In The Orbit (Part I)

35. Strom

 I drive and drive and drive. It doesn't have the satisfying feeling that driving a car for miles and miles does. Whenever I was upset and hacking didn't solve it, I would hop in the car and drive. Usually it was around two in the morning and I had to watch out for drunk drivers and also police. I have been using the car for years before I got my license.

Kellina sleeps off whatever she is on. She is wearing a tight white shirt. It is wet and I can see her striped red bra. I'm not going to lie. It's hot. Her skirt is red and has white beads on it. It looks like a ridiculous candy cane.

I fight back tears. This satellite program was my hopes and dreams. But it isn't at all what I thought it was going to be. Kesselhof has too much control and I doesn't trust anyone. I have had this underlying feeling that all of this has been slightly off. Especially because of Fifi. Something is very off about Fifi. She is very guarded. I am a guarded person because of the hacking. But everything Fifi does screams that she is hiding something huge. The officers are hiding something too. The physical stuff that they have us do is practically militant.

I realize I am falling asleep. I put the pod on autopilot to do a basic orbit of Earth. That's when I realize that we are closer to the moon than Earth. I look at Kellina. Her shirt is dry now and her sleep somehow looks more in control. I decide not to wake her up. Even though I am slightly scared of being so far from Earth, I feel good. I let the ship do it's thing and I drift off.

I wake up to Kellina screaming. She used the f-word about sixteen times until I plugged my ears and yelled at her to shut up.

"GET US BACK TO THE SATELLITE NOW! WHAT THE-"

"Kellina Kellina Kellina." I put an arm on her shoulder. "Listen to me."

She stays silent as I tell her exactly what happened. I even tell her that I have important stuff in my prostheses. I don't tell her what and she doesn't pry. She just kind of nods and thinks.

"Hey, my brother's girlfriend had an issue like you. It wasn't hard to fake them out and keep her prostheses. I can ask him. But he's on Earth."

"So let's go to Earth. I want to talk to my aunt anyway."

"We can't just land on Earth. We need to land in an actual place so we don't crash and burn."

It takes three hours for us to get near Earth. We have found a farming area somewhere in Washington. That is where Kellina comes from, and my aunt works in Seattle. I also figure out how to flip the settings to cooperate with Earth's atmosphere. It takes fifteen seconds to enter the atmosphere and land safely.

I didn't even think about the fact that it would be midwinter. I had kind of forgotten that seasons existed. All I'm wearing is a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. Kellina will freeze in her skirt and sandals. We both gaze out of the window at the foot of snow on the ground.

"What are we gonna do?" she asks.

"I guess we have to walk and find a road," I reply.

She sighs.

"Hey, take my socks. We don't need you to get frostbite," I say.

I give her my socks and put my shoes back on. Then Kellina makes the mistake of checking her SmartScreen for the weather. It is sunny, but negative four degrees Fahrenheit, with the windchill negative seventeen.

"I'm going to look for extra clothes in the storage," I say. So we both go digging through the storage. We only find space suits.

"Those'll keep us warm," Kellina murmurs.

"If we want to hitchhike, no way."

"You're right. We don't need to be mistaken for terrorists."