I sighed, "This has to be the worst part of all this. At least before we could measure by sight how far away and if we were drifting the right way, but all this time stuck inside of a black hole is crap" I said, taking my frustrations out on something else besides my feelings for Brandon.
Brandon nodded, "Yes I know, but maybe there is something we can do to pass the time" he said.
I tilted my head to the side, "Like what?" I asked, somewhat afraid of what he would say.
"Have you ever played poker?" he asked.
I shook my head, "No."
He put his hands together and rubbed them, "Oh good, then I can teach you. Thinking about the cards will take you mind off of, Um, things" he said, obviously not meaning the black hole anymore.
Determined to do anything to avoid a conversation about what had happened I agreed to learn poker. We walked over to the table and he started to show me the basics of the game. I had never known that poker was such an intricate game. I felt like I was continually trying to solve an old Rubik's cube, always seeming to make the wrong move.
"Okay, so let me just get this in my head before I show you my cards. The best hand I can get to win is a Royal Flush, which is Ace, King, Queen, Jack and Ten in the same suite, is that right?" I asked him, looking down at my hand and wishing I could just once get a Royal Flush.
Brandon nodded, "Yes. Well, unless you are playing with wild cards, but we aren't advanced enough for that" he said.
I put my hand up to my forehead, "I don't understand why this is so damn hard for me" I said.
He laughed, "We just started, it'll take you a while to get the hang of it, but eventually you will. We have lots of free time on our hands for you to learn" he said.
"If you say so" I said.
"Okay, so it's now been called, so not more betting. Now you show your hand" he said, laying down his cards. I looked at what he had and saw that he had two Aces and three Queen Cards.
I groaned, "Jeez, you have a full house. That's the only one I know, and I know that it's good" I said, laying my cards down onto the table in front of me.
Brandon looked down at it, "You have two pair, that's not too bad" he said.
"Is it enough to beat you?" I asked, looking down at the cards I had thought were horrible.
He shook his head, "Unfortunately no. But, that's the best hand you've managed so far, so it's an improvement" he said.
Over the next few weeks, things started to get back to normal between Brandon and me. We woke up in the morning, checked all of our gauges and wrote in our journals, then after eating breakfast got down to business and played poker. My hands were improving, but I still hadn't managed to actually beat Brandon yet. Something about playing poker made things less awkward between us and it was almost as though nothing had ever happened between us, almost like the way things were when we were kids and didn't even realize that we were different from each other.
I looked up at Brandon and saw that he was keeping his usual poker face as we were ready to call. I looked back down at my cards and focused on keeping my face as still as I could. I had never before had a better hand and I was hopeful that maybe the time had finally come that I would beat him.
"Okay Rose, what do you have?" he asked.
I looked up at him and groaned, "Oh, I only have.. Four of a kind!" I yelled a little too enthusiastically. "Now show me what you have" I said, calculating in my head that the only had that could possibly beat me at this point was the dreaded Royal Flush.
He smiled and set his cards down on the table, "I have three of a kind, all aces" he said.
I sat for a minute staring from my cards to his, trying to let them sink in.
"Did I just win?" I asked, afraid that some rule was going to come up that I didn't know about.
He smiled and nodded, "Yes Randi, you beat me" he said.
I jumped up from the chair, knocking it out from behind me as I whooped, "Yes! I finally beat you sucka! In your face!" I yelled, doing my awkward winner dance.
Brandon laughed, "Happy to see you are such a graceful winner" he said.
"Hey, after watching you beat me for about three million games, I deserve a little celebrating" I said.
He nodded, "Yes that you do, congrats" he said, standing up and pulling me into a hug. For a split second my heart stopped beating and I felt the awkwardness want to start back up inside of me, but the happiness of finally beating him took over.
He quickly pulled out of the hug, "Now that you have a good concept of the game, I think we should raise the stakes a little bit" he said.
"What do you mean?" I asked him.
"Well, maybe we should start playing for money" he said. "Unless you are a chicken."
I put my hands on my hips, "I am no chicken sir. You are on!" I yelled, running toward my bedroom giggling.
Chapter Eleven
"Randi!" Brandon yelled from the control room.
I leaned my head out of the workout room, "What?!" I yelled back.
"You need to come here, we are about to pull out of this black hole!" He yelled.
I quickly grabbed my towel and wiped the sweat off of my face. I had just finished my workout and was about to head to the shower. Well, the shower would have to wait because finally getting out of this black hole was more important.
I ran into the control room and sat down in my chair, looking over at Brandon who was watching the navigation system.
"It says here that we should pull out in about thirty seconds" he said looking over at me.
I suddenly realized that I wasn't wearing very much, and was wet and sweaty at the same time. I almost always worked out in yoga pants and a tank top, and for some stupid reason had decided to go with a white top today. Luckily I was wearing a white bra underneath it, so no matter how wet I was with sweat, nothing should be showing through.
