Where Our Dreams Go

Andrews | Chapter 8

The power nap didn't work out. I slept right through until nearly midday and woke up to nearly a hundred messages and calls from Harry. I wasn't in her good books, but she gets it. "Sorry again Harry, my body just shut down." She barely said a word on the way here.

"It's fine." She said a little tense, but not without warmth. "I'm just annoyed because I spent hours packing quickly because I thought we'd be going in there yesterday."

"Sorry." I said again.

"I know you are," she says with a sigh. "Don't worry about it. Just press the button and tell them who we are. I want to see what my new room looks like." Harry points to the intercom button to the left of the enormous steel doors that separate the sections. There is access in the central column to reach each block easily, but they also have doors that link some sections together like this one. They're not really used anymore. Most of the crew move through the central entrances, but this one is the closest to our rooms here. I held my finger on it and confirmed who we were and why we were there.

The station itself is massive in scope. Like a tower block floating in space, twelve floors up with four blocks jutting out from it at different levels. These are the living quarters we call the North, south, east and west blocks. Each of them with a mixture of ranks living inside, but they are separated into their tiers and then one for the new recruits. I've always felt it was a little classist, but I guess people who are classist don't give two licks what the lower classes think. North block belongs to the grade 6's to 1's, south to the beginners, west to the lieutenants and overseers and the East is for Classes 1 to 3.

"How do you know you'll have your own room?" I ask innocently.

"Ooh, yeah, you're right." She says, looking up at me with a mischievous smile, the smile she knows I like. "Maybe they'll set me up with a cute guy. Devilishly handsome with a danger in his eyes only I can tame, but deep down. I don't want to." Maybe I was on a bit of a high from the promotion or slightly asleep still, but I dared to say back,

"I don't think they'll put us together." The look of gleeful surprise on her face made my heart race. She opened her mouth, no doubt about to flirt back, when a bored voice interrupted her.

"Did you want to come in? Or shamelessly flirt on our porch some more?"

"I wasn't-" I tried, but Harry cut me off.

"We can finish it inside." She flashes me a sly grin, making me cough slightly to stop the heat rising into my cheeks.

"Oh. Joy." The bored voice said, now turning a shade of sarcastic. The door shudders a bit as it releases from the floor, parting as it does to slide into the walls and ceiling in three near equal segments. Each central point held a fraction of our company's emblem. A circular design with stars scattered in the sky, a space shuttle leaving a jetstream through it. The sky reflected the specific stations' colours. Ours is a metallic gold with white stars and a black ship.

We head over the threshold to find the same cyclically designed corridors we're used to, which was a little disappointing, but what did we expect? We weren't here for the decor anyway, though, by the look on Harry's face, she was expecting a little more, too. "Not to your liking?" The owner of that bored voice looked exactly how I'd expect him to look. Round belly, a medium-length scraggly black beard, a polo shirt and an unapologetic look of disdain in his eyes. I was about to protest when Harry chimed in.

"Not really. It's just the same as everywhere else." A pretty standard Harry response, but not a great great one without knowing who we're speaking to. I pinch the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. This was bound to happen and will continue happening, so I might as well get used to it.