Mirsada stared out the window. Well, not exactly window; it was more of a screen, like on Star Trek. Well...whatever it was, she stared out it. It was a beautiful view, whatever else she would say about her situation. It was almost worth the whole mess. Key word: almost.
The stars...there were so many. Even the cloud of debris couldn't completely obscure the perfect view. And when the asteroid had hit Earth--it was beautiful. Horrifying, yes. Guilt-inducing (that she could consider such a loss of life beautiful), yes. Ugly, no.
Two of her abductors/captors/rescuers entered the room, chattering in their awful-sounding language. They gestured, looking at Mirsada. Mirsada stared, not comprehending and probably not willing to comply even if she did know what they wanted.
"Please follow us." The grating voice came from a box, Mirsada realized. It was a translator, probably.
"Please follow us," it repeated after several seconds. Mirsada reluctantly got up, after casting one last glance out at the familiar but alien view, and followed them out into the cafeteria/mess hall/restaurant/fast food place/thingy.
"Mirsada!" someone shrieked. Mirsada looked around, jumping back as she noticed someone running towards her. The creature latched on around her middle and, like a frightened cat, refused to let go.
"Shaedyn?" she gasped, the breath knocked a few miles out of her from the force of the impact.
"Weweresoscaredwethoughttheyweregoingtohurtuswedidn'tthinkyou'dgeton," the seven-year-old stuck to her explained.
After a few seconds, Mirsada understood. "We? Is your family here?"
"Down, Shae!" someone said. Mirsada looked up to see her best friend, GothGirl.
"They took you, too?!"
"Yeah," Goth replied. "Anyway, I repeat, DOWN, Shae!" She laughed.
Shaedyn detached herself reluctantly from Mirsada's middle. "Mirsada likes me, don't you?"
Mirsada thought a sec. She didn't want to offend Shae, but she didn't want to offend Goth, either. "Shae, Goth and I need to talk. ABC's on board, too. Why don't you go find her?" ABC, Mirsada's little adopted sister (who had chosen her name already), was Shae's best friend.
"She is? Yay!" Shae turned and hurried off.
"You ought to be a peace worker," Goth said, raising an eyebrow and grinning.
Mirsada shrugged. "I don't want to offend anyone."
Goth grinned, then looked serious. "Anyway, do you have any clue what's going on?"
Mirsada nodded slowly. "The rooms I was taken to had a window."
"So did mine; I didn't pay any attention. Shae thought it was scary, and Mom and I were trying to be nice and all."
Had Mirsada been more sarcastic, or had she had less self-control, she probably would have replied, "She thought it was as scary as your face?" However, she wasn't, and she didn't, so she replied, "I've always loved space...my family was in another room...I went right to the window. It was beautiful," she said, falling into a daydream. She shook herself out of it. "There was an asteroid...it hit the Earth."
Goth blinked. "You're kidding me."
Mirsada slowly shook her head. "No. I assume they took some humans...and specimens of most of our creatures...to save us. Protect universal biodiversity." Mirsada smiled slightly. Then she frowned again. "We're just lucky it was us."
"What do you think they're going to do with us?" Goth, by some extreme measure of self-control, kept all but the barest waver out of her voice. Considering the amount of terror she felt, this was a near miracle.
"I don't know," Mirsada replied.
As if in answer, one of the beings entered the room. Silence fell over the humans (luckily injuring none).
"Your people must choose twenty representatives to decide the fate of your remnant population," a grating translator box's voice stated. "We will be back in half an hour by your time."
The creature left. The humans immediately started talking and debating. Five minutes went by, by Mirsada's watch. She looked at GothGirl. "They're never going to get anything done this way."
Goth nodded slowly. "Are we the only ones who realize that?"
"I don't think so," Mirsada replied, after a careful study of the room. "There are a few people who look annoyed, but..."
"Yeah," Goth agreed. She started to climb up on a chair and then onto a table.
"What are you doing?!"
"Getting their attention." Several people had already started to look at her. Goth grinned at Mirsada.
Mirsada groaned.
"SHUT UP!" Goth shouted at the top of her lungs. That got most people's attention. The few remaining talkers trailed off into silence. "That's better," she said, satisfied. "Maybe now you can get something done. Mirsada, suggestions?"
Mirsada sighed. "We'd better elect them, I think. Maybe each group could decide on a representative, if no one else has any suggestions."
Goth grinned. "Listen to the girl. She's smart." Goth glared at Mirsada before she could protest.
"What are the groups?" someone pointed out. "We would need groups of about ten people each. Do we go by family? town? age?"
"Age sounds fair," someone agreed. "Including minors?"
"Minors could have one representative," someone suggested. "From there on up, every three years of age or so could pick one representative."
"That sounds about right. Where do the groups meet to vote?"
