My name is Nia. I’m nine and three-quarters. I live on Earth. And I hate it.
Before you tell me how beautiful Earth is, let me tell you that I don’t care. Everybody tells me how beautiful Earth is. Everybody tells me and tells me. And I tell everybody: You haven’t seen the moon.
I grew up on Moon Colony Alpha. It was all wonderful. The warm, cozy underground habitats, where Dad and Mom and I had our apartment. The tunnels where we played, clean and smooth-floored and well lighted. You didn’t trip over rocks or roots; you didn’t get too cold or too hot; you weren’t surrounded by strangers who might or might not be dangerous. There were no strangers; we were only 150 people. And on the moon, you feel light and can run faster and jump higher. Gravity doesn’t pull at you like some sort of tentacled monster, the way it does on Earth. Basketball, which my friends and I played all the time, was awesome.
And on the moon, when we went up to the surface for a picnic under the dome, you could see a gazillion stars in the clear black sky. The Earth hung above like a blue-and-white ball, the way it was supposed to. The view just took your breath away.
I loved living in Alpha Colony.
Then we moved to Chicago.
#
“I won’t go,” I said, for about the hundredth time.
“Nia, we have to go,” Dad said patiently. He is always patient. Mom—not so much, which is why I was talking to Dad.
“But I don’t even remember Earth!”
“I know.” He patted my arm. “But we’re already over the five-year limit. And your mother’s been reposted.”
People aren’t supposed to stay on the moon longer than five years. Human muscles don’t grow strong enough without Earth gravity. We moved here when I was four.
“Dad, I do the exercise machines every day! Sometimes twice a day!” Well, one time I did them twice. But once is sometimes, isn’t it?
“That helps, Nia, but it’s not enough. Eat your dinner, honey. Mom said to make sure you eat your broccoli.”
“I hate broccoli. And where is Mom, anyway?”
“Packing up the plant samples for the trip down. She’ll be home soon.”
Mom is an important scientist, a geneticist who creates plants that will grow well in our underground farms. You’d think she would grow something better than broccoli. Dad is a scientist, too, but not as important as Mom, except to me. But nobody listens to me because if they did, we wouldn’t be moving to stupid Earth, where they probably eat broccoli for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
“Nia,” Dad said, trying another argument, “you’ll make new friends, have new experiences. You can even have a real dog.”
“I don’t need a real dog! I have Luna!”
Luna, who was sitting under the table, barked when she heard her name. I programmed her to do that. I did a lot of her programming myself, and she’s the best robo-dog ever.
Dad said, “Well, I need a real dog. I miss dogs.”
I didn’t say anything because Dad looked unhappy, and I hate that. Although I’m the one who should look unhappy. I have to leave my friends, Jillian and Ben and Katie and Jack and Rosa. I have to leave my bedroom, all safely sealed into smooth rock where nothing bad could get me. And all I could do to show how unfair this was, was leave all my uneaten broccoli on my plate. So I did.
Dad said nothing about it.
#
Earth was awful even before we got there. The shuttle from the moon entered the atmosphere, and gravity slammed out of the ceiling and pushed me so hard into my seat that I thought my bones would be crushed. It was the most horrible thing I’d ever experienced, but at least I knew that it would only last a few minutes. The shuttle screamed and everything shook and then we were down—only the gravity didn’t go away. It kept pressing on me so that when Mom unstrapped me and pulled me to my feet, immediately I fell over.
“Take it slow, Nia,” she said. “You’ll get used to it.”
Stones on my shoulders. Stones on my feet. Stones at the end of my arms and a big heavy stone on the top of my head. That’s what it felt like. Dad and Mom wobbled, too, but they both had that look on their face that said I can do this. So I had to do it, too. But there were tears behind my eyes. I would never jump for a basketball again, never run as fast as Luna, never even bounce on a bed. Not in this gravity!
But I could walk. After a few lurching steps, I did get a little used to it. At least I was upright.
Dad said, “You’re doing great, Nia!” Even Mom looked proud of me, and that was enough to keep me going down the aisle of the shuttle and out the door.
Where I started screaming.
There was nothing. No walls, no roof, not even a clear dome. The shuttle sat on a huge expanse of white stone with empty land around it and nothing above it, just a lot of empty hot blue. Nothing to hold you in place, nothing to keep you bounded and safe, just a whole lot of dangerous open space….
I tried to claw my way back into the shuttle, but the door had already closed. Still screaming, I dropped to the ground and curled into as tight a ball as I could. Anything to keep out the nothingness, keep out the vast emptiness large enough that I would just fly apart in it, swallowed up by the huge vacant blankness.
“Nia!”
“No,” I cried over the pounding on my heart, “no no no no….”
....to be continued in the Young Explorer's Adventure Guide!
*********
Why I Hate earth is a story from the Young Explorer's Adventure Guide, an anthology of science fiction stories for middle graders. We've got a great collection of 20 stories from amazing authors, ranging from Nebula and Hugo winners to relative newcomers to the field. 90% of the stories in the anthology are brand new, and 80% have central female characters. We don't have girls who are prizes to be won or waiting to be rescued. All of our heroines and heroes are on their own adventure, not a side note in someone else's. Our characters are white, black, asian, latino. Human and robot. Everyone belongs here.
To read more, check out our Kickstarter!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/815743020/young-explorers-adventure-guide-sf-for-young-reade
