Maggie Johnson

The End of the Beginning

A tall woman sat in the corner of a large house peering through an even larger telescope. She wore a white coat, and her hair was swept up in a very neat bun. She held a clipboard in one hand and was adjusting the telescope with the other.  Had you tried to talk to her, there would have been no response; this woman was always absorbed in her work.  Not in the bad way, though, for she had nothing else around her to neglect.  She had been cut off from most of her friends when she began her work. By now, your probably wondering whom this woman was what exactly she did for work. Well, to start, her name was Traciana Mahogany and she worked for the president. She was one of the very few chosen to work in this certain department, and the only one who had survived the assassins.  Traciana Mahogany worked for the president and she was looking for a new planet to colonize on.  After all, people would need somewhere to live after the planet known as earth died.  

Let me try to begin at the very beginning. This is the year 3797 and, just as Michel Nostradamus had predicted, the world is dieing. About 8 years ago, when President Maria Black sent people out to examine the rapidly dieing trees, she found that it was more than the trees that were dieing.  Her “crew” had come back with the news that the people surveyed in that area were also extremely sick, and dieing if not already dead.  The disease resembled something of the plague, but you really never could be too sure.  After all the tests her “crew” ran came back, it was concluded that the earth was dieing.  The President then appointed 5 people to search for a new planet to live on, one that could support human life.  Once word got out that this was going on, some citizens began to rebel and assassins killed 4 of the 5 astronomers.  The last one, Traciana Mahogany, had then been placed in a special house towards the north where she could easily study the stars. This is what she found and what happened after she found it.

Traciana Mahogany sat by her telescope, deep in concentration.  The stars she saw were burning brightly and she could easily identify the constellations, even some of the newer ones the Greeks have found.  They were all there; Idago the Hippogryph, the Great White Shark, Sisca the cat, all baby names, but much easier to remember.  And among those stars were planets, about 16 of them, all rotating around a sun.  Each one of them had several moons, and some even had as many as 25.  The planets had been examined closely and advanced technology had produced space probes to walk on the planets and take pictures. Then there was a breakthrough; the pictures taken by the probes and the tests run on one of the planets had proven that that planet was suitable for human life.  All this had been found through that very telescope in which Traciana was looking through.  The only thing left before colonization was a route in which to get to that planet. It had been named after her, Planet Moira (Moira was her middle name). 

            And it was up to her to find the route.  About ten minutes later, Traciana let out a deep sigh and pushed her chair away from the telescope.  The search for a good route had been proven futile for now, and she tired of her constant work with the telescopes and the computers and the graphs and the charts.  Everything was just so complicated; there were too many risks in every single possible route she found.  It was either too far, or it took too long, or it didn’t lead directly to the transporter that they built for the trip, or you had to pass one of the many new formed suns and would most likely burn up from the extreme heats.  She put her eye back to the telescope and searched the stars.  The president had given her special equipment so that she could chart the skies with great meticulousness.  The stars are extremely beautiful at night, even if they are just gas balls, Traciana thought.  Sometimes she longed for companionship, but never gave it a second thought, she was too busy trying to save the world. With that thought, Traciana turned off her computers and went to bed.

            The very next morning Traciana was back at work, searching as well as she could through the daylight.  Lucky for the new technology, it was possible then.  Traciana worked for a while without finding a single thing.  She was about to give up; she had been working on this particular thing for the past 5 years.  She looked and searched and explored until she was nearly at her wits end, day after day after day after day.  She had settled something with herself a while ago, no matter what happened, she would always look one more time. So that’s exactly what Traciana did, she looked one more time.  The stars were there and so was the circular transporter, which was placed about a couple thousand light years away, the only safe distance.  The transporter was there, the sun across from the transporter, and the stars in between. The sun would pull you in if you went on that side, and there were asteroid storms on the other side.  If you went straight in you might not end up in the right spot, you had to enter the transporter from an angle.

            Traciana moved from her telescope to her computer in exasperation. There seemed to be no way around the fact that earth was doomed for all eternity.  The earth was dieing because the sun’s force was dieing, and we needed a new, closer sun, which happened to be on the planet they needed to get to.  At that moment Traciana was struck with a brilliant idea. She shamed herself for not realizing it before, but there wasn’t much time for that. She picked up the phone and quickly dialed the President’s phone. This was really big news.

            The phone rang and the President immediately picked up. “Hello?” the young women’s voice said.

            “Hello, Maria. I have very important news for you. I think I just figured out how to get to our planet.  The minute I tell you, you better get working on it, and ill be there as soon as I can.” Traciana replied, her words tumbling out of her mouth like a swift brook.

            “Mom? Is that you? What have you got for me?”

            “Do you still have that gravitational gist?”

            “You mean the stuff Jakkin made? Yeah, I think so. Why?”

            Traciana’s hands were trembling with excitement as she spoke.  She tried to calm down, because she knew that every bit of information was vital. “I need you to put that substance on the vessels carrying us through to the planet. It can repel the sun’s gravitational pull and we can get through without harm. Do you understand?” she said slowly.

            An eerie silence fell between the two women and Maria was the one to break it. “I’ll get Jakkin to make more. We’ll leave on the first of May. I’ll see you then, mother.”

            The first of May came and Traciana was sitting inside Lucky, the craft that would be taking them to their new home. Everyone was silent, anticipating what was to come. The ship eventually lifted off the ground and immediately went into hyper drive. It swerved and dipped and rolled right up to the sun that was blocking the route. Everyone was holding their breath, not knowing what was in store for them.  The ship gave a little jolt…..and turned into the transporter without hesitation. They were safe. Mankind was going to be able to continue living. The new world approached them at a rapid speed and a cheer went round Lucky. It was home, their home.