The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) (21 page)

“Do we have time to bury him?” She asked me softly. “I know you said we’re running out of time. But…”

I grasped her hand and kissed her.

“We’ll make time. Come on.”

XXX

             
We reached the launch site with exactly seven hours t
o go until the
event
. In order not to be caught in the middle of it, the ship would be departing Earth with two hours left until the great blast.

             
The launch site was something to witness, believe me. It reminded me of a tailgate party, though one with sli
ghtly more frightened-looking party-goers. Cars, trucks, vans, buses and even one tractor trailer were parked on the hard desert ground, stretching back as far as my eyes could see. Alice and I watched as people meandered through the rows upon rows of cars
, talking in different languages and carrying their bags.

             
“This would make for a cool essay, wouldn’t it? ‘Different cultures at the end of the world’?” I suggested to Alice, who just wrapped her arm around my back as we started walking.

             
“Even if you bri
ng a charger, there isn’t going to be electricity, you moron!” One man snapped at another man.

             
A man was gesturing to the ship in the distance while trying to communicate with a group of
Americans that were obviously very confused at his ramblings in a la
nguage they didn't know. One man opened the door of his car and pulled out two small dog carriers.

             
“All pets are being kept in the east side of the ship through lift-off.” A man in an unidentifiable uniform told him. “Did you bring their sedatives?”

             
The
man nodded and started to explain, but our feet were carrying us forward still.

             
“This is going to be so much fun, sweetheart. It’s going to be like a ride at Six Flags!” A woman was telling her crying daughter as she hugged her tightly.

             
“This is crazy, Q
uinn.” Alice commented as she looked around.

             
“I know. It’s like every country has at least a few people here.” I replied. “I think that’s a good thing. It would be no fun if we got to Pangea and there was no diversity, right?”

             
“I don’t think it really
matters.” Alice replied. “I know you’re trying to keep things positive. But diversity on Pangea should be the least of our worries.”

             
“What should we be worrying about?”

             
“Getting there in one piece. Think about it: We are going to be zooming through space
at a ridiculous speed. We’re going to cover an unthinkable amount of ground in a two weeks. I just don’t think that if spaceflight travel was that advanced, that we never would have heard about it. It seems dangerous to me.”

             
“Do you remember what they sa
id at the meeting? They kept this a secret because it was all going to be unveiled in a big ceremony. But now they have no choice but to tell us. We’re all making this ship’s first journey with them. There’s something I forgot to tell you, by the way.”

             
“What?”

             
“They’re sedating everyone.”

             
She stopped walking and looked at me, her eyes blazing.

             
“How could you have not told me that?!” She exclaimed in fury. “No! Quinn, I am not being sedated! For all we know, they’re sedating us because we have to trave
l for like, one hundred years!”

             
“What are you talking about?” I asked, wrinkling my eyebrows in confusion and stifling a bemused grin.

             
“Don’t give me that look like I’m being so ridiculous! Quinn, hello?! You’re the space nerd!
Hyper-sleep!
”

             
“This is no
t hyper-sleep! They're sedating us so we don’t all freak out while we’re taking off into space at thousands of miles per hour. I don’t want to be awake for that. Plus, they said it’s more like a cruise ship on-board than anything. Why would they make it lo
ok so nice on the inside if we were going to be asleep for so long? We’re only going to be out for the take-off. Allie, I promise, no one is trying to trick you into sleeping for one hundred years.” I grasped her hands, trying not to laugh. After a minute,
she rolled her eyes and groaned in aggravation.

             
“Quinn, if I wake up and my boobs are down to my knees…”

             
I couldn’t help it; I cracked up.

             
“You think it’s funny. But you’re the one who said you wanted to be with me forever. So, you have to deal with th
em.”

             
“I meant that, when I said it. So you’re right. See? Now I wouldn’t lie to you about this because that would be unpleasant for both of us.”

             
“Yeah, it would.” She punched me lightly in the stomach. “Keeping secrets from me… Hyper-sleep with one eye o
pen!”

             
She was trying to maintain the façade of being genuinely angry but I could see the faintest trace of a smile as she turned away from me. I was laughing even harder now as I walked behind her and ignoring the irritated glances of the people I walked
past. I’m sure they thought I was just a stupid kid that was too immature to understand the gravity of the situation. But I wasn’t just laughing because what she had said was funny. I was laughing because she was starting to show stronger signs of returnin
g to the way she had been before the end had begun. In my heart, I knew that both of us were
starting to grasp at a faint, distant hope that we were going to survive. We were going to have the life we had always dreamed of having. Whether it was on Earth,
Pangea or Pluto (the non-planet, so obviously, I’m kidding), we were going to be alright.

Violet

             
Brynna was frustrated. She was shaking her head slightly, taking long drags on her cigarette, and rolling her eyes. Maura, Penny and I were standing on the
cracked desert ground, watching her and James try to change the tire that had exploded as we drove. If James hadn’t had sufficient reflexive abilities, the car would have swerved off the road.

