Untitled Sci-Fi Book Draft

Christopher E. Jones was just a normal space employee, visiting his family every two years. He had just come out from the doctor’s office, after getting used to walking with his new knee. He had gotten in a fight with someone in the cafeteria, and ended up getting his leg smashed into the table, breaking it.
“Chris!” yelled one of his friends, William, from across the room.
The doctor’s assistant let out a long “Shhhhh” to keep him quiet.
“How’s it going?” he whispered to Chris, after giving the doctor’s assistant a strange look.
“Fine, but if we ever have a zombie invasion, I’d be in some trouble with this knee.”
“How about we go get some breakfast? I could go for some pancakes.”
“And I’d like some waffles right about now.”
         On their way to the cafeteria, they passed their rooms, which were very small compared to the other employee’s rooms.
“You know, I could really use a raise,” said Chris.
“Don’t count on it,” said William back, “And I would really like some new rooms, our old ones are getting really small for all the stuff we have.”
         They approached the cafeteria, standing in front of the big gray doors, engraved with the letters “USEO”, standing for “United Space Exploration Organization”, the company both Chris and William worked for. They had waited almost a minute and a half for the automatic doors to open, when they normally only took about three seconds. Chris and William where so deep in their conversation, complaining about their jobs that they didn’t even notice the doors for about two minutes.
“Well just great, now the doors won’t even work properly,” complained Chris.
“We should probably call Tech Support over.”
“What about all the people in there?”
“They’ll be OK; they have tons of food and water in there.”
         Tech Support ended up showing four hours later, due to a huge problem in the holo-communications network. So no one had been able to eat for that time. They assigned the new recruit to fix, effectively making it take half an hour longer. In the meantime, Chris and William had gone back to their rooms, and gotten a frozen lunch from the personal cooling unit in Chris’s room.
“You know, it seems like this ship is starting to fall apart a bit,” said William.
“You wouldn’t say so. I wouldn’t be surprised if it fell apart right now.”
“We should probably get some sleep, we’ve got work tomorrow.”
“Don’t ever start abo…” Chris was broken off by a rattling of metal somewhere around the closet. He walked over and whipped open the closet.
“Ple… ple… Please don’t hurt me.” It was Steve, one of Chris’s co-workers.
“Why the heck are you in my room?” shouted Chris angrily.
“I was trying to find out if you were the one who sabotaged the holo-communications network.”
“Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know, but the boss sent a few people to eavesdrop on some people he thought might have done it.”
“I’m gonna have to go talk to him, he must have gone crazy. And why would someone want to sabotage the communications network anyway?”
“They were having an important meeting on the mut… Oh-no. I shouldn’t have told you that.”
“An important meeting about what?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Alright, you get out of here within five seconds, I’ll leave you alone, and talk to him in the morning,” said Chris as Steve ran out of his room.
“And William, you should probably get back to your room and get some sleep.”
“Yeah, probably. See ya!”


*****

When Chris woke up the next day, he started for the cafeteria. He realized Steve either already ate breakfast, or was avoiding him in fear. Probably the latter according to what had happened last night.