Year E2996

Beck

The end of the rainbow wasn't a pot of gold for me. It was more colors. Little did I know a rainbow wasn't a bridge or an arch to my dreams. It was a circle in the sky of never-ending fantasies. The red, orange, and yellow continued as water poured from the atmosphere, painting blue, indigo, and violet.

"Captain Doxon, we found a stowaway hiding under the floorboards in the storage closet," the man with huge hands on my shoulder said into his birdroid. The orange robot bird chirped back at him while jumping up and down. They invented the birdroid to be more high-tech. Instead of walkie-talkies, it's still a walkie-talkie to me, just more annoying.

The man's bushy eyebrows looked at me like I was an alien. Static cawed from the communication bird before its beak opened.

"Bring them up to me," the captain's voice sprang from the birdroid.

"You are in trouble now, boy." His hands gripped my arm, pulling me to the captain.

A whistling noise echoed in the dark hallway as he dragged me to my death. Being a small sixteen-year-old boy made it easy for me to hide under the floor, but Tyrannosaurus, my sidekick rabbit, had to give away my spot.

It wasn't easy crawling my way off Nus this morning. The spaceship holds most of the human population, better known as my home. This smaller traveling spacecraft was bound for somewhere new, and I didn't want to miss it.

The spaceship rattled, prompting me to fall forward into a bear of a man. Being on a smaller ship than the gigantic one humanity lived in generated my seasickness. Well, I mean, space sickness. I don't know what seasick means or feels like, but I've seen the old movies from Earth and would like to think it's like this.

I held my hand over my mouth, glancing down to see Tyrannosaurus peeking his head at me. Smiling, I pushed his ears down to be sure the oversized bodyguard didn't see him.

Tyrannosaurus snuggled into my oversized coat, tucking his gray head away from my glare. "Look what you did now, Tyran."

The man squeezed my arm tighter. "Name?" he asked in a deep voice.

"Wouldn't that be nice?" I replied. "Giving you my name to make your job easier."

He stopped in his tracks, grabbing my shoulders so I would face him. He crouched down, letting his coffee breath fan my face. "I'm not afraid to just let space take you." He moved closer. "Let you beg for air in a—"

"Beck!" I yelled with fear, feeling my face turn white. "My name is Beck." On a side note, living on Nus my whole life had added the fear of suffocating in space, holding my throat while my eyes popped out of their sockets.

He smirked, standing straight to knock on the metal door behind me. "Captain Ray Doxon, it's Rob." He opened the door.

I stepped into the room, pulling my arm from Rob. My eyes fell off my face as I gawked at the window. There was a small ball of lavender floating in space. But when the smog of purple seemed translucent at moments, I could see the planet was blue with small patches of green. The blues swirled around as the green changed to brown in areas. Teachers told me there were mirror planets to Earth somewhere in space, my doppelgänger living life, not on a spaceship.

"A purple planet?" I asked Captain Ray.

She stepped out from behind her desk. "Yes, Beck, only from the atmosphere, though," she answered with a smile. Her face changed to anger as she looked at Rob. "You can leave now, Rob."

Rob's jaw dropped as I smirked at him with an attitude. He pointed at me, then pulled his hat off his head. "What did you want me to do with this brat?"

Ray chuckled to herself, then wrapped her arm around my shoulders. "This young man is my baby brother, Beck Doxon."

Rob froze as I waved my middle finger at him. "Oh yeah, Rob, I forgot to mention some little detail."

Ray shoved me over to the side of the ship near the window.

Ray walked up to Rob, whispering to one another. "Why didn't you tell me you had a younger brother?" I heard Rob's voice, even though he was trying to whisper.

Ray looked over her shoulder at me with pink cheeks, then back at Rob. I couldn't hear her response as she hushed Rob and walked him out the door. They left me in the room as I placed my hand on the glass window, watching as the new planet hovered closer.

I had never lived on anything besides the immense spaceship made years ago. When the sun died, they chose only a select number of people to live on the ship. Somewhere down my ancestors' life, I was lucky. But also, somewhere in my ancestors, humanity killed the sun. The Nus ship was all I experienced, which included all the teenage kids I hated to say I knew.

I could smell Ray's pineapple-melon perfume as she walked up behind me. "Beck, you know damn well Mom will kill you when she finds out you snuck in the craft."

I imagined Mom's angry face, waving her arms around like she always did when she was mad at me.

I spun around to look at my older sister. "But when I heard you on the birdroid—" I glanced back at the planet. "I thought you were joking with someone."

Ray placed her hand on the top of my head. "Safforia." Her expression grew to a smile. "We found her ten years ago. The first and only planet with the same atmosphere as Earth, making it breathable for us. And we have been communicating well with the safforians."

"Safforians?" I questioned her.

"Yes, there is a living species down there." Ray walked over to her desk, clicking on her computer. A hologram sprung up in the middle of the floor.

"Safforians are almost identical to humans," she said as I waved my hand through the person in the middle of the room. He was tall with bright green hair and emerald eyes that matched. The pronounced shape of his nose was slightly different, an eerie, non-human facial feature.

"They are just like us, but their hair and eyes are unique colors," she said, then clicked on her keyboard, causing a woman to pop up with the man. She had bright pink hair. Her rosy eyes glanced my way, like they programmed the hologram to watch the people in the room.

