A Persistent Journey

A Mother's Love..

At first I thought I was dreaming. My body, which had been cramped in an escape pod for four weeks, was now extended. I was laying on a stretcher, my eyes fluttering from the lights and the drugs, only half remembering that the instant before had I passed out, I had seen the alien ship through the porthole.

I screamed then, or at least I thought I did, refusing to let whatever the hell they'd given me to take effect. I flailed my limbs, which ones, I didn't know, but I wanted to make sure they knew I wasn't going down without a fight.

"A ship is supposed to meet me!" I told them, but they continued to drag the stretcher along.

With my mind clearing a bit, I tried telling them again. "Please! You have to listen to me! My children need me!"

There was a soft prick on my arm and I looked over to see one of them injecting me with something. My ears began to hiss, my brain telling me that to stay conscious would be my doom, but my logical thinking told me that if I passed out now, I would never make it back to Earth.

I was on my way to the New Paris colony to implement a new irrigation system when four months into the journey, I received word that my husband had been in a construction accident. In the end, his injuries were too severe and he died in a hospital room all alone. With no close living relatives, they placed his body in stasis, pending funeral arrangements until I returned. And because of no close living relatives, my children were placed in foster care. Having been in foster care as a child and having been abused in countless ways before they found me a decent home, I desperately did not want my children there.

With the ringing still in my head and my eyes refusing to focus, I continued to scream at the aliens around me. I was aware the stretcher had stopped shifting but I felt like I was moving, nonetheless. I continued to scream, trying to hear my own voice but the ringing was just too loud. "My name is Karen! I'm a agricultural specialist! I am no threat to you! I just need to get home to my children!"