Glowing red lights and blaring alarms awoke Theelyith. She opened her eyes and sat up to find the motherboard flashing rapidly, colors illuminating the dark control pod she was snoozing in. She furrowed her eyebrows, watching the screens above her become distorted and glitchy.
How does she fix this? She had never driven a spaceship before. She was only 10 had just barely lifted off from her home planet, Kepler-438b. It was the only known planet in the solar system to be most similar to earth, a planet she was never to go to. She wasn't allowed to travel to any planet, really. But she snuck out in the middle of the night after a fight with her mother and somehow thought stealing a highly complicated spaceship designed for trained professionals was a good idea. She was going to bring it back though. At least.. She thought she was. But now...
She bit her lip and pressed a button. Ah, no, shoot- that was the wrong button. She pressed another that seemed to blink faster than the rest and the lights above and behind her came on. Okay. This was a start. Now, to fix this whole.. Flashy-glitchy-spaceship thing.
She tucked her semi-short hair behind her ear.
She pulled a lever that read 'kla'skiq', meaning, 'radio', in her native language, Langelle.
All of a sudden, a square piece of the dashboard popped up and brought what looked like a boombox with it.
She turned the dial until she heard noise, a loud collection of voices all in different languages, accents, male, female.
The clearest station was named '101.8 falcon' and she heard what was a very unstable radio talk show man's voice.
"Oh God... God help us all. Everyone, if you're listening, grab your family and lock yourself in your home", the man sounded like he turned to speak to someone else suddenly,
"Stan, I need to get to my daughter",
Silence. Then suddenly, a different man's voice, sounding scared and unsteady.
"Sorry folks. Erm, like Dan said, please gather your family and get to your home as quickly as possible. The government will be sending an alert system around America, and no doubt other countries' governments will be doing the same".
Theelyith was confused. She heard stories before about how unstable earth was, how different it was from Kepler-438b.
But there was something else going on.
She grabbed her backpack that was slung across the swirly-chair she was sitting in a while ago. She opened the main pouch and took out her PHS, Portable Holographic Screen, and pointed it in front of her. She tried to find a T.V station. All but a few were the same, Government issued alert messages, like the ones given in case of a nuclear attack or war, like the one Stan, the radio guy, had said.
She turned up the volume of the T.V station by waving her right hand and saying, "volume increase".
A loud beep was played and a monotone robotic mans voice said,
"Alert: A strange object in space has been detected by the American, Canadian, and Some European air bases. Please safely get to a government-issued emergency centre, and wait for further instructions".
...
What more lovely way to start the day than to fly too close to an army air base and end up alerting the entire planet earth, right?
