Contact

Day One

I suddenly wake up, going straight from deep sleep to being wide awake. The chip must be working.

“Good morning!” an automated voice says from the ceiling. “Please report to the cafeteria by 6:30!”

I walk into the bathroom, and something on the floor catches my eye. It’s a jumpsuit made of some blue and white synthetic material, with a note on top telling me I need to wear it. I take a quick shower and put it on. It fits me perfectly, and I can only guess it was tailored especially to my body.

I walk out and can clearly see that the cafeteria is at the end of our hallway, opposite the sub entrance. It’s completely empty, so I pick up the meal with my name on it. Everyone else slowly trickles in over a period of 10 minutes or so, and we all eat in silence. Nobody needs to say it, but we’re all wondering what comes next.

Eventually, General Kochan walks in. He leads us all out and to the submarine out at the end of the hall. Nobody is speaking. It’s all just awkward silence for a few minutes. I look outside, trying to make myself look busy. It’s still pretty dark under here, but there are some tiny slivers of light fighting their way down. What seemed like a magical world just yesterday is now dark and unforgiving. I just hope whatever they’re leading us to doesn’t reflect the mood outside.

The place we get off is simple enough; a pristine white room that looks well kept but almost as though nobody’s used it in years. It extends pretty far back, and has what look like booths near the entrance. There are hundreds of them, extending in every direction for hundreds of yards. Whatever this is used for obviously was meant to house more than five people.

“Okay,” the General says, pointing into the room, “Today, we’ll be training you in the use of weapons. Nothing too complicated; just some bullet weaponry and the basics of hand-to-hand combat. We have some people that will be teaching you. If anybody needs anything, I’ll be wandering around, so just flag me down if you need.”

I go to one of the booths and wait. After a few moments, a guy dressed in the UN armor comes up, introduces himself, and starts showing me the basics of shooting. I’ll admit; I’ve never used a weapon in my life except for the occasional shoe to kill a bug.

He hands me a little pistol and shows me the basics of using it. The General was right in saying there’s nothing too complicated about it. Next, he steps back and points down the range. A few stationary holographs pop up, and I’m told to shoot. Interesting way of teaching someone. Kind of like throwing a kid into the pool and yelling “Swim!”.

My shots are pretty awful at first, but after a few hours of working with different weapons and ranges, I actually become a pretty decent shot. So good, in fact, that the guy helping me eventually leaves for a while and leaves me to just hit whatever comes up. `

The rest of the day goes by pretty uninterestingly. There’s some hand-to-hand stuff we do, shooting while moving, and all that fun stuff.

“Okay everybody,” the General says around 11:30, “It’s getting late, so please head back to your rooms. We’ll do more tomorrow.”

When I get back to my room, I practically collapse onto my bed. The day went by so fast, and yet I’m completely wiped. I close my eyes, and before I know it, I’m fast asleep.

Day Seven

When the door opens this time, I have to look twice. We’re standing in a tiny room, and the only thing here is a little path leading into a dark tunnel. “We have a running course. set up for all of you today,” the General’s voice says from the ceiling. “The course is very self-explanatory, and you just need to follow the path. Good luck!”

We all immediately bolt into the tunnel. When we come out, we’re all in a giant, relatively flat grassland. There are a few hills and valleys here and there, but nothing serious. I can see that some of the obstacles include fallen trees, hurdles, some ditches, and muddy road. After a half mile or so, the path goes into a thick forest.

I’m quickly in the lead. I’ve always been a good long-distance runner, and sprinting halfway across campus to make a class that starts in two minutes has really improved my speed. The obstacles they’ve set up for us are all pretty easy, and I clear them all without missing a beat. The mud road slows me down some, but not by a ton. When I get near the forest, I look back. Jay’s in second place, and he’s maybe halfway to the forest. Maybe.

I laugh a little, then run into the forest. The only thing that might make this an obstacle is that the path has changed from an asphalt track to a ground path covered with leaves and twigs. Nothing too difficult.

