All Alone in the Universe

                 All Alone in the Universe


     After placing Khiarra into her Frozen in Time tube,
Scottin kisses her on her forehead. “See you in seventy
years, Khiarra.”

     Khiarra smiles as Scottin slides the door of her tube
close. Almost instantly a thick grayish-blue liquid starts
filling up that tube. The liquid gets about halfway her when
Scottin starts walking away from her. Down a row of other
tubes. Each one he goes by he nods at the one who is in that
tube. The one inside it nods back at him.

     At the end of that row, Scottin stops in front of five
other Young Ones. He turns to stand next to them as Triamin,
a male Adult in his middle forties comes up in a hoverchair.
“My younger sister, Khiarra, is the last Young One who is
thirteen to be placed in her Frozen in Time tube.”

     “That means that you are the last six that need to be
placed in your tubes,” says Triamin. “Once you are in them,
we will start you on your way to your new home, Vollinia
Two. You two hundred thousand Young Ones are our last chance
to keep Vollinia alive.”

                             ##

     Scottin stares at the image of their spacecraft on the
large monitor in front of his Frozen in Time tube. It’s a
big four-square spacecraft with two squares touching each
other. And the other two in the middle in front and back of
the two touchings. On the top and bottom of it in the center
are two large circles. Scottin watches as it starts to rise.

     Flames coming out of the bottom circle can’t be seen by
Scottin at first. But as it continues leaving that planet,
he can see those flames are coming from small round metal
tubes that circle the outside edge of that circle. As that
spacecraft is leaving there is a lot of shaking going on.
Not only is it the Frozen in Time tubes, but everything else
around Scottin.

     Slightly turning his head to his side, Scottin can see
the others in the tubes next to him are shaking too. He
turns completely around to see those behind him are doing
the same thing. When he turns to face the large monitor
again, he sees that they have left Vollinia. And that their
spacecraft is getting smaller the further away they are
getting from it.

                             ##

     It’s a get-together. And there are a lot of Young Ones
enjoying it. Most were around Scottin’s age. But there are
quite a few that are slightly younger. Including his little
sister Khiarra. They are moving wildly, listening to loud
sounds echoing all around them, and some are just sitting
there talking to each other.

     One of those moving wildly is Khiarra. And she is doing
it with another Young One about her age. Scottin is keeping
his eyes on them as he moves wildly to the loud sounds in
there. He continues being wild as he talks to a lot of the
other Young Ones there. Most are acting like him. But some
are talking with others.

     Suddenly, there is a loud banging sound coming from
outside that room. Now there are hundreds of them. Most can
barely be heard. But some are very loud. Those that are
louder are shaking up everyone there. Causing them to slip
and slide into each other and falling.

     Just then, Scottin opens his eyes. He’s back in his
Frozen in Time tube. He looks at the large monitor in front
of him to see some SpaceRocks hitting their craft. Most are
very small. But a lot of them are large ones. And quite a
few are very large.

                             ##

     There’s an extremely loud sound echoing around the
Frozen in Time room. Flickering red and blue lights start to
appear everywhere in that room too. That loudness starts to
get even louder a few minutes later. The flickering gets
more intense too.

     The clear round Frozen in Time tube that Scottin is in
disappears. And the thick grayish-blue liquid falls to the
floor all around the base of that tube. Scottin also falls
too. For a long time, Scottin just lays there. Then very
slowly he starts moving around. First his fingers and hands.
Then his feet and legs.

     Flexing his finger, hands, and feet, Scottin starts to
come around to what has happened to him. Slowly, he begins
to get up. As he’s doing that he’s still flexing. Once he’s
up he starts to look all around him. He’s not the only one
doing it. There are about a hundred others that he can see
who is coming out of their tubes.

     “What happened?” Scottin asks no one. “We can’t be at
Vollinia Two already. Because we haven’t been in Space that
long, or have we?”

                             ##

     “Is everyone okay?” Scottin asks a few minutes later as
more Young Ones begin realizing what has happened.

     Everyone there may say it slightly differently. But
they all say the same thing that they are okay. They also
start asking questions of their own. “Calm down,” says
Scottin. “I will answer all of your questions as best as I
can. But I can’t answer them all at once.”

     Just then someone screams. All look in the direction of
that scream to see that it’s LLoni. Scottin isn’t the only
one running over to the controls where LLoni is. But he has
to push his way through about fifty who get there before
him. “What’s wrong now?” Scottin asks.

     LLoni looks up at Scottin with a shocking sadness on
her face. “Not everyone is awake.”

     “How many haven’t done it yet?” Scottin asks.

     “According to the Frozen in Time controls here there
are about one hundred and fifty thousand that haven’t done
it,” says LLoni. “One of them is your sister, Khiarra.”

