Living Off Planet

Living Off Planet


How was anyone to know that today, of all days, the universe would decide to prove once and for all that humanity was the ultimate cosmic joke. After all, the human race spent literal millennia in blissful ignorance about why, why they were even on earth. Why did it all have to change? The answer was something that would have left a bitter taste in the mouth of pretty much every human, if only they had had the time to figure it out. Good thing that wasn’t an option for practically everyone. Margo Henderson was one of the unlucky (lucky?) few that had the honor, and it was only pure chance that brought it all about. It was barely ten A.M. when it all began to happen, ten in the morning on a Saturday at that, so Margo, a hardworking college student would hardly have been awake if it hadn’t been for a horrible stomachache that woke her from a perfectly wonderful bout of late morning sleep. She was guzzling (rather unladylike) from a huge jug of orange juice when it happened. She was standing with the refrigerator door open all alone in her rattrap apartment wearing nothing more than a second hand silk negligee and one sock when suddenly she wasn’t alone. The man that literally popped into existence was surprisingly well dressed, was all she thought, before he reached out and tried to grab the orange juice from out of her hands, with a feral sort of instinct, she just wouldn’t let go. Next thing she knew she was standing in a room entirely made out of stainless steal and the Earth was a startlingly blue blip disappearing into less than a dot within the frame of wide window. Before she could turn to the man that was still attached to the orange juice bottle with her, who was cursing in some strange language at that, an explosion rocked everything, radiating out from where Earth had just been. Margo’s gasp seemed to silence the man, who was now oddly enough in a sleek uniform looking ensemble that was entirely different from the dapper suit in which he had appeared in her kitchenette, or maybe he was silenced because in her horror she released the orange juice bottle and pushed her fingers into her hair instead.
“Oh my god! Did the earth just explode, just fucking explode!” Margo stumbled toward the wide window, but the earth was gone, the home of humanity as she knew it had shattered out of existence.
“ I can’t believe I couldn’t just get a bottle of orange juice! I just wanted some orange juice! Listen, earthling, can you understand me?” The man yelled the last bit at her waving his arms a little, as if to get her attention in the spare room.
“Of course I can understand you! Did you hear me? I asked if the earth just exploded behind us?”
“Yes it exploded, right on schedule too. Why do you think we came back to this precise moment? In fact we were running a little early so I went down to get the one thing I missed from the earth and what do I get but a puny looking little earthling and a bottle of o.j. that’s barely a quarter full!” with that, he grabbed her arm and dragged her toward the back half of the room, apparently leading to what she supposed was the rest of some sort of spacecraft or ship or something. Her boggled mind was having a very hard time absorbing everything.
“Wait, you mean that you knew the earth was going to just…you know…and you didn’t come back to stop it!” She tried to pull her arm free, but his grip was like steel pincers and all she did was twist in his hold like a fish on the end of a line.
“No, we couldn’t stop it even if we wanted to, but that’s not important right now. Right now, I have to take you to the Senator, who, lucky for you, happens to be the whole point of this mission, he has to make a decision about you before we go into the wormhole.” As he spoke, he pulled her along a corridor that was as stark as the room they had just left. A few people walked by and stared at her in such obvious horror and disdain that Margo realized for the first time that she was still only in her nightie. Fortunately, the earth exploding had rather wiped modesty out of her mind. With her free hand she flipped the bird to those who actually stopped to stare and kept walking, or rather running, to keep up with his much longer strides.
“Why is it lucky for me that my home just exploded behind me and I’m being dragged off to see someone named the Senator on a space ship filled with animatronic drones who don’t care that more than 60 billion people just died!”
“Look lady, when we are from, we’ve had a little time to get used to the idea that earth is no more, so why don’t you give it a rest? As for the Senator, he’s the only thing between you and the nearest garbage jettison tube, so don’t push it!”
“What do you mean ‘when’ you are from?” Margo asked rather breathlessly, but it was too late for him to answer any more questions, they had entered the main chamber, which was filled with an alarming amount of buttons, blinking lights and LED-like screens. A man who was dressed (surprise) just like the one dragging her into the room, rushed toward them with a pained look on his face.
“Captain,” Margo looked behind them for some distinguished looking person with whom she could plead for some sort of answers, but when she saw no one she realized with horror that the man from her kitchen and the captain were one and the same, “We saw you pick up the straggler on the video feed. The Senator is not at all pleased, sir, he wants an explanation pronto, sir.”
“Thank you Morgan, as you can see I’m bringing the earthling to the Senator right now, that is if you would move out of our way.”
“Yes, sir, just wanted you to know that he’s on the, er, warpath sir.” Morgan said as he stepped aside, giving her a curious leer behind the Captain’s back. She gave him the finger too, but it didn’t seem to register with the people on this ship as it should.