Brandon's eyes darkened as he looked down at me, and I tried to ignore the hungry look in his eyes and hoped the he would soon be too distracted to pay attention to what I was wearing.
"So we should see something soon?" I asked, looking back out of the window into the darkness.
"Hopefully" he said, I could see him still looking at me in the corner of my eye, but decided to ignore it at the moment.
"Brandon look! There is some light here in the corner already" I said with excitement, seeing an orange light start to appear and get brighter by the second.
I heard the navigation beep as we finally pulled out of the black hole and was looking at the new solar system for the first time.
I sucked in air as I looked out at a solar system that looked nearly identical to the one we had just left. We had come out right next to a planet that looked exactly like our Mars. It even had the red color that we had come to know so well in the years that we had sent people to live on it.
"I'm going to go look out of the telescope" I told him.
He nodded, looking out of the window, "Make sure it's taking pictures would you?" he asked, not looking away.
I ran to the middle of the room and walked up the ladder that would take me to the upper part of the ship that housed only supplies and the viewer to our large telescope that continuously took video and pictures.
I walked over to the computer screen and check that it was still taking pictures and saw the pictures crossing the screen and getting saved into the database. I took a second to scroll through a few of them and was awed at how beautiful these planets were, so similar to our own.
I reached over and pulled out the manual view finder and zoomed into the red planet, wanting to see if the pattern of craters were the same as Mars. I gasped as I realized that there were very few craters, unlike Mars. This planet looked young, much younger than our own, and if I would have to guess from looking at it, I would say it is only a few hundred years old. There was also one huge difference from our Mars, and that was the fact that there was not the huge bubble we had constructed on Mars to make a part of the planet inhabitable for humans.
&
nbsp; "Hey, see anything good?" Brandon asked from behind me.
I pulled away from the telescope and nodded my head, "Yes. Come and take a look at this red planet that looks like Mars. It looks very young to me. Tell me what you think" I said, moving to the side so that he could see into it.
He reached down and put his eyes into the lens, "Wow, Randi I think you are right. I would say it looks around maybe five hundred years old to me" he said without turning.
"That's exactly what I thought" I said, looking down at the computer as the pictures it was taking continued to scroll through the screen.
"This is incredible Randi. That would mean that this solar system is not very old at all. Do you understand the possibilities of this? There could be other solar systems out there that haven't even fully formed yet" he said, finally pulling away and looking at me.
"When do you think we should be able to see the other earth?" I asked.
He looked back into the telescope and moved it around, trying to find the angle that they would first catch a glimpse of the planet.
"Oh, I would say that we should be able to see it soon. Once we get around this planet it should be the closest planet from there on our path. Maybe a few days I would guess" he said.
I nodded as I turned to go back down the main part of the ship. I walked back over to my chair and looked out again, taking in the sights.
"You know, now that I see it again, I think their stars and sun look younger too, don't you think?" Brandon asked, sitting down next to me.
I looked over to where you could see the sun in the distance. It did in fact look younger, smoother, as though it wasn't as agitated by time as our was.
"I think you are right" I said.
"This information is going to be huge when we get back" he said.
I sighed, "Going home sounds like something that will happen so far away from now. We have been out here for nearly two months already and it seems like I'm starting to forget what life was like before I was on this ship" I said.
Brandon nodded, "I know. You are just going cabin crazy. It happens to the best of us. I think it will help now that we will actually have something to look at instead of just blackness" he said.
I nodded, "I hope so" I said sighing.
I looked back out over to the red planet and realized something that I hadn't thought of before. "Um, I just thought of something" I said.
Brandon looked over at me quickly, "What is it?" he asked, hearing the edge to my voice.
"Okay, so we have established that the red planet, let's just call it Mars Two is only about five hundred years old at the most" I said, standing up to pace in front of him.
"Yes" Brandon said.
"Okay, so given that theory, we can also conclude that the new Earth planet will likely be just as young" I said.
Brandon nodded, "Yes. Where are you going with this?" he asked.
"How old is our planet?" I asked.
"A few billion years old" he said.
"Right. What kind of ecosystem did our planet have after about five hundred years?" I asked.
Brandon looked out at the red planet again as though he was trying to see the new earth, "Dinosaurs" he said.
I pointed to him, "Exactly. So if this new planet is following the same lines as our own, what is to say that we land there to gigantic animals. What then?" I asked.
He shrugged, "If that is the case then we take a few pictures and get the hell out of dodge and head back home" he said.
"Yes, I get that part, but what I'm saying is, there is a lot of hope that the people of this new planet will be able to teach us how they have managed to keep their planet pollution free. What do we tell them back at home if there are no people to ask?"
Brandon put his finger onto his chin, "That's a very good point" he said.
"Thank you" I said.
"Okay. So we need to digest this question. We are about an hour from dinner time, so how about we go to our separate corners and write all of this down in our journals. This is an important discovery and we need to document it anyway. Then, after we eat dinner we can play poker or something to get our minds off of it for now, as we won't know anything for sure for a few months yet, when we are close enough to see something" he said.
