Satellite girl

Satellite Girl: Chapter One

My heart is pounding, fingers twitching, body warm and tingling over every inch. I am breathing too quickly, anticipation and fear of failure. I have done my best to create my own luck, done all that I can to make my name appear early in the drawing. But there are four people on the stage, five, six, twenty. Even as my chances of placing within the golden top fifty become exponentially lower, the flurry of emotion in my body pulses stronger and faster. My palms are clammy and damp, chest hurting low down when I suck in a breath, eyes intent upon the hand dipping again and again into the glass bowl of paper strips. My name appears ten times. The greatest number possible. However, I am not the only one with duplicate letters.

There are one hundred people on the stage, and I have killed that thing inside myself, repressed it now that I know I have lost. As I watch, constantly shoving down the anticipation, I remember the second half of today.

There are a hundred and forty people onstage, forty two, forty three. Now my heart beats quickly for a different reason, whole body shaking, cold ice piling up in my toes and thighs and chest until it crystallizes in my throat. I swallow rapidly, definitely hyperventilating now.

One hundred and forty nine, and my entire body is filled with ice.

"Ida Lane, please come to the stage. Ida Lane?"

The whispering has replaced all other talk, replacing the chatter and cheers of before completely now that the ceremony is over. A hand touches the small of my back and I stand, stumbling down the aisle, barely able to see.

"Thank you for your noble sacrifice," They say, handing me a plaque. We all hold a metal slab, ingrained with our individual destinies. All one hundred and fifty of us stand for a picture, holding the markers so they can be read. I must look terribly ugly in it. Someone as devastated as I could not appear beautiful.

My mother smiles at me, eyes wet as she wraps me in a hug. She is warm and all encompassing as she whispers in my ear, "Goodbye. You are making a noble sacrifice." I hear her breath jump as a sob breaks through. "I will never forget you."

I walk slowly to the car, sent by the government. Silently, I get into the backseat, clutching a small bag to my chest. As soon as the door has closed, the bag is ripped away from me by a big man in a black suit who sits with one hand on my forearm for the duration of the ride. I never expected to keep it.

After about an hour we reach the launch pad. It is mostly empty, only professionals and otherwise important personnel visible. My family will not see my departure.

They load me up, putting straps around me as they press me into a padded seat, and I am suddenly glad that I am not claustrophobic.

Though I suppose I would get over it quickly. I'd have to.

The professionals, who did not say a word as they made the last minute preparations, leave, and soon after a roaring starts under me, shaking the room, making my head light as everything vibrates violently. I feel a bit sick as the rocket shoots me up through the atmosphere. Perhaps the nausea is from the process of entering space, but more so, I think it hails from the knowledge that I am forever leaving home.

And then things are quiet. The wall of computers in front of me hums quietly, establishing connections, running tests and scans to see that everything is correct, starting the functions that will keep me alive until something eventually goes wrong.

Slowly, hands shaking, I undo the buckles of the chair. I wish that the numbness I feel in my fingers when I perform the action would spread to the rest of my body, fill up my head and soothe my aching eyes.

I find my fingers on the single window, glass not yet icy. Five square inches of stars. The last bit of the real world left me. There is a pain just above the junction of my collarbones, and I notice that my nose has begun to run.

I am a girl in a satellite.

I lost.