Scrivenings of the King-Beyond-The-Wall

Space Adventures #1

I can’t believe they found me. I had covered my tracks so carefully, ensured that my safe house was completely off the grid and that nobody would be able to trace it to me. And yet, somehow they managed to find me and drag me, literally kicking and screaming, to the truck, which took me to the airport, which in turn transported me to the launch pad, where I was then unceremoniously strapped into the rocket that was headed for the moon.

For decades we had been sending a single person to the moon every year. Even with our limited resources after The Fall, as a society we considered it critical to have this symbolic gesture for the good of unity among the remaining populations of the earth. Personally, I thought there were better ways to handle this kind of thing rather than utilizing the massive amount of resources required to mount an actual space flight, but hey, I wasn’t in charge of making those decisions. Some passengers wore their nomination to be that year’s Rocket Man like a badge of honor and welcomed the opportunity to travel to the moon for the good of our society.

Me? Not so much. I hated the fact that I had been selected for this. I had spent so many years trying to stay off the government’s radar so they wouldn’t select me. I’d tried to play by the rules and, when that didn’t work, I tried living off the grid and just avoiding people entirely. It may not have been a perfect plan, but I was smart enough to know that I just didn’t get along with some segments of society. If anyone was going to get sent to space in a rocket, it was probably going to be me. So I avoided it as best as I could.

And yet, here we are. I’ve been the one selected for this year’s flight, which means that the entire remaining population of the world voted me the Most Annoying Person Alive, and my reward for such a distinction was a one way trip to the moon. Which would have been fine if humanity had ever finished its moon colony as initially planned. I could have stood to have lived out the rest of my days in a tiny little moon colony surrounded by other degenerates and social outcasts. But, sadly, the only thing waiting for me up there was a tedious 240,000-mile trip followed by a very abrupt crash landing on a deserted moon that had never been fully developed as a colony. I wondered how many impact craters this program had left on the surface of the moon, and whether I’d hit any debris before I impacted with the moon’s surface.

In these final moments on the planet Earth, I took a moment to steel myself... and then I tried to think of ways I could annoy the launch crew one last time before they pushed the big red button that would condemn me to space.




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(505 words)


Prompt: Every year, one person is sent to the moon. This year, though you hid in terror, it is your turn to enter the rocket.