When I come out, I look at what’s ahead. It’s just a straight, asphalt path for about a quarter of a mile with some cliffs on either side. Figuring that this is just a little area to transition between zones, I slow to a light jog. It’s actually quite nice, until I feel something hit my arm really hard.

“Ow!” I yell out, stopping. I look at my sleeve to see what’s hit me. I see…paint? That can’t be right.

Sure enough, it is. Something else hits my thigh, and I almost fall over. I look at my leg, and yup. Also paint. Where could that come from? Why’s there flying paint here? My eyes open wide when the realization hits me. I’m in the middle of an ambush. A very colorful ambush.

I start sprinting, and that’s when the paint really starts to fly. I do some hasty scanning of the area, looking for whoever’s shooting at me. I catch a glimpse of someone covered in camouflage sitting in some bushes on top of the cliffs, and once I notice what he looks like, I can see lots of them. All armed with little rifles, shooting tiny blobs of paint at me. By the time I get to the tunnel at the end of the stretch of road, I look like a rainbow vomited all over me and I hurt like hell. I grimace a little, and that surprisingly makes some of the pain go away. Some, but not all.

The next few areas aren’t anything too difficult. I have to run across a frozen lake in a snowy area, climb a cliff in a rocky area, and get chased by virtual alligators in a swamp environment. That wasn’t actually the obstacle I was supposed to encounter, but I saw a pond and jumped in. I didn’t feel like looking like something you’d paint while on drugs, so I wanted to quickly wash off and apparently pissed off some fake alligators and ended up booking it. So in the end, it’s all the stuff anyone does on a normal day, right?

The last place I enter is a pristine-looking beach right on the water. They’ve even simulated a sunset to make it look nicer. I can see what looks like some people off in the distance, and since I’m still in the lead, I can only assume that that’s the end. I start slowly jogging, but remembering my stupid mistakes at the ambush, I go instead for a normal running speed.

About three seconds in, I find out that running in sand is way harder than it looks. There’s a small concrete path that runs all along the beach, and against my better judgment, I go on it. My speed greatly improves. That is, of course, until the ground gives way beneath me and I fall into a pitfall.

I can feel that there’s water all around me, and it’s incredibly salty. Some gets into my nose and I start coughing, which only causes me to swallow a little, which causes me to cough more, which causes more to go up my nose, so…yeah.

I grasp onto the edge of the pit, where there are a couple outcrops that I can tell are for people stupid enough to fall down here. It’s not that far down and I can climb easily, but I’m coughing so hard that I wouldn’t be able to climb without waiting this out for a little bit.

“Hey!” I hear someone yell from above. “Need help?” I look up; it’s Jay, with his arm outstretched. I grab onto it, and he pulls me up.

“Thanks,” I say between coughs. “Kind of needed that.”

“What happened?” he asks.

“And here I was thinking that was pretty self explanatory,” I sneer at him. “I fell down a hole, accidentally swallowed some overly-salted water, and couldn’t bring myself together long enough to climb out. How’d you catch up so fast?” I just now realize that my previous thoughts of how much my lead was were apparently wrong.

“Paced myself,” he says. “Figured that with how fast you were running at the start, you’d wear yourself out pretty quickly. Turns out I was wrong. Guess I’ll see you at the end, then.”

“What?” I ask, still a bit aloof from nearly coughing myself to death. I see him running on the sand toward the people at the end, and silently mutter a curse at him. I take one more step on the concrete path and then realize why it’s there; it’s a trap. Designed for people dumb enough to blindly run on the road (sad to say I’m on that list). I hop back onto the sand and put all my energy into running. As if running through sand wasn’t hard enough before, now I’m all wet and it’s sticking to me. When I finally manage to power through to the end, I’m practically covered all over with clumps of wet sand. I look like The Sandman on a bad hair day. Bad sand day? Whatever he has.

