“This is Nikki reporting from planet 278402. The date is March 5th, 2067, and I have just arrived in my single person ship, and it looks like nighttime here. Tomorrow morning, I will go out in search of any living thing. The oxygen levels read high, but I’ll bring a suit just incase. You can never be too careful on a new planet you know.” I shut off the document camera, and slid into my bed. My cat Tommy curled up next to me and kept me nice and warm. I dozed off pretty quickly, and when I woke, it was to the sound of birds chirping. For a moment, I thought I was back on my home planet. Then, when I looked out the window, I realized that this place was NOTHING like earth. The trees had turquoise leaves, and maroon trunks. The grass was a bright orange, and the sky was the most magnificent color of pink. It was creamy, and looked like cotton candy, with orange streaks in it, and right on the horizon, there was a stipe of purple. It reminded me of the sun setting back at home. Me, sitting on my roof with my husband and two little boys. I shook my head. Stop. I said to myself. You can’t think like that. It’ll make your brain do weird things, and then, you might accidentally fly home without a helmet on or something. I had heard stories of single ship fliers not coming back, and then satellites picking up a signal on their ship, and JUMP (the space station that I work for) realizing that the door was open, so they must have jumped out. You would think that would make them think twice on the whole one person thing, but it saves them money, and they could really use some. Anyway, I looked around me, trying to figure out what had made the sound of birds chirping. Then, up in a tree, I saw what looked much like an enlarged bird nest, and inside was an enlarged bird egg. Then I got the feeling that I was being watched by somebody, or something. That’s when I heard a muffled cracking sound from behind me as if someone had stepped on a tree branch. I slowly turned my head around to see what looked like a pterodactyl, and it was staring right at me, or maybe at her nest that I was leaning on. Of course, my first instinct was to run, but then I realized something. This pterodactyl was a mother. I was a mother to. If I learned anything from that parenting class, it’s that all mothers are most concerned about their baby. Not the person that just shot them in the back, no. Their first priority is their precious baby. Thinking quickly, I picked up the enormous egg. With every move I made towards the egg, she stepped closer. The, I whipped it up over my head, and as she leapt at me, threw it as high as I could into the air. Then, once she was flying after it, I took my chance, and made a run for it! I ran right through the woods, and the closer I got to the ship, the closer the pterodactyl got to me. I could hear her wing flapping, and it sounded like millions of helicopters were circling around me, saving me, pulling me off the ground, and taking me high into the sky. *Boom* I got dropped. but it wasn’t a helicopter at all. No, it was the pterodactyl. She dropped me, and I landed in a puddle of mud. She was circling, trying to find me again, probably so she could feed me to her baby that was almost hatched. Quickly, I put layers of mud over my head, so I would look like part of the landscape. I waited until the helicopter sound was gone. Slowly, I pulled myself out of the mud pit, and dragged myself into my ship. I was pretty sure that I had broken both of my legs from the fall. After 20 long minutes, I finally pulled myself into my bed, put on my covers, and fell asleep. I would deal with this tomorrow, and besides, I can’t do much right now since I can’t walk. It’s too risky that the pterodactyl might still be out there anyways.


I woke to the sound of my alarm, and immediately felt the pain in my legs. It wasn’t a broken bone kind of pain though, it was a “I just got my bones welded together in this high tech machine we have on Earth called a bone welder” kind of pain. The difference is that with the bone welder, you go in while you are asleep, and it heals your bones instantly. Then, 12 hours later, the pain is so terrible that it wakes you up. After 2 or 3 minutes though, it’s completely gone, and you feel as good as new. While broken bones only hurt when you move, and that lasts until you get it fixed or take pain medicine.
“That’s impossible..,” I muttered. “There’s no way that someone could have put me in one, because one, my ship is always locked, two, the only ones in existence are down on Earth, and three, There’s no live on this planet except for dinosaur like creatures.” Now it was time to put on my thinking cap.
“Focus Nikki,” I told myself. “You gotta go out there, get a DNA sample, and then head right back to Earth, and everything will be better.” So I strapped on my hiking boots, and headed off to get something-anything that will prove that this planet is like Earth.


