Chapter 1 Destiny
Destiny
This place is massive. Five football stadiums could fit on this landing dock.
And five more could be stacked to the ceiling.
It’s metal and glass, same as just about everything else I’d seen in space, and currently swarming with bus-sized passenger ships depositing humans like some sci-fi Disney ride.
I crane my neck to take it all in. The landing dock takes up the entire bottom level of an absolutely ginormous—seriously, small planet sized—space station called Sanctuary Station.
Sanctuary Station is exactly what it sounds like. A place of refuge for not just humans, but all the intergalactic refugees. A group we were firmly placed in when Earth went full-on Day After Tomorrow and aliens rescued us in their UFOs.
I wish I was kidding.
We’d all spent the last year on a transitory satellite, learning about the galaxy and its many species, a large percentage of which we are apparently distantly related to.
According to the Originem, our benevolent alien overlords, about 65% of the galaxy’s population came from their home planet.
Several megaannum ago, the Originem’s ancestors decided to colonize on a galactic level and, well, let’s just say the apple doesn't fall from the colonizing tree.
When the Originem finally decided to clean up their mess and take a little responsibility for their wayward descendants, they found several uniquely evolved species actively destroying their adopted homes. Many, like us humans, were on the verge of extinction.
Which is to say, I can’t help but be grateful to them, despite their weird politics. I would be floating bones by now if they hadn’t picked us up.
“Destiny! Grab your bag, dear. We’re blocking the walkway.” Sounding exasperated, my dad nudges me gently, shouldering his own bag. I toss my rucksack over my shoulder, scavenged from Earth like most things we have with us, and follow him, craning my neck.
Spaceships are still flying in to land in an orderly fashion, like lipstick tubes neatly lining up in a cosmetic display.
The open door of the hanger spans the entire exterior wall and beyond, I can see the inky blackness between the stars.
I’m slowly getting used to the crazy advanced space technology, which means I’m not screaming in terror of getting sucked into space, just staring in awe like a landlubber.
I peel my eyes away from the twinkling stars and rush after my dad, who is walking with a purpose towards the elevator bays.
He hasn’t yet gotten used to the vastness of space, or anything since we left, really.
“Dad! Wait up!” I call out, but the walkways are really starting to get crowded now.
I lose him for a minute before spotting his salt-and-pepper hair by an elevator off to the side.
His gaze is down, stuck to his shoes, and I feel a familiar ache in my heart for my dad.
He hasn’t been the same since we left Earth, understandably.
Really, he hasn't been the same since mom left, but I thought for a second he may finally be getting better… I signed us up for Sanctuary Station hoping it would be the thing that finally pulled him out of his funk. A new life, a fresh start. Something we both could really use.
When I finally reach the elevator, it has already been filled and is taking off.
Dad is still standing next to the closed chrome doors, staring at the tattered New Balances on his feet, the same shoes he’d been wearing when they found us.
I inhale sharply through my nose, willing patience to fill me along with the filtered oxygen.
I know he’s having a really hard time adjusting.
He’s been quiet, withdrawn, and disinterested for too long now.
Trying to pull him out of his funk was a big reason why I applied for Sanctuary Station in the first place; that and the adventure, of course.
We both deserve a fresh start. This is a good thing.
I know it. I just wish I could make him see it.
“Good thinking. We’ll just wait for the next one.
Hopefully less crowded.” I’m panting as I finally shoulder my way next to him, tossing him an excited smile.
“I can’t wait to see our floor. Or division, I mean.
Each level is like a whole different city.
Division Five has the largest citizen’s market on the whole station. ”
These are all things I’ve definitely said to my dad before, about a thousand times probably, but I can’t help reiterating.
“Still confused about how a market functions on a communist spaceship,” he grumbles back to me. I’m just happy to get a response, honestly.
“It’s not communism, Dad! Think of it as a perk of this experimental community. Over a dozen different alien races living on one station! Everyone gets basic living necessities so we can focus on making friends and building communities.”
I know I sound a bit dreamy, but honestly, it is a dream.
As a kid, I dreamt of visiting far-off places, like the pyramids in Egypt, and making cool, eclectic friends there.
By the time I was old enough to travel, infrastructure had been on the decline for a while.
Only the uber-rich were able to access resources like airplanes, while the rest of us fought over the diminishing amount of canned goods on the shelves.
Where I’d lived, in the Midwest United States, summers were so hot and dry, you could watch the lakes evaporate into thick, humid air, only to be filled again by the brutal wet season of autumn.
I never got the chance to travel, to see our world.
Now I have a whole space station to explore, though.
And new friends to make from all corners of the galaxy.
My fingertips tingle with electric excitement as I think about it.
“Whatever you say, Destiny. Let’s just get to our apartment, I’m tired.”
I don’t want to point out that he slept on the spaceship on the way here. Or that all he seems to do is sleep, lately. One thing at a time.
Just then the elevator opens up and reveals an empty car.
We slip inside as a rush of humans follows behind us.
Only five hundred humans have been admitted in the first wave of integration, but seeing so many people still milling around the hangar bay, it could have been five thousand for all I know.
Our assigned apartments are spread throughout the station to encourage diverse relationships and when the bay finally opens to Division Five, only two other people get off.
The doors open to a nondescript chrome hallway with double doors to the left and right.
In front of us, a screen flips through written languages until finally, Human English comes up, indicating numbers to the left and right.
Each division is broken into subdivisions, and in this case, ours, Sub 14, is to the left.
To the right, Subs 19-36 hide behind a nondescript door.
With a wave, the other two people let us know they’re in Sub 22, if we need a familiar face, and head through the door without looking back.
I have the strange urge to race after them, terrified my dad’s will be the only human face I see for the rest of my life, but I stifle it.
I wanted to see new faces, didn’t I? No point in being scared now.
Glancing over at Dad, I see he’s lost in his own thoughts, staring at those stupid shoes again.
As soon as they started stocking human-made items, which I was told will be in a month or so, the first thing I’m getting him is a new pair of shoes.
The holes in the side are probably the result of the ocular lasers he is constantly sending to his feet.
And the fact that those shoes have seen an apocalypse, a transition satellite and now a planet-sized space station within the last year. It’s time for new shoes.
I point my own sneakers, pink Reeboks I traded to another human for my instant camera back on the satellite station, toward the left door and walk with purpose into my future. Behind me, I can feel my dad following like a ghost. I push that thought aside as I push open the door.
Division Five is an immediate assault to the senses.
I’m smacked in the face with such an assortment of smells my brain can’t pick through them all to single one out.
There’s something spicy and scrumptious in there, but it’s blending with a metallic, coppery tang, the sour smells of crowded bodies, and so much else.
This must be what a big city smells like.
Grosser than I expected, but still beyond exciting.
The sounds are cacophonous, filling the massive chamber with thousands of voices, some deep and growly, some lighter and tinkling like porcelain.
All of them speak English, and for a second I’m confused before I remember the babelfish I had installed when we were chosen as candidates to live here.
The Originem made sure everyone had all the languages spoken on the station installed for translation, and I'm excited to hear that voices did not change.
The sights in front of us are overwhelming.
I feel like the protagonist in one of those big city movies, where the country bumpkin gets their first look at the Big Apple, and the soundtrack offers a bright, adventurous beat.
I have to make a conscious effort to close my gaping jaw as I take in the main corridor of Division Five.
I know what to expect from the orientation videos. The main corridor is like a huge hallway that bisects the entire division, and along either wall are numbered doors leading into smaller corridors, or subdivisions. We just need to find Sub 14, then we’ll find our apartment, number 126.