Journey to the World of Seven Kingdoms

Launch Day

It was eventually time to say our goodbyes. Telling my daughter goodbye was probably the hardest. My father-in-law had warned me of this. On the day of the launch she was in her room crying when I came in to say goodbye. I held her and told her I would come back. I also told her that if she continued to study hard in school then one day she could go too. She kept reminding me that I had no idea when I would come back.

As I was driving of my son asked me if he could drive my truck while I was gone. I told him it was his Tundra now and drove off. I checked around in the truck to see if Hannah had snuck in the truck again but she wasn't in the cab. I saw her in the rearview mirror running out of the house. She probably would've chased me had she not been grabbed by my father-in-law.

When I got to the NASA headquarters; I found this time the gate was opened. Professor Chastain and my crew came out to greet me along with the robot I had encountered when I first came here. The robot's name was Lars and well he was accompanying us on are mission.

We go into a room and Professor Chastain reads us a poem. It was something about rage and dying light that I didn't really pay attention to. I guess there too many things on my mind like the launch and the mission. After reading the poem he wished us Godspeed.

We put on our spacesuits and got on the bus to the launch pad. Our spacesuits are these skintight suits that according to Professor Chastain were designed by MIT. They had the flag of our country of origin on our right shoulder and on our left shoulder it had our mission patch. Our mission patch had a small picture resembling the ring spaceship we would be traveling on amongst a starry background. I couldn't decide if our mission patch was dark navy blue or black.

When we got to the launch platform we had to take an elevator up to where we get in our craft. Our craft that we were getting in was called a Ranger. The Ranger was on top of rocket. Part of the rocket looked like the Saturn V rocket that took the Apollo astronauts to the moon.

We walked across a gangway to get in the Ranger. After we got strapped into our seats Lars began the countdown. He started at 10, by 5 I was getting butterflies and at 2 the rocket roared to life. He then announced main engines are a go and we have lift off. The roar of the rocket was deafening and it shook a lot. I felt like I was inside of a washing machine with all that shaking, but then it was over.

I watched the rocket fall back down to earth once we got into orbit. As we thrusting towards the Endurance, Cole and I look out the window at planet earth. I say, "We had a perfect planet for life and we ruined it." Cole standing next to me said, "We are not going to find another one like her." I then responded, "We have to it's our mission."

When the Ranger reached the Endurance Cole took the control stick to dock us with it. Once we successfully docked Cole opened the hatch and followed Jessica and Chang in. I then started the rotation of the Endurance and followed them in.

I found out that we had another robot identical to Lars, this one was named Chase. After Lars and Chase exchanged hellos Lars introduces us to Chase and says that Chase will help him to build his "robot colony." I look alarmingly at Cole but before I could ask if he knew about this he said "We gave Lars a humor setting of 100%." I said, "What say we move that setting down to 70." Then Lars said, "What say we cut off your oxygen supply." I finally said, "We've got a funny robot." When I asked Chase if he was like this he said, "No Lars here does enough talking for both of us." Well I can definitely see that.

I grab the Commander's Clipboard which showed the names of the astronauts who were on the planets that we were visiting. I noticed that all of them had weird last names; I asked Jess if any of these astronauts were American because there were only two names that I could easily pronounce and those were Mark and Martin. She pointed out an astronauts with the last name of Reorgger and said he was from New Mexico. I jokingly say "Oh let me guess Roswell? Jessica replied "No silly; he's from the capital." "Oh, Santa Fe" I say in a more serious tone. I next ask about the next guy Rasputkov. After reading that name I told Jessica that I smell cosmonaut. She snickers at that but then she told me that Commander Rasputkov"was the best of both worlds." When I asked what she meant by that she said; "He flew a couple trips to the international space station and he researched solar cycles." When I asked her what solar cycles were she said she wasn't exactly sure. I then told her that we should visit him and ask him. Jessica shrugged but then I asked about the third guy, who's name I didn't even bother pronouncing. She said he was Italian. She then told me the correct pronunciation of his name which was Preposulo or something like that. Then she said that she and him went way back.  "Oh sounds like you two had a love affair." I say handing Jessica the Commander's Clipboard without realizing it. "Be honest." I went on to say teasingly. It was hard to see if Jessica was blushing because her hair was red. She then said "Stop" but I egged her on by saying "Be Honest."

I could see she was getting annoyed, so I then asked Lars if he had an honesty setting and he said that his honesty setting was 90%. Lars pointed out that complete honesty is not always a good idea. So I decided that we will be 90% honest with each other when it came to personal things.

Apparently I forgot that Jessica Chastain still had the Commander's Clipboard, either I had forgotten or simply didn't know. She said, "You should really keep up with this. You are the commander after all." She then tossed the Clipboard at me and I caught it. Not exactly knowing what happened to it I said, "Oh, what??" I then looked for a place to put itand I must have looked really stupid to her. Mainly because she said that I really needed to get with the program but that was when I cut her off. I straight up told her that she needed to relax and I reminded her that are next objective was to take 6 month siesta.

Since it was half a year's journey to Mars, we would be going into cryogenic sleep. Cole and Chang were the first to enter their sleep tanks. As Jessica was entering her tank, I asked her if Preposulo purposed to her. She told me I was literally wasting my breath. I tried asking Lars if he knew but he told me he had a discretionary setting. I guess they don't want this chatty robot spillings everybody's secrets.

I send a video message to my kids telling them dad is about to go night night for about six months and then I get in my sleep tank. The water in the tank is freezing cold but within a matter of minutes I'm asleep. I dream of being back home with the kids and my wife. My wife and I talk of having another kid in my dream.