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Fly Among The Stars
“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you will land among the stars.” -Les Brown
JD read the quote continually.
“Hmph. What a load of crap.”
He was stranded in deep space for 2 months and lost communication with everyone else in the Universe. The radio and almost all electronics on board had stopped working. Reading the few books, he had brought again and again along with the voice of Serena (the ship's AI) was the only thing keeping him sane.
The light was flickering, and his oxygen supply was running low. He had almost run out of food and water, not that it mattered. If anything was going to run out first, it was the oxygen.
To confirm his thoughts, Serena spoke. “Oxygen at 5%.”
“So this is how it ends, huh,” he sighed. He was out of reach from home or any place that humans had inhabited at one point.
JD had left his fiancée back on Prime, and everything else he had loved so that he could find a new planet. Mars had been overrun by humans and left desolate like the Earth before it. His home planet, Prime, was on the same path, leaving humanity on a universal quest for a new ‘home’. So far, no planet had been found.
To make matters worse, the planets, Prime, Earth, and Mars, could not afford to make two-way trips. The astronauts had been told that they would either find land and live or die trying.
I guess I’ll be one of the lucky few who died trying, with my luck.
“Oxygen at 1%. Now commencing destination search,” Serena stated.
“Good luck with that,” JD sighed.
He was losing every ounce of hope he had left as fast as he was running out of oxygen. He fought to keep calm, but it wasn’t easy.
I’m going to die here.
It was all he could think and there was nothing he could do. Tears were rolling down his face. He had left everything behind, all due to his stupidity. He could have declined the offer, and stayed at home. He could have been with all that he loved back home.
“Dammit… I don’t wanna die….”
“Destination found. Now diverting route.”
