It was a day after we left Earth. We were given a day to mourn for our dead and be with whatever family we had left, and today there was a meeting planned in the hall.
It was just overwhelming sadness. It was bad enough to leave Earth, our home, everything we'd ever known, behind. Now the rest of humanity was dead. Destroyed. Blown up into a million little pieces. I hated Ruski. With my entire soul. How could a person do a thing like this to fellow human beings?!
I came out of my room for the first time since the night before. I liked my room. My mom had come here before and decorated each of our rooms. Mine was peaceful, with a large bookshelf and an easel and a lot of paint. A few of my old paintings were hanging on the walls. My mom must've taken them from my desk without me noticing. There was also a guitar. I'd never learned to play, but I'd always wanted to.
Allie had stayed in Rory's room for the night, giving her company. I'd seen her room a little. It was much more extensively decorated than my family's rooms. Her dad must've worked hard on it to make it the way she would want it.
Poor, poor Rory. Both her parents were dead. She had no twin like me. She was alone, with no family at all. I don't think I could've handled it. But Rory was strong, I knew that much at least, and she could get through it.
The way our family's rooms were designed was the three bedrooms branched off one smaller room in the middle. It was a mini family room with a some kitchen appliances and a couple couches in it. A bathroom was located in the back.
My mom was sitting on the floor, sorting through some boxes left unpacked. She looked at me and gave me a sad smile. Her face was tear-stained and she looked a bit sick, but strong all the same. Dad was most likely doing work, so mom was all alone. I felt a little guilty for that.
She stood and gave me a hug. I held on to her tightly. She was shaking.
"Ridge..." she murmured into my hair, slowly rocking back and forth. "I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry."
We stood in silence for a while after that, and sat and talked lightly. Allie came back after a bit, and my mom made us promise to stay strong, and always watch over each other no matter what. She hugged us yet again. "I love you two. So much. Stay strong for me, stay strong. I love you so much..."
Later on, at about 7pm, we walked slowly to the hall on floor 1 of the ship. A thick, horrible feeling hung around the air, nobody was talking save those comforting the sad and talking in low voices. People were crying everywhere. People were hugging and holding hands, candles were lit. On one whole wall people had written R.I.P.'s to anyone, it looked like. There were lots of R.I.P. Earth's and lots of specific names too.
I went and sat next to Kimberly, where my mother was already sitting next to Kimberly's parents. She gave us hugs.
"Are you guys okay?" she asked.
I took a deep breath. "We'll get through this. Everyone together."
She nodded and turned to talk to her mom. Allie pointed out Rory to me. She was writing on the wall, presumably her parents' names. We were about to wave her over, but a boy a couple rows ahead of us did so first. I didn't recognize him but I was glad that she had another friend willing to comfort her.
After a few minutes of mourning and comforting each other, a man walked to the podium and gathered our attention.
"Yesterday," he began softly, "was undoubtedly the most tragic loss in all of history."
He looked around sadly. "I ask you to remember your world with love, and never forget the people. Our friends, family, strangers, and fellow habitants of our world. Remember them with happiness and pride! It's okay to feel sad, it's okay to cry. To lend a shoulder to cry on. But be strong. They would want that at least, they would want us to carry on, and continue our journey, to preserve humanity, they would want us to keep living, and to carry on what they can't."
Some people were sobbing now. Tears fell down my face, one by one, but I was determined to stay strong.
"Most of you know the reason why this happened, but I'll tell you now in case. When our ship took off, we needed a tremendous amount of lift to leave the ground and enter space. This lift was amazingly large blasts of fire, so large and so intense, they were like little explosions themselves. That's part of the reason why we chose a place so desolate to take off, everything within miles was destroyed.
"Somehow, this explosion triggered one of Ruski's bombs, which in turn triggered all of the others. I'm so sorry everyone."
I stopped listening. I didn't think I could anymore. The man continued his speech for a long time, then a few other people said a few words. We sang a song commonly played at funerals and said some old prayers. At the end, everyone blew out their candles, dedicating each small flame to those lost. The room smelled of smoke, but the air filters cleaned it quickly.
Everyone was given a small break, and then another meeting took place, a bit less saddening.
My dad began to speak now, to my surprise.
"Hello everyone. I didn't want to start this so early, but we have little time as it is, so I'm sorry if it's a bit russhed."
He swallowed and took a glance at a piece of paper, and spoke again. "We humans are entering a world completely new, with completely different poisons, diseases, lands, animals, everything. We'll need people to learn what is safe, where is safe, develop medicines and vaccines, learn about the wildlife, learn how to raise and grow food (from Earth and possibly Novelta too), build shelters, lead our small population, explore, everything, again. And lots of other things, too.
"While we have people that can take care of these things, we never know if anything should ever happen to these people, and knowledge is useful to everyone, no matter what job. This will also help everyone keep their minds occupied and we all have good training for the unknown.
"Everyone over the age of twelve must take classes to prepare you for Novelta. You will have a kind of 'major' class, which is what you'll focus on, and any others that are relevant to yours. Anyone with a job may choose to opt out of these classes, but I highly reccomend taking them if you are able to.
"Also, I need to prepare those interested in a very important task upon reaching Novelta. We'll need young, fit adults to enter the new world before the remainder of passengers. Keep in mind this is a very, very dangerous task. We'll do some tests before exposing you completely to the air and plants, but there is still a lot of risk.
"That group of people will consist of a few different jobs. We'll mostly need people making medicines and vaccines. We'll also need some builders to start some houses and a small town, explorers, people studying plants and animals and pilots to fly these people around. The rest of us will do what we can on the ship."
He smiled and held up a packet of papers. "Before you decide for sure what you want to do, read these over and think about it. We'll have another meeting in a couple 'days'" (he put days in quotations) "and place you all in your classes." he smiled. "Okay? Anything I missed I'll go over at the next meeting."
I looked around. There were less people crying now, and more discussion. It was nowhere near happy, but this meeting distracted everyone from the death for now.
I wondered what classes I should take, and decided that medicine would probably work best for me. I'd always wanted to be a doctor, not because of the money I just wanted to help people, so that sounded good for me.
So the first full day ended. It was official, we were on our way to our new planet, our new home somewhere among the stars.
