Gone to Ruin

ECHO

CHAPTER ONE

ECHO

I stare out the window of my bedroom at the passing stars. Well, it lacks a bed, (Alexis told me what those are) but it is where I sleep, and that seems to be the main factor for a bedroom. Alexis and I used to share, when I was really little, but then she figured out how to drive the spaceship and now she basically sleeps in the cockpit.

I stare down into my lap at the folded piece of paper. I haven't told Alexis about it. She would probably take it away.

I can read. Very well. Alexis doesn't like it because she never taught me. Sort of like the languages.

I think this notebook might have belonged to the person who built the spaceship.

Alexis never told me anything about Earth. If I ask, she might tell me something vague and impersonal, but mostly I learn from when she talks to herself at night. Talking to yourself is a big part of being the last humans.

She told me that we are the last humans. The omega. Humans used to live on Earth. Earth is gone now, and we were asleep in the spaceship when that happened. And her favorite thing to say;

"Normal humans don't have glowing white hair, Echo."

Absentmindedly, I finger my hair. It's always dark in the spaceship. The lights are always dimmed. We don't know what type of fuel the spaceship runs on, but it's safe to assume it was destroyed with Earth. But my hair always glows. Always full of light.

I usually hide my hair under a bucket hat that Alexis made for me. Alexis doesn't like my hair, as a general rule. Sometimes, though, Alexis will tell me it is the color of Earth clouds, or fresh snow. Alexis has her moods. I think it's from growing up on Earth and then raising me on the spaceship. Once, after we ran out of orange juice ration and had to drink this disgusting stuff called gin, she told me that her name wasn't always Alexis. She changed it after Earth was destroyed.

She has it worse than me, I think. She lived on Earth, and then had to deal with taking care of a baby when she was only eleven Earth years old, as well as driving the spaceship.

Another strange think about me: I have an immaculate sense of time. Earth time, Lijt time, Glkin time, you name it. I know when an Earth year is complete, I understand the concept of Earth day and night. It's one of the only quirks that Alexis likes. Before, she just went to sleep when she was tired, ate when she was hungry, and fed baby me when she remembered. (Not often.)

That is how I know that I am twelve Earth years old, and Alexis is twenty-three Earth years old. That is how I know that we stop at planets and disguise ourselves as citizens of the Planetary Union for supplies every three months, ever since I was nine Earth years.

Alexis told me that citizens of the Planetary Union are aliens, but I think that we are the aliens. We are creatures who disguise our very existence, creatures with no planet to call our own. If we are not aliens, who are?

Not the Neros, who can breathe above and under water and have hair that they use to sense the world around them.

Not the Glikins, who are humanoid exept for their eyes, which grow on stalks out of their heads.

Not the Hclaineshs, who have eyes of midnight and glowing skin.

Us.

Once again, I look down at the piece of paper. I unfold it. I have read it hundreds of times, ever since I ripped it out of Book of Planetary Union.