Far From Home

Chapter Five

I woke to voices murmuring around me, I jerked my head up suddenly and cleared my eyes. The voices settled into silence, awkward silence as I looked at all the different faces in the room. I stopped at Tanner’s looking for an explanation, he shrugged and smirked “You wouldn’t wake up so we started the meeting without you.” I gave him my deadliest stare and his smile faltered “you should have tried harder, this is embarrassing.” I said seething with anger; he shrugged again “it’s not my problem.” I sat up straighter ready to lash out at him, but someone put their hand on my arm to stop me, I looked behind me into the face of a gorgeous Indian woman she smiled “there’s no need to resort to violence just yet Ms Zhou. If you fight you’ll only prolong the meeting further. I ensure you that nobody even truly cared that you were sleeping, we all took our time and you had to wait for a long time.” I smiled back thankful that somebody could be straight forward with me and also calming. She went to take a seat at the left hand of my chair. I swung my head back to the right at Tanner and gave him a venomous look, he stuck his tongue out childishly and gave me an obscene gesture with his hand, and I returned it.

The Indian woman cleared her throat and looked at us, we put our hands down and looked at her, “without further ado let’s call this meeting to order shall we?” The six other people at the table moved to comfort themselves in their seats shuffling papers and getting pens out. I looked at my empty part of the table and felt unsure as to whether I needed a pen and paper. I looked at Tanner and saw he was sat back lethargically with nothing as well. I felt some confidence that at least I would be able to mentally note things, while Tanner would most likely not even remember this meeting tomorrow. “Alright everyone this is Adira Zhou our leading girl for our mission to space, we’ll all introduce ourselves to you. I am Professor Divya Goswami, hypothetical Astrophysicist and head scientist of your mission.” I nodded making a mental note to keep her name. Around the room people started saying their names; Daniel Goddard, hypothetical Astronomer expert, with balding red hair and shyness he looked more like a gnome than a scientist, Woodley Yearling, Millionaire and philanthropist, he was helping fund the study along with Tanner, Wesley Rabinovich, Millionaire, who explained in her deep Russian accent that long ago her people loved space travel and she wanted to experience it as well, Gunther Hijazi, supporting scientist to Professor Goswami, who looked like the gender swapped version of Culan, and Toulouse Fairly, billionaire scientist, who with his large smile and beautiful Middle East looks, took my breath away. Toulouse saw me staring and gave me a wink; I felt my face heat up.

“Okay now that we know each other’s names let’s get down to business. Ms Zhou, how much have you been filled in about this mission? Starting from the Test?” Professor Goswami asked me. I froze up thinking back to when the Test had asked for my silence, how many hours had that been? Twelve or so if I estimated, “uh well I know that this is all top secret and keep to myself, that lots of billionaires have poured in money to keep this place under wraps. Also that you’re pretty much sending me to space to die,” the room erupted in noise as everyone started yelling at me, I looked around at the rich people who were basically the ones yelling, except for Tanner who was just laughing quietly at me, then the scientists shaking their heads. “Quiet! Please be quiet everyone and settle down!” Professor Goswami yelled, “Adira we are not sending you up to space to die surely you should know that? We would never harm another human life!” I just looked at her, “yet you don’t know what is up there do you professor?” I said. She looked at me taken aback but I continued, “You’re sending me up there for a look when we all know space travel was discontinued for a reason correct? Something made people want to stay in the confines of the atmosphere and what was that? I’ve been thinking this through ever since I was told I was going up there in the first place!” Truthfully I’d only thought of it now, but it was still frightening that it was now coming to mind. Professor Goswami looked at me kindly, “you’ve been thinking very logically and you may be correct, except we have had geothermal cameras set up for twenty years seeing if there is anything out there. Whatever it was all those years ago is now gone, I’ll reinstate what I said; we would never harm a human life.” I calmed down and nodded, it wasn’t like I could back down now anyway. The professor looked at me one more time to make sure I had no more to say before returning to take order of the table.

“Okay now we’ll have a look at our other Test candidates who we have chosen today, as we speak they are being brought to the building. We have four people chosen all at the age of 17 like Ms Zhou here.” The professor pulls out a hologram disk and turns it on, the face of a boy with blond hair and a stern look on his face comes up, “Zachariah Wadley, 17, highest IQ in the entire class this year. We’re thinking he would be perfect for mechanics, due to his knowledge of 21st century technology and body strength. Next we have Mia Kikuchi, she was going to go into aeronautics field but we pulled her as she may be able to contribute to knowing how to fly.” She looked almost too cute to want to ever fly anything except butterflies, but I couldn’t judge a book by its cover as well as the glimmer in her eye that showed a daredevil. “Now we have Dmitry Nikolas, who was going into communications, but looks more promising as head of communications between Earth and space.” I nod I slightly know Dmitry as we had two classes together, so one familiar face is good. Then Professor Goswami pulls up the last face and I gasp, I cannot believe it and there are tears in my eyes. “Mochrie Diya, high level genius and has the brains to become a wonderful astrophysicist.” I can’t help but smile. Professor Goswami claps her hands “that concludes our meeting for today, we will hold one more tomorrow when the students arrive.”