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MidReal Story
Stardust Secrets: The Asteroid Adventure
Anonymous
Apr 12
Scenario:She floated through the small opening in the asteroid
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It had been twenty years since I last saw Earth.
The only home that I had ever known.
I often thought about the life that I had left behind, but my memories were slowly fading.
With each passing day, the images of my parents—Maria and Santiago Rodriguez—grew hazy, but their legacy lived on inside me.
Their love and passion for exploration fueled my every breath as I floated in the vast expanse of space, a solitary figure against the backdrop of glittering stars and distant galaxies.
I was exactly where I was meant to be, adjusting the trajectory of the spacecraft with precise movements, under the watchful eye of my mentor, Dr.
Marcus Stone.
My long dark hair floated around me as I reached out with my hands, calibrating the controls and ensuring the ship was on course.
I was an expert explorer, with years of experience under my belt, and I reveled in the thrill of every mission.
The sense of wonder that filled me as we ventured into the unknown was unlike anything else, and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else with my life.
“Everything’s looking good,” I said over the comm.
I knew Marcus was watching from his lab, monitoring the ship’s systems as we hurtled through space at breakneck speeds.
I imagined him sitting at his desk, glasses perched on his nose and a lab coat flapping around him, even though I couldn’t see him from where I was.
“All systems are go,” he replied.
“Don’t get too comfortable, though.
We’ve got a long way to go before we reach the asteroid.”
“Understood,” I said, my eyes flicking to the countdown timer in the corner of the screen.
Thirty minutes until we arrived at our destination.
My heart thrummed with excitement as I gazed out into the endless expanse of space, taking in the distant stars and swirling clouds of gas.
I couldn’t wait to get there, to touch down on the asteroid’s surface and take those first few steps into the unknown.
I’d always been like this, ever since I was a child.
My parents had been explorers too, and they’d taken me on countless missions when I was growing up.
They were my heroes—my guiding lights in a universe filled with darkness—and I wanted nothing more than to follow in their footsteps.
Unfortunately, they’d been killed on a mission to Kepler-186f when I was just a child.
Their deaths had been a tragic loss for all of us, but we had carried on in their honor, determined to keep their legacy alive.
Now it was up to me to continue their work and make my own mark on history.
I adjusted my trajectory again and smiled to myself as I thought about what lay ahead.
This mission was going to be different from all the others I’d been on before …
And I couldn’t wait.
We’re coming up on it now,” Marcus said over the comm.
Wait, do you see that? Something is pulsing blue on the asteroid.
I squinted at the screen in front of me, scanning the asteroid’s surface until I saw it—a faint glow that seemed to be coming from one of the craters.
That’s interesting,” I said, my fingers flying over the controls as I adjusted our course slightly.
“What do you think it is?”
“Hard to say,” Marcus replied, his voice crackling over the comm system.
“It could be some sort of mineral deposit or maybe a radioactive element of some kind… Whatever it is, it’s definitely something we should check out.”
A couple more minutes passed before I brought The Pegasus down for a landing on the asteroid’s surface.
The ship shook slightly as it made contact with the ground, but otherwise everything was fine.
I sat back and waited for Marcus to give me further instructions, watching as he climbed out of his seat and made his way towards the control room.
He paused at the entrance and gave me a quick nod before making his way over to one of the monitors and studying it closely.
“Good work, Luna,” he said after a moment.
I turned towards him and smiled, the familiar warmth that filled me whenever he was around flooding my body.
He might have been gruff and intimidating on the outside—his icy blue eyes and stern expression making him look like he’d rather be anywhere else—but he had always been kind to me.
Ever since we met all those years ago on the moon.
“Thanks,” I replied.
“It’s not every day you get to land a spacecraft on an asteroid.”
He chuckled softly and returned my smile before turning his attention back to the monitor.
“True,” he said after a moment.
“But let’s not forget the real reason we’re here— to discover what that blue glow is all about.”
I nodded and turned back to my controls once again, watching as Marcus studied the monitor with an expression of intense concentration.
Our relationship was different from that of most mentors and protégés.
He was more than just a teacher to me—he was my friend.
But he was also my boss.
And even though he’d taught me everything that I knew about exploring and discovering new worlds, he was still the one in charge.
It was hard sometimes for me to remember that.
But it was important.
I’d been lucky to meet him when I did… When I was just sixteen years old and living on Earth’s moon with my aunt and uncle in one of the mining colonies that had been established there decades ago.
We’d been on vacation at the time—my parents were stationed on Mars—and I’d been floating around outside when he’d seen me and realized how much potential I had.
I’d always known that I wanted to be an explorer like them but having the chance to meet Marcus and work with him had been an amazing opportunity.
I owed him everything.
And I would do anything for him.
I watched as Marcus studied the monitor for another moment before turning his attention back to me.
“Alright,” he said.
“You know what to do.”
“Understood,” I replied before turning my attention back to the controls and bringing The Pegasus back up into the air once again.
