Joy's eyes slowly opened, and she yawned. Her eyes were heavy and she felt all groggy. She rubbed her eyes, blinking. They weren't home.
She removed the covers and looked to her right to find her brother, Jeremy, lying on a separate bed. They were in some sort of vessel. The floor, walls, and ceiling were all black, and they had cords and patterns embedded in it. Colors sliced through the cords. Joy's heart beat faster. How are we going to get back home? she asked herself.
She shook Jeremy and murmured, "Time to wake up."
Jeremy grunted, and stretched, getting out of his bed. He squinted his eyes, took a deep breath, and sighed. "Where are we?" he asked.
"I'm not sure." Joy replied, and walked towards an elevator-looking door, curious as to what was behind it. She pressed a button, and the door opened. She beckoned for Jeremy to follow, who looked warily around him. Joy entered the elevator and Jeremy followed. Anticipation built up inside of her as she pressed a button with an arrow pointing down. They began drifting downward. It did this for a few moments and then finally came to cease, and the door opened.
Joy's eyes widened with astonishment as she hesitantly walked out of the elevator. Before her were humanoids, though some of them weren't quite humans. Several had cat ears and tail, others the same but for wolf and fox. Some had peculiar colored skin, such as pale white, blue, and green. The eye colors weren't at all the same, either. Brown, blue, green, black, white, pink, purple, yellow, orange, golden, sky blue, hot pink, red, and much more. They even had different designs on their skin and details in their eyes. Some eyes were like liquids, others aflame, and yet more were hardened. Some hair flowed like a ribbon, and other hairs were short and stout. The shapes and sizes were odd, too. But then she saw that among them some there were perfectly ordinary humans.
This all seemed to occur in a single heartbeat, but almost the second she walked in, every creature stopped and stared at her. Some of them looked mightily curious, while others looked angry. Some looked welcoming and others gruff. Joy patiently looked at all of the strange faces, though some looked familiar; blonde hair and blue eyes like her: Norwegian.
One woman stepped out of the crowd. She had a darker blonde hair, like Joy's, but forest green eyes, "Hello, there. I see you have welcomed yourself aboard the SSA, more formerly known as the Silver Satellite Aircraft. We found you floating in space and saved you just in time. We are curious to why you seek us or how you got lost in space."
"We're not sure, ma'am," Joy murmured. She preferred she be the spokeswoman, because Jeremy must have been too intimidated. He wasn't expecting an occurrence as much to the extreme as this, but she was.
"Hmm. Then, we would like to take you back to your family. Please state your planet, address, type, contact number, and several other statings so that we may locate your home."
"But I saw our home get destroyed!" Jeremy exclaimed, and Joy felt unsettled by his rude exclamation. What if they hurt us for that? she thought. But, to her relief, they didn't do anything.
To this, the woman had a slight look of uncertainty and sorrow in her face, but it vanished once she began speaking, "Which planet, may I ask?"
"Earth. We called it Earth." Joy murmured.
"Earth still exists," the lady raised one eyebrow in curiosity while suddenly, the elevator opened once more, and another girl came out. She looked about the age of nineteen and she had black hair that was twisted like a bun with strands of hair that looked like feathers coming out of the bun.
"They've woken up?" the girl asked.
"It is what you see." the lady answered.
"Come. Follow me." the girl beckoned to Jeremy and Joy, and led them back into the elevator. She pressed a button out of the many of them and they began to descend deeper into the SSA. The girl whipped around with fury burning in her eyes, "Why have you come here?!"
"We don't know." Joy answered quietly. She felt an urge pumping in her chest to yell right back at her, and she gritted her teeth to prevent that. She needed to keep self-control. The fury in the girl's eyes seemed to fade slightly, but she still looked grudgingly at the two children, "But . . . why?" she asked desperately, "Why did you have to come back?"
"Come . . . back?" Joy asked with a crack in her voice.
"Yes! You were in my dream . . . oh, you know what I'm talking about! You were torturing me!" she yelled.
". . . What?"
"Maybe it was just a dream . . . but . . . that's impossible. Are you going to torture me? Is it some sort of prophecy?" she muttered to herself.
"Why are you so panicked?" Jeremy sighed with hint of amusement in his voice, though she could tell he held back the rest of the saying, which was most likely a bit rude to her. Joy couldn't see how he could be amused in this situation, and she kept herself from punching him and screaming.
"Well . . . the same thing happened to my mother. That's how she died. She got so paranoid and . . . she committed suicide. I'm afraid the same thing will happen to me."
"It's okay," Joy soothed, "What's your name?"
"Do you think I'll tell you?" the girl snapped. The elevator door opened, and she stomped out. Joy and Jeremy stared at each other with a look of confusion, and they followed. The girl was typing something on a high-tech keyboard, and touched a screen, which was a touch screen. Joy got a look at the screen and there was an image of an escape pod.
"What are you doing?" Jeremy asked.
"Will you quit asking me questions?!" the girl shouted, and continued to click, touch, and type.
"She has some anger problems . . ." Jeremy whispered to Joy, and Jeremy smirked with a quiet laugh. Joy held back a little giggle. Now, that, was true.
"You're going. You're going back," the girl said breathlessly.
"But where will we go?" Joy and Jeremy asked together.
"You'll go somewhere! Like back to Earth, or some other planet! Wherever you came from, you're going back. I don't care where you go, just as long as it's away from me!" she slammed her hand on a button and another door opened, and there was the inside of the escape pod. She pushed Joy and Jeremy into the pod and shut the door. Joy felt a surge of sorrow as she saw the girl's face; it had the look of pure hatred as the door closed on them. Joy stroked the locked door with empathy and sympathy mixed, and turned around.
There was a tiny window where she could see where they were going. There was a white leather couch, and two huge touch screens. The theme of the pod seemed to be white, if it even had a theme.
The pod vibrated, and a small noise began to erupt. The whole pod soon started shaking, and then they were lunched out into space. Joy nearly collapsed at the force.
One touch screen was a map, while the other was the controls. Jeremy stepped up to the map, and it showed currently what was going on in the real time. On the bottom left hand corner, there was a place where it said 'the weather'and traffic'. There were a few other pods similar to the one they were in, but they weren't 'escape pods'. They were more like traveling machines, such as an airplane or car, though more high-tech. Are we in the future? she whispered in her thoughts.
"Pretty fancy escape pod, eh?" Jeremy pointed out. Joy know that he was trying to cheer her up, but it would never work. Ever.