I had been searching for something for three hours, but with no luck. It was getting late though, so I decided that I would go back to the ship, and search again late at night with inferred goggles. I walked back to my ship quietly, and I was extra careful not to wake up anything that might be lurking in the shadows. I was almost to my ship, and my plan was to make a run for it as soon as I got close enough to, but then, I heard a big banging sound from inside my ship. All the lights were on, so I could see shadows, but I didn’t see anything moving. Then a huge shape emerged from under the windowsill. All I had to go off of was outline, but I swear, it looked exactly like the pterodactyl that I had ran away from. Then another three rose also, except they were smaller. Those must have been the eggs! Oh god! How am I supposed to get back to Earth? my head was screaming a million different thoughts. How could this get any worse? I was thinking. But just then, it did. I heard the engine turn on, and then, almost too quickly, the rocket took off. I immediately started screaming and crying all at the same time. I was half trying to get them to come back down and take me with them as hostage, and half trying to get something to find me ad make this mess up of a day over. Then I started thinking about my friends and family. I would never see them again, and I would never get to come back to earth and warn them of the dangers of this planet, and of the close resemblance to Earth. So close, that it is almost exactly like Earth, just younger. So we could start all over, making no mistakes that we made last time! And now, that chance is ruined, all because of me! That’s when I started running after the the rocket even though I knew that it had already left the ground.
“STOP! STOP RIGHT NOW!” I was yelling up at it. Then, from right behind me, I witnessed the loudest sound anyone has ever heard. I fell down and shielded my head from whatever made the horrible noise, and that’s the last thing I remember.

There were bright lights all around me, and I was in a white room.
“No, no no no no no no. This can’t be happening. I can’t be dead. No! I have t get back to Earth! I have to get back to my family! Please! No please!” I was crying so hard now that I could barely breath. I couldn’t stop thinking of who might be sent to find me, and end up with the same fate I got. The worst put was, I was all alone. There was no one else in the room, and no one to calm me down. I didn’t know what to do, so all that I could do was go to sleep. I got comfortable in the bad I was laying in, and when I woke up, I was surrounded by my crew. My captain, my fallow spacemen, and my cat.
“Oh no! I killed you all too!” I said horrified.
“No! No! We’re not dead Nikki! And neither are you!” said my captain.
“Then someone please explain to me what’s going on, or so help me, I will go crazy!” I yelled at them.
“Okay, okay, just calm down. I’ll explain everything, but first, can we get back to the station so we can get you calmed down? Do you trust me Nikki?” my captain asked.
“Yes, I do trust you captain. Okay, lets go to the station, and then you’ll tell me everything right?” I asked
“Right,” he replied.


So we went down to the station, got a drink of coffee, and sat down on some big orange chairs that sucked you in when you sat down in them. They gave me mixed emotions. Like I was getting a hug from grandpa, safe and warm, and like someone was shoving me into a corner, stuck and helpless.
“Okay captain. Start explaining,” I demanded.
“Alright Nikki. Truth is, this whole time, you’ve been training. Everything that happened with you on that other planet was just a hallucination. We put you in a fake space ship, all alone, and told you that you were training to be alone on a space mission. Is any of this sounding familiar?”
“Yes Captain, yes I think it is! And then, you left me alone to see if I would be able to handle it. You told me that there would be cameras watching me the whole time, so if anything went wrong, you would come in and get me out. Captain, why didn’t you come and get me when I accidentally landed on planet 278402?” I wondered.
“Because Nikki. You never actually landed on a different planet. in fact, you never even left the room that you slept in. You stayed bunched up in the corner the whole time.”
“So I really am alive! Oh Captain, thank you so much!”


When I realized that I was not dead, I felt more alice then ever. The only problem was that someday, I would go on a single person mission. And when that day comes, I really will be alone.