                            ####

     That room used to be the get-together room in Scottin’s
mind not too long ago. The only difference now is that there
are small monitors on the walls all around it. It looks like
the walls there are covered with monitors from the top to
bottom of them. There must be several thousand of them. And
each one has a Vollinian on it.

     “It hasn’t been easy the last few days,” says Scottin
as he stands in front of several thousand Vollinians. “But
thanks to those who have come out of their tubes helping the
ones who haven’t, we got them all out.”

     “Most of them aren’t going to be doing too much for
quite a while,” continues Scottin. “But they will be okay.
The only reason we have so many still suffering is that we
don’t have too many Health Tubes. Because those who created
this spacecraft didn’t think we would need them.”

     Slowly, Scottin looks at the Vollinians there. That
includes those on the monitors. “Does anyone else have any
questions?” Almost everyone visible in that room or on one
of those monitors has at least one.

                             ##

     “We have a very big problem,” says Jsom. “There are no
sleeping rooms for us here.”

     “That’s not that big of a surprise to me,” says Scottin
as he walks down a corridor with several others about his
age. “After all, we were supposed to be Frozen in Time for
the next seventy years.”

     Jsom sighs. “So, what are we supposed to do? Stay awake
until we get to Vollinia Two.”

     “If we go to Vollinia Two,” answers Scottin. “I haven’t
decided if that is where we will be going yet.”

     “What about us?” LLoni asks. “Don’t we get a say in
where we should be going?”

     Scottin stops and turns to face the other six there
with him. “Of course, you do. But as the future leader of
Vollinia Two, it’s my decision that counts.”

     “That’s on Vollinia Two,” says Rhova. “That doesn’t
mean you should be the leader here too.”

     “Whether it’s here or Vollina Two, I’m the oldest. “So,
I should be the leader here too.”

     Jsom steps in between Rhova and Scottin. “That doesn’t
matter right now. What does is what are we going to do about
our sleeping problem?”

                             ##

     Scottin adjusted himself in a small chair in the center
of a large room that looks a lot like Central Control. As he
does that, he accidentally pushes a button on his armrest.
The image of Yra appears on a large monitor in front of him.
“How did you know I was about to contact you?” Yra asks.

     “What’s wrong now?” Scottin asks.

     “Who says anything is wrong?” Yra asks.

     Scottin smiles sheepishly. “Because you were about to
contact me. So, what’s wrong?”

     “We have a very serious problem,” answers Yra. “There
isn’t any food or water here.”

     “That can’t be true,” says Scottin. “We should have
enough food and water to last us for five years until we can
start producing it for ourselves.”

     Yra sighs. “We do have that food and water. “But like
us, it was going to grow twenty years while on our way to
Vollinia Two.”

     “You’re right,” says Scottin after a few minutes of
silence. “That is a very serious problem. Any thoughts on
what we should do about it?”

     “You won’t like it,” answers Yra. “But there is only
one thing that I can think of that we can do about it.”

                             ##

     Mnone slowly looks at the other six in Central Control.
“Power is also a big problem that we have.”

     “Those SpaceRocks that hit us have caused a lot of
problems,” continues Mnone. “I’m sure that I can fix them.
But that isn’t going to give us the power that we need to
continue for several days. And we don’t have that long.”

     “That’s another reason why we need to find someone to
help us,” says Scottin. “That means finding a planet that we
can get to before our power runs out.”

     Scottin looks over at Blandia who is at Monitoring.
“Have you found any planets that can help us Blandia?”

     “There are several near us that we can get to,” answers
Blandia. “But most of them are either uninhabited or aren’t
advanced enough to help us.”

     “How close is the closest one that we can get to?”
Scottin asks.

     Blandia glances at her controls. Then she looks at
Scottin and the others. “It will take us about twenty-five
days to get there.”

     “Then that’s where we will go,” says Scottin. “And the
sooner we get there the better.”

                             ##

     Their spacecraft suddenly stops. Right in front of them
is a small planet. And from that planet, there are four big
and long thin metal things heading right for them. Scottin
can see that on the large monitor in front of him. The other
six in their positions there can see it too.

     “I’m not sure,” says Blandia. “But they appear to be
weapons of some kind.”

     Scottin turns in his center chair to face Whavin. “What
kind of weapons do we have to destroy them?”

     “We have several kinds that can do it,” answers Whavin.
“Including one that is similar to theirs. Only ours are a lot bigger.”

     “Use them,” says Scottin. Scottin returns to looking at
that large monitor too just as Whavin destroys those weapons
with four of theirs.

     “Why would they try to kill us?” LLoni asks. “We only
came here to get some help.”

     Scottin sighs. “Because they don’t want to help us.”

     “I was worried something like this would happen,” says
Scottin. “True, I don’t want to do it. But we may have no
choice but to take what we need by force and sneakiness. And
I’m not just talking about this planet. After all, we are
all alone in the universe now.”


                     Word Count = 1,950