The Optimum Project

Chapter 23

A day's end
I collapsed in my bunk, my legs had just enough strength to get me there from the exercise dome, which supposedly doubled as the zero-grav. training room though I had no reason to particularly believe that. After the quick intro to our teacher, a man who went by the name Burns, that was it, he literally said,"you will refer to me as Burns." He then made us run through a grueling obstacle course so complex it took us half the hour to complete it. I was getting even more tired just thinking about it. After all that he stated we were going to run that course every day until we could do it in three minutes. It wasn't going to be fun doing that for the six months I'm supposed to be here.

I rolled over and looked at the bowing curve of the bunk above me, which housed an already snoring Peter. I legitimately thought about what I was doing, was I really willing to stay here for six months? And what about afterwards? Another six months? A year? I don't think I could do it, I turned and looked out the window, at times I almost forgot that I was in space. I would find myself thinking that I was at school on some planet, that at the end of the day I would just walk out a door and ride the bus to my stop, where I would get out and find my parents sitting at the door and waiting for me... But none of that was real, and I needed to wake up.

I pulled myself from my thoughts in time to see a fighter swoop by and open fire on some astroids that were to close for comfort, that was what I was going to do, now I just had to get to it...