answers with the same sugary tone.
“Luggage?”
“In the corner.”
She swiftly turns away and goes to the dull grey luggage machine. A fine layer of dust covers its surface, and rust dots its corners. Myrha slides her luggage plate into the slot, the machine makes a rather worrying rattling noise, but then her luggage appears on the metal weighing slab safe and sound. The luggage plate, now blank of data, shoots into the recycle bin, where the other passengers’ plates rest.
She heaves her suitcase off the machine and drags it up the stairs. She has some serious decorating to do.
When she pops open her luggage, everything is thankfully intact and packed how she left it. Grumbling, she takes her travel kit out of her suitcase. It was something her mother, upon hearing about her trip, had thought she would need. Myrha had endured endless gossiping and shopping sessions to find the best one.
She carefully takes a tiny pod out of the kit. She places it in the corner, presses the expand button, and tada! Instant standing lamp. She enables the anchoring feature, and the lamp goes from a projection to solid lamp of awesomeness. Soon she has several lamps, a mirror and a clock. Unfortunately, the ceiling and walls don’t seem to have hooks for pods, so the pods stay on the floor which means she’ll probably trip over one of them and smash in her face (something that had been a design flaw of the pods in the first place).
She is not in the mood to get food from the hotel, so she makes the bed instead. She peels off the bed’s comforter, which is flowery in design. It has sensors that replicate the smell of the flowers, but since the flowers aren’t Earthen in origin, they’re not really a comfort to her. She kicks it aside and takes her own sheets out of the travel kit. Nasty bed bugs, especially the extraterrestrial ones, are things she unfortunately has experience with. She did not need her mother to tell her that clean sheets are a vital part of a travel kit.
Finally, when her bed is made, and the lights are extinguished and the sun has set, she takes a peek out her window and the enormity of what she has done just sort of smacks her. She’s on an alien planet.
The world is entirely dark except for the light of several far away moons. They’re not as close and luminous as Earth’s solitary companion, but she can still see them as small orbs, three in total. They cast minimal light only, and everything is very…quiet. The Universe is asleep here is a line from a Dellylee poem. She still doesn’t much care for her poetry, but perhaps she knew what she was on about after all.
Earth is loud. Loud and bright throughout the day and night. Even the moon, which is the astronomical equivalent of Antarctica, is still dotted with research facilities and clusters of lights that can be seen when the moon is new. Here, she is one of nineteen people (and an android) on a foreign planet. She chokes a little on the reality of such isolation, and there’s an itch, a need, to get back to Earth as soon as possible.
Instead she goes back to her bed, curls up in the warmth of her terrene sheets, and pretends she’s not light-years away from home. In the darkness, she can almost believe it.
“The what is what?”
She stares at the smoke sifting quietly through the air, and the big gigantic hole in the starshuttle’s side. She’s pretty sure that’s not supposed to be there.
The android gives a muted sigh, and tries to explain all over again what happened to the shuttle. The technical jargon just sort of goes over Myrha’s head by leaps and light-years, however, so she goes up to the gaping hole and inspects it.
“It’s like a meteor just,” she explains ‘BOOM’ with an expansive hand gesture.
“It was not a meteor,” the android says.
“Not even a tiny one?”
“The shuttle was deliberately damaged.”
“You mean—“
“Yes. Someone on this island sabotaged the shuttle.”
“Deliberately.”
“Yes,” the android huffs.
The implications of that sort of terrify Myrha.
“So…this isn’t fixable?”
They all turn to look at the burnt out, hacked out hole in the shuttle.
“No,” the android answers shortly.
Myrha tries to fight the fog that’s desperately taking over her brain, “You can contact someone though, right?”
“Not through the starshuttle. All controls are dead. The auxiliary power units were destroyed as well.”
“The hotel then,” she says, and makes a run for the lobby.
Her feet fly over the compact sand and she is not going to be stuck on this forsaken planet with smelly trees and a handful of hermits. She desperately rings the bell on the counter until Bartin shows up.
“Myrha,” he greets her, “you missed breakfast.”
