CHAPTER TWO
All of the ships were taking off simultaneously, Mordecai just figured that it added to the visual effect and would be an amazing sight to see, if he wasn’t the one going up himself. It seemed rather dangerous for them all to be going at the same time. But Carla did say that they were rushing this. They must have reached their deadline or something, most of the scientists didn’t care about the ‘volunteers’. They just saw them as expendable test subjects. But he didn’t care either, he was ready. Luckily, they didn’t blow up on launch, but there were still plenty of ways that they could die. And all of them were relatively bad.
Mordecai couldn’t take his mind away from the vision that he had. They were so lifelike, as if they had actually happened to him. He the remembered back to an old show that he watched with his grandfather, it was a show called ‘Supernatural’. And there was an episode of the show where one of the main characters had to relive the same day over and over again, seeing the same things every time. Maybe that was what had happened to him them. That would be terrible, having to see people die on repeat for eternity. He wouldn’t wish that fate on his worst enemy.
They had been passing through the Earth’s atmosphere at this point and nothing had gone awry that far. Mordecai hoped that it would stay that way. Though he still couldn’t shake the feeling he had about this trip. They would soon be in deep space, exactly where his vision had taken place. Perhaps he could warn everyone of what was going to happen. But he couldn’t do that. They’d all think that he was a deranged mad man. In fact, he wouldn’t believe anyone if they were to say that either. Who would? It didn’t exactly help his case when everyone knew exactly how jittery he was about the whole trip in the first place. He couldn’t get anyone to believe him even if he had tried.
Mordecai tried to relax in his chair, closing his eyes he tried to visualize a happy place. That never worked, his imagination was the thing that put him in this angst ridden mood so it definitely wasn’t that thing that would drag him out of it. He looked over to Manny who had been smiling the whole time. Modern day technology had caused the take of to run smoothly. In older days, the acceleration was almost too much for the human body to withstand. But now it had made it seem like a relaxing car ride. Though it was anything but relaxing for Mordecai. This was something torn straight from one of his nightmares.
‘Okay, calm down man. It’ll all be fine. Nothing bad is going to happen,’ Mordecai thought. He was trying to talk himself out of terrorized state. It wasn’t working at all though. He was still scared out of his mind.
“Everyone can get out of their seats now,” Joseph called from the front of the ship. He was hanging onto a handrail on the wall in order to keep himself close to the ground. Mordecai assumed that he just didn’t want to be floating around while everyone else was sitting stationary. It would look rather foolish.
Mordecai was the last of everyone to undo his seat buckles and get out of the seat. Manny had went over to his parents to ramble about how great it was that they were in outer space. Every kids dream was to be here, and Manny was one of the few that actually got to do it. Mordecai would have been more than happy to give his spot to some other person. But he wasn’t able to do that. He was stuck there in that ship.
Mordecai was lost in thought, so lost that he had completely forgotten about the fact that there was less gravity in space. He floated up while he was entranced in his overly active thoughts and bumped his head on the ceiling of the ship. This quickly brought him back to reality. He shook his head wearily and looked around the room. He saw no one that he recognized, not even Carla and Joseph. It didn’t matter though, Mordecai wanted to be alone with his thoughts. He told himself that he would make an attempt at socializing later on. That was a lie, he hated socializing with just about everyone.
Mordecai grabbed onto a handle on the ceiling, put there to make movement easier, and climbed across the room to the wall where he pushed himself with his legs to get to the doorway that led to the bunkroom. He decided that taking a nap to clear his head was the best option for him. He grabbed onto the edge of the doorway and heaved himself through. He knew that there were assigned beds because of the countless drills and pamphlets that they had to go through. He knew that his bed was the top bunk of set eight, which was pretty close to the back of the room. So he grabbed onto the post of the nearest bed and climbed all the way to his bed.
Mordecai laid down and strapped himself onto the bed. It was less than comfortable but sleep was sleep. Sleep was perhaps the only thing that would quell the thoughts. Unless of course he ended up dreaming about it in which case he would be totally boned. But sleeping was worth a try, at least in his mind it was. He folded the grey pillow in half, laid his head down on it’s cool surface, and shut his weary eyes. He let his body, mind, and soul slip into a slumbering state.
Mordecai dreamt of awaking in a heap of broken metal. Miraculously, he was unharmed, but it was a dream so of course he wasn’t too banged up. After all, some strange things happened in dreams. Smoke filled the area as he looked around dazedly. His head was booming from the impact. He wiped his hand across his face to make sure that he wasn’t bleeding and then looked around some more. This was very strange for him. He had never had a dream quite as vivid as this one. Perhaps it was because he was in space and this was just a space dream.
