Hello, my name is Doran Stanson. My friends tell me I make a sinister figure at one-hundred and ninety centimeters, with long fingers and my gaunt face. Put that with my unkempt dark hair and ghostly pale skin – courtesy of a lifetime living in the asteroid-belt colonies – and I look like some kinda weird space vampire, except I love garlic and people shoving crosses in my face only pisses me off. Said imposing image was ruined at the moment, however, as I was currently holding a fishbowl filled with CDs along with my carry-on bag. I am also fifteen years old and hate my life.

Okay, not really, but I’m feeling angsty at the moment. Sue me.

Anyway, my mother and I were at the Sokolov-Johnson spaceport on Ceres, waiting for the security guards to give us the okay to go on through. Such procedures had become more and more thorough and necessary over the years, what with the growing number of space pirates in the area. At first, they weren’t much of a problem; just smugglers running around in old, cruddy civilian spacecraft with one machine gun at most. Within the last twenty years, however, they had gained access to newer, faster, and all around better ships, almost on par with military spacecraft. However, they still stuck to the shadows, hiding out in abandoned or unknown asteroid mining facilities.

The spaceport was alive with chatter, a mixture of standard earth-accented English, Russian, and Spanish, mixed with some of the spacer-accented English that I was more familiar with. I heard at least two different Earthling toddlers crying; probably upset by the slightly but obviously different gravity they were now under, as well as the heavily-filtered air that circulated through the facility. Those unused to it would complain that it was too clean, as it lacked the pollutants that had now become a norm within Earth’s atmosphere.

After being frisked and metal-detected by a man that must have been in his late nineties (while some smug looking asshole was being inspected by a female maybe ten years older than me) and having my luggage x-rayed, I was allowed on through behind my mother – although at first glance, nobody would believe my claim, as she frequented the tanning salons and thus looked like a tourist returning to her tropical island home, and I towered over her by almost two feet.

“Ooh, I can’t wait to meet up with mom and Jazz on Earth,” she said, a perky smile upturning her lips. “It’s been at least eighteen years since I’ve felt real gravity.” Her voice was filled with a bit more than its usual cheer; however I nonetheless detected traces of uncertainty in her voice. I was well aware that there was one more thing she wanted to say.

Wait for it… Wait for it…

“Are you looking forward to Earth, Doran?”

I gave a nigh unintelligible huff, expressing something between wry amusement and an inner dread.

“If only to get away from the little brats and old people on the way,” I replied, and I felt a grimace spread across my face. “Ugh, three days of that… I’m not sure which will be worse; the kids’ screaming or some old man talking about a war that he only half remembers.”

My mother frowned, visibly deflating as I spoke. I sighed.

“Honey,” she said, her voice soft, “I know you hate waiting around bu-“

“Don’t worry about it,” I interrupted her. “I’d rather be stuck with them than be made into a frozen dinner for three days, and that’s not only because I end up waking up screaming halfway through.” I smirked. “Besides, I love convincing the little ones that I’m an alien in disguise that’s going to eat their brains.”

My mom managed a smile and shook her head, and we continued our way through the oncoming throngs of arrivals while keeping up with the others who were leaving. I was by no means ‘alone’ among the crowd, but I did stick out with my pale skin and ‘spacer’ clothing, which was loose-fitting but not baggy jeans, long-sleeved shirt with many pockets, Velcro straps, and loops decorating the chest and limbs, a similarly accessorized jacket, and my magnetic-sole boots. If the artificial gravity faulted up, you didn’t want to be caught without a way to easily anchor yourself to a wall. Being stuck floating in the middle of a corridor isn’t fun, especially when your friends start throwing peanuts at you when you ask if one of them could go grab a snack for you. But then you get revenge on them later in some form or another, so it’s all good…

… Especially when said retribution involves silly-string, duct tape, a folding chair, and gum, but that’s another story.

After another half an hour of standing in line, we had our tickets verified and marked and got into one of the monorail shuttles. The doors closed together tightly, and a hiss was heard as the airlock was sealed. The whirring of machinery was accompanied by a slight shift of the compartment, and then we were zooming away from the terminal and towards the spaceship, a metal behemoth that was transporting over two thousand people across the inner solar system towards humanity’s home planet, Earth… a concrete and steel covered dirtball inhabited by about three billion too many psychotic apes, also known as humans.

Suicide rates had dropped when most nations ‘recognized the right of a man or woman of adult age to end their own existence.’ Ironic, right? I guess it does make some sense, since a lot of suicides are teenagers. They figure they’ll wait until they’re eighteen and then kill themselves, provided they still want to… and, of course, by the time they reach the age of eighteen the realize that life doesn’t suck as bad as they thought it did.

After about ten-minutes, our monorail shuttle arrived at the gates into the ship. There were some more clicking and hissing sounds as the airlock opened and closed again, and the doors of the shuttle finally opened. A blast of cool air, carrying the scent of carpeting and cleaning supplies, blew in. I breathed in the familiar scent, recalling several other trips between asteroids that I had embarked on.

