De-ac-ti-vated

Into the Black

Our pod floated by several others. Some students had their faces pressed up against the windows, and others were still fastened securely to their seats, eyes locked on the wall or floor in front of them. They looked like tiny ants speckled through the dark sky. Several of my own pod's occupants had taken up the same deposition. I removed my harnesses and flexed my legs to get the blood flowing. My body lifted from my seat the moment I removed the straps. I looped my left hand around the strap to keep from floating off, and leaned against the window.

The sun's light bounced along the metallic edges of the white pods and turned them into white sparks. We were manmade stars drifting through the cosmos with no source of pull. Earth was streaked with white scars. More evacuation pods shot through the atmosphere and broke through the gravitational barrier that had kept us safe since the beginning of time. The blue sky looked like a master painter had scribbled lines all over its surface. 

Earth looked weary with smoky tears and barren breasts. We left smoke trails with our rocket ships as we abandoned her, a cold testament to what we had done. Her back was burned red, and void of life. Her knees buckled beneath the waves, and relented to the storm clouds that covered two-thirds of her body. We had gotten what we had come for. We had drained Mother Nature of everything she had to offer, and now we were on to our next victim. 

That was why we were here, wasn't it? Why we left her in a hurry, abandoning her like a stray child caught in a sand storm with no rope to hold onto? Isn't that why we were evacuating? Because she no longer could serve our illustrious appetites further and posed more of a danger to us than a help? We were fools to think we could take and take and not pay a price for it. The earth was dying. 

Our pod shook suddenly. I removed my attention from the Blue Planet and turned my eyes on the nearest pods. The bodies inside crammed the fore of the ships and pressed their faces against the glass. I did the same, but it wasn't until our ship fell into the gravitational pull and twisted on its axis that I saw what was pulling us in.

The Space Station was larger than I had imagined. I tried to moved my head along the glass of my pod to see it all, but was unable to. Its vastness stretched deep into the dark shadows of space towards the moon. One of the loading bays was opening along the side of the station. The first pods to leave Earth were already breaking through the green forcefield that protected the inside atmospheric pressure from the outside. Our pod shook again and turned in the direction of another bay opening. I pulled myself back to my seat and harnessed myself in. We hadn't been trained for what came next. For months we were drilled on the proper protocol for evacuation. No one ever told us what to do once we did.

Maybe they never thought we'd get this far. Maybe none of us were supposed to survive. My hand twitched on my lap the longer I thought about it. The closer we drew towards the Space Station, the tighter the pod felt, like it was squeezing the life out of me. I looked out the window to my right, thinking it would free up the feeling of claustrophobia, but it only made it worse. The emptiness of space sent a whirl of vertigo rushing through my body.  My insides squirmed and tried to spew from my mouth but nothing came out. I dry-heaved for a few moments while my body rejected reality.

"Feeling sick?"

She floated by and pulled herself down into the seat next to me. I moved my eyes to watch her.

"You could say that," I said. 

My stomach gurgled with the movement of my lips. I closed my eyes.

"Your body will acclimate soon," she said. "Some people are more sensitive to the gravity void than others."

I managed to turn my head in her direction.

"Are you sure? It sure doesn't feel like it's going to stop. The entire pod feels like its rotating."