Tangea Ch 02

Chapter 2: Flight

After I saw Earth disappear from the window of Myra's spaceship, I was dumbstruck and could not move. I had a vague awareness of what was happening around me however, and heard Myra piloting the ship, pushing buttons and giving voice commands to the on-board flight computer. I had no sense of time, but after a little while, Myra led me through a series of doors to a bedroom and helped me to lie down on the bed. She then left the room to continue piloting the ship, as I assumed.

As I lay on the bed, my senses came back to me and I began to process what had happened. I thought to myself,

Did I really just see what I think I saw? Whole planets cannot just...disappear. What happened back there goes against every law of physics I have learned.

I remembered the huge, dark purple ship, and figured that it must have something to do with the glow I saw around the planet and the big ship right before the disappearance of both. Obviously, there were more forces at work here than I even knew existed. Another thought I had was what happened to my friends Travis and David. I did remember that after I had recovered when Myra had shown up on Earth and knocked me down, they were not anywhere around during the following events. I thought to myself,

Could they have just 'disappeared' like Earth? Or were they possibly thrown somewhere else? Like, maybe another dimension or something. Christ, listen to me! I'm virtually talking to myself, and considering that Earth is still here, or somewhere!

One thing that did give me hope was the fact that the enemy ship, really the enemy space station, had disappeared as well. If Earth really was dead, then the station probably was as well. I didn't think that was very likely, unless the attack was a suicide run. I thought things through for another couple of minutes, and then my tired and dejected body fell asleep, fully clothed and on top of the bed sheets.

I awoke to find myself under the covers and sheets, along with another comforter on top of me. This bed felt so good! The sheets were extremely soft, almost like silk, but tougher than silk. It did not feel like I was going to tear them with the slightest move, which is a good thing, considering I move around a

lot

during sleep. I also love to have heavy covers on top of me when I sleep, so the extra comforter felt very good. After lying in bed for a few more minutes, I rolled over and climbed out of bed. I walked to the door, noticing that the room was large, at least by my standards. I figured it to be maybe 30' by 30', in a rough square. The walls were dark blue with a white trim, and the floor and door was white as well. When I was a couple feet from the door, it opened automatically. I recalled the route back to the bridge, so I began tracing my way back to the front of the ship.

I found the bridge with ease, as I had numerous signs leading me to the different areas of the ship. I entered the bridge and saw that Myra was at the helm. As I walked towards her chair, she turned around and smiled brightly when she saw me.

"Hey!" Myra said. "You're up! I was starting to worry if you'd ever wake up!"

"Uhh...how long have I been out?" I replied.

"Well, let's see...we left at 11:34 AM Earth time, and right now it's 2:17 PM."

"Oh...well, I guess that hasn't been too long," I said. The way I figured it, after what I had been through, three hours was not that much. However, after I said that, Myra giggled.

"Wow, you're

really

out of it," Myra said. "It's been three hours plus a day."

"Holy shit!" I exclaimed. "A day? Damn, I must have been wiped!"

"Yeah," Myra replied, "you didn't even really know what was going on yesterday when I took you to your room. Like, your eyes were glazed over and stuff."

At this point, something odd struck me. Why was Myra talking with slang and not perfect English like before? I asked her this very question.

"Hey Myra, you mind if I ask you something?"

"Sure, Paul, shoot," she replied.

"How come you're not talking perfectly like before? You're using stuff like, 'like,' and contractions, and generally not sounding like a Northerner."

She giggled again.

Damn,

I thought,

her laugh is really sexy.

"Well, pretty much, my translator had to have time to work out what language you spoke," Myra said.

"What, you mean English?" I asked. "You spoke English fine. What did your translator have to work out?"

"Your regional speech," Myra replied. "It took a couple of hours, but you speak a lot different language than what English really is. I could speak it well enough for you to understand me, but I think this is much better, don't you?"

"Yeah, I like it better," I said with a laugh. "Just wondering,"

Myra laughed back. "No problem, Paul. Listen, come sit down. I think we need to talk about what happened back there."

"What do you mean?" I asked Myra. I went and sat down in the seat next to her, probably the co-captain's seat.

"Well, I just want to make sure that you're all right. Like, that you're not going to have a breakdown or something."

"Nope, I'm fine," I said. "I mean, I pretty much worked everything out like I need to, I think. I won't go crazy on you or anything. I've always been stable with my emotions and not let them get the best of me. You won't have to worry about that."

"Okay," Myra said with a smile. "I'll take your word on that. But how are you dealing with losing your family and your friends?"

I didn't really know what to say to that. I hadn't thought about my family much, and my friends just a little more.

"Well," I answered her, "my family and I were kinda close, but for a while there I had wanted to get away from them out onto my own. My parents were...strict, to say the least. I think that it will do me some good to be on my own now." This was the truth, maybe even less than what I really felt. I had been wanting to get away on Earth, and this seemed like a very good opportunity.