When I get to the people at the end, I can see that it’s the General, a few soldiers, and Jay. “Congratulations!” the General says, shaking my gritty hand, “That’s quite an incredible time for a civilian, and not half bad for a soldier, either.”

“Thanks,” I say modestly. I didn’t think I was actually that great, but it turns out that I was.

“You two are both relieved for the rest of the day. There’s a sub behind us, you can take it to your rooms now if you wish.”

Jay and I both walk into the pod, and it starts out for where we’re staying.

“You look terrible,” he says about a minute in, obviously trying to hold back some laughter.

“Gee, thanks,” I say back. “You know exactly what women like to hear, don’t you?”

“Sorry, but it’s true,” he chuckles. I roll my eyes, but he’s too busy being a clown to notice. When we get to the rooms, I quickly go into mine and take off the disgusting UN jumpsuit. It’s covered in sweat, salt, water, and sand. Ick. I throw it into the cleaning machine, and it starts up immediately with washing it. I then start to inspect myself to find the damage from today. I’ve got tons of little bruises all over my arms, legs, and chest. Those paintgunners got me good. I hop into the shower and just stand there for a few minutes, relaxed by the water. The stuff they’re making us do can only get worse from here, I’m sure of it.

Day Twenty

We’re all standing outside of a room with one of the handprint analyzers. We’ve all tried using it, but it won’t open for any of us. “Are you sure this is where they said to go?” Dick asks after nobody comes for almost 10 minutes.

“It should be,” Jay replies. “The submarines that leave our rooms are only programmed to go where we need to.”

“Maybe it’s a test?” I suggest. “Like, how fast can we figure out the way inside?” I don’t actually think it’s anything of the sort, but it makes me sound smart and attentive.

“Sorry, sorry!” the General says behind us apologetically. “So sorry I’m late. I bet you’ve all been wondering what we have for you today, no?” We all nod our heads in agreement.

“Well,” he says, going to open the door, “Today we’ll be torturing you.”

“Did I just hear that right?” I ask. “Torture?”

“Yup!” he says a bit too happily.

“Any reason, you know, why?” Will asks.

“You see, if there’s any form of intelligent life where you’re going, we…can’t exactly be certain that they’ll be, well, nice. We need to make sure that you can survive brutal amounts of pain.” He looks at the analyzer and frowns. “Shoot, forgot there was a passcode. Anyways, do we have any volunteers to go first?” He turns around and smiles. “Ah, Keerthana! Thank you?”

I quickly look around me. Everyone else apparently took a few steps back without me knowing. Now I’m at the front, making it look as though I stepped foreword.

“Dammit, guys,” I mutter as the General leads me into the room full of the most malicious-looking things I’ve ever seen. This certainly will not end well.

Day Thirty

I blink a few times to adjust my eyes to the darkness. When they do, I can see that I’m in a tiny, featureless room. “Hello?” I ask into the nothingness. “What’s going on?” Nobody responds. “Fine, don’t tell me.”

The wall in front of me slides open and blinds me with light. When my eyes adjust back again, I walk out of the tiny room.

I’m standing in a dusty market surrounded by the most stereotypical-looking Martians I’ve ever seen. “Can you help me?” I ask one of them. It points down the road and says something in a weird language that sounds like someone recorded an engine. I walk where I think he pointed me, dodging these…things. They’re all pointing at me and backing up, freaked out by me.

When I get to the end of the road, there’s a large group of the aliens waiting for me, holding some science fictiony-ish weapons. They yell at me, which I take as my cue to start running away. I quickly realize how bad it looks to be bolting at the first opportunity. Totally not suspicious at all.

I duck into a run-down shack and hide. There are sounds of panic and confusion coming all from all around and I can only assume that they’re looking for me. From one of the dilapidated walls, I can see a small, wooden gate that looks to be the only way to exit the area. When there’s nobody looking at the little stretch between me and the gate, I sprint as fast as I can towards it and jump the gate. As soon as my feet land on the other side, the world melts around me.