I nodded, "Okay, meet you back here in an hour. I need to take a shower anyway, and I always do my best thinking in the shower."
I turned and walked to my room, trying hard not to look back to see if Brandon was watching me walk away in my yoga pants, though I didn't have much to look at in the first place.
***
I stepped out of the shower and pulled my robe closed around me. I had just taken an extra-long shower, trying to help wrap my mind around the fact that this planet might not be as friendly as we had hoped.
Though I had always been nervous about what we would find there, I was now outright scared. Just the thought of landing onto a planet with animals large enough to crush us with their feet, and eat us in one quick bite scared me more than I had ever thought anything could. I felt as though I was about to step into a horror movie and had no way to change anything.
I looked into the mirror at myself and realized that if something were to happen and I was to die on this new planet, not only would I be failing at my mission and breaking the promise I had so earnestly made to Stacey. But, I would die without ever having gotten over my fear of life.
So many times in my childhood I had wanted to leave the small town I grew up in. I hated that my mother had married someone she didn't love for the fame that she loved more than herself. I had hated the fact that eventually my father ran out and lived the life that he had always wanted, the life of a rock star.
My mother tried her best to keep me sheltered and away from the spotlight, and in turn kept me from exploring who I was. As a child I had dreamed of flying not only around the world, but to new worlds. The day I watched a group of my neighbors and friends leave to go and live on Mars was the day I decided that I wanted to make a world that people wanted to stay on. What would be the point of traveling the world if nobody was there to travel to.
I hadn't managed to go much further as an adult. Only one hour away from my home town to go to college and get a job at the SSE. Here I was now traveling to new worlds, like I had always dreamed, but all I really wanted was to be home and see my own world.
I sighed as I shook my head, trying to get my mind back on the task at hand and not start to dwell on what I had left behind. If I even started to think about Stacey and everything else I would just work myself into a depression, and without Stacey there to talk me down, they could be pretty bad.
I walked out of the shower and into the kitchen, forgetting for the moment that I was just wearing my robe.
"Hey what's for dinner tonight?" I asked, pulling open our deep freezer so hard that a few meals were thrown out.
"Whoa, what's the matter with you?" Brandon asked from the table, sensing my anger as he wrote in his journal, which was what I was supposed to be doing, but now was no longer in the mood.
"Nothing. I'm just hungry" I said.
Brandon stood up and helped me pick up the few meals that had fallen, "If you say so. We have some chicken enchilada meals that we haven't tried yet" he said, looking into the freezer.
I nodded, "That's fine. I'm going to go and put some clothes on and I'll be back. Can you start to heat them up for me?" I asked, turning before I got an answer.
"Yeah sure" I heard Brandon say from behind me as I walked into my room and slammed the door behind me.
I didn't know what was wrong with me, but my thoughts in the shower had worked me up into a sort of frenzy that I hoped I would be able to come back out of.
After I threw on some clothes, I walked back into the kitchen and was surprised to see that Brandon was already setting down the hot plates at the table.
"Sorry, I must have been gone longer than I thought I would be" I said.
Brandon shrugged, "No big deal" he said. "Eat, you
will feel better."
"I don't know about that" I said, sitting down at the table and starting to eat.
I was half way through the meal before Brandon spoke to me again, "So are you going to tell me what is bothering you?" he asked.
I shook my head, "I would, but I don't even know what the hell is bothering me." I said.
"Oh you are having one of your episodes aren't you?" he asked.
I sighed, "I hate that you have known me my whole fucking life" I said, stabbing my fork into the food.
"Wow, I know for sure you are now, it's the only time you talk like that" he said.
"Sorry" I said.
"Don't apologize, its okay. Were you thinking about your mother? You always seem to have one of these things when you give her too much thought" he said quickly.
I nodded, "Ugh, yes. I just keep hearing her voice in my head that I am never going to be a great as she is. She is just so full of herself, and here we are probably going to a damn planet full of beasts that will probably kill us" I managed to get out before starting to cry.
I pushed my plate away from me, no longer hungry. "Randi, why don't we play a game of poker? It'll help take your mind off of everything" he said.
I nodded and sat with my hands crossed as he cleared the table and got out our poker cards. I watched as Brandon shuffled the cards and dealt us both our cards. I finally felt my body start to relax as I got into the game, and even managed to beat Brandon on our first hand.
"Are you feeling better now?" he asked, dealing another hand to us.
I nodded, "Yes thanks. Poker helped."
He looked at me and licked his lips, "So how about we make it interesting?" he asked.
"You want to play with money?" I asked, remembering that he had made the suggestion once.
"Well, sort of. I was thinking that we play a little game of strip poker" he said.
My heart started to pound, "I don't know about that Brandon" I said.
"Oh, come on. We are pretty evenly matched now, so I wouldn't have any kind of advantage over you, and if it gets to be too much at any time you can stop things" he said.
The Other Earth Page 9