I continued speaking. "As for my friends, the only ones that I don't really have an idea of what may have happened to are Travis and David. Those are the two guys that I was working with when you showed up. The just kind of disappeared, but not with the planet. You don't have any idea what happened, do you?" I didn't really think that she would, but I had to bring it up sometime, sooner being better than later.

"As I recall," replied Myra, "when I appeared on Earth, you were thrown to the ground and your friends were nowhere to be found. I did run a scan for life-forms, and nothing for three miles, as I remember."

"Yeah, that's right," I said.

"You don't think something else could have happened to them, do you?" Myra said. "The only other options would be for them to have been transported somewhere else, maybe just still on Earth; or..."

Well, her trailing off meant she was thinking one thing. "Killed, you mean?" I asked.

"I'm afraid so," she replied. "It's just a possibility, Paul. Nothing is saying it actually happened."

As I thought this through, I turned and looked out the window in front of my. I'm not an emotional person, but the view outside was very beautiful. On the sides of the view outside, there were electric blue lines, indicating to me that we were traveling at least very near the speed of light. When an object travels near the speed of light, which is 186,000 miles per second, then objects are "blue-shifted" to the observer because of the light dilation. This can be compared to sound; if a train is traveling towards you, the sound pitch goes up. Away from you, and the sound pitch goes down.

In addition to the extremely vibrant blue lines at the edges of my view, the stars were all but white lines in the "sky." There must have been hundreds in my vision! It had the effect of watching a 3D movie in a heavy action sequence with all of the explosions and stuff coming at me. The scene was something that cannot be described. I had never seen anything like it on Earth! After staring out of the window for a few minutes, taking in the breathtaking view, Myra cleared her throat, bringing me back to reality.

"Well," Myra started, "I'm glad to hear that taking this well so far. Please, though, Paul, tell me if you have any problems with dealing with this! I can help you a lot."

"Wait," I said, "How can you help me so well? Do you know psychology or something?" Myra looked at me kind of weird, but I kept going. I guess it was pent up nervous energy or something, but I didn't want to stop right now. "Besides, how do even know anything about humans? Have you been in contact with us before?"

"No," Myra replied, "I've never seen a human before, only rea...never mind, Paul." She said this last part rather anxiously. It gave me the impression that she was hiding something.

"What were going to say there?" I asked her. "You've only done what?"

"Paul, it's nothing," Myra said, even more disturbed than before.

"No! It's not nothing!" I was practically shouting now. "This is my entire life we're talking about here! My whole planet has been fucking

destroyed

!" I noticed now that I was standing. I'm not small, at 6'1", and Myra probably with heels would be 5'6". However, I continued ranting, moving closer to her.

"How can you presume to think that you can keep shit from me? You haven't ever had anything like this happen to you! My

planet

is gone, for God's sake! Not my family, not just my friends, not my town, not even my country! My entire

race!

."

I finally slowed down, and the look I saw on her face stopped me cold. It was a mixture of different feelings. She looked like she pitied me, even understood me, but she looked a little angry as well. I hadn't seen that side of her before; I just guess she has a rather feisty side as well. I could tell that she was also hurt. However, there was one emotion that was the most prevalent that gave me intense disappointment in myself. I saw fear. She had been only trying to help me, and here I was looking as though I was going to hit her. My fists were balled up at my sides, I was towering over her, and she was cowering in her seat.

I sat down in my previous seat heavily and took a deep breath, put my hands in my head, and began crying. Hard. The events of the past few days hit me extremely hard then. I began sobbing, roughly, trying to deep it down, but not being able to. I always thought that I was a strong person emotionally, and I wasn't used to crying, not ever. This thought never entered my mind, though. The only thought I had was that my entire life was destroyed, with quite possibly the only remnants of my species being gone. My family came to my mind, at the forefront being the good times. Things like trips we took, and jokes we made, and games we played. My friends flashed before me, especially Travis, as he and I had been through some tough times together, and were the best of friends. I didn't even know what was going on around me for the next few minutes, but then I heard Myra's voice and felt her putting her arms around me, pulling me to her.

"Oh, Paul," Myra said. She sighed. "I knew you couldn't keep that façade up forever." She pulled me to her tighter, just embracing me, letting me quietly cry into her. "Paul, I am

so sorry

that this happened to you. I'm glad that I was able to save you, but I can't possibly even begin to understand what you're going through right now. You know I'll help you in any way I can."

I looked up at her with tears running down my cheeks and saw that all of the emotions I saw before were gone, being replaced with deep hurt, a different kind than before, and much empathy. There was something else there, but I wasn't in any shape to place it.

"Thank you," I barely whispered. "You're already helping me trem-"

I cut off and began crying again as it hit me for a second time. Myra just held me there until I was able to regain control again. She then helped me up from the chair and led me, once again, to my room. She laid me in the bed and covered me with all the sheets and comforters she had before, and I sank back into the fluffy mattress. She sat down on the bed and put her hand out, and held it there for a few seconds, as if she were debating something. She then brushed my hair back from my eyes and told me good night.

"Good night, Paul," she said. "Get up whenever you're ready, and we should be in dock at our destination. I...sweet dreams."

With that, I fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.