After about ten minutes of just laying there and looking around the area, he stood up. Mordecai was groggy and a bit lightheaded. But that was to be expected seeing to the fact that he was apparently in a huge crash just a few minutes prior to that. He recognized a few of the objects laying around the crash site. They were items from the Ulysses. This was another one of the vision's, just a different one.
“Aw come on!” Mordecai yelled in frustration. This seemed to be more than just a dream. He was envisioning another thing. This was terrible. He wasn’t even safe from those things in his own dreams. This was the third one of the vision in the last five hours. How does such thing just come out of nowhere like that? Mordecai thought that it must have been some kind of space magic that had done it. This had to be the work of some type of space wizard. That was the only explanation for it. Every other possibility made even less sense than that one.
Mordecai walked out of the jumbled scrap metal and looked around the place. He saw no one else around. Not even dead bodies, or even most of the ship. It was just a small part that was about the size of a custodian's closet. He must have been quite lucky to have had a piece of the ship stay in tact enough to ride it onto a completely new planet. Speaking of which, where was he? This definitely wasn’t Mars. It looked similar to Earth but with a purple sky and rainbow flowers covering the blue grass. It was pretty psychedelic. Like he had just dropped a gallon of acid or something like that.
The scenery amazed Mordecai, but it was still pretty strange that he had been somewhere completely different than anything that he had ever known in life. He then deduced that this couldn’t be a vision, it must have just been a really weird dream. This couldn’t be anything real. It was far too strange to be real. Mordecai laid down on the space grass and looked up at the strange space sky. There was a completely normal sun in the sky, so at least there was one thing that his brain could properly process.
Suddenly there was a feminine voice in a very foreign language that yeller at him Mordecai shot up and looked at her. She had been pointing a strange bow at him. It was a piece of curved metal that was shaped like a bow, but instead of a string, it had this blue light that went down it and connected the two tips. The girl, who looked like a greyish blue elf with red eyes, had the blue light pulled back. In her hand, there was a special glove that he assumed made that possible. There was a similar blue light shaped like an arrow that had formed as soon as she pulled back the original one. She had it aimed directly at Mordecai. She continued shouting at him in a defensive tone.
"Look, I have no idea what is happening right now or even where I am. If you could just point me in a direction that leads me to a place that isn't here, that'd be great," Mordecai said looking at the girl and her space bow.
Then, without the slightest warning, she walks over and bashes him with the bow. The blow knocked him out. Or did it wake him up? Mordecai didn't exactly know which. But it didn't exactly matter. What mattered was that he was awake now. He unclasped the strap on his waist and floated out of the bed. Looking over to the clock, he noticed that he had been asleep for about eleven hours. That was far longer than he had expected to sleep for. But there were no worries, that just meant that eleven hours into the flight, no disasters ad happened. That was great news to Mordecai. Now they just needed to stay like that for another week and a half and they’d be golden. Though he doubted that their luck would hold out that long.
Mordecai floated over to the doorway and looked around the room to see everyone in their seats, eating their space food. Mordecai had no idea what exactly it was that they had been eating. All of the weird astronaut food looked the same to him. Surprisingly, he wasn’t hungry at all after his eleven hour slumber. He just climbed over to his seat and popped his earphones back in. He shamelessly played air guitar as he listened to the music, he didn’t exactly care who saw him doing it. He was in his own world. And nothing could drag him out of it. This was what he had decided to do with his time, this was how he had decided to calm himself. And this was what had been working, he could stay like this for hours on end. But similar to all things good in this universe, it came to an end.
Mordecai was interrupted by a woman who had tapped him on his shoulder. He pulled the earphones away from his head and looked up at her. She asked him in a fake caring tone, “Are you hungry dear?”
“Not particularly,” Mordecai said, trying to sound nice to the woman who had just messed up his good time. “Thank you for asking though.”
“Not a problem dear,” he said with an obviously forced smile. She had then walked away, returning to her seat. She spoke to the man sitting next to her, Mordecai assumed that he was her husband or something like that.
Mordecai began to put his earphones back in when he felt a shake throughout the ship. ‘What the hell was that!?’ Mordecai thought. His mind was in a panicky state. Was this when it would happen? Was this when they would all die? He knew it was coming, but this was terrible, he never wanted it to end like this. But it was all over. The fat lady was singing. But Mordecai noticed a distinct lack of death and destruction. He realized that it was just a bit of space turbulence. ‘Well that was pretty anticlimactic,’ He thought.
