Chapter Text
We see the Earth, all calm and tranquil, when suddenly … boom an explosion occurs,
A ship zooms past heavily damaged with an engine on fire being pursued by two enemy ships.
One of the ships opened fire and managed to land a hit on the on fire engine sending the ship hurtling into the Earth’s orbit. As the ship was crashing it managed to fire two rockets and hit its pursuers.
Meanwhile, on the Earth’s surface, we zoom into Yellowstone National Park where a young auburn-haired woman is walking around. She is nineteen-year-old Asha Elwood. She is dressed in a red and black flannel button-up with a black t-shirt underneath. She is also wearing brown cargo pants with black hiking boots. On her back is a black hiking pack with her supplies.
Asha has been walking around the park for hours, but she is not tired, rather she is content and feeling at peace, even with some conflicting feelings and thoughts swirling in her head. Suddenly, a flaming streak flies through the air. Asha looks up but dismisses the streak as nothing important, “perhaps a shooting star,” she thinks. Asha continues her hike, admiring the trees, picking up rocks, and examining them before carefully placing them back, and looking up at the gorgeous blue sky. Finally, she decides to take a break. She walks a bit further to get to a good spot in the shade, as she walks, she stumbles upon trees that have fallen on the ground. She creeps closer trying to figure out what has happened to cause the trees to fall. She sees more destruction, trees uprooted and lying on the ground, bushes smoking, and charred grass. She creeps even further, not able to make sense of such a puzzle. As she does, she discovers a crater and falters against the crater edge, “the crater must have been made by whatever shot through the sky, whatever it was must have crashed or fallen,” she thinks, “but what could have made that happen.” She looks up at the sky searching for any clues that would have caused something to fall. There is nothing, the sky is clear, and just as beautiful as it was before. Asha looks back at the ground and looks further into the crater where she discovers a spaceship. The spaceship was triangular in shape and appeared to suffer heavy damage, there were dents all over it, scorch marks on the bottom as well as the ground, and branches and debris scattered throughout the impact point.
As Asha continues to balance on the crater edge, the ground suddenly gives away and she slips in. Asha shouted in surprise as she fell. She tried to get out of the crater but unfortunately, she had no rope in her backpack. When she tried to climb out the ground kept crumbling under her hands. Realizing she couldn’t climb out she decided to go into the ship to see if there was any rope or anybody who could help her get out of the crater.
Once in the ship, she saw the damage was even more extensive than it seemed outside. There were sparking wires that were disconnected, holes in the walls, some doors that seemed to be impacted into their frames, and even a small fire or two.
Asha tried calling out “Hello, Is there anyone there? Can you hear me?”
Only silence filled the room, Asha rummaged in her bag and found a flashlight so she could see if there was anybody on the ship. Under the dim beam of the flashlight, Asha crept around the cargo hold and stumbled upon a set of stairs leading up. Asha turned around and shined the light all over the cargo bay, but there was nothing around except the stairs and the way she came. Feeling trapped, Asha decided to take a leap of faith and see what was up the stairs. Slowly, she climbed the stairs, under the beam of the flashlight. She continued up the stairs, but there was no light except for her flashlight. Finally, after walking up two flights of stairs, she saw a dim light under a room. She turned the corner past the landing of the stairs and noticed that there was, in fact, a room that was full of light.
As she got nearer all of the sudden the entire ship lurched causing Asha to stumble. As she lost her balance, she pushed some buttons on the control panel. She pulled her hand away from the panel as she heard a robotic voice say “Powering up. All systems are online. Trans-Warp online. Traveling to the last known coordinates” Suddenly, all the lights on the ship flashed on, the doors slammed shut, and she heard locking mechanisms snap into place. Asha began to panic as the last door to the bridge (and the outside world) started to close. She tried to run to it, but it slammed shut right before she could reach it.
Asha started banging on the door screaming “No, No! Open up! Come on, let me out, you stupid ship!!” She kicked and pushed the door and kept screaming at it. As she attempted to lift the door off the ground, she heard the ship’s robotic voice come back on and say “Trans-Warp fully online. Initiating cryogenic sleep.” Confused as to what that meant, Asha yelled at the computer to unlock the ship and let her out. As she continued to yell, smoke from gas started to fill up the room from hidden vents. Asha soon began to feel drowsy and started to drift off to sleep. The last thing she saw or thought she saw before fully losing consciousness was what looked like the Earth out the window as the ship turned around and began to navigate back to its last programmed coordinates. Whether from the gas, the shock, the confusion, the panic, or all of it, Asha collapsed on the ground, hoping it was all just a dream and she would soon wake back up at her campsite.