*RANDOM STORIES COLLECTION*
(A new idea of mine. let me know if you like it!)
Milo Maxwell sighed as he returned the entry column back to its original loading position and entered the command keys to engage the sequence again. He loaded another pod remotely into the chamber, locked the shield clamps down and slid the human sleep chamber into the firing bay. He powered the shields, engaged the heatsync and fired the single man unit off. Giving a small wave with one hand and a sarcastic salute with the other as the firing mechanism returned to it’s starting position he repeated the steps. He still had over three hundred individual pods to fire into the ether and frankly wished he could change their course to send them directly into the nearest sun.
Milo loaded the next pod, another millionaire businessman named Franklin T. Custer, and fired the pod off. His salute was a more sarcastic middle finger this time. Frankly, Milo was pissed. He’d never got the breaks. All his life he’d worked hard to earn barely enough money to live. He was nearly thirty, and in this day and age, for the work he’d done, he should be in one of the pods he was currently shooting off into space, destined for the new world of prosperity.
The latest space program, codenamed New Dawn, was an open program sending anyone healthy who could afford it on a deep space journey across fifteen solar systems to rendezvous with a distant planet with a habitable atmosphere. The planet, nestled in a twin starred, sixteen planet solar system, was faithfully called Aandora, a mix of Pandora and a few other names from well known sci-fi series. The planet was a haven, a completely clean copy of Earth. Early space exploration teams had been there, sampled the rich ground and the pristine air. They had reported of endless crystal clear water and long, green grasses, blooming flowers and flourishing wildlife. And then, within hours of their arrival, they had gone offline.
Every deep space exploration vessel has systems built to guide it home in the case of catastrophic failure, so that even if the crew perish, their bodies can be returned, or at the very least, the ship can be analysed. Three months after they went offline the exploration crew’s ship returned to home without any trace of the crew itself. Only samples, three tiny samples, rattling about abandoned in the cabin. With these, the scientists back home were able to determine that the planet was of optimal capacity for sustaining human life and as soon as the governments got hold of the information, multi-trillion dollar investments were made in programs. The most successful of these, developed in the vast empty space of the Utah desert, was a massive space gun approximately fifteen kilometers long. When done, it stretched high into the stratosphere and boasted five thousand specially designed cryogenic pods built to hold one person and exactly five kilograms of luggage. The pods, incredible feats of technology, would sustain their transport cargo for the three month deep space jig to the new world.
Everyone else would be left behind.
Each trip cost nearly fifty thousand dollars. A small fortune to anyone not a millionaire. On top of this, in depth physicals, mental checks, spacial training and orientation and preparation cost another packet. By the time you were ready, any millionaires making the journey were nearly likely to be bankrupt. It didn’t matter. It was a one way journey. Leaving, as far as your finances and belongings that weren’t going with you in the 5 Kg luggage hold, were left as per your will. You were, effectively, dead. But, so everyone thought, you were destined for a new life. You would be reborn on the new planet, a fresh start offered to you.
It was romantic, desirable, and downright heavenly. People attempted to steal the identities of those who publicly announced their departure. Mass stormings were held. But, throughout this, the facility was successfully defended from the public and within two months all the pods had been bought. And then they began firing.
Milo was another hundred pods down and, as far as he felt, lacked a hundred less brain cells as well for it. Politicians, businessmen, artists and public figures all shot out into the stars and each time Milo had a sarcastic comment for them. It was the least he deserved.
‘And fuck you too, Margret H. Shitsville.’ Shoom, off she went.
Milo wished beyond desires he could simply step off the platform, take one of the smarmy buggers out of their pod and climb in himself. Oh, if only. Any kind of tampering, however – even moving back on the mounted railing towards the shielded containment exit – would result in immediate expulsion. And, unfortunately, when handling people who had paid close to or over a million dollars for the trip, simple firing wasn’t quite enough. He would likely be locked up, possibly executed. This shit counted as treason.
Milo unhappily pressed the same buttons over and over, loading, preparing, and firing living people across space at a thousand miles an hour. He worked through them, one after another, until there were fifty left. As he pulled the pin and depressed the trigger, all the buttons on the desk turning green, another pod shot off the mark and as the mechanism reset he turned and leaned against the console with his eyes closed. He knew the sounds by now and even knew it would be exactly 18 and a bit seconds to reset. He took some deep breaths, slightly happier that he was almost done. Six seconds in, he opened his eyes.
There was a woman standing before him, a flawlessly skinned, pristine-uniformed woman with straight dark red hair and glasses. She held a clipboard to her chest with one hand while the other hung by her side. Milo shot off the console, standing upright and hoping his shabby clothes were acceptable for duty. Behind him, in the launching cabin, the gears and system ground back to position and reset.
‘Uh, hello, I was, um…’ Milo stammered. He was flustered that she’d caught him at the one time he’d chosen to relax. He could be killed for this. She looked staffy, official, but what part of the staff she was he did not know. He didn’t recognize the dark red jacket or black skirt. He noticed her features as he took this in and nearly mentally slapped himself for it. She smiled as he talked and held up her hand. He was almost mesmerized by it, though why, other than it’s flawless, perfect, soft skin, he didn’t not know.
