Chapter Text
„You should maybe slow down on the books a little.”
Looking down on the piles of books in front of her, Rachel sighed. Mel was right, probably. Then again, she didn’t know when she would get to come home again.
“But I need them. All of them! They’re my babies.”
“Just pick some! Like, your favourite ten novels, and some science-y ones.”
“How would you feel if I told you to pick your favourite baby!”
Mel raised her eyebrow at her friend. It wasn’t new that, when it came to books, Rachel was a little melodramatic. And, of course, Mel knew that her friend would never manage to choose only ten books to bring along.
“Well? How would you feel if I asked you to leave either Ricky or Annie behind?”
“Depends, would Annie stay with you? Because then I’ll leave Rick here.”
Both of them started giggling, with then grew to a hearty laughter.
“You’re a terrible person, Melanie McIver.”
“True. So, Good Omens or The Martian? Please tell me, you don’t want to take The Martian along on your trip to space, because that really doesn’t sound like a good omen to me.”
“Ha-ha, very funny. Both of them. But I’ll leave all of the Jane Austin behind, except for Pride and Prejudice.”
In a similar manner they made their way through Rachel’s bookshelf. At least through the one she had the ‘important books’ in. In the library where, as the name said, several more of them, but those were the books she read more than once or twice. In the end, Rachel closed the box with a deep sigh and wrote on the top of it with Edding ‘FUN BOOKS!!’. Then she put the box to the others in the hall. All labelled likewise. One contained nonfictional books, those Mel had earlier described as science-y, the rest were cloths and other necessities.
“What’s with your lab stuff?”
“I spent the last weeks taking my lab apart and rebuilding it. It’s all settled.”
“Explains why you haven’t finished packing by the last day.”
“You know me. I finished my dissertation like five minutes before the end of the deadline.”
With another sigh Mel grabbed one of the boxes and carried it outside the house. The moment she stepped out of the door, a huge, dark shadow hovered over her.
“You know, I won’t miss this thing a bit. I’m glad when it’s gone.”
Rachel, now next to her, with another box in her hands, laughed, “Why, it’s rather small.”
“Small? This thing is bigger than your house. And in case you didn’t notice you live in a manor.”
“Of course, it is! It’s a spaceship. It has to be big. And it’s a country residence, not a manor. ”
“That’s no reason to turn your garage into a hangar!”
“What else should I have done? Build it on my front lawn and let the world know about it before I’m done?”
“Well, yes?”
“You seem to forget that we life in Scotland! The rainiest place on earth. Even in the rainforest it rains less than here! Can you even begin to imagine what that would have done to my beautiful ship?”
“Nothing good, probably.”
By now, the women had reached the loading platform and set down their boxes.
“But why on earth would you want to take this thing anywhere? Let alone this very hostile and dangerous place called space?”
“Because it’s space. It’s the final frontier. I can go, where no one has gone before. I will be the first person to get out of our solar system.”
“Fine, just be the first person to get out of it and returns, will you?”
“Sure, I will. I will find a nice planet with nice people, get some land there and then come and get you and Ricky and Annie, and if I have to, I’ll even get Max.”
In the evening, when everything she could think of, was taken care of, Rachel sat in her kitchen for one last time. This was it. This was the big moment. Tomorrow she would show her spaceship to the world and then leave with it. Next to her sat Copernicus, her border collie. He would come along with her, of course. Sure, a spaceship was probably not the best place for a dog, but Nic had been her companion for too long to leave him behind. It was unbelievable that it was finally time. For years and years and years she had worked on this project. Invested so much time. This whole thing had started in summer before secondary school. She had been eleven and decided that she wanted to travel to the stars. And so, she had started experimenting with ways to power her very own spaceship. And now, almost twenty years later she had a spaceship with revolutionary technology. She had spent all these years working on it, while everyone around her had gotten themselves a life, she had built a spacecraft. Mel, her best friend, the person she’d grown up with, had found herself a husband and made two humans with him. Sure, Rachel was the godmother of Ricky and she spent lots of time with him, but that was it. And right now, so close to the fulfilment of her lifelong dream she wondered if this was really what she wanted.
“No!” she decided, which made Copernicus look at her confused.
“Tomorrow, my dreams will come true, I will do what no man could do before me. I will leave this godforsaken planet on a freaking Starship.”