Space Log Day 107

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It’s been over 100 days, and I am still required to write these stupid logs. As if anyone back home is still reading them. Who really cares what eight teenagers in space are learning, or what they’re thinking about what they’re learning? Mrs. Something (I can never remember her name) says they’re very important for The Department’s records.

Whatever that means.

So, hello to whoever in The Department is reading this. I hope you’re having a nice day today. Kiss the ground for all of us.

Today we learned how to check the windows to make sure they stay air-tight. Alexandra Lopez didn’t show up to mandatory training, and she earned herself an hour in detention. (Detention is getting yourself locked in one of the bathrooms, because they’re the only rooms with no maintenance equipment, no intercom, and no windows. It’s really boring.) Just to piss off Mrs. S, Alexandra shaved off all of her hair while in the bathroom. It took Mr. Banks, our janitor/head engineer/maintenance man/more-that-I-cannot-remember extraordinaire, more time to get the hair out of the sink drain than Alexandra spent in detention.

Mr. Banks has gotten used to cleaning drains of hair, though. After we all woke up from cryo when the Allure got into space, all of our hair kept falling out in chunks until our bodies adapted to being alive again.

Learning how to check the windows was cool but freaky. Knowing that one wrong move could probably kill us all made everyone very still and very quiet. Which is rare, for a group of delinquents.

During training, we’re split into two groups; one with Mrs. S, and the other with Mr. B. Jacob Kelsey and Gwen Clemons, my best friends on the ship, were both part of Mr. B’s group, and I was with Mrs. S, so I was forced to hang out with Nico Soto for the whole time. But then one of the alarms went off because the plumbing was all clogged, and Mr. B had to leave to go check on it. (It was Alex’s hair.) So the groups converged into one, and we all pestered Mrs. S until she let us stop checking the windows and go back to our common area.

I really don’t know why The Department put someone like Mrs. S in charge of this mission. She comes off as a hardass, but she’s really a softie, and even though Jake is her favorite, she loves us all. I’d ask you reading this why she was assigned to us, but it would take you too long to get back to me for it to be worth it.

Now that it’s been so long into this trip, I find myself thinking about our goal more and more. Our objective. This big secret that The Department is keeping for us. From us.

Gwen thinks that they’re sending us to some new galaxy to study planets. Jake thinks that we’re going to meet aliens that The Department has already made contact with. Once we asked Mrs. S where she thought we were going, but she just smiled at us and said, “it’s a surprise.” Which made us think that even she doesn’t know what we’re doing here.

I don’t know what I think. It must be something kind of boring, because if it was important or exciting they’d send actual astronauts and not high school kids. Sometimes I think that maybe there isn’t anything we’re heading towards; The Department just wanted an excuse to get rid of us.

Their daily letters to us (which were all sent months or years ago) sound cheery, but they also don’t reveal anything about what’s going on back on the planet.

I miss home. I miss the ground, and I miss my mom. We all do.

Nico Soto says he doesn’t miss anyone, except I’ve seen him staring at a photograph of his little brother late at night, so he’s a liar. I don’t know what Nico did to get here, onto the Allure, but I suspect I’ll find out eventually. We’re stuck with each other for about…forever, as far as we know.

I think I am going to end this log here. Gwen stole some cheese from the kitchen this morning while everyone was eating breakfast so we’re going to try to make grilled cheese sandwiches, or as close to good grilled cheese sandwiches as we can make with freeze-dried space bread and an electric stove. Don’t tell Mrs. S!

Looking forward to writing to you again tomorrow. As always.

 

Love from,

Me

Anya Schwartz is the editor for the Fiction section of the Q. She is a second year English with a Concentration in Creative Writing and Mathematics double major, and she is from Brooklyn, New York.

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