A woman pointed to the walls. "Minors over by those doors, more elderly people by those doors, and everyone else, by age, in between."
The general opinion seemed to be favorable, so Goth grinned. "Do what the lady says, people." She stepped down as people started moving towards their designated position.
"That actually worked," Mirsada commented, surprised.
GothGirl grinned again. "Yeah. C'mon, let's go!"
The twenty old-enough-to-walk-and-talk minors--including Goth, Mirsada, and their respective younger siblings--gathered near the doors. They looked at Goth and Mirsada.
"Do we nominate? Let people sign up to be voted for?" a kid, slightly geeky-looking, asked.
"Nomination might work well," Mirsada said when Goth looked at her. "That way, people who are good representatives will be chosen, not people who *think* they're good representatives, if the two aren't the same."
Most of the people nodded, minus a few five-year-olds who seemed to be distracted by a scab on a fellow five-year-old's elbow.
"Okay, nomination it is," Goth said, grinning at the kids. "Two nominations gets you into the vote, and no self-nominations?" she asked. Mirsada, along with most of the minors, nodded. The younger adults, in a group next to them, seemed to be following their example. Mirsada found that strangely satisfying.
"I nominate Mirsada!" Goth immediately said.
"I nominate Goth!" Mirsada said at the same time. They grinned at each other.
"I nominate the smart girl!" a nine- or ten-year-old said, pointing to Mirsada.
"So do I!" someone chimed in, apparently not realizing that Mirsada already had the necessary nominations.
"I nominate the goth girl!" a guy who had fashion sense similar to Goth's said.
"GothGirl, at your service," Goth said self-mockingly, bowing.
"I nominate Jakob!" someone near the back of the group said, holding up a boy around Goth and Mirsada's age's hand.
"Me, too!" another person agreed.
"I nominate Raychel!"
"I nominate Lance!"
"I nominate Raychel!"
"I nominate NutT!"
"Lance!"
"LMZ!"
"Fall!"
"LMZ!"
"T.J.!"
The room trailed off into silence.
"Well, is that--"
"T.J.!" someone added quickly.
"Is that all?" Goth asked. Everyone nodded, except the aforementioned distracted five-year-olds, who had moved from the scab to a small bug.
"Okay. Let's let everyone talk. What time is it?"
"Ten minutes left," someone volunteered.
"Okay. Everyone has one minute. That'd be...Mirsada, Jakob, Raychel, Lance, T.J., LMZ, and me. So, Mirsada? Why do you think you should go?"
Mirsada stood up and looked at all the children, nervous. "Well, because..." she trailed off.
"Definitely not your eloquence," someone in the back joked.
Mirsada smiled. "I guess because I'm very curious about what all of this is about. I'd really like to know, and I'd do my best to contribute rationally to any discussions being made." She sat down, toying with the cord on her link. (She used hers so much she had to use a cord so it could connect to a larger battery pack at her waist.)
"Okay, Jakob?"
The guy who stood up was the one who had joked about Mirsada's speech. He was cute, Mirsada noticed. Then she blushed. This was stupid. The world was ending/had ended, and she was thinking about physical attractiveness. She shook her head slightly.
"...I have opinions seemingly similar to a lot of people--my friends, at least, although they may not be all that normal," Jakob joked. "I'd do my best to represent people our age, who may not get much of a voice normally."
A couple of people, who seemed to be his friends, clapped.
The rest of the speeches, up to Goth's, were similar.
"And me," Goth said, concluding her list. "Well, I guess I could be our representative because I probably have a different view than most people's, and so would spice up the discussion." She grinned. "If 'spice up' involves a protest or two, is that so wrong?" she asked, mock-innocently. "Anyway, let's vote. All in favor of Mirsada?"
Six people, including Goth but excluding Mirsada, raised their hand. "Seven," Goth said. "Anyone have any paper?"
Mirsada rummaged through her pockets for some scrap paper and held it up, removing a pencil from over her ear and holding it up as well. She handed it to a younger adult, their group having already voted. (That way, there would be no possible cheating.)
"Jakob?"
Five.
"Raychel?"
One.
"Lance?"
None.
"T.J.?"
None.
"LMZ?"
None.
"Me?"
Five. (Not everyone voted; the five-year-olds were now busy with trying to see who could stick how many pencils up their nose.)
The adult held up the tally. "Looks like Mirsada won," she said, smiling. She looked at Mirsada. "So did I. Congratulations."
Mirsada smiled slightly, a little overwhelmed. She had never won any elections, although her poetry had been first place in a lot of contests. "Thank you."
"I wonder what we do now. By the way, I'm Amanda Collins, although most people call me Amy," she introduced herself.
"I'm Mirsada James," Mirsada said, "although you probably knew that."
