Journey

Lorelei

The colony has spiraled into chaos. The chaos is so bad that even Tove is having a difficult time controlling it. All the shippers, Elijah and I sit in the bridge of the ship trying to figure out a way to keep control.

"First we need to establish the cause of the chaos, so what is the cause of the chaos?" Cyrus asked.

We think for a moment.

"The cause of the chaos is people being afraid of the epidemic," Akia answered.

"What can we do to fix the problem?" Cyrus asks.

"Give everyone healing suaves," Elijah says.

"Why don't we do that?" Cyrus asks.

"We don't have enough," I say hollowly.

"How do we fix that problem?" Cyrus asks.

"We get people to make more," Tove answers.

"But there's a problem with that. The people don't want to work," I say hollowly.

"Than we need to make a new rule," Elijah says.

"What might that rule be?" Cyrus asks.

"You work and you get food. Don't work and starve. I read about it in a book of Sol Earth," Elijah says.

Everyone considers this. I give Elijah a secret smile. He smiles back at me.

"How do we go about enforcing this?" Cyrus asks.

"We can assign a job as a work supervisor that hands out tickets to people who work. People can turn in the tickets for a meal," Elijah answers.

"What about the children?" Cyrus asks.

"Children under the age of fourteen can get a ticket that they can reuse," Elijah replies.

Everyone seems to consider this. Than Tove speaks.

"People need to know how to make the healing suaves. They are very difficult to make and require a lot of practice. How do we get the people to learn how to make them in such a short amount of time?" Tove asks.

We all turn to hear commotion out in the hallway. Elijah cocks his head to the side. A girl bursts into the room. She is panting hard like she just ran around the whole ship.

"I'm sorry commander but I needed to talk to you," She pants.

Tove looks at her like she would murder her in an instant.

"What do you need?" I ask.

"It's my brother. We haven't seen him since before the epidemic hit," She exclaims.

"Could he be in a friend's tent?" I ask.

"I checked all his friends and his girlfriend's house but they haven't seen him," She swallows.

"Did he have any reason for leaving?" I ask her.

"No. He was the happiest person around. He just asked his girlfriend to be his fiance and they are planning their wedding already," She sobs.

"So no reason for leaving," I say.

Elijah looks worried.

I think for a moment.

"We will send out search parties to look for him. We will ask people if they've seen him. What's his name?"

"Grayson," She replies through tears.

"We will have people searching for Grayson."

We leave the ship in a hurry. Alivia tries to come with us but I can't risk her getting sick. We break into parties of three. Me, Elijah and Cyrus are a group. We got to search the hills where Elijah and I had our picnic.

"Grayson!" We all yell.

No answer. We search until our eyes droop. We have walked for about fifteen miles. My legs hurt like crazy but it isn't bugging Elijah as much as us. We get ready to sleep for a few hours. I sit next to Elijah while he's setting up his sleeping bag.

"You know something we don't," I say.

He sighs.

"I do," He agrees.

"What do you know?"

"This has happened before."