the unknown space

chapter 2

"You have one minute until launch." The robotic voice came over the radio again telling us that we only had another 60 seconds to prepare the pod. Karen was deep in thought concentrating. We hadn't even launched yet, and I could see why she was accepted into the program. She was pulling down one of the levers on her side of the pod as I was forcefully pushed to the back of my seat as our pod flew straight into the air. Karen let out a small scream, and I gasped in shock.

I looked out the window to see the ground quickly fading away. The pod shook violently, knocking my head against my seat. After a few seconds I looked outside the window once more only to see we were now in space. I pressed a few more buttons on my side of the control panel and our pod continued through space.

"Look at the stars!" Karen said looking out the window in awe. Space was even more beautiful than I had imagined it would be. I looked out the window. our pod was slightly turned so I could see the Earth. It was giant and I could see a whole continent from how far away we were. There was a small snap sound and I looked at Karen to see her floating up from her seat.

"Hey, we aren't supposed to mess around," I said nervously trying to grab her arm as she floated.

"Aww but it's so cool!" She giggled. "Plus, when else are we going to be able to fly? No one will know what we do while in these pods." Karen started to spin, her tail amost whacking me in the face several times. When will I ever get to do this I thought to myself. I nervously unbuckle my seatbelt.

"Karen if we get into trouble it's your fault," i said

"Yeah, I know but don't you want to live a little? I mean we were the few who were chosen to go to space, you don't seem to be thrilled about it," she said.

"Well maybe I wasn't excited to leave my whole life behind," I responded bitterly.

"Neither was I but now we have the chance to do something great! It'll be worth it," Karen promised. I flew across the room doing summersaults and cartwheels. After a while, I floated back to my seat and buckled myself in once more. I turned to Karen who was acting like she was flying.

"We should turn on the pod's gravity," I said pressing a button. Karen fell to the ground with a thump her arm under her.

"Ouch! I think you broke my plaster!" She yelled holding her arm.

"Plaster isn't even a bone, you'll be fine," I said looking at the controls with a twinge of guilt. "Now come help me turn on hyperspace." Karen walked over and sat down in her seat turning her head away from me as she rubbed her arm. I rolled my eyes. We silently worked in the ship preparing to enter hyperspace, the pod started shaking a bit as it was about to enter. The stars started to zoom past us, the space around us was going at light speed. The stars began to spin in a spiral, not because we were spinning but because our eyes could not focus on the things that were moving fast.

A few days had passed and we were still traveling in the pod. I lay on my bed as we traveled. It was hard to tell day or night, but we assumed it was night from how tired we were trying to sleep. Karen had been sleeping for hours but I couldn't, my mind was racing with thoughts of what was happening on Earth. I also wondered what Covanity would look like. I looked over at Karen, her chest was slowly moving up and down, she was hugging a pink fox stuffed animal that she had gotten from her mom. Well at least that's what she told me. I thought about my family, and my brother, would he have gotten to go to Covanity if he survived cancer. I wanted to talk to him so bad, but all I could do was think. Eventually, I felt myself drift into sleep.

"Evander, wake up!" Karen yelled at me. I jumped up falling off my bed onto my back.

"What is it?" I asked sitting up rubbing my back. Karen was now lying on my bed as well as her own. She was stretched out like a seal, looking down at me.

"I was bored and after sitting here for a while I decided to wake you up," she responded.

"Of course you did," I mumbled standing up and stretching. I shoved Karen back to her own bed and then folded up my bed so that I could sit. "Well what do you want to do now that I'm awake?" I asked.

"I dunno," she responded. "There's not much to do but talk,"

"I brought uno, wanna play?" I said shuffling through my bag.

"Of course! You waited this long to tell me you had a game!" Karen looked at me with slight disappointment.

"I'm sorry, you just never said that you were bored, I just assumed you didn't want to play," I said. I set out the cards on the floor there was barely enough room to play but we made it work. I never thought that I was going to play uno in space; it amazed me.

"UNO!" Karen yells, loud enough to start an avalanche after a new snowfall.

"Jeez Karen can you get any louder?" I addressed the look on Karen's face, "oh, i'm sorry if I hurt you, it's just my family is usually quiet when we play games,"

"Awww it's alright, I guess I got a little too excited."

A few hours passed, we played Uno and a matching game that I had brought along, Karen was really good at it. She is really smart. We started to get bored playing by the same old rules so we decided to make up our own. We both became very competitive. After another few hours we got bored of playing. Karen sat down on her bed, she pulled out her sketchbook and started to doodle. I on the other hand opened my journal and started to write about the heated Uno games we had just played. I've been writing everyday about what we have done on the way to the planet, Convanity.

"What are you drawing Karen?" I asked to break the awkward silence.

"Oh, not much just a doodle of my dog that passed away before I left," Karen flipped her sketchbook around to show me her drawing. It was a german shepherd. The drawing was awfully good and the detail was remarkable.

"Oh wow, that is really good Karen. No offense but I never saw you as the type of person who would be an artist."

"Oh it's fine it may surprise you but I actually get that a lot," karen addressed

"Really? What happened to your dog? If you don't mind me asking," I said quietly

"I don't mind telling you, he was 13 when he died. We came home one day and he had lost movement in his back legs," Karen started to tear up, I knew this was going to be hard for her to talk about, "he couldn't control his bladder, we took him to the nearest vet, they said they could save him but he still wouldn't be able to walk and we knew he would have been miserable. We decided that it was best if we put him down," Karen's voice was shaky as she finished and I could see a tear on her cheek. I pulled her into a hug to try to comfort her and she sat for a few seconds before turning away and wiping the tears off her face.

"I'm sorry," I said after a minute of silence. She nodded, turning to me putting on a big smile despite the sadness I could still see lingering in her eyes.

"Well I've told you something about myself so now it's yours. . ." Karen's voice drifted away as something on the control panel caught her eye. "Somethings wrong." she screamed. I looked at the controls, everything seemed fine to me.

"I don't see any-" I started before Karen cut me off.

"The coordinates. Elijah said they were already put in," I opened my mouth to say if they weren't we wouldn't be moving but Karen continued before I could. "I know there are coordinates typed into the pod, but they aren't right," She said quietly, with a concerned edge in her voice. I looked at a screen telling me the coordinates of where we had to go.

"How do you know?" I asked, not fully believing her.

"Look out the window," she instructed. I did as she asked. "Now tell me what you see."

"Stars," I responded, still not getting what that had to do with the coordinates. Karen let out a small sigh.

"It's a wonder you got to come," she murmured before saying louder, "At this point in the trip we should have just gone through a giant spiral galaxy," she started. "On this screen," She pointed to the screen with the coordinates, "I can switch to a panel that shows the path of the pod," Karen messed around with the screen until a panel popped up with the path the pod had taken. She scrolled back through the path for a minute before saying, "We aren't going to Covanity."