But of course, Mordecai had thought too soon. There was yet another shudder throughout the ship. And then another, followed by a series of shudders. The ship was shaking more than an old man with parkinson's disease. This was it, there was nothing that he could do to stop it at this point. Mordecai grabbed his seat belt and unfastened it. He was about to get out of there as fast as he possibly could.
“Everyone remain seated! It’ll be over soon, there’s nothing to worry about!” Joseph called back from the cockpit with authority. He was being a great leader in the face of this immanant death. Trying to keep everyone calm in this hectic and terrifying situation. Everyone had sat in their seats and strapped themselves in. Everyone except for Mordecai that is. He had a strong feeling that he knew exactly what was about to happen. He looked over to Manny who had been sitting in his seat, gripping the sides of it tightly. He was obviously terrified. Who could blame the kid though? Everyone there was paralyzed with fear. Even Joseph, who was putting on a strong front, was scared.
Then, an asteroid came crashing by and smashed into one of the wings of the ship. This caused the ship to begin to swirl out of control. Mordecai shot up out of his chair and grabbed Manny from out of his chair. Luckily, the child hadn’t properly strapped in, so this made Mordecai’s job a lot easier. Soon thereafter, a fire broke out in the cock pit. The screams of Carla and Joseph could be clearly heard throughout the ship. It had officially begun.
The fire spread quickly in the ship. Those who had properly fastened their seatbelts had not been able to get up in time. They had caught fire and were burned to a crisp. There were only four people who had gotten up in time excluding Mordecai. Those people were Manny, his parents, and the lady from before. They all hurried to the back but Manny’s father had pushed the woman out of his way and she landed directly in the fire. Mordecai knew what an acceptable response was to this, he punched the man in the face and then carried Manny to the back where he his in a supply closet. He and Manny heard the scream coming from the few survivors that were being burned alive.
Luckily, the scream eventually stopped. The only thing that could be heard by them was the raging fire that was creeping closer to them. The door began to heat up a bit as the flames drew closer to it. Then, there was an explosion. The ship was destroyed destroyed in the massive blast. All except for about one fifth of it, including the supply closet that they were in. It was as if some space enchantment was put on that part of the ship that miraculously stopped it from being obliterated.
Mordecai was hurling through open space and great speeds. He would surely die soon. There was no saving him and Manny. He wondered if this was going to be a fate worse than burning alive. He highly doubted that anything was worse than that. But on the same note, he had also doubted that the whole fire thing was going to happen. And yet it just did. Exactly how it had played out in his day dream. There was absolutely no doubt now, those were visions. The strangest part of it was that they were visions that actually came true. He began to wonder if his other dream would also come true.
A small wormhole big enough to suck in the makeshift vessel that Mordecai had been in had suddenly opened up. Some powerful being had just opened a hole in time and space just to transport them somewhere else. Within seconds, they were both several thousand galaxies away and hurtling towards an unknown planet. Mordecai could see it’s seven moons through a small porthole.
Manny had been sobbing about the events that had just taken place. It was a shame that such a young boy had to go through something like that. Mordecai sucked at comforting people so he just walked over and sat next to the boy. He wouldn’t tell them that they too were about to die. He didn’t want to upset the boy any further than he already was. Though Mordecai wouldn’t lie to himself. They were in a supply closet that was beaming towards an unknown and perhaps hostile planet. Their odds of survival were looking very slim. Mordecai knew that it was their time to go.
Mordecai hand never thought that he’d die in a closet that was plummeting onto a completely different planet. In fact, he never thought that he’d ever even get to a completely different planet. He thought that he’d die before he got to Mrs, let alone a planet that no one had ever even heard of before.
Mars, that reminded him of his parents. They were on a different ship. Did only the Ulyses get ravished by asteroids? Or was it all of the other ships as well? If not, then his parent were still on their way to Mars. Did they even know what had happened to the ship that Mordecai had been on? If not, when would they find out? And would they even care? Again, Mordecai had far more questions than answers and it sucked.
They began to pass through the atmosphere of the planet and Manny scooted a bit closer to Mordecai out of fear. They were about to crash land on a planet in a supply closet. No amount of space magic could save them from that. Mordecai shut his eyes and waited for the inevitable to happen. They say that a person’s life flashes before their eyes when they are about to die. But that didn’t happen to him. Perhaps that was just a lie.
Mordecai felt a large crash as the closet smashed into the ground He was flung to one side of the room and banged his head pretty hard. Manny was flung right beside him and also hit his head as well. Mordecai looked up to see a purple sky before he fell unconscious. His last thought before that was simply, ‘dammit.’
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