Page 4 of The Mating Games

I shut my eyes and uttered a dozen different prayers to any god that would hear them.

“Stabilization in progress,” a serene robotic voice informed me.

Stabilization?!

Stabilization!?

If you callthisstabilization, you can shove it up your ass!

The capsule kept quaking, resonating with the force of the plummet.

I tried to focus on my breathing and distance myself from the tempest outside.

Memories of home, my snug bed, and the novel I’d been engrossed in — the very last things I remembered before waking up in this place — provided only minor solace.

All my problems and issues I’d had in what now felt like a past life shrunk to the size of raisins.

They were nothing.

Nothingcompared to this.

Another painful jolt snapped me back to my reality.

I managed to force my eyelids open into tiny slits and peer through them.

And I wished I hadn’t.

A deafening roar indicated my entry into the planet’s atmosphere.

The friction turned the exterior of my capsule a bright, scorching red but I could still see through the bottom of it, like an enormous bloodshot eye.

I thought the capsule might disintegrate at any second.

Swollen and huge like the fingers of God, were the broad leaves of a huge jungle that stretched as far as my eyes could see.

I realized, with dread, I was heading straight for it.

Above it was the vastness of the cosmos, speckled with far-off stars.

I braced for impact.

Suddenly, my capsule shunted hard, snapping me forward and shoving me to the floor.

Thrustors engaged, strong enough to slow my descent, but not to stop it.

I was going to crash.

And crashhard.

Would I make it?

Who or what awaited below?

Would there be others, or would I be an anomaly on this world?

The descent didn’t let up.

Vast forests, tall mountains, and serpentine rivers raced towards me.

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