Page 1 of Crash Landing
1: Sam
I expected to be dead by now.
No, really. I wasn’t great when it came to decision making, but when my best friend decided she was done with our poor luck on Earth, we got some records faked and we hightailed it off our little rock. Not that the planet itself is a drag. It’s beautiful and as a kid, all I wanted to do was stare at pictures of it. The savannah. The rainforests. Even photos from space. The way the planet looked like a little multicolored marble fascinated me.
But Earth had changed since all those photos were taken. Overpopulation happened. Greenery and wilderness became so rare that people had to pay thousands of dollars just to take a vacation to glimpse it through a glass shield.
So you can imagine how being a botanist was completely out of the question. Despite my fascination with plants and nature as a little girl, what use was studying something that was going to be gone before my time was up?
I’ll get back to the part where my best friend convinced me to go to space later.
“You’re really going to give me attitude?” Thomas said, raising a bushy brow at me.
“It’s not attitude,” I said, cocking a hip. “Melissa knows I don’t like the slimy ones and she did that in front of everyone to make me look bad.”
“You’re going to have to get used to the slimy ones sooner or later.”
“Ok, but that was bitchy and you know it.”
“Bitchy or not, she’s worked hard to be here.”
“And I haven’t?”
“Maybe, but you also broke a lot of rules. Like… a lot.”
“That was a year ago. I’ve learned.”
“Have you?”
I wanted to throw my scalding hot coffee at him, but of all my workmates, Thomas was the most tolerable. Therefore, logically, burning his face off would make me a big loner. He’d hate me.
Not that I wasn’t used to everyone hating me. I was the kind of girl people rolled their eyes about. If there was a problem, I probably started it. If there was a mess, I probably had something to do with it. If some guy touched my ass, his girlfriend probably thought it was my fault.
But I didn’t really make it easy. Fingers pointed because my track record wasn’t great.
To quote my foster parents, “You’re just a big fuck up.”
“Whatcha thinking?” Thomas asked.
It was annoying how well he could read me. Sometimes I just wanted to be in my head for two seconds, but he always dragged me out.
I shrugged. “Trying to convince myself not to throw my coffee on you so I don’t lose my only friend in here.”
Looking around, most of the other interns had left the cafeteria and it was pretty much just us.
Mary Mark’s University of Science aka the only place on Earth where they dealt with alien plant life. I always found myself looking up at the Nexus at night. Or what I could see of it. From Earth, it was just a light in the sky. I should have been up there studying. Not back on Earth where plants from other planets could hardly last a month.
But there was a lot that went wrong the first time around and it stayed with me. I was torn between wanting to be in space and being terrified of going back.
“You’ll get back up there,” Thomas said.
He must have caught me staring through the glass ceiling of the cafeteria at the sunset. And of course, he knew I was daydreaming of the Nexus.
“I was just starting to feel important,” I said, mostly to myself.
“Yeah? And I’m sure you would have put some people in danger if you actually had to play doctor before they found you out. Couldn’t have lied about a less dangerous career?”
He brushed a hand over his bald head. He was one of those guys that had been balding since he turned twenty and he shaved his head clean every morning in an attempt to make it a style choice. I had to admit, he pulled it off really well.
