Earth Year 2065
Reyna read the scratched gold plated placard on the bolted door, Gateway of the Sun.
The lever that opened the door looked in bad shape. The grey paint was cracked and chipped, the metal twisted and torn, but the bright saffron-colored pin still held the door in place.
Just pluck it out and open the door, Reyna, she thought.
Her memory snapped her back to Earth for a moment. She was twelve again with that deep blue sky, the breeze wafting through her hair as she clutched her small fingers around the chains and her father’s hands on her back.
“This is what it will be like when we lift off into space,” her father said.
And she always responded, “Higher, Papa. Higher.”
The wind rifled through her shoulder-length brown hair, her lips split into a toothsome smile, and she raised her arms like Superman.
The CEO of Pinnacle, Jared Neri, funded the diplomatic mission to Crima in the Altrus Five system. His grandfather, Rodolfo Neri, the first Mexican scientist to travel into space, sending an unmanned module to Crima in 1985. In 2010 the module came back with data that there was life on the Altrus Five system. Jared’s mother had an Inca heritage and grew up reading about the lore and mythology. He named the craft, Gateway of the Sun, after the stone arch near Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. It was the main reason Mexican born Manuel and Reyna were chosen for this special diplomatic mission. The rest of the volunteer team comprised of a diplomat, a corporate executive, a linguistics specialist, and one engineer, Reyna’s father, Manuel. Each one of the team knew they would not be coming back from this trip.
Jared told her once, “Little Reynita will make it back. Won’t you girl?”
Manuel informed Reyna before they left, some of the issues with time dilation from space travel. The aging process continues with problems resulting from lack of gravity leading to loss of bone mass. Also, getting the right nutrition from freeze-dried foods.
A twenty-four-hour cycled program would continue throughout their space travel. This program included a scheduled REM sleep for fourteen hours with prescribed sleeping aids and an awake time of only ten hours to reduce boredom. There would be exercises, meals, spacecraft function checklists, and then studies, mostly for Reyna. As part of each ten-hour shift, her father would teach Reyna space travel engineering, literature, English, Latin, mathematics, and Latin American studies.
Earth Year 2041
Reyna, thirty-seven, and her father watched the monitors as the landing party approached the Altru diplomats and guards. The planet’s surface looked very similar to her twenty-five-year-old memories of Earth. Green grassy valleys and deep blue rivers, golden foothills led to enormous snow-capped mountains.
The Altrus’s did appear humanoid but did not have an actual human-like head but numerous charcoal-colored necks sprouting from their chest. One contained an enormous cat-like eye, another a toothless mouth, and the other was unrecognizable. Their three-digit hands fidgeted about as they spoke, and from her viewpoint through the monitors, the Altru’s grew incredibly animated all of a sudden. Corin, a linguistic specialist, attempted communication set by the prescribed outline she researched during the trip.
The rest of the team fidgeted about as Corin attempted the first contact. Reyna saw a bright splash of green-grey light, and the entire landing party was lying in body parts on the ground. Her father reached out and covered her eyes. She felt like she was twelve-years-old again while watching an R-rated movie. Then she could see her father run towards the door with the gold placard sign and started down the ladder to the surface. Before his feet touched down on the surface, he spoke into his arm, “Gateway sequence H zero M Earth.”
Reyna shouted out to him from the doorway, “No, Papa!”
The door closed rapidly in front of her as she caught the last sight of her father running towards the bloody scene as the Gateway of the Sun lifted off the ground. Reyna looked back to the monitors and could see her father running straight at the Altrus’s. Another splash of light and the monitor flickered off as the craft hurled itself into space and on its long way home.
Earth Year 2065
The Gateway of the Sun alarm went off and spoke through the speakers, “Life support at critical, ten seconds to power loss.”
Reyna ran her fingers through her shoulder-length grey-black hair. She could see her wrinkled face reflecting in the dark monitor and knew she was out of time. The neutronium powering the propulsion for the Gateway of the Sun also powered the life support functions. Her lungs felt heavy, as she had a hard time breathing the remaining O2 mix and could feel the effects.
Her eyes opened, and she pushed the pin from the door and stretched her hand out to the lever. Vamanous Reynita, time to go, she thought.
The monitors flickered, and a young Latin-American woman dressed neatly in a green business suit from Pinnacle Corporation spoke, “Gateway of the Sun, welcome home. Reyna, you made it. My father told me I would be speaking to you one day.”
Reyna did not reply.
“What are the results of the mission?” the young woman asked.
Reyna wiped her tears and said, “Mission failure, invasion imminent. Team dead.”
She glanced at the life support reading and turned, not wanting to see Jared’s daughter’s reaction to the news.
Earth Year 2065
Reyna read the scratched gold plated placard on the bolted to the door, Gateway of the Sun.
