The Childrens Rebellion

red sky, brown grass

He remembers the fields of golden light and the flowers that grew near the shallows of the lakes and rivers under green-leafed canopies.

He remembers being retrieved from the spaceship explosion; he remembers shaking as he concludes that his family is dead and isn't coming back. He remembers shaking in his escape pod, tears rolling down his face, as he looks onto the empty void of space and weeps. He was ten, then.

He is twelve when he is rescued from the prison that his parents' enemies brought him to. Twelve, released by an older, Avian man with a perchance for speaking with a silver tongue and a promise for a new home. Twelve, when the Avian—just like him, he thinks—brings him through warp speed and past planets and to a burning golden one called Pogtopia. Burning, because the atmosphere is red, and when they land, and he beholds the scarlet sky, he thinks of the flames of the H.M.S. Fran as it crashed into the Arachnid warship—his family onboard.

The Avian tells him that this place is a home for lost children, and he brings Tommy to a set of buildings on a glowing field of wheat, and he shows him the place where Tommy will live, with all the other children—learning, until they grow up and go home.

He does not tell the Avian—his name is Chroma, like a hue—that he does not have a home, for he was born on the spaceship and lived there for ten years. He does not tell the man that there were things about his family that he is just figuring out—that Chroma likes the Arachnids, that his family didn't, and Tommy thinks of the whispered messages and hushed transmissions they sent when they thought he wasn't looking. He hears Chroma gnash his teeth in loathing and irritation at any mention of the Galactic Rebellion, and Tommy thinks that his family might not have been transporters like their I.D.s said they were.

There are three thousand, two hundred, and seventy-three children there, ages ten through nineteen. They are there to go to school, to learn about the planets and stars. The other kids promise him that it is fun, that they are learning so much.

They do not know about their families.

Tommy does not mention he saw his die.

He meets a boy named Purpled. Purpled has blonde hair and magenta eyes, and he is angry, oh, so angry. Tommy asks him why and Purpled says that he wants to go home.

Purpled is fourteen, just a single year older. Purpled has two brothers, and he says that Chroma says that they are dead, but Purpled knows they are not. He says that he wants to go home to Terra—which Purpled calls Earth. Tommy learns that Purpled is Human. Tommy discovers that Chroma and the multitudes of guards will not let Purpled home. Purpled seethes with an inner rage that shows in his magenta eyes, but there is also a sadness that lingers on his features whenever he thinks nobody is looking. Purpled longs for home.

Tommy meets his other roommate, an Enderian named Ranboo. Ranboo is an oddball—he has half white skin and half black skin, and he's partially albino because his mother used to take narcotics when she was pregnant. Tommy learns that Ranboo's family is dead as well—he's been here since he was five when Chroma rescued him. Ranboo has memory problems when he eats anything but food from his homeland. He cringes whenever a guard comes near, and Tommy later learns that the Arachnids think that Ranboo is a waste of space and deserves to be killed.

There are others. There is a girl named Alyssa—she is sixteen—and there is a boy named Foolish. That is not his actual name, but he says to call him how he is, and so Tommy calls him Foolish.

The name sticks and Tommy makes new friends. They are not as close as Purpled and Ranboo, but they are close. Close enough that he tells them stories of his family—his aunt and his dad—close enough that he teaches them how to fly a ship on the simulations when it's that type of class.