After Fate Fell

63 • MARINA

1 year, 3 months, and 21 days after it all
•MARINA•

Once we leave the Earth's atmosphere, Lexa and Rex set a course for Lorien on autopilot. They'll still have to check up on everything every morning when they wake up and every night before we go to bed, but they don't have to stay up in the navigational area constantly.

Now that the exciting part of the trip is over, and we're out in the blackness of space, we start to explore the ship. The room we were in was simply the back part of the navigational room, with the pilot and co-pilot seats up against the navigational board and the front thick plexiglass.

Deeper into the ship though, behind the navigational room, there are so many more parts, each with their own purpose.

There is a hallway to the left with bedrooms lining each side of the hall. There are also a couple bathrooms in that hallway as well. At the end of the hall, there is a room that looks kind of like a karate studio or something back on Earth, but we decided to call it the "living room" because it's the closest thing we have to one. It looks like it's meant for battle training, but we won't be using it for anything like that. Instead, I intend on lying on the soft floor pads, laughing with the others, just chilling.

On the other side of the ship, there is a room with a huge glowing interactive map on a table, with the Milky Way Galaxy and its sister galaxies, swirling around. On the walls are oxygen tanks and space suits for space walks or outside maintenance of the ship. Beyond that room, connecting in with the other side, is a huge storage area with closets and pantries, filled with food and supplies, and the largest one containing parts and tools for maintenance work. Beside the food pantries is a large kitchen area, filled with everything and more we need to make our food.

I can tell we're going to be just fine on the journey home. Even more than just fine.

//

1 year, 5 months, and 2 days after it all

It's been over a month since we began our journey back home, and it's all been smooth sailing. Everybody has been getting so much closer with one another (yes, in part because of the tighter living quarters, but also in spirit), even closer than before.

In the four bedrooms we have, I'm rooming with Ella and John. The room across from ours is Sam, Six, and Malcolm. Beside them is Lexa, Adam, and Rex, and the room beside mine is (somehow they got stuck together) Nine and Five. Despite their unrelenting dislike for each other, I haven't heard (too many) complaints from them. Of course, they'll never fully put their differences aside, but I think their feud has gotten a little less intense, probably mostly due to the fortunate circumstance we're in.

I'm sitting in my room, late at night (we set up a time system so that we aren't aimlessly wandering in a never-ending day with no sun to tell us what time it is), eating a cup of noodles in the dark while Ella and John snore in the other bunks when I hear a loud noise from somewhere in the ship. The others aren't awoken by the noise, so I decide not to wake them myself, and I get up to go see what it was.

I peer down the dark hallway, all the doors closed or open a crack, but I hear no sounds of others stirring. I go first down the hall toward the navigational room, walking through the corridor and into the open space. I walk past the row of seats to the front, where the pilot and copilot seats are. No one's here.

I glance up through the thick navigational windows into the darkness, and am stunned by the beauty lying out before my eyes. I know I've looked out at the stars hundreds of times, sometimes when I'm bored, I can look out at the universe for hours, marveling at it's beauty and becoming fully lost in it all. Tonight, nothing has changed. Even though these are--for the most part--the same exact stars I've been looking at every day and night, and I've memorized the most of the patterns and where the bright stars are, in the midst of the dimmer ones, I still get lost in them.

Every time I look, I think to myself I have never seen anything so beautiful in my life, but also never so frightening. How can these stars be so far apart, yet be only a small portion of the universe? Does it really go on forever? If our navigational technology failed, would we be lost forever, aimlessly wandering through space? These thoughts creep in. But I know that it's only the evil part of my mind feeding me these lies, that they aren't anywhere near the truth.

This evil part of my mind is the only evil thing left in the world, now that the war is over, and Earth is far beyond being able to see in the rearview mirror, even if we had one.

I know there's no evil on Lorien, only a memory of it. A memory of a day where all but a few were lost. A memory of a day that was supposed to be a celebration. A memory of that day which was the last time the sun shined on the surface and saw life. Until, I tell myself, we return.

The noise shakes me out of my thoughts and I am torn away from this beautiful display of light, as I wander down into the other side of the ship. I walk through the map room, seeing no one or nothing. I walk into the storage room, and see nothing once again. I walk into the kitchen, where I find nothing but the remnants of my midnight snack, which I was too tired to clean up from.

I finally reach the "living room", where the culprit of the noise is finally found. It's Lexa, punching one of the huge punching bags that hang from the ceiling. The chains holding it up clang together as she punches, sometimes louder than other times.

I quietly walk in, and I know that she sees me, but she continued to punch. None of us really use any of the equipment in here, because we have nothing to train for. Sometimes Nine and Six will work out in here, but they're the only ones I've ever seen using this room for it's actually purpose. Now that I think of it, I don't think I've seen Lexa in here, ever.

As she gets in a few more punches, Lexa's eyes finally fall onto me.

"What are you doing up this late?" She asks me, sweat beading on her forehead and running down the bridge of her nose.

"I could ask you the same thing," I say. And she looks as if she knew I'd say this.

"Technically, the time system we made up is just so we can have a normal routine. It's completely made up. Useless," she says as she continues punching.

"But you've followed it pretty well until now," I say, looking up at her, but she's not focused on me. "What's wrong with following it now?"

Her punches are becoming weaker, more exhausted, and I can tell she's just punching so she has an excuse to not give me her attention.

"I've never been one to follow the rules very well," she says, finally throwing her gloves on the floor and resting her head against the wall. "That's actually why I never liked life on Lorien," she tells me.

And now I know why she's up. She's worried about Lorien becoming what she ran away from, what she hid from, what she despised. I remember hearing the stories of her life, remember hearing of her hatred of how everything was done on her former home.

"Well that's okay," I tell her. "And you're right, time is a construct. Fuck following it right?" I ask, and she laughs, looking up at me. I smile. "Lorien isn't anywhere near the same as it was, Lexa, you have to know that."

"Yes, but isn't that why we're returning to it, to make it what it used to be?" She asks, her breaths still heavy and fast from exhaustion.

"Only the parts of it that need a little help," I say. "The ground is dust, the planet is dead, the water is buried deep within the ground. We need to make things better," I say, smiling. "But we also can make other things completely new, like for starters, the system."

"But you ten still represent the Elders, how are things supposed to change when everything is written in prophecy, everything we've ever known and ever done is all meant to serve some purpose out of our control?"

"Prophecies don't mean shit, Lexa," I tell her. "And if you want to talk to somebody who changed their fate, I know a girl."