The lever that opened the door looked in bad shape. The grey paint was cracked and chipped, the metal twisted and torn, but the bright saffron-colored pin still held the door in place.
Just pluck it out and open the door, Reyna, she thought.
Her memory snapped her back to Earth for a moment. She was twelve again with that deep blue sky, the breeze wafting through her hair as she clutched her small fingers around the chains and her father’s hands on her back.
“This is what it will be like when we lift off into space,” her father said.
And she always responded, “Higher, Papa. Higher.”
The wind rifled through her shoulder-length brown hair, her lips split into a toothsome smile, and she raised her arms like Superman.
The CEO of Pinnacle, Jared Neri, funded the diplomatic mission to Crima in the Altrus Five system. His grandfather, Rodolfo Neri, the first Mexican scientist to travel into space, sending an unmanned module to Crima in 1985. In 2010 the module came back with data that there was life on the Altrus Five system. Jared’s mother had an Inca heritage and grew up reading about the lore and mythology. He named the craft, Gateway of the Sun, after the stone arch near Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. It was the main reason Mexican born Manuel and Reyna were chosen for this special diplomatic mission. The rest of the volunteer team comprised of a diplomat, a corporate executive, a linguistics specialist, and one engineer, Reyna’s father, Manuel. Each one of the team knew they would not be coming back from this trip.
Jared told her once, “Little Reynita will make it back. Won’t you girl?”
Manuel informed Reyna before they left, some of the issues with time dilation from space travel. The aging process continues with problems resulting from lack of gravity leading to loss of bone mass. Also, getting the right nutrition from freeze-dried foods.
A twenty-four-hour cycled program would continue throughout their space travel. This program included a scheduled REM sleep for fourteen hours with prescribed sleeping aids and an awake time of only ten hours to reduce boredom. There would be exercises, meals, spacecraft function checklists, and then studies, mostly for Reyna. As part of each ten-hour shift, her father would teach Reyna space travel engineering, literature, English, Latin, mathematics, and Latin American studies.
Earth Year 2041
Reyna, thirty-seven, and her father watched the monitors as the landing party approached the Altru diplomats and guards. The planet’s surface looked very similar to her twenty-five-year-old memories of Earth. Green grassy valleys and deep blue rivers, golden foothills led to enormous snow-capped mountains.
The Altrus’s did appear humanoid but did not have an actual human-like head but numerous charcoal-colored necks sprouting from their chest. One contained an enormous cat-like eye, another a toothless mouth, and the other was unrecognizable. Their three-digit hands fidgeted about as they spoke, and from her viewpoint through the monitors, the Altru’s grew incredibly animated all of a sudden. Corin, a linguistic specialist, attempted communication set by the prescribed outline she researched during the trip.
The rest of the team fidgeted about as Corin attempted the first contact. Reyna saw a bright splash of green-grey light, and the entire landing party was lying in body parts on the ground. Her father reached out and covered her eyes. She felt like she was twelve-years-old again while watching an R-rated movie. Then she could see her father run towards the door with the gold placard sign and started down the ladder to the surface. Before his feet touched down on the surface, he spoke into his arm, “Gateway sequence H zero M Earth.”
Reyna shouted out to him from the doorway, “No, Papa!”
The door closed rapidly in front of her as she caught the last sight of her father running towards the bloody scene as the Gateway of the Sun lifted off the ground. Reyna looked back to the monitors and could see her father running straight at the Altrus’s. Another splash of light and the monitor flickered off as the craft hurled itself into space and on its long way home.
Earth Year 2065
The Gateway of the Sun alarm went off and spoke through the speakers, “Life support at critical, ten seconds to power loss.”
Reyna ran her fingers through her shoulder-length grey-black hair. She could see her wrinkled face reflecting in the dark monitor and knew she was out of time. The neutronium powering the propulsion for the Gateway of the Sun also powered the life support functions. Her lungs felt heavy, as she had a hard time breathing the remaining O2 mix and could feel the effects.
Her eyes opened, and she pushed the pin from the door and stretched her hand out to the lever. Vamanous Reynita, time to go, she thought.
The monitors flickered, and a young Latin-American woman dressed neatly in a green business suit from Pinnacle Corporation spoke, “Gateway of the Sun, welcome home. Reyna, you made it. My father told me I would be speaking to you one day.”
Reyna did not reply.
“What are the results of the mission?” the young woman asked.
Reyna wiped her tears and said, “Mission failure, invasion imminent. Team dead.”
She glanced at the life support reading and turned, not wanting to see Jared’s daughter’s reaction to the news.
Reyna pushed the lever and opened the door that her father went through twenty-five years ago on Crima. Pools of blue light entered the craft and her eyes finally adjusted to see Earth again. The spacecraft had just dropped through the atmosphere, and she could see the green grass valleys, the golden foothills, and the snow-capped mountains. She stepped out and raised her hands like Superman once again.
Jack Scott Hunt 