Jonathan Rush and the Star Academy

by Gregory Blackman

  Chapter Three

  Beep. Beep. Beep. Johnny bolted up, screaming as he jumped out of his bed.

  “There’s a fire!” Johnny shouted, reaching for his flashlight on the bedside table. It was dark in his room. The power must have been out, Johnny thought. Not only was his flashlight not there, he could not seem to find the bedside table. Johnny panicked, it was very dark and he was alone. Or so he thought. He couldn’t tell, everything was black around him.

  Was he dreaming again? He frantically searched around the room, looking for any signs of his life back home. There was nothing; there was literally nothing in the room. Not a chair, not a table, nor any of his personal belongings.

  Johnny felt isolated and alone; two feelings that had come natural to him. They never did get easier to deal with, though.

  A bright flash of light appeared, coming from one of the walls. Light shined in from the opening, so bright that Johnny had to cover his eyes. It must have been an advanced door, as a dark figure started to walk from out of the wall.

  “Lights on,” the figure ordered. The room instantly lit up, with the figure walking toward Johnny. A good-looking man in his early thirties, he was clean-shaven and had long dark curly hair. Wearing a simple brown robe, he resembled the men Johnny had seen in his dreams earlier. Could it be a coincidence?

  Johnny should have been scared, but the man did not seem to instill fear in the young teen. He gave off a reassuring disposition; whoever the man was, Johnny felt like he could trust him.

  “Good morning, Mr. Rush. I am sure you have a lot of questions,” the stranger said to Johnny, extending his hand. Johnny grabbed it, and he was helped out of bed. “My name is Kenzel Arlen, and I am a Star Knight of the Star Alliance.”

  “Where are we?” Johnny asked.

  “We are on the Star Academy Space Station,” Kenzel replied. This startled Johnny. How could he go to bed on Earth, yet awake in space? “I am sure you have many questions, maybe this will help.”

  He motioned for Johnny to follow, and they walked out of the room.

  It was a long, rounding hallway that looked like it went on forever. Johnny was still unsure what to make of his new surroundings. It all seemed so surreal. It actually reminded him of the Dark Prince’s home. But instead of cold, dark steel walls, the hallways of the Star Academy felt warm, almost inviting him to walk about the hallways.

  Kenzel walked with him down the hallway. The wall seemed to be made out of glass, clouded white. Instrument panels seemed to glow from the walls every few panels. Wherever he was, it certainly wasn’t Earth.

  “Where is my mother? If she safe?” Johnny asked.

  “She is safe, at home where you left her; you will see her again, that I promise you,” Kenzel responded, with a serious look on his face. “You are a very special boy, Johnny. At the Star Academy, you will learn how to use your abilities correctly.”

  “I want to see my mother,” pleaded Johnny. He thought the world of his mother. She was everything to him. How could he possibly manage without her?

  “I have something, here,” said Kenzel, reaching for something within his pockets. Pulling out a small black tablet, he pressed a few buttons. Soon the holographic image of his mother appeared above the tablet.

  “It can’t be…Mom!” Johnny cried, tears running down his face. “It is you! Can you hear me?

  “It’s just a recording of your mother,” replied Kenzel, touched by the emotion displayed in the young teen. “She gave us a message for you; something to tell you, that she was proud of you, that she missed you very much, as well.”

  Pressing another button, the holographic image came to life, a mother speaking to her child, worlds apart.

  “Johnny, I want you to know that I miss you,” his mother began. “I want you to know how special you are. I always believed in you, even when I had to do the believing for both of us. Look at how far you’ve come. They tell me, you are going to a place called the Star Academy. They tell me you are going to be a great man one day. I told them that you already are.”

  The tears continued to stream down his face, touched by his mother’s kind words.

  “I will see you again, I promise,” his mother continued. “I made them promise, as well. They are going to take care of you, and give you everything in life that I could not. A mother could not feel any better about a son. When you were a child, I always said I would chase down the stars for you. Now you are going to chase them down for yourself.”

  Johnny dropped to the floor, sobbing. On one hand, he was going to receive the opportunity of a lifetime, and on the other, he was a lonely child without his mother.

  Turning the hologram off, Kenzel bent over to comfort Johnny.

