Present age/Future setting.
There is a young, blonde woman sitting at the table across from me. She has dark brown eyes, freckles, and tiny braids in her wavy hair. I stare at her for a long time. We are both dressed in white and gray jumpsuits, and are sitting in what looks like an outdoor cafeteria. It is sunny.
The huge room is filled with tables, lined up uniformly, organizing the various groups. There are tables of people wearing red jumpsuits, purple, black, etc. All organized neatly.
The blonde woman and I are seated at a circular table, where as the rest of the tables are rectangular. Our group looks older than the rest, who appear to be teenagers. The man to my left is much older than us, and his jumpsuit is all white. He has a nice smile. He is talking about doing a ropes course, and is asking what our opinions are about various activities. The blonde woman likes archery.
My lunch tray is piled with food. Pizza, fried chicken, a steak, broccoli, mashed potatoes, man ‘n cheese, buttered toast, a burrito, and a bowl of soup. There might have been more than that. I’m taking small bites and listening to the rest of my group talk. I can hear a jet, and look up to see that it is landing gracefully right outside of the roofless walls where we are. A sudden burst of wind sends napkins and empty plastic cups flying across the room, and a team of janitors, wearing brown uniforms, rushes in to clean it up. I’m reminded of the military.
My group and I are getting on the jet, along with a group of teenagers, dressed in green and white jumpsuits. Everyone is smiling as we take off, speeding like a bullet through the air. We are flying low to the ground, which isn’t actually ground, it is water. Behind us is the island in the middle of the ocean where we took off from. All I can see is endless blue ocean.
We land on another island, just a few minutes later, in the middle of a lush, green, jungle. In the distance I can see two futuristic circular houses. Our guide shows up to lead us through the forest, and she reminds me a lot of Laura Croft. Actually, I’m fairly certain that it was Laura Croft.
At the houses, we separate. The boys go into one house, the girls into the other. The insides are absolutely enormous, compared to the outside, which looked like space pods (if you remember the tents from Harry Potter, you’ll understand). Aside from myself, and the blonde woman, there is another woman from our group, who is much older. She seems like a bit of a bitch, and just glares at everyone and everything, seemingly judging. There are also four teenage girls in the other group, which run into the rooms to pick their bunks.
I walk back outside, and kneel down to take a drink from a gravity-defying stream of water running down a nearby tree and over the foliage and rocks on the ground. One of the teenage boys yells that he found a wounded animal, and I, along with a few others, rush over to him. On the ground is a creature that looks like a cross between a rabbit and a cat, and it’s head is missing. Everyone starts crying, and the older man from the group wraps the tiny creature and buries it. They have a service as well.
I am helping a young girl stand up after she fell off of a tightrope during our ropes course training. Her knee is bleeding, and one of the other adults and I get her to a nearby medical van to bandage her knee. The other man seems upset and worried that her blood will attract something to our location, and he closes the door, locking me out. I turn around and the rest of the teenagers and adults standing perfectly still, staring off in the opposite direction. In the distance, I can see an enormous shape moving, but it is see-through and camouflaged. Someone screams, and we all turn to run. I never saw what the thing was, but it chased us through the woods, picking us off one-by-one, until only a few of us were left.
We made it back to the jet, and took off immediately. The oldest man, two teenage boys, a teenage girl, and myself, were the only ones left of the original 14 or so. Our guide is also gone. I realize that no one is actually flying the jet, but that it is being controlled by the old man, who is calmly speaking orders to it. The three teenagers are all crying, covered in blood, but are not injured. I look out the window, and the island disappears in the distance. The old man writes something down in a little book he pulls out of his coat, and sighs heavily.
Back on our island, the man briefs another group on what happened, and they nod. They leave to prepare their groups for the next ropes course. I’m not sure if they are going back to that island or not, but I assume they are.
I walk with the teenagers to a large infirmity, where they each receive shots from a very pretty nurse, who winks at me. This makes the boys laugh. I leave them there and walk to a large command center, which is now part of a spaceship. I’ll let you guess which one.
The captain is scolding me about having blood on my uniform, when something suddenly slams into the ship violently, and we are all thrown to the floor. There is a large, blur outside the ship, covered in splotches of bright, red blood.
The captain calmly tells everyone to retreat to the basement (basement on a spaceship, sure…), and we rush down several flights of stairs, to a basement, which hilariously resembles a crappy laundry room in an old house. One of the crew members has cooler filled with bottled water, and passes it around to everyone. I grab one, but my water has swirls of blue in it, and I decide not to drink it.
The captain starts yelling at a female crew member about smoking a cigarette on a spaceship…
And then I woke up.
My Life as Jan 