"Nice to meet you," Amy replied, smiling. Before Mirsada could reply, some of the aliens entered the room.
"Representatives, please follow us," one of the aliens said through a translator. Mirsada, Amy, and eighteen others followed.
Once all the representatives were seated around a circular table, one of the aliens stood up and started to talk through a translator box.
"Your planet has been destroyed by an asteroid," s/he said. "Some of you already know this." Mirsada was certain s/he glanced at her for a second. "We, observing that this catastrophe was about to occur, decided that the planet Earth was worth saving. Our original plan was to destroy the asteroid, saving your planet entirely, but a tragic accident left us with only three ships left and no weapons capable of eliminating the threat. However, we determined that each of our ships was able to hold many more creatures than we and our gardens, terrariums, and aquariums accounted for, and therefore decided to save at least a sample of Earth. There are no humans on the other ships, but they carry more Earth animals and plants than this does."
The leader looked around at the representatives. Everyone seemed to be taking it remarkably well.
"However, we have determined that one human spacecraft, apparently sent out desperately to save some remnant of Earth and the human species, has safely escaped the destruction. All occupants are in an artificial coma--a sort of hibernation. We do know of a..." the leader glanced at his fellow aliens. "A place," he seemed to decide on, "able to hold them. It would take at least five hundred years for them, in their craft, to reach it. Your dilemma is this: shall all of the humans aboard this ship be put into hibernation, too, to wake when your fellow humans reach their planet? Please, discuss this freely, and see if you can decide."
No one seemed able to respond, until an elderly woman said, "Excuse me, but would we be safe in hibernation? The human technology fails an alarming percent of the time."
"The chance of being killed or otherwise injured in our hibernation is less than that of dying walking across a planetary street on an average civilized world for a member of the dominant species."
"I'll assume that's pretty low," the woman replied, smiling. "I don't have any objections to hibernation. I don't agree much with it, either, though."
"Is there any way you can take the human craft on board here and revive the occupants?" Mirsada felt herself asking. She shrunk down into her seat as the other nineteen representatives looked at her.
"I am afraid not, with the vessels we have. It would be possible with a larger craft; it would still be very dangerous, as the only ship known to be able to do this a reasonable percent of the time would not be able to respond to our particular requests for a long time."
"Well, does it really matter if a few people don't wake up for a while? Human civilization can go on," one representative replied, shrugging. "We can live somewhere and have them brought there when they wake up."
Amy shook her head. "A lot of things can happen in five hundred years. Civilizations can rise and fall, and a Dark Age can become an Information Age. So much would change that they'd be overwhelmed, at best, and maybe just forgotten, at worst. What if *we* were on there and not here?"
"Like you've said, a lot can happen in five hundred years. Do we want all of humanity to be asleep all that time? It'd be better to have some awake and fighting and some passive and not caught up in interstellar politics or whatever."
Mirsada bit her lip, then spoke again. "We're all humans, right? Maybe it'd be best for us to stick together on this. The rest of Earth could be safe on a planet somewhere, but maybe we should stick with them. They were humanity's last hope; we can't just abandon them. It's just not right."
About half the members nodded in assent.
"Does anyone else have any points to make?"
One representative tentatively raised his hand. "Can we really trust them?" he asked, nodding towards the aliens, who were watching from against a wall. "I mean...not to be rude or anything, but..."
"Probably as much or more than anyone can a random human," someone else pointed out. "They saved us, right?"
"And anyway, they have such superior technology, plus the advantage that we're in their territory, how would being awake change things? And even if they did turn against us, and we managed to win, we wouldn't be able to operate their ship," Amy noted.
The speaker didn't look convinced. No one spoke for about a minute.
"Are you ready to vote?" the lead alien asked, stepping forward.
"As ready as we'll ever be," someone muttered.
"An electronic ballot will appear on the table in front of you. Holographic walls will emerge around you; your ballot will not be visible. Vote by pressing one of the two choices and then pressing the large green button; you may change your vote at any time before the outcome is read aloud," he instructed.
Mirsada looked nervously at the ballot. What should she choose?
"Go with your gut. It's usually got good advice when logic fails."
How long ago had her father said that? She had been only five. Her friends were making fun of a new girl named Hannah. She didn't like it, but she didn't want to lose her friends. Her father had said that when she asked him for advice.... She had decided to side with Hannah--who later changed her name to GothGirl. That had been some of the last advice he had ever given her...she would trust it now.
She pushed "Hibernation".
A few minutes later, one of the aliens stood up and looked at the representatives. Mirsada got the impression that it was smiling happily. "Hibernation it is; one vote more for staying awake would have made it a tie. All humans will be put into hibernation within three days."
Mirsada bit her lip, not sure whether her vote had doomed or saved the human race.