The female safforian laughed sweetly, prompting me to swallow. The male's expression beamed at me while he placed his hands on his knees, bringing our eyes level.

"We have been there for ten years?" I asked as I set Tyran on the floor. He hopped away, figuring out his new surroundings.

Ray stepped away from her desk. "Yes, we have been teaching them English, ten years of living in peace with them. There are even interspecies relationships," she said, her voice trailing. "Even though they can't reproduce, they are not the same classification."

I swallowed hard. "So, Nus only having a short time left isn't a rumor, is it?"

Ray shook her head. "Beck, just like when the sun died years ago, our ship will die too."

The teal birdroid on her desk buzzed as she shot her head up. The bird jumped around the desk until Ray rushed to me, pushing me along. "Okay, get out of here." She opened the door for me. "Go get your gear from Rob and meet me here in an hour."

Ray shut the door on me. "Gear?" I questioned into the empty hallway.

Within less than an hour, Rob had me in a new outfit with a helmet. He rolled his eyes, smacking the top of my head. "Seems like it fits well," he said.

I glared up at him as his broad shoulders towered over me. He was messing with his hat, biting inside his cheek like a teenage girl nervous about being in trouble.

"Why are you nervous?" I asked him, causing Rob to tense up.

I could hear my sister's voice around the corner. Rob's shoulders rolled back, telling me the answer. "Oh, I get it," I said, wiggling my eyebrows.

Rob scrunched his nose. "Knock it off, you little twerp."

Ray walked around the corner and signed a tablet, handing it to a small man beside her. She grabbed her helmet from Rob with a huge smile. They both paused for an awkward portion of time, staring at one another.

"I'll meet you two on the pod," I said, feeling Tyran wiggle in my suit.

Ray jumped a little and then waved her arm around. "No, let's get going."

The pod's inner seat design was for two people at the front and one pop-out adjacent to the door. Most of the craft included a tiny kitchen with bunk beds at the back. I stepped in front of my seat, letting Ray and Rob take the pilot's position. The ship shook as Ray started it up. We pulled away from the vessel while the inside masked darkness. With the reflection in the helmet, my blue eyes, covered by strands of brown hair, stared back at me. I looked down, not wanting to glance at myself.

We sped across the open space, causing me to grip my seat. I closed my eyes, feeling the sickness flood my stomach. As much as I wanted to watch out the window, I couldn't. Fear of dying out there always got the best of me.

"Okay, little fucker, you can open your eyes," Rob laughed.

I peeked one eye open to see Ray and Rob glancing at me. I smiled large, realizing this would be my first step on solid land.

I pushed Rob to the side and ran toward the open door, throwing my helmet to the ground. I didn't know what I expected as I unzipped my suit, grabbing Tyran from my pocket. We both looked out at the new planet called Safforia. The sun was setting, producing a pink glow to the surrounding trees.

Only for a split second did I see the sun before its shine dipped below the hillside. The sky's calm wind brushed alongside my skin. Goosebumps peppered up my arms to my neck as a shiver rode down my spine. The clouds dotted orange and green over the dark blue, smearing like someone was driving through them.

My feet crunched into the leaves on the ground as I set Tyran in the grass. He hopped around, eating the beautiful world. The dirt had an off-color, giving a unique purple tint. I crouched down, picking up a handful of the silt and feeling it seep through my fingertips. I smelt my dirty hands, reminding me of the gingerbread cookies my mom would make around Christmas time. Why would the amethyst dirt scent reflect gingerbread?

I glanced over my shoulder at Ray. She smiled from ear to ear. "Mom's cookies?" she asked, knowing what I was thinking.

My cheeks burned from how wide my smile became as I went from my crouched position to a crawl, feeling my palms in the dirt and reaching for the grassy ground. Without thinking, I placed my face on the land, closing my eyes as I lay there, smelling the Christmas soil.

Tyrannosaurus squealed in excitement, causing me to look over at him. He shook his gray ears and jumped before hopping into the trees. I watched as his white tail disappeared into the moss.

"Tyran," I said, jumping up from the grass and chasing after him. I glanced behind me to see Rob and Ray inspecting a tablet before following my mischievous bunny.

The forest was dark with an overcast of greenery. The trees and bushes were more substantial, creating a panic to fidget with my fingers. They towered over me like they could swallow me. I was a fly buzzing around a Venus flytrap.

On Nus, the pine trees only grew about twenty feet tall near the tracks. I loathed the tracks, the center of rotation for the ship. It was supposed to be the community park as a fake sun and moon would rise and fall each day, but it only reminded me of what I would never see in real life.

Well, until now.

"Tyran," I whispered, not wanting anything to hear me. "Little chunk." I slowly looked around a tree to see him nibbling on a small plant.

I walked up to him, crouching down. With my hands stretched out, another set of little fingers grabbed Tyrannosaurus before I could. Fear washed over me as I glanced to see a girl smiling at my bunny. The girl had her purple hair pulled back into two buns as curly flyaways brushed her tan cheeks.

Her purple eyes looked into mine. "Hello," she said in a honey voice. "Is this little critter yours?" she asked as she held Tyrannosaurus in one hand and then used the other to light up the night.

A small ball of purple fire hovered above her palms, making everything look violet around us. "I'm Kat," she said, exploding my heart into a rainbow of colors.

Thank you for reading. Please share, comment, and push that beautiful star.

:)