UNTITLED

Eleanor Coughlin

8th Grade • Disney II Magnet

For as long as Remea could remember, she had lived on her small ship, floating around in space, with nobody else except for the computer. She had no idea where she came from, or who her parents were. She did, however, know a few things.

She knew what year it was — 3025.

She knew that she was born about 15 years ago, although the exact date she wasn’t sure about, and if the computer knew, it wouldn’t tell her.

And she knew what she was. Remea was a human, which was one of the many species out there in the galaxy.

Human. Upon learning this, when she was eleven, Remea had started to do intensive research about humans. She loved learning about the many species that lived out in the big wide universe, although she had yet to meet anyone.

Studying humans was strange. They were quite different from many of the other species she knew lived out there. For one — they were much less advanced than many others. They had big, roaring cities with flying things they used to transport themselves around, cars, Remea thought they were called. Their atmosphere was polluted, so polluted, in fact, that they were hoping to move to one of their neighboring planets, Mars, in the next hundred years or so.

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They valued stuff like money and material things. They were very violent — wars going on constantly.

Remea couldn’t understand why they were like that. Most everybody else in the universe wasn’t. Most everyone else had been like that - but eventually, they grew out of it. Most everyone else were at peace with their neighbors and theirselves, living in small towns among nature, only needing a few simple things to survive. Most everyone else didn’t care about the riches of someone, only needing laughter and other people around them for happiness. The universe was a peaceful place - except for Earth.

So because of that, Remea assumed, she couldn’t get there. Her computer could calculate a course to any other planet she wanted — except for the Milky Way. But Remea didn’t want to go to any other planet. She wanted to go to Earth. She wanted her people, despite how terrible they were, to be the first people she would ever meet. She wanted to ask them why they were like that, why they were so full of anger and hatred.

She had found a way to get to Earth. She would travel to the nearest star, one that was just outside the Milky Way, and then she would travel towards it, until she was in it, and until she could reach Earth.

When she was eleven, Remea set off, and the journey took several years, combined with light speed jumps and just normal traveling, but eventually, she was able to get there. Turning on her cloaking device, Remea slowly approached the bustling ISS station, spaceships coming and going from Earth.

Gulping, she slowly eased the ship forward, towards the planet. And that’s when things started to go wrong.

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She should have chosen a less busy area to enter the planet, because there were ships flying everywhere — ships that couldn’t see her, as she had the cloaking device on. Remea noticed the ship that was moving towards her a second too late.

The ships collided, and her cloaking device shattered, and there was an explosion, and she flew back against the wall, and the next thing she knew, she was lying in a cold bed, beeping machines connected to her.

No. No, this wasn’t supposed to happen. She was supposed to land peacefully on Earth and find a family!

Blinking her groggy eyes open, Remea gasped at the sight of a figure standing over her. This was a person, an actual human. A doctor, she had read about those. The doctor saw Remea and hurried over.

“Oh, good, you’re up. Now, I need you to stay calm, okay?” the doctor said, but all Remea could do was gape at her.

This was a human. An actual living, being, talking person. One who was like her, one who could understand her. She thought she might hyperventilate, but she forced herself to stay calm. This wasn’t how she had planned this out.

Looking around, Remea saw that she was in a small room with lots of beeping machines and a few wires hooked up to her, and the walls were a ugly, bright yellow that she assumed was to make patients happy, but just made her want to throw up. The doctor was typing something on a hovering, slightly see through computer. A doorway was in the middle of one of the ugly yellow walls, and Remea saw the shadow of the person before the person came through it.

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It was a woman, with long black hair and piercing hazel eyes walked in, frowning, a look on her face that said she wasn’t pleased at all. “So, you’re the girl who caused so much trouble,” she accused in a tight voice. “Tell me. What’s your name, girl?”

So much trouble? Had her crashing into another ship really caused that much problems? “I’m Remea,” she answered, and holy cow, she was speaking to another human. No way this was real.

“Captain Mendoza,” the woman answered. “The ship that crashed into you was called the USS Falcon, and it was mine.” Oop. That wasn’t good. “Many of the people that were in the crash are fine. A few... are not.”

Remea felt sick. This wasn’t good, this wasn’t good at all. What a great first impression she had made.

