9Chapter One I Enter Frederica and Burton
Frederica hadn't seen him for almost three years and was barely able to contain herself. The other girl, Alumit, had never seen him, and was eager to meet him.
"So what is he like?" The latter said, "Don't tell me he's the most wonderful person again. You've told me that a million times."
"Not a million, but he definitely deserves that much." She sighed a dreamily staring off to some undecipherable point in the stars.
"Yeah, Yeah, but what is the most wonderful person in the world like?"
"You wouldn't understand."
"Why not? I've understood every thing else you've told me. Please!" Frederica wanted to say that she was too young but that would just lead to more questions that she didn't want to answer. The sad girl didn't even know her own age let alone Frederica's previous adventure on Mars.
"You can't understand until you've been through it."
"At least tell me what he looks like!"
"Alright already! Imagine the hottest guy you've ever seen, multiply that by a hundred and he's still even hotter than that."
"Are you thinking what I think you're thinking?"
"Depends on what you think I'm thinking."
"What do you think I think your thinking?"
"I have no idea! Dose it look like I can read minds?"
"No" Frederica tried to push 'her majesty annoying' away but she was determined to find out … what ever she wanted to find out. "Tell me!"
"I did!" Alumit paused considering that.
"No, you didn't!"
"Yes I did."
"What is it then?"
"I don't know."
"What?!"
"I don't know."
"Maybe you should just repeat the question." Alumit opened her mouth but nothing came out. What was her question? "I don't think you even know what it is."
"You just read my mind!"
"What?! No I didn't."
"Then how do you explain that?"
"Frederica, your visitor is hear." said a door behind them. Frederica spun around to face the view screen and her heart skipped a beat. Alumit was pushed violently to the side. She tried to look at the boy on the screen but Frederica was determined to block her out.
"Let him in." she said as she gave one last shove pushing Alumit into her invisible world. The door previously mentioned slid open and chirped a crisp "Have a nice day!"
The boy who entered was a month past 14. His blond hair stuck out in odd angles and his frightened hazel eyes darted around the room until the finally rested on Frederica. His name was Burton.
If her thoughts could be seen, they would look like a drivers-ed Class that just came from a Christmas Eve party where someone had just spiked the punch a bit too much. Good thing for her that he couldn't see her thoughts because if he had he would have turned around and went back to where he came from, wherever exactly that was. Finally, when the drivers-ed class had discontinued there lives and the clean up crew had come in with bulldozers, she spoke.
"Hi"
"Hi … Would you mind telling me where I am?"
"No"
"OK … where am I?"
"The star ship Silver Speed in the ex-location of the planet Earth."
"Why?"
"I saved you."
"Why?" She almost blurted out "I love you!" but luckily caught herself. He didn't recognize her anyway and was too confused to even without having to dig trough almost three years of memories.
"You would have died if I didn't."
"Why?"
"The Earth was demolished."
"Why?"
"They needed to make room for some sort of space highway tip thing."
"Why?"
"I don't know." Then there was an awkward silence. One of those awkward silences when the all people involved just stair at each other squirming. Most of the time they both want to say, "I love you!" but people are very afraid of what other people will think. Research has been done to explain this phenomenon but not much progress has been made.
"Who are you?"
"Should we tell him?" one of the cleaning crew happened to say.
"Why not?" said another one who happened to be wearing a pink shirt and was named Mr. Silverberg.
"Frederica Guth" Burton stepped back, stunned gibberish pouring from his mouth. She smiled. So, he DID remember her. "I'll show you your room." She stepped toward a terribly missprogrammed and hoped against hope that it wouldn't act up.
"Hello, my name is Claude. What's your name?" Is it to much to ask, a door not to act up?
"His name is Burton."
"And what's YOUR name?"
"Frederica"
"Where did Alumit go?"
"Away"
"Oh" Despite the fact that Silver Speed is, or was, the best ship in her mother's fleet it contains the very worst door. It reminded her of the fact that New York had been the most populated city in the US, but New Jersey had been the most populated state.
"Will you please open now?"
"What's the password?"
sigh Open Sesame"
"Nope"
"That's what it was last time!"
"I changed it."
"You can't do that!"
"Then I won't open."
"Once a week?"
"Nope"
"Once a day?"
"Nope"
"Either that or never."
"Fine"
"Bob," she called to the over-intelligent onboard computer, "What's her password?"
