Up to the Heavens

I stood in the giant container they called the Passenger Safety Scanner and kept still as a beam of ray scanned me from head to toe.

“You guys are really using the high-end stuff, huh? Thank god I’m not claustrophobic.” I joked to the security guard as I stepped out of the equipment. 

“We will now need to record your voice to ensure your identity; please speak to the microphone for thirty seconds.” The guard ignored me. 

Recording of voice? Geez, I guess that’s the level of security needed for a space flight.

I was at the state-of-the-art Houston Space Center Terminal One, my flight to the International Civil Space Station scheduled to take off in two hours.

As I passed the security check, a service personnel came to greet me and took my luggage. After confirming my boarding pass, he guided me through a long corridor to a thick metal door.

Opening it, I gasped as I saw a long metal bridge leading to a silver space shuttle. The shuttle was extremely delicate and beautiful; it looked like a private jet with huge propellants on the tails.

The door of the space shuttle was already open. My heart pounded faster and faster, pushing the sweat on my skin so that it dropped from my palm when I stepped into the stunning vehicle.

There were two seats in a row and four rows in total. I sat down on B1 and realized that all the other seven passengers were already seated.

I looked to my front in curiosity to see what the command module of a space shuttle would look like. To my astonishment, there was no door leading to a flight deck where the usual cockpit door of an airplane would be. Instead, there was just a wall in front of us, as if we were in a lecture hall instead of a spacecraft. 

“Excuse me, can you tell me where the pilots are?” I curiously asked the personnel who came into the shuttle with me to help me get seated. 

“You are inside the most advanced unmanned space shuttle, sir. This short flight would be controlled remotely.”

Before I could say anyt

hing in response, the personnel bowed and quitted the space shuttle. The cabin door soon closed after him. 

As I exchanged curious eye contact with the other passengers, I realized that most of them were extremely well dressed-successful-looking people. There was a family of three sitting behind me. The little kid, no older than eight, was conversing politely with a lady of age sixty or so.

Sitting right to me was a middle-aged man in an elegant suit. He would have looked fine if his belly hadn't upheaved his shirt.

"So, how do you make money?" The man turned to my side and asked me with a smirk on his face.

"What do you mean?"I smiled politely.

"Come on, you must be doing something special to be able to pay for the immigration plan." He patted my shoulder.

He had a point: space immigration cost 12 million dollars and that was why the ICSS housed only the richest five hundred thousand people on earth.

"How about you tell me first, sir?" I didn't really feel like sharing my “success story”.

Just as he was about to speak, the radio interrupted our conversation: "Ladies and gentlemen, please remain seated and secure your belongings; our flight is about to take off."

Our seatbelts automatically fastened. The space shuttle suddenly rotated to a sixty degree angle and the people on board shrieked a short gasp. Thirty seconds later, we heard a loud burst of fire behind us. I suddenly felt a strong thrust that pressed me hard against the seatbelt. My mind went completely blank as I realized that we were ascending to space. 

Through the window, I saw us propelling upwards at an incredible speed. The ground soon faded; we crossed the clouds; we crossed the atmosphere. The sky became darker and darker until there we were, floating in space. I gazed at the elegant contour of earth in ecstasy and disbelief.

Our shuttle flew stably again. The middle-aged man turned to me and asked: "So what's the first thing you’re gonna do up there? I heard that there are twenty five luxurious hotels and twelve casinos bigger than the biggest ones in Vegas."

"Probably visit my uncle first," I said. "He immigrated to the ICSS two years ago and never returned to earth. We talk through video calls often and he urged me to come and enjoy a new life as well. “

An influencer of the national oil industry and an important figure in the political circles, my uncle was indeed my role model. He was one of the first to pay and set foot on the ICSS when the program first started. 

"That's nice," the man said. "I also know some people that went to the ICSS, but I haven't seen them since they left. I think that none of them ever bothered to come back to earth—-the place must be a literal heaven."

I turned away and looked through the window. The scenery was unbelievable; earth was silently glowing, a tranquil azure. I also saw the moon in the distance, a rather mundane and barren space body compared to earth.

Wait, what? The moon? Wasn't the ICSS located exactly between the Earth and the Moon? Why wasn't I seeing the space station? The advertisements flowed back to my head. I looked around, yet no one else seemed to be bothered; they all conversed happily with each other and chit-chatted about what they would do after the trip.

Suddenly, we heard a ticking sound somewhere in the shuttle. Everyone became silent.

Tick, tock, tick tock. The tick became clearer and louder.

To my ultimate horror, I did recognize the sound. It was the sound of a bomb.I looked out of the window again in desperation. 

No space station in sight...