Note: This may be offensive to religious people, but I want to make it known that that was never my intention.
Preface
They descended on the world. Nobody knew who they were, only but they called themselves the Cloud, and that they served a higher authority.
Then the others came.
The beautiful, bewitching beauties, that went by the name of the Stars.
Their General, and glorious leader, the Sun.
Then came the Underlords. The Planets. There were millions of them, but only the first seven to come were counted as the main ones:
Fiery-tempered Mercury.
Misleadingly beautiful Venus.
The ferocious Mars.
The greatest of all, Jupiter.
Ringed Saturn.
Impending Uranus.
And outer, calm Neptune.
All of these were adopted by humanity, yet humanity was told nothing, only that these creatures served a higher authority. And humanity gave a name to this authority.
They called it God.
Chapter 1
Everyone was talking about it, including me. The class couldn’t focus, and even the teachers were eager for the lesson to finish so they could get home and watch The Launch.
Mankind was leaving the Solar System.
It was only a month ago that NASA had put forward their idea for a ship to get out of the Solar System, but now it was ready, its nose pointing towards the sky, ready to plunge into regions unknown.
And they still expected me to put up with maths?!
I fidgeted in my seat as the teacher droned on and on. “On and on” hardly justified it. More like “on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and a few more ons.”
Alicia leaned over to me.
“I heard the launch is actually a conspiracy! What do you think?”
I simply shrugged, and tried to look like I cared. Don’t get me wrong, I was as excited as everything, but I was fast getting tired of everybody talking about it.
I had my journal open under the desk. Most of the class had stuff going on under the desk. Mr Ghengis was away, which was the equivalent of Christmas coming early to pretty much everyone. I randomly scribbled a bit in the margins before continuing with my entry.
17th March 2014,
Maths - ugh! And I wish everyone would shut up about The Launch. I mean, it’ll probably be a fluke. Dad says it’ll blow up as soon as it passes Pluto. Can you believe him?!
Someone I can’t believe is Alicia. That’s the fifth time she’s told about the Conspiracy Theory .I’m amazed she hasn’t noticed yet.
I’ll be kept in if I don’t finish off, so I’ll end this entry now.
Signed,
Claudia
I’m not sure what I was trying to achieve by trying to keep a journal. I’d failed epically whenever I’d tried before now. It was a bit therapeutic, I guess.
The rest of the day passed pretty much like maths. People whispered their theories to me across the classroom, and the teachers took no notice.
Until, at last, the moment came.
I gripped my seat, and the screen lit up with the sleek nose of the Aztec 1. I shook with excitement as it rose into the sky, forgetting all my suspicions that it was all a fluke. I wanted nothing more than it to succeed in that moment. I don’t know why, perhaps it was simply the power of the idea of leaving the only galaxy we’ve ever known.
I watched from my home as the ship flew powerfully across the starlit sky.
And nobody in the world could have guessed what happened next.
The stars began to move with purpose, they were coming for the Aztec 1 like it was a magnet. They closed in on it while the world watched with shock.
The Aztec 1 was engulfed in the stars, and then they withdrew.
To reveal empty space.
I gawked at the screen, but then I heard a low voice sounding through space.
“You shall not leave this system.”