‘Please. I am not here to get you in trouble.’ Get him in trouble? What did she mean? That didn’t sound much like something a staff member would say…
She stepped closer to him but rather than moving to view the console or the mechanism below she stood before him. She was almost his height, a little less than half a head shorter. She reached up and ran her fingers ever so gently over his hair and down his face, her touch lighting electric sparks on contact. He naturally moved a little into her hand, slightly tilting his head despite himself.
‘You want to go there, don’t you?’ She whispered. Without the mechanism movement it was dead quiet. Her soft, silky voice flowing over him.
‘You want to so bad.’ He merely nodded. Her hand ran open palmed over his shoulder and down his chest.
‘You need to go there.’ Another nod, the hand kept moving.
‘You have to be there.’ The hand went lower.
‘You will get there.’ She said, placing great emphasis on the will, as though he truly would stop at nothing to get in a pod and leave. Her hand slid over his crotch, and he felt the soft skkin on him like there was no clothing between them at all.
She dropped the clipboard and unzipped him. With effortless efficiency she reached in and wrapped her hand around him. And she pulled.
His mind fogged, his body went numb. With each movement up and down the feeling doubled. Before long he was lost to consciousness and lolled back and forth on her hand.
‘Now go, my child. Become one with us.’ She whispered, as she gently tightened her grip on him and, a white glow emanating from the place in his pants her hand was buried, she raised her other hand and placed it, also glowing, on his cheek. He came and flopped to the ground, her crouching to stay on him as he ejaculated. When he was done, she removed her hand, taking care to position his meat and rezip his clothes. Then, she straightened her uniform, took up her clipboard, and strode out, her fine rear wiggling in the tight skirt as her eyes emitted a gentle, almost alien glow.
When Milo woke, he felt amazing. He stood, and saw the console. With speed, he executed the next pod for release. Then he vaulted the railing and dropped to the floor of the firing ground. The vast, huge machine before him stood proudly, reaching miles and miles into the sky. Alarms began to whine up above but he didn’t hear them. The line of pods on their feeder belt were on the far side. He jogged over to the line and ducked as the huge rushing sound of the mechanism firing rang out. It was a lot louder down here. Standing up again he continued to the belt, jumping up over the pylons and beams that connected the base of the device. Behind him, three armed officers ran through the shield on the door, and immediately drew their weapons, only loosing a few shots into the area around him. But it was useless, by now he was behind the comparative shielding of the pipes and belts. Jumping onto the conveyor belt he ran behind the brushes, the thick bristles cutting him in too many places to count. Still he went on, a powerful driving desire fueling him beyond logic or common sense. He found the nearest pod and took the service driver from his belt. Only really designed for basic cleaning and maintenance on the console above, he applied the device to the pod’s door. The invisible waves did nothing, so he tried the circuit panel. Still nothing. Outside, the three officers dropped haphazardly to the floor and began to chase.
Milo checked the baggage compartment and found a loose side. Without the external shielding the inside case of the pod was comparatively soft and he peeled the metal back. Inside he pulled out the solid box containing this pod’s occupant’s valuables and reached in. With the device, he found a hidden panel at the back. Tearing it open it saw wires and tore them out. The pod interior went red, and a hiss emitted as the door opened. Replacing the wires, Milo pressed the panel back, returned the box to help shield it, and bent the cover back over it. It was shabby, but it should be enough. He ran to the front and pulled the rather large man inside out. As he did so, the belt began to move, knocking him off balance. The three armed men outside were also knocked off their feet as the pod moved out to the loading bay. Milo climbed in, did the belt up and realized he couldn’t shut the door. He grabbed at the inside rails, pulling it hard. It swung down and slammed shut, it’s power support gone. Milo then realized it woudn’t lock without the power mechanism and, in a brief moment of realization, he unstrapped the belt, extended it to maximum and tied it to the inside hand rail. He rolled past the brushes and saw the three men outside. They watched as he was loaded into the mechanism base. It was too late for them, as a charged shot at the pod could rebound into the machine.
It was now that Milo noticed another problem. He was awake. Looking around he saw above him a sticker on the window that read “In event of sudden awaking, DO NOT PANIC. Remember your training! Press the “Sleep” button on the console to your left to restart cryosleep process.” Milo shrugged and hit the green button. A hiss sounded, and he began to relax back into the shaped container. He felt naturally sleepy, closing his eyes. Outside, the shield and thruster unit was attached to his pod and the device rumbled as he was lifted into firing position. He shook about in the oversized mould and then all was calm. Firing time.
Milo fell into a deep, three month sleep just as the magnetic rockets came to life and he was catapulted up into the sky at several thousand miles an hour, his pod carrying him on a direct journey into the stars towards his new home.
Three long months passed. Three months of sleep. Milo didn’t wake much and the shield unit on his pod kept all in order. He floated about in the pod, the natural gravity emulation apparently something else he’d disconnected in the back. He flew at thousands of miles towards the distant planet. The miracle of the invention was not that hundreds of rockets could be launched towards the planet, but rather the way they did so. Pods were carried in a magnetically shielded chamber, a series of long beams that soared into the sky above earth, negating the natural gravity and force of the atmosphere. Once in the stratos, they were released and the force behind the take off carried them the rest of the way. Hence, extra rockets and a live crew were eliminated.
If Milo had been awake, he would have been able to see, in the distance above him, one rather bright little star. It would, no matter where he was on his journey, be the same distance above him.
It was the last pod to be fired before him. And above that soared another. And another.
A great line of sleeping people flew through space towards the planet they would soon call home.