Rewrite

Rewrite

The spaceship blasted into orbit. Two astronauts sent on a journey to parts unknown.

“You have to make them go somewhere. Rewrite that part.” John circled those two lines with a red sharpie.

“Where should they go? All the galaxies have been explored. We’ve done them all. Nowhere else to go.” This part of my story had tripped me up for days.

“Make one up. It’s fiction. It doesn’t have to be real. Fudge it.”

John left me with my thoughts. Evil thoughts of slaughtering the astronauts in the spaceship as they rocketed to an unknown part of the universe.

Hmm. What if…an alien came on board and started killing everyone. Then the alien took over the spaceship to take it back to its home base? Naah, that was the blockbuster movie last year. Everyone saw it, said the special effects were amazing. Yeah, well, computers are amazing. Ooohhh, what if the computer took over the spaceship and killed the astronauts on board because it believed it was smarter than they were? Nope, that was some movie from back in my hippy days.

Is there really no plot I can think of that will get some excitement out of two astronauts rocketing into space, to a place unknown to them?

Finally I came up with an idea.

“John! What about this…”

He wandered into my study, eating an apple.

“So, they are rocketing toward who-knows-where. But, as they go, they discover that they are aging faster than they should. Instead of time slowing down, it’s speeding up. By the time they figure this out, they realize they will be dead in a few hours. I’ll title it ‘I’m Too Old For This’.”

“It’s rotten.” He threw the apple in the garbage and left.

I’m still thinking.


W/C 299