“Well you know what I’m also missing? My shuttle. Someone on this island decided to murder the starshuttle. So hand over your interstellar utiphone, because I need to contact Earth.”
The little man gapes at her, “The what…the shuttle?”
“Is destroyed. One of your guests must be insane,” she stops, and then glares pointedly at him, “Or maybe you are.”
“Me?” he sputters, “Are you accusing me?”
“I’m accusing everyone until I know who did it. Bottom line is: get me in contact with Earth.”
Behind her, the door opens and the android and the captain finally catch up to her.
“When Orion Starlines doesn’t receive a message from us, they’ll contact the port here to determine what happened,” the captain says.
“A message…?”
“Every shuttle is instructed to send a take-off message to their destination port and their Starline hub. When Orion Starlines doesn’t receive our take-off message, they’ll contact the port here.”
“But there is no port here,” Myrha says.
“Not in the traditional sense. They’ll contact this hotel.”
“So they’ll come rescue us?” Myrha says hopefully.
“They’ll send out another shuttle. There will have to be an investigation, at least. We may actually be stuck here until the authorities come and question us.”
Right. Great. She just walked into a crime scene. Perfect.
So any minute now they’re going to receive a message from Orion Starlines. Sure. Okay. Myrha lounges on the couch as they wait for any sort of communication. Of course, since the shuttle is impaired, and it’s probably going to be a few days until another shuttle can arrive, they’re all stuck here for the time being. Bartin coughs delicately.
“Ah, captain,” he says rather timidly, “as it seems you might be staying here for a while, I’ll go about getting a room ready for you.”
“Yes, thank you.”
Myrha looks up from tearing strings out of the couch, “Wait, where’d you stay last night then?”
“We stayed in the crew cabins onboard the shuttle,” the android answers.
“Yes, they’re quite comfortable,” the captain says.
His face says what his words don’t: that the crew cabins are much more comfortable than anything at the hostel.
“Unfortunately, with power gone, they’re not so comfortable anymore,” the captain continues.
Not to mention it would probably be a phenomenally bad idea to sleep at a crime scene, especially one that most likely has volatile fluids leaking all over from a destroyed engine.
“I’ll just go ready your room,” Bartin says, and then continues a bit meekly, “Most of our rooms are undergoing renovations. You wouldn’t mind, uh, sleeping on a cot would you?”
The captain’s aghast expression says he would mind thank you very much.
“This facility doesn’t have a collection of bed pods?” the android asks skeptically.
“No, the beds come out of the wall,” Myrha laments.
The android gives her an ‘are you serious’ look that has Myrha cracking up. Who knew androids could be so expressive?
“Right,” Bartin says loudly, “I’ll just go and get that o
ut for you.”
Something about the conversation bothers Myrha. She can’t pin down exactly why until the android sits on a couch warily, as if expecting it to fall to pieces underneath her.
“And what about the android?” Myrha asks, “Doesn’t she get a room?”
Bartin looks stumped, as if he hadn’t even thought about it. Myrha has to admit that she doesn’t know all that much about androids, but she figures they have to sleep or recharge or whatever somewhere.
“We don’t exactly have the space,” Bartin mutters, “with the renovations and all.”
Myrha is quite sure that there are enough rooms, even in a small hostel like this. She doesn’t glance at the android to see her reaction.
“So,” she drawls, “you’re just going to have her sleep on the floor?”
“Androids don’t exactly sleep,” the captain cuts in, a bit bemused.
“I will be perfectly able to activate hibernation mode without a bed,” the android says.
“Whatever,” Myrha unfolds herself from the couch, “have an extra cot brought up to my room. She can stay with me.”
Bartin looks as if he has swallowed something unexpectedly large without chewing, and is now struggling for breath. Myrha leans with an elbow on the counter and smiles up at him sweetly.
“Also, the swill you call alcohol? You can deliver all of that to my room.”
At his indignant squawk she rings the bell to drown it out, and then continues, “It’s the least you can do, after you lied about the prize package and forced me to share a room because you are inadequately prepared to accommodate guests.”
“Forced?!” he sputters.
She’s walking away already, but spins around to level a