  “I’m sorry about that,” said Johnny, wiping the tears from his face. Embarrassed, Johnny paused for a moment; he tried to remember the last thing they had been talking about, trying to put his emotional outburst behind him. “You mentioned abilities. I don’t have any special abilities.”

  “You may not yet, but one day you will,” Kenzel said. “The mind is truly a beautiful thing. Every species has a one-in-a-billion chance to produce a genetic variation, one capable of allowing individuals to use their mind, able to create wonderful and extraordinary things with mere thought alone. You are one such child.”

  “This whole galaxy is controlled by the Star Alliance. The Star Alliance is a government consisting of a dozen Galaxies, many just like this one,” Kenzel continued. “The Star Alliance protects those that cannot protect themselves. However, sometimes they need help; so the Star Academy was founded. That was over fifty thousand years ago. I am proud to say that peace has existed throughout the known universe for over twenty thousand of those years. We use the gifts given to us here at the Star Academy to help defend the honor and tradition of the entire galaxy.”

  “If there is peace, why do we need the Star Knights?” Johnny asked.

  “Ha ha,” Kenzel laughed at the child’s endless questions. He never had a child himself; he found that his commitment to the Star Academy would not give him the time to properly nurture a child. “Just because there is peace, it does not mean law enforcement is not needed. When the government requires a more forceful touch than the local law enforcement can offer, we are called in.”

  “How were we given these gifts?” Johnny asked. “I certainly didn’t do anything to deserve them.”

  “The Universe is a truly magnificent place, Johnny,” Kenzel said. “To be honest, we don’t understand completely why some people are born with abilities while others are not; other than the fact it is incredibly rare. Around the age of sixteen, children’s abilities develop to the point where our galactic scanners are able to pick them up, and we request from their parents that they join the Star Alliance.”

  “But I am not sixteen,” Johnny started. “I am only fourteen; I simply woke up here today, and no one seems to know why.”

  “Sometimes, the Universe is mysterious,” Kenzel replied. “We simply have to bow to its guidance, and hope that it has a plan.

  Kenzel almost talked about the Universe like some divine presence, with a free will and a mind of its own. Could that really be possible?

  Johnny didn’t realize it at the time, but Kenzel had not really answered his question as to how Johnny came to be here.

  The reality was that Kenzel himself did not know. Something like this had never happened before, and it unnerved Kenzel.

  “You are the first human from Earth to be chosen,” said Kenzel, looking down upon the wide-eyed youth. “It is quite an honor, you know.”

  This all seemed so unlikely. There was nothing special about him. He couldn’t even stand up to the bully at high school; how could he be special? Johnny always dreamed of escaping to a fantasy world, but in the end he knew it would never happen. Not because the worlds he imagined couldn’t have existed somewhere, but because he could never ho
pe to be the hero in his stories. He had no idea of the potential that resided within him.

  “What makes me so special,” Johnny asked.

  “Everyone is special in their own way, but there are some that can use their mind in wonderful and extraordinary ways. I am one of those people, and soon you may be as well.” Kenzel explained.

  “I may be?” Johnny questioned, getting stuck on that part of Kenzel’s words. He was just starting to believe that he had a better future for himself coming, only to have it possibly be taken away. If these powers demanded something from him, he surely would never be able to be the man that Kenzel believed him to be. Still, a polite boy, Johnny decided to be grateful for the opportunity and to try his best for Kenzel.

  “Not everyone that is chosen to attend the Star Academy ends up graduating. Some decide this life is not for them,” Kenzel said.

  They stopped in the hallway, and Kenzel turned to Johnny and said, “Later today, you will be inducted into the Star Academy and the rest will be explained, I promise. Come, I have something I want to show you.”

  Up the hallway, they came to a lounge area with couches. There was a large black panel that the couches were situated around. They walked over to the black panel, and with the touch of Kenzel’s hand, the panel cleared, revealing the awe inspiring view of the world around them.

  “Whoa,” exclaimed Johnny as he peered out the window in amazement. The lounge over-looked what seemed to be the center of the Star Academy.

  A gigantic, ringed, golden sphere, it was made up of three rings that seemed to be locked magnetically together. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life, he thought. The sheer scale of the academy conveyed both the importance and wealth of the Star Alliance.