We floated above the asteroid for a moment before I adjusted our trajectory slightly and began moving towards the location of the blue glow that we had spotted earlier.
Suddenly the blue light arced out at me
and I gasped as it flashed across the surface of the asteroid and disappeared into the darkness of space.
I shuddered as I watched it go, a sense of profound sadness washing over me as I realized just how far away from home I really was.
It had taken me a long time to get used to space travel—not just the loneliness and the disorientation but the nausea too.
My first mission had been a total disaster; I’d puked all over myself and passed out for half the trip.
But now, after years of training and hard work, I’d finally gotten the hang of it.
But that didn’t mean it was easy—not by a longshot.
I took a deep breath as I tried to calm my stomach, but the damage had already been done—I could feel the bile rising up in my throat as we descended towards the asteroid once again and my mind started to spin out of control…
Luna… Luna!
I blinked and shook my head as I tried to clear away the cobwebs and bring myself back to the present… And that’s when I realized that I wasn’t just staring at the blue glow of the asteroid anymore, but floating through it instead… The darkness of space had given way to a dimly lit hallway that stretched out before me in both directions, vanishing into the distance as I floated there and stared at it in shock and disbelief…
“Luna,” Marcus said over the comm, “are you there?Did you make it inside?”
I blinked and shook my head as I turned towards the sound of his voice and saw him standing in the distance, watching me with an expression of concern on his face as he spoke into the microphone on his headset…
“Yeah,” I replied after a moment, “I’m here.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line before Marcus finally spoke again.
“Good,” he said at last.
“I need you to make your way through the asteroid and collect as much data as you can.
We’re going to need all of it for our analysis.”
I nodded and glanced around the hallway for a moment before taking another deep breath and pushing off towards the end of the corridor where I could see a door that had been left open.
“Understood,” I said.
“I’ll start making my way through now.”
“Be careful,” he said before I started to move.
Even though he wasn’t saying it out loud, I could hear the concern in his voice.
He knew just as well as I did what kind of dangers could be lurking inside an alien structure like this one.
But that wouldn’t stop us from collecting as much data as we could either.
And he knew it.
The corridor stretched out before me as I moved along it slowly, taking care not to bump into anything in case there were any inhabitants nearby who might have been alerted to my presence.
I’d been training for this my whole life and now at 55 years old I was finally where I wanted to be. I could do this.
The asteroid was getting closer.
At first it had looked like nothing more than a speck in the distance, but now it was taking up my entire field of view as it loomed just outside the window where I was sitting.
It was still far away enough that I couldn’t see it clearly, but I didn’t need to—after all, I knew everything there was to know about it already.
It would have been easy to forget that though; after all, we’d passed three planets on our way here and two moons to boot.
Each one had been different than the last—different colors and sizes as well as different levels of devastation from meteor strikes—and yet they were all beautiful in their own ways.
The universe might be vast and empty and filled with things that could kill you in any number of horrifying ways, but it was also filled with wonders too.
Even in the emptiest and most lifeless of places there was always something to see, something you’d never seen before and that you’d never see again.
This asteroid wasn’t one of those things—not for me and Marcus at least.
We’d spent the past two weeks studying every single piece of data we could get our hands on to make sure we were fully prepared for whatever we found when we got here.
And after all this time and preparation it had better be worth it…
I glanced over towards Marcus where he was standing next to me and watched him as he adjusted his glasses and stared out at the asteroid in front of us.
He had a look of intense focus on his face as he did it too—his eyes narrowed and his brow furrowed while his lips moved silently as he muttered something under his breath.
It wouldn’t have been anything I could understand though; after all, Marcus Stone was a bona fide genius with more degrees than most people had brain cells and more knowledge about asteroids than I had about just about anything else.
But that was why he was here—or at least part of the reason for it.
He’d been my mentor for as long as I could remember—ever since I’d shown up at his lab in New York City when I was just a teenager and announced that I wanted to work with him.
And even though I’d already been training for years at that point—thanks to my parents’ connections with NASA—it had been with him that I’d finally been able to put my skills to the test.
And it had been with him that I’d first discovered just how much we didn’t know about the universe we lived in.
And how much more there was still left to find out.
“What do you think?”
I asked after a moment as I turned towards him and watched him as he continued to stare out at the asteroid in front of us.
“It’s hard to say,” he replied as he adjusted his glasses and turned towards me.
“We won’t know anything for certain until we get there.”
I nodded and glanced towards the asteroid once again where it was still inching closer and closer to us by the second.
Even though it was still moving slow enough to be barely noticeable from where we were sitting, it was already much larger than it had been before; its surface had finally become clear enough for me to see the craters and other imperfections on it.
It wasn’t a perfect sphere like the planets we’d passed on our way here were but rather a strange and jagged shape that looked as if it had been cut out of a much bigger piece and left behind by some cosmic giant who had decided he didn’t need it anymore.
“Any chance of life on it?”
I asked as I watched it get closer and closer to us.
“Not likely,” he replied after a moment as he turned back towards me once again.