Footsteps were heard outside of the room, and an old man with a silver cane walked in. There were many badges on his uniform, and Remea judged by the way Captain Mendoza nodded to him, and by the way the doctor stopped her work to acknowledge his presence, that he was an important person.

“Remea, this is Colonel Jones. He is —”

“Bah!” Colonel Jones interrupted, waving his cane in the air. “Enough with the boring introductions. And no Colonel for me, no thank you. Call me Jones, everyone does — other than Ms. Procedures over here.”

Remea almost laughed at the Colonel’s joke and the Captain’s exasperated but humorous roll of her eyes, but she didn’t think that Captain Mendoza would like that. She didn’t want to make her first impression even worse than it already was.

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“Now, tell me, little lady. Who are you? And why are you here?”

So Remea told the story of her past, how she was raised on her ship with only the computer, how she had learned how she was human, how she was determined to find Earth before going anywhere else. The two officers listened intently, and so did the doctor, who was trying to make it look like she wasn’t eavesdropping and failing miserably.

“You should have left Earth alone, little lady. We’re pretty annoying people. Everyone and everywhere else are much better than us,” was the first thing Jones said after she finished talking.

Captain Mendoza rolled her eyes at that. “Colonel has been sent in to listen to your story and decide your verdict.”

“And I have decided it.”

“Already?”

“Already. Since we have no idea who your family is, you will be placed in a temporary one, for however long I deem necessary for both you and the family. And you will be placed under the guardianship and family of...” A goofy but mischievous smile appeared on his wrinkled face, and Jones spun to look at the woman besides him. “Captain Mendoza.”

“What? No, Jones, you can’t do that!”

“I believe I can, actually.”

Remea watched the argument with a sinking heart. Captain Mendoza seemed like the polar opposite of all the families she had read about. Families and parents were kind, loving, caring. The Captain, or what Remea could see of her so far, was cold and harsh. She didn’t want this.

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Neither did Captain Mendoza, judging by her glaring face. “I already have a kid that I need to take care of! He’s only six!”

“Remea can help take care of him.”

“I’m not handing Peter over to some girl who crashed into my ship!”

Remea coughed loudly, and the adults blinked at her, as if they were just remembering that she was there. “Do I get a say in any of this?”

“No!” Mendoza snapped, before realising that she had condemned Remea to her guardianship with that. “I mean, yes, yes you do.”

Jones laughed and patted her shoulder. “First choices only. These are my orders, Captain. You’re not one to disobey them.”

Mendoza looked long and hard at Jones, who returned her gaze, until she broke away and sighed. “Fine. I will take the girl into my custody.”

It started when Remea got out of the hospital. She was shown around the ISS — it was huge. Apparently when it was just starting out, it could only support about six people. Now it had over a hundred.

She and Mendoza and her son Peter were to stay on the ISS for another month, and then they would go down to the Captain's home on Earth. Remea was excited to see Earth, but she wasn’t looking forward to leaving Jones, who visited her every day and had quickly become her friend.

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Remea was Peter’s friend too, according to him. The young boy was really sweet — and hyper. Extremely hyper. He wasn’t allowed any sugar, and Remea feared what would happen if he ever got into a bag of candy and ate some. He would probably be able to fly.

Everyone on the ISS was very kind to her, and quickly taught her how life and people worked. Remea had read up as much as she could about it on her ship, but doing things and experiencing the world was very different than simply reading about it. People were complex, with a billion feelings, and not everyone thought the way she did, so they could get hurt or angry over something she never would have meant to be insulting. Luckily, most people accepted that Remea was new to everything, and still learning. Most people.

And most people meant not Captain Mendoza. She seemed to have an open hostility to Remea, and to everyone else but Peter and sometimes Jones, was simply cold and strict. So the question that kept popping up into Remea’s head was why? Why was Mendoza so angry at life? Remea had tried asking Jones, because the two officers were friends, despite Mendoza’s formal tone, but he had just smiled, shook his head, and told her that she needed to find that out for herself.

The question that came after that, adding onto the why, was now how? How was Remea supposed to get Mendoza to open up to her if the older woman seemed to hate her? It was frustrating. All she had wanted was a family, a mother, but Mendoza seemed absolutely against it.