”That signal has rather fallen out of style nowadays, young lady,” Without her knowing it, the Captain had dragged her the rest of the way into the room, and she now stood next to him in front of a stately looking gentleman in one of the standard uniforms, but with a crimson cape attached at the shoulders. “Captain, would you like to explain how a man of your years in the field and your experience with entering planets, and leaving them I might add, manages to pick up a straggler?”
“Sir, I really can’t explain. This was supposed to be an in and out thing. It was out of my control really, that she was the only one with detectable orange juice in the apartment complex near which I entered.”
“No, I quite agree, that part of your little expedition was not under your control. There were other variables, however, that were well under your purveyance, Captain Still.” The Captain looked unfazed by the Senator’s cold words, but Margo was shaking in her boots, or would have been if she had been wearing any.
“Look, sir, I don’t have any excuses, so if you want to bring me to tribunal when we get back home, you are more than welcome. But, something tells me that since the Council sent you on this expedition ten years ago and you’ve been living on earth all that time and still have next to nothing in conclusive research… well, I think a live sample will be in right order.”
“Oh no Still, you are not going to pass your little mistake off on me. My research is nothing but data and formulae and such things, I have no need for a ‘live sample’ as you term her. This vulgar young thing is your problem; I am a historian after all, not a biologist.” Captain Still snorted, and turned to look at Margo as if she were something from the bottom of his little space bootie. She had remained silent through the whole conversation, mainly to learn as much as she could before she was packed off to be jettisoned or something equally space-y and horrible, but now she was just angry.
“Hey, both of you can just forget it! I’m not going anywhere with either of you, and I am certainly not going to some zoo or to be some sort of specimen! I am a person, not an animal and I will have my questions answered and I will be treated with some modicum of respect!” Neither man seemed impressed by her, in fact, the Senator just turned away and sat back in his chair. Maybe it was the nightie. Still walked off to look at a nearby board of controls and switches. Margo hurried after him, sliding a little in her sock on the slick floor.
“Um, Captain Still, what’s going to happen to me? The earth was destroyed, and I know you can’t really think to jettison me, and the Senator wants nothing to do with me….”
“Lady, I don’t really care what you do once we get back to Degon V, but right now, I’ve got a ship to run and we are about to go through the wormhole back to when this ship came from and I don’t have time to baby-sit you.” Margo must have looked a little more than stunned after his speech, because she had just started to have a real panic attack when he sighed, “Okay, okay, just give me 20 minutes or so and I’ll take you to a place on the ship where you can sleep, eat and maybe get something to wear.” His derisive look at her nightie was enough to make her forget about trying to be civil and get angry all over again,
“I am so sorry that I happened to be in my pajamas when you dropped out of the sky and tried to rob me. Excuse me if I cause you embarrassment. I’ll find someplace to stay on my own.” As she prepared to storm off in a full theater exit (stage left), a strange shudder seemed to start at the bottom of the ship and work its way throughout the ship, growing increasingly violent until Margo ended up flopped on the floor, not thinking about going anywhere, but rather more concerned with keeping her negligee from flipping up over her head. When the shaking finally stopped and she regained her feet, she realized that everyone but her on the flight deck, including the ever so charming Captain, had strapped themselves into harnesses and seats for what she assumed was the trip through the wormhole. “Thanks so much for a warning.” She snapped at Still. He simply snorted at her and grabbed her by the arm again, still holding her jug of orange juice in his other hand. He dragged her out of the room and down more corridors, but she didn’t fight him this time, assuming that this was simply the way that jerks like him controlled situations, and she did very much want to get into something through which one could not see her nipples. Finally they arrived at what seemed to be a storage closet of some kind, he threw several sizes of the generic jumpsuit that everyone else was wearing at her and ordered her to try them on for fit and be quick about it. With a nonchalance that she wasn’t feeling she whipped off her nightgown and sock and tried to step into the first suit. Still’s eyes goggled a little bit, but she just turned her back on him and worked the suit up her body. It seemed to fit her like a glove until she tried to pull the zipper over her breasts. It was a no go. She tried the next one on. It fit more loosely in the thighs and butt, but it still wouldn’t go over her breasts. Margo wasn’t totally stacked, but apparently she was at least a cup size or more bigger breasted than the women on this ship. She tried two more suits with the same or worse results and she began to feel Still’s impatience. So she went back to the first suit and left the zipper mostly unzipped, her boobs staining out of the thin material. Great, she thought, now I look like a space-slut! When she turned around, Still’s eyes goggled again and he cleared his throat,
“Couldn’t you find one that, you know, covered…” he made a vague gesture at her breasts.
“No, apparently all of the women on this ship are not only robots, but also flat chested.” He just shook his head and grabbed her arm again, maybe trying to hide a little smile, and dragged her down another hall into the cantina. Margo sighed; she had a feeling that this was just the beginning of a very long adventure.