”

She chuckled. “Maybe.”

“Can you just tell me, honestly, if having him around made it easier to forget my dad?”

She stood to come wrap her arms around me. “It did.” She whispered. “But I realized I’ll never forget your father. And I never want to. I’ll always love that man. So it shocked me one day when I looked at Dale and realized I really do like him.” She let go. “Then it smacked me in the face that I loved him.”

“Did it now?”

“Open palm.”

I smiled. “I’m still mad at—” There was a knock at the door.

I took my baton out my pocket, extended it as my mother grabbed the shotgun. She took aim as she walked to the door. “It’s Dale.” He called out.

Again, I rolled my eyes as we both disarmed. “Hey.” She greeted. “You’re twenty minutes early.”

“You guys didn’t see the last news broadcast?” He looked down at my mother, smiled. “I brought extra bags if you guys needed them.”

She gave him a small smile. “The looting started a little while ago.”

“What was on the news?” I interrupted.

“They opened three bunkers up to the public. Each at least twelve hundred feet underground.”

“I guess they didn’t mention they’ll only be able to fit about eight hundred people in each of them.” I say sarcastically.

“How’d you come up with that?”

I tilted my head looking to my mother and back to him. “Did my mother mention I’m an engineer while you snuck around behind my back?”

His gaze shifted to my mother. “I told her.”

“Yeah, and I can use this big brain of mine to deduce that if they’re opening them up to the public, those are either prototypes bases, or, someone developed a conscience and asked, ‘What about the people?’, somewhere in the past year.”

“So, you’re in?”

“Got some questions, Dale.”

“We don’t have time for this.”

“Grace is right.” He said. “The temp is one-eleven out there right now. By morning it’ll be one-twenty, or higher.”

I glanced at the clock. It was a little passed nine. “I want your roster. How many people on the ship? Who’s doing what? Do we have enough perishables? Once we’re up there, do you have some connections with one of the space stations?”

“Your dad’s plans were just one part of it… for my team. I was in charge of the ship. We split causes. Another team was in charge of space station. Another deciding on NASA families to approach. And the last on equipment.”

“This isn’t a NASA project.” I stated.

“Faith, listen—”

I put my hand up, cutting her off. “Is it?”

“No. A scared billionaire found a handful of us. We found the rest.”

“What?” My mother came to stand in front of him.

“Gracie we need to get out of here.”

“You told me NASA approved this and reached out—”

“Okay, that part was off course, but the rest was true. It’s full proof.”

“No, it’s not. If there’s not one person at least rotating between your four groups, to make sure you’re cohesive, any little thing could go wrong. A piece of code, an allergy, a bolt not twisted all the way.”

“The heads speak on a weekly basis. We’ve been launching the space station in sections for the last two months. It was completed a week ago.”

“How have you not been shut down?”

“Billionaire backing.”

I shook my head. “Whatever. How many pilots do you have?”

“Ten in space. Four on the ground.”

“Of the four on the ground, how many have been to space?”

He looked to my mother, then back to me. “One.”

“One?” I asked critically.

“One’s enough.”

“Ohmygod, my brain hurts.” I said as I paced away, rubbing my temples.

“Dale..”

“Grace, she’s good. Nerves of steel.”

“And the other three? Have they even been through the simulations?”

“Somewhat.”

“Dale!”

“What the fuck does somewhat mean?” I asked, astonished at the idiocy.

“They didn’t quite get passed NASA standards, but they’ve got the heart!” He said quickly. “They’ve been pushing themselves since day one.”

“There are reasons why they don’t let certain people in space.”

“We’ve fixed those issues.”

“They aren’t minor issues. Radiation. Gravity pockets. People turning into psychopaths because they’re in a big metal box.” I held my hands up. “They factor in.”

“We’ve covered it.” He stated. “Now we have to go.”

“What are their names?” I asked.

“Grace?” He looked to my mother.

She looked to me, then turned, walked to the back. “Names.”

He closed his eyes, sighed. “Trevor and Kameron Carpenter. Rebecca Dyer. Jerard Black.”

“I know Rebecca. I’m surprised you got her involved after what happened.”

She’d gotten caught in the magnetic storm on her decent and it knocked half the systems offline. She was on course to crash and no contact with the ground.

“She has a family.”

“However, the idiot twins, they got kicked—”

I felt a sharp sting in my right shoulder. I turned around holding my arm to see my mother with a syringe. “What did you do?”

“Tranq.” Her eyes glossed. “I’ll keep you under until we’re up there.”

My vision blurred, and it felt as if I was falling. “..I have… a plan…”

Then I woke up.

I stood, shaking off the grogginess, and surveyed my surroundings. The sand threw me off most. It stretched out from left to right as far as the eye could see. Fifteen meters away was a body of black water. Behind me were cliffs. Whatever my trajectory, I knew I was lucky to be alive. But the glass-like, and coffin-like, pod was beyond repair. As I searched for some type of answer I saw my dad’s go bag he kept with him on missions. When I pulled it out, my mother’s locket fell out. It was heart shaped with a picture of us, ironically at the beach, the year before Dad died. I hadn’t seen her wear it almost a year.

I pulled it over my head and smiled. The hologram appearing in front of me, however, surprised me. It was a girl, a few years older than me. She looked… familiar. Something in the eyes.

“Hi, Faith. I don’t have much time, but you deserve an explanation. I’m Gwen, your niece’s granddaughter. I don’t know the whole story of why they put you in cryo, but the original goal was to wake you up. But after your mother died, no one thought it was smart. Apparently, whatever you were worried about came to fruition and bottom line, they didn’t want to admit it. It took years to get good, but we stabilized eventually. We know stories of you and your time with your family. And it was my turn to watch over you. We’re funneling resources, and cryo is unnecessary. And teaching would apparently take too long. But I’ve read your file. You’re a genius. Even for our time. You can figure this out. If they woke you up then, we probably wouldn’t have all these random issues. And that’s what worries them, because they aren’t trying to fix the real problems anymore. I think Earth is livable again. That’s where you are. I’m putting a map of last weeks’ geo-creds with coordinates in your bag. I circled the area you’d likely land. Give or take a couple miles. I smuggled in a little bit over a weeks’ worth of food and water. I’ll try to follow you, and meet you at those coordinates. If you get there before me, wait for me. I’ll meet you there if I make it off this rig. Good luck.”

I gripped my locket and caught my balance, leaning on the pod. “Cryo.”

Still stunned, I knew I had to keep moving. I dug in my dad’s bag and found the map. The year said 2154. I’d been sleep for over a hundred and thirty years… My mother was long dead… and I had a great niece who’d been watching me sleep basically her whole life.

Fun.

I packed the bag with everything that wasn’t glue down and strapped it to my back. It was eerie how quiet it was against the waves. At the base of the cliffs I shaded my eyes and searched for the top. It would be a long way up…