Those were the thoughts running through her head as she looked nervously out the window of the spacecraft she was in,

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traveling quickly towards the atmosphere of Earth. In the two seats next to her were Mendoza, reading a book, and Peter, sleeping. The two had been from Earth and back too many times for the trip to be interesting anymore, but Remea’s heart felt like it was going to beat out of her chest. She was going to Earth. And hopefully there, she and Mendoza would bond, because the Captain had no troops to order around.

Remea would be arriving there during the start of fall, a season where the warm, sunny weather started to chill and the leaves on the trees started to turn gold and brown and fall. Of course, she had no idea what any of those things really meant, but she had read about it and Jones had told her many stories about what life was like down on the green and blue planet.

It went so quick, all of it. Arriving at the station. Stepping out onto solid land for the first time in her life, people rushing all around her, the air so fresh, everything so bright, it was like she had stepped onto a whole new world. Which she had. But that wasn’t the point.

Then she was in the air, sitting on a seat in a compartment that rushed through the blue sky, other compartments just it like going by next to them. Cars, they were called.

The car she was in split off from the rest of them, floating down to the ground, landing in front of what Remea assumed was a house. She had read about them, seen pictures of them, but obviously hadn't been in one, like most of the things in the universe.

Mendoza turned to her, and looked her in the eyes. Opening the door, she gestured for Remea to go in. The moment she stepped in the door, Remea knew that there was no going back.

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This was her new life, and she was going to make the best of it. Starting with getting Mendoza to like her.

She tried everything, helping out around the house, doing exactly what the Captain told her to, taking care of and playing with Peter, being extra nice and sweet, even if she just wanted to snap at her and yell, “Why can’t you just accept me and like me? Can’t you see that I want that, why don’t you?”

Remea was beginning to think that it was hopeless. Then, everything changed.

It was a warm Sunday afternoon, and they had gone on a picnic. The three of them were sitting on a large cliff, overlooking the ocean. There was a few other families scattered about, as this was a popular place to go, but it was very peaceful. Mendoza was reading a book, Remea was zoning out, and Peter was playing with a toy.

Or he was playing with a toy.

Remea was snapped out of her thoughts when she realised that Peter was no longer sitting beside her. Glancing around, she saw that Mendoza was still engrossed in her book, and Peter was...Peter was...shoot.

Peter was chasing a butterfly that was heading to fly right over the edge of the cliff.

Springing to her feet, Remea sprinted towards the young boy, and with a jump, grabbed him, pulling him to her chest, right before he was going to step into the air, almost tumbling down the cliff herself before falling backwards.

“Hey!” Peter exclaimed, glaring at her. “I was going to catch it!”

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“No, you weren’t,” Remea grumbled softly, but he had already scrambled out of her arms and run away to do something else. She turned around to see Mendoza standing, staring at her in shock.

“You saved him. You risked your own life to save Peter.”

“Of course! I wasn’t just going to let him walk off the cliff,” Remea exclaimed, scratching her neck.

Mendoza rushed forward and wrapped Remea up in a tight hug. “Thank you,” she whispered. Remea stiffened, then slowly patted her back.

“Uh, you’re welcome.”

After that day on the cliff, Mendoza had started to warm up to Remea. She had invited her to make dinner with her, had started asking about her day, had started actually doing things with her. Remea responded with positivity, enjoying the time she got to spend with Mendoza. She wasn’t as cold as the girl had once thought, and she began to get to know more about her.

Eventually, a year passed. Remea was enjoying her life, and happy with her family, and had completely forgotten that she was only supposed to stay with Mendoza and Peter for one year until Jones showed up at the door one day.

“Jones?” Remea exclaimed in surprise, giving him a hug. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to ask if you want to stay.”

“Want to stay?” By this point, Mendoza and Peter had joined her.

“If you want to stay with us. As a family,” Mendoza clarified softly, and realization dawned on Remea’s face.

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“Oh.”

“If you don’t you’ll be living with me and my wife, Leah. But the choice is up to you.”

Remea had to admit, the offer to live with Jones was tempting. But as she looked over at Peter and Mendoza’s faces, so filled with hope and fear, she made her decision. “I’d like to stay here,” Remea answered firmly, turning back to Jones, and he smiled.

Peter yelped in happiness and hugged her, Mendoza and Jones joining in, and that was when Remea knew.

She had found her home.

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