             
“Well, maybe you should have checked them before we left! Aren
’t men supposed to be the ones who possess all the expertise on automobiles? That’s a fallacy, obviously!”

             
“Will you just be quiet?!” He snapped at her loudly, clearly beyond frustrated. “At this point, listening to you talk is like having a spiteful, con
descending banshee screeching in my ear. If you’re going to stand there and complain at me, please, for the sake of all of us, be a little quieter about it.”

             
“I feel no need to mutter when I’m irritated, James.”

             
“Clearly.”

             
“Alright!” I snapped finally a
nd jogged over to them. “Brynna, stop being…” I shook my head slightly, coming up short on a word to properly describe her behavior, so I settled on:

             
“...
you.
James, you have to hurry up. We’re running out of time.”

             
“I know. I’m getting there, Violet.” H
e hiked the car up further on the jack and I knelt down beside him to screw in the bolts. “Thanks. Oh, look; someone else has brains in the family.”

             
“You are the most insufferable annoyance I have ever had the displeasure of meeting, James Maxwell.” Brynn
a snapped as she flicked the ember off of her cigarette.

             
The jack started to give beneath the weight of the car but James, in an impossible show of strength and reflex, got below it before it fell. He knelt with almost half the weight of the car on his sh
oulders.

             
“Yeah?” He hissed as the exertion of forcing the car up rendered him hardly able to talk. “Right back at you, sweetheart.”

             
“Would you two just stop it?!” I stood up after fixing the jack. “One minute, you’re arguing like ridiculous tweens who wa
nt to wear the same shirt. Then, you’re babbling at each other about the most stupid, ridiculous things. Bottom line: You two
never
shut
up
!”

             
“Excuse me, if you overheard the conversation that we had in the car earlier, you only heard it because we were
operating under the assumption that you were asleep. I can also assure you that the aforementioned conversation was neither stupid nor ridiculous. Furthermore, please let me remind you, that if something is stupid, it is more than likely also ridiculous, s
o your statement has been rendered moot by redundancy. Finally, even if our conversation was meaningless or mindless, it was also none of your business.”

             
“We were in the same car. What was I supposed to do?”

             
“Listen to your iPod. Plug your ears. I don’t
know!” She snapped and clearly, her exhaustion was beginning to get the best of her. Maura and Penny came over to see what was holding us up. Brynna scooped Penny up and walked around to the back of the car where the trunk was open. I heard her pull open t
he cooler we had brought, talking softly to Penny all the while. Normally, her gentle nature was not exposed to strangers or even to Maura and me. Now that she was slowing, her body weighed down heavily with exhaustion and hunger, she couldn't hide it.

             
“A
re you sleepy?” She was saying softly as she came back around where we could see her. Penny was eating a cheese stick while her head was rested against Brynna’s chest. “We are going over here to lay down while you figure out a solution to our little conund
rum. You got us into it, James, though I have little faith that you can get us out of it as well.”

             
“Maura, make her stop.” James grunted as he pulled the bolts with all the strength he could muster in his own exhaustive state.

             
“That’s enough, Brynna.” Ma
ura replied flippantly.

             
Brynna was opening a cheese stick of her own carefully.

             
“I will walk away now. If I do not, I will surely throw this cheese-stick at his head.”

             
“She’s just being funny at this point.” Maura explained to James quietly as Brynna
started to walk away.

             
“Really? I didn’t know she was capable of being funny. I thought she was only capable of foaming at the mouth.”

             
Maura and I both gasped when Brynna's half-eaten cheese stick hit James in the side of the face. I expected him to jump
up and start shouting at her in fury. Instead, he turned his head and watched her walk away, grinning to himself before starting to laugh. The cheese-stick had landed in his lap; he picked it up and shoved the whole thing into his mouth.

             
“She’s something
else, I’m telling you.”

             
“She is.” Maura replied with a sigh. “That’s kind, actually. She’s a right pain in the ass. But she is, as they say,
my
pain in the ass.”

             
When the car was finally running again, Brynna came over with Penny bundled up her jacket. W
hen I looked into my younger sister's face, I found that she had fallen asleep again.

             
“You need to wake her up, Brynn. If she sleeps now, she won’t sleep on the ship.” Maura told me.

             
“I will get her to sleep.”

             
“How? Are you going to knock her unconscio
us?” Maura asked impatiently.

             
“Do not make jokes with me. I am not in the mood. I will get her to sleep by simply...”

             
“They’re giving out sedatives for the lift-off.” James interrupted her. “It will wear off sometime after we’re in space.”

             
“Sedatives?!”
Brynna snapped at him as she laid Penny in the backseat against me. “That’s not happening, James! I don’t even let her have non-organic juice! You think I’m going to let them drug her?!”

             
“What is the alternative?” James closed the door to block out the r
est of the conversation. She was pointing at him, her eyes widened, clearly infuriated that he had kept that little secret from her. Finally, she threw her hands up and huffed to the car door which she opened and closed with gusto.