"Ugavie, your highness"
"Alright Claude, the password is Ugavie." The door VERY SLOWLY. Frederica stepped threw. The door closed so fast it nipped the ends of her hair.
"Hey!" Burton's muffled voice said threw the annoying metal sheet.
"What's your name?" Frederica sighed and slumped against the wall to wait.
"Ugavie"
"Wow!" The door slid open and Burton stepped threw. "He's cool. I like him" Frederica rolled her eyes and gestured toward a door in front of them. "That will be your room," She pointed to another door. "and that is my room. I'll be in my room, the bridge, or in-between, if you need anything." Burton just stared at her so she left for her room.
Burton sat on the bed staring out at the stars. He was to frightened to get up but to excited to stay where he was, which didn't make much since because the company where the mattress he was sitting on was made had recalled all there mattresses because they had been coming back to life, mutating, and eating people.
Burton had been sitting like this for well over three hours without moving except for the occasional blink and a long period of insane scratching when the itching powder his brother had put in his underwear drawer as a joke took affect. Of course as the victim of such jokes usually duos Burton didn't think it was very funny. In fact he didn't think much of anything.
Exactly 13.6313 minutes after the 235th blink a voice blared over the intercom causing him to jump, fall to the floor, and lay in a quivering ball.
"It is now time for midday meal. Please report to the nearest sense-o-matic immediately, thank you." That is what the voice said. The voice was Bob's.
"Sorry 'bout that. Just ignore all announcements for a while." That decided it. Frederica's voice had sparked it. He was going to find the bridge and nothing could stop him. He jumped up and ran threw the door, which almost didn't open because it was so startled by he sudden movement and it was definitely to startled to say anything about it. Burton ran down the corridor that he had come down with Frederica.
"Well look who it is again!" The door ahead of him said. He crashed into it expecting it to open, which it hadn't. "Ouch!" Why hadn't the door opened for him? Aren't doors on spaceships supposed to open? Put your hand down! I know you know! Burton is the one who doesn't and no you can't help him! The door slid open and it started giggling.
"What are you doing?" Frederica looked down at him with her hands on her hips. Burton just gave her a goofy smile. There is a strange thing about the mind I should tell you about. When it should be absolutely confused and on the verge of insanity and finds something it has been looking for, for a VERY long time it will act almost drunk. Now you might be thinking that Burton wasn't looking for Frederica for that long. If you were paying enough attention to figure that out and you weren't just reading this for lack of something better to do during commercials you should have also figured out that he has been looking for her for almost three years. (Is it just me or has the number three been showing up a lot in this story?) Oh look when I was busy confusing you it looks like Burton and Frederica started expressing their emotions by making out. To bad, I'm not going to tell you what exactly you missed. Looks like your just going to have to what till the next chapter.
By the end of the artificial day, Burton had pretty much gotten used to his current position, or at least it seemed like that on the outside. On the inside, he thought he had died and gone to heaven a very strange heaven.
He went exploring after some alarms started going of in the bridge. Living quarters and a small bay took up most of the ship. The ship itself was shaped like a Swedish Fish that had been dropped by a small child on the way out of a grocery store, melted in the sun a bit, and was run over by a skateboarder about to be arrested. In the front was the bridge to the left of it was a cargo bay. In the back was living quarters and the middle was a futuristic thrown room.
To Burton the whole thing was very boring since he had lived near Orlando. Disney World and Sea World were the local theme parks. On top of that had starred in a handful of movies, and found himself in LA a lot.
He wandered back to his cabin and for the first time notice the computer built into the wall the screen was blank and there was one big hot pink button under it. Of course, like any other normal earthling he pushed the button. Immediately a stool popped out of the tile he was standing on and knocked him into the very hard keyboard, which had popped out of the wall. The keyboard that his face was now firmly planted into was covered with strange triangles. The same triangles appeared on the screen so he punched in some random keys. The computer beeped and a new set of triangles appeared.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"Um…Uh…I was…Uh…Just."
"Trying to hack into royal files and get me found? Oh no you don't!" The screen went blank, the lights went out, and Burton found himself sitting on the floor.
He looked around but there wasn't much to see except stars shooting past his window at great speed. It occurred to him for the first time that he was going somewhere. (He was a very dense boy.) He decided to ask Frederica where. It wasn't really a good excuse to go to the bridge but any excuse was a good excuse to him to go see Frederica. He had other questions too like "What's with the computer", "What have you been doing all these years?", and "Will you marry me?" Those were all lame excuses too except maybe the last one.