You’re probably wondering why my mother and I are traveling in the first place. Well, you might have already guessed, but we’re a military family. Specifically, my dad is a naval officer that was stationed in the asteroid belt for the last twenty years or so, and he had recently gotten orders to Earth. He hadn’t told us the specifics, but he said that he’d fill us in once we got settled ‘back home.’ Despite living for twenty years in space, he still considered the blue planet his home. That’s probably where most of the tension between us came, not that we fight or anything. Things just tend to get… awkward… when we talk about the move. He would be meeting us there in a couple of months, once the ship he was currently on arrived in Earth’s orbit. Meanwhile, my mom and I would move into the house and make nice with the neighbors. Moving in that of itself didn’t really bother me, but moving between asteroid stations and to Earth was not the same.

As glamorous as dependable gravity and oxygen was, I still felt like I was leaving a part of myself behind in the colonies. There’s just something about the honeycombed asteroids and the stars that just sticks with you. The risk of colonies’ life support systems failing always kept me on edge, if only slightly.

“Doran?”

I hadn’t realized that we had reached a fork in the corridor.

“Oh, right,” I said, shaking stray thoughts away. I looked down at my mother, and then to the sign that said ‘Cold Bunk Passenger Blocks A-B’ above an arrow pointing to the left, and then to another arrow pointing to the right, with ‘Central Passenger Block’ written above it. My eyes locked onto the former, and a shiver went down my spine.

“I guess I’ll see you in three days, then.”

“I love you,” she said, hugging me. I returned the hug, and then let go. “Bye.” She turned and made her way down the hallway.

“See ya.” I turned and as she did and fell in with the crowd of elderly, younger children, and a few adults and other teenagers. My long strides got me to the central block after only a couple more minutes of walking, and then I passed into the main hall.

It was a massive room, the size of a school assembly room in size, the far side with doors that entered into the bunks, showers, and cafeteria. The main hall was littered with chairs and tables, as well as a large screen on one wall that displayed departure and other travel information, as well as various safety and emergency procedures that I had long since memorized. Bookshelves, arcade games, vending machines, lined the other walls. The main hall had three stories to it, the two upper stories made up of catwalks along the walls and across the hall, supported by pillars. The entire block was set to rotate fast enough for centrifugal force to simulate earth-normal gravity. The walls were also lined with harnesses and the like to act as anchors incase of rotation failure, and there were air-powered rope launchers to reel in anyone who was stranded out in the main hall in zero gravity.

I found a secluded seat on the second floor catwalks in a corner and sat down. I made sure my ticket was still in my inside-left jacket pocket, and then pulled out a book and my CD player, looking forward to three days of solace with music pounding into my ears as I read.

And then space pirates attacked and everyone died.

And by that, I mean that several six year olds were running around pretending to be pirates and shooting everyone with their Nerf guns.

It was hours later, after the ship had finally departed from the spaceport and began its journey towards Earth, that my three days of moderately annoying damnation of harassment by toddlers and old people was upgraded to true hell.

An Earthling tourist started talking to me.

Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating. Her questions weren’t particularly obnoxious or ignorant, mostly just asking about life in the asteroid field. She displayed some manner of intelligence in that she reasoned that my pale skin and attire were a result of my environment and its necessities. Apparently it was some sort of summer project for an AP social science class that she was taking the next year. She also had the decency to introduce herself as Sarah McDougal before she started her inquisitive assault. In the end, I reasoned it wasn’t all bad. Despite my earlier remarks on Homo sapiens, I do like to have the occasional intelligent conversation with another human every now and then. After twenty minutes or so of jotting down notes, she put her electronic notebook away.

“So…” she said, fiddling with her glasses. “Are you here alone? Where are your parents?”

“My dad’s Navy and is meeting us on Earth,” I told her. “My mom’s in the freezer. She hates long trips and would rather just sleep it through.”

“My family’s the same way,” said Sarah, “but we won tickets in the lottery for a vacation out in the belt, and it was perfect for my project. Cold Sleep didn’t really appeal to me though.” She looked at me quizzically. “Why didn’t you do Cold Sleep? I mean, I figure as a spacer you’d be more used to it…”

“For the most part, you’re right,” I said, frowning. “Have you ever heard of Sokolov’s Syndrome?”

“No,” she said, her brow furrowing. “Is that new?”

“Yeah, and there’s only a few recorded cases,” I answered. “Basically, a person with Sokolov Syndrome will go into Cold Sleep like normal, but a few hours later – usually eight hours or so – the body rejects it and freaks out. Type One Sokolov’s Syndrome is a bit tamer, and basically you just wake up feeling like crap and throw up all over yourself.”

“Type One? What’s Type Two?”

I shifted uncomfortably.

“Well, Type Two is what I have. It’s just like Type One, up until you wake up… instead of feeling sick, you berserk. The mind and body reacts more violently to the drugs, and you get delusions, minor hallucinations, and your adrenaline spikes.” I grinned wryly. “When I was thirteen, I woke up nine hours into Cold Sleep and started freaking out… broke two flight attendant’s noses and sent another to the hospital.”

Sarah blinked and looked at me warily. I snorted.

“I’m not gonna go ape-shit right now,” I said.

“Oh… that doesn’t explain why you look so tense though,” she said.

I rolled my eyes, saying, “You can’t relax entirely while in space. A thousand things could go wrong at any time… small meteorites busting up the ship, technical difficulties, pirates, lots of stuff.” Sarah decided it was her turn to laugh.

“Oh come on. Pirates wouldn’t come all the way out here, and what could a little rock do to a huge ship like this?

Cue the lights flickering off.

“…shut up.”

I laughed, my voice overlapping with the screams of the other passengers.