  Johnny had to squint to see, but there looked to be a metropolis of buildings lined up on the inside of each ring, a realm within itself. It might have been the single largest city Johnny had ever seen. Tens of millions of people must live here, he thought.

  Starships streaked across the window, all appearing from bright flashes of light. All of them seemed to be docking with the space station.

  “Why are there so many starships?” Johnny asked, as twinkles of light continued to dot the view. “Is it usually so busy?”

  “Today is an important day,” Kenzel said, placing his arm on Johnny’s shoulder. “Once a year, on this exact star date, we accept thousands of selected children in to the Star Academy. Those children will go on to become members of the Star Alliance. You are one such child.”

  “But I didn’t come here on a starship,” reminded Johnny, who couldn’t help but think about the young red-headed girl from his dreams. Did she really exist? Was she one such child, as well?

  “Correct,” Kenzel replied, taking his hand off Johnny and placing it on his chin. “Perhaps that is a mystery for some future adventure.”

  The two of them laughed for a moment. Space stations and intergalactic adventures, it all seemed so unreal to Johnny. He still did not believe he belonged here, but he was not about to keep reminding them of that. He was happy just to be here.

  It was most certainly of alien origin, it had to be; yet Kenzel looked human? Johnny just had to ask, “What are you, Kenzel? Are you human?”

  “Ha ha, yes and no.” Kenzel laughed, unsure where to begin. “In this galaxy, The Milky Way, there are many different races and countless variations of each of them. I am terran, specifically a variation known as tandarian. While you are also terran, you are still considered human.”

  This was starting to make Johnny’s head spin.

  “What about the other aliens?” Johnny asked, unsure if he really wanted to hear the answer. Johnny remembered all the late night science fiction shows he watched. Little green men and their flying saucers, he shuddered at the thought of having to meet a real-life alien.

  Kenzel laughed again, “Ha ha, well one is right behind you.” Johnny turned around, slowly. What Johnny saw was exactly what he was afraid of.

  “Ah!” Johnny screamed in horror, getting very dizzy.

  “I—I—I…,” Johnny gasped, his head spinning and spinning. With a thud, he hit the floor. He had fainted.

  Johnny awoke shortly after on the couch. He looked up to see Kenzel in conversation with the individual. The man, if you could even call him that, looked exactly like any walking Octopus should look. Two large tentacles made up his legs, and two others for his arms. The other four tentacles were smaller and flailing around his face. Johnny smiled; it almost looked like the Octopus version of a beard. The more Johnny studied him, Johnny realized that he was not as intimidating as first appeared, and feared he had been rude to the man.

  “I…I am sorry, sir,” Johnny choked out, still recovering from the incident. “You caught me off guard.”

  “Oh young man, no apologies needed. I sometimes forget what it is like for others to meet an alien for the first time. I have heard a lot about you,” the alien said to Johnny, extending his left tentacle toward Johnny. “My name is Ocelot, how very nice to meet you.”

  He spoke English? Johnny thought about that for a moment. Kenzel had spoken English as well. The more Johnny thought about it, how is it possible that aliens from distant worlds could be speaking the same language?

  “You two are speaking English?” Johnny asked. “How is that possible?”

  Kenzel smiled, and replied, “A Universal Communications Implant (UCI), allows anyone who has it installed to interpret any known language, and speak their own native tongue back to the person.”

  Johnny was still slightly in shock, and realized that Ocelot had still extended a tentacle, in some sort of extraterrestrial hand shake. Johnny didn’t want to be rude, and reached out to Ocelot.

  “I—my apologies, sir,” Johnny said, grabbing hold of the tentacle and giving it a shake. “My name is Johnny.”

  “We don’t want to keep you, Ocelot,” Kenzel said. “We actually have to leave ourselves. Johnny has a very big day ahead of him. He is going to be joining us as a Star Student.”

  “Well congratulations, young one,” Ocelot replied. “It is a great honor. You are a very lucky kid.”

  He didn’t feel like a lucky kid, however. Johnny couldn’t explain it, but he felt like a fraud; like he didn’t belong. They didn’t even know how Johnny got there, how could they know the man he would grow into?

  Johnny and Kenzel said their goodbyes to Ocelot, and went to prepare for the ceremony that would take place later tonight.