When everything stops disintegrating, all that’s left is a huge white room with nothing for hundreds of yards on either side. “Okay,” I ask to nobody in particular, “Can you guys tell me what that was now?”

“That was a test,” someone says from nowhere. “You passed, albeit poorly.”

Thanks, jerk, I think. “A test? For what?”

“To target your weakpoints. After after all the simulations you’ve been put through were analyzed, yours was found to be that you didn’t think much before you acted. We constructed a scenario specifically for all of you to target your weaknesses.”

Well, I guess all that matters is that I passed. “Can I go now?”

The only response I get is a door opening in front of me to another submarine. I step back into it, and it takes me back to the rooms.

Day Thirty One

We’re all standing in a lab of some sorts. Nobody is speaking, or even making eye contact for that matter. We all know what today is; the day our training is finally applied. We’re going to whatever planet lies beyond the portal.

I’m staring at it right now, and it’s actually quite memorizing. It’s moving in space constantly, always expanding, shrinking, and moving not unlike water in a balloon when you squeeze one end of it. Lights of all colors are flickering in no sort of rhyme or reason throughout it constantly, almost giving me a headache.

“Okay!” one of the scientists yells excitedly, “It’s almost ready!”

A doctor comes up and pulls the sleeping chip out of my arm with a syringe. It's a shame that they're taking it, I was really liking being able to sleep for 2 hours and still be attentive.

My heart bunches in a knot. It’s so surreal to be finally here, doing the thing that seemed so distant for so long. Now that it’s arrived, I can hardly believe it. Me, one of the first people ever to meet aliens. What will they look like? What sorts of strange languages will they speak? Questions of all sorts are racing through my mind faster than I can comprehend them.

Some people come up and give us each a backpack. General Kochan is with them as well, a gigantic smile on his face. “Okay,” he starts to explain, “We’ve stocked those with some necessities that you’ll need. There’s the basic survival equipment, like a compass, some lighters, a tent, water purifier, and whatnot. Each of you has a simple, bullet-firing pistol and a few extra magazines, but try not to use them if you can. It’d make a bad image of our entire race. Still, if something is hostile and you don’t think you can get it any other way, know that you have it.”

“We’ve also put some paper and pens in there in case you need to make notes on the planet or if the portal remains to send messages back to us, assuming that it isn’t a one-way portal. We have a computer and a backup battery as well, though try not to use those as often. If they run out and we can’t send things to you, you’ll be stuck. Let’s see…there’s also something that lets you test things there to see if they’re edible. Just put a bit into it, and it will tell you if it is or isn’t. In case everything there is bad for you, we also have enough rations to last you about a week, two if you’re careful. There’s also some water if you can’t find any. There’s also a gas mask, and I think that’s about it!”

We all slowly nod our heads, trying to take in all of his information and enthusiasm at the same time. “It’s locked on!” someone yells. “Start the filming!”

“Filming?” Dick asks.

“Yes!” the General says. “Nearly everyone on the planet is going to be watching you five go be the first people to travel to another inhabitable planet. You may just usher in an age of colonialism in space, and maybe even bring us into contact with other intelligent life! Nobody will want to miss this!”

We all turn back towards the portal, which looks no different than before. We all hold the hand of the people next to us, which happens to be Nadiya and Jay for me. Let’s hope he doesn’t get any ideas.

“Just think,” Will starts to say, “450 years ago, we were landing on the Moon. Now, we’re going to another planet we could live on. We really have come far, and now we’re about to go further than anyone could ever have imagined.”

Jay smiles. “This is one small step for man…”

“…and one giant leap for mankind,” I finish.

We step into the portal, and the world instantly changes. I can feel my grip on Jay and Nadiya loosen and then break completely. Inter-dimensional travel is loud, cold, dark, and I feel as though a gigantic hunk of metal is crushing me.

When it stops, I’m one my side in a dark field, cool grass blowing gently on my face via the breeze. I struggle for a few minutes to stay awake, but I soon pass out on a planet much different that the one I woke up on.