A Rocketship Ride to Nowhere

A little luck goes a long, long, long way.

I won the interstellar lottery. I was downright stupefied, a little apprehensive and then so excited I wanted to scream. I checked the numbers a dozen times after the president first read them, and then every time a news reporter read them on repeat for the next three hours. None of the cars paying for parking in that Detroit casino parking garage would have suspected the guy collecting their stub was about to head to space.

“Hey, did you hear the number?” one lady asked.

“Yeah, I saw it on the news. Pretty crazy,” I said.

“No one has come forward yet. You couldn’t get me on that rocketship ride to nowhere,” she replied.

She was a high roller, fur coat in the middle of summer, driving a Benz — had it made. Lady, if you were in this booth, barely pulling minimum wage, you’d ride that rocket anywhere. Sure is nice to have options.

Another man asked, “Did you get in on it?”

“My ticket is at home,” I lied. “I doubt it’s me. You know the odds were something like three billion to one and my luck ain’t that good.”

“I kept my ticket with me at all times. A lot of good that did me. Who wouldn’t want to get out of this dump?”

“Yeah, I…”

“Too bad it wasn’t my number called,” he interrupted. “That would have sent my ex-wife through the roof.”

At least he has an ex-wife. I’ve got no wife, no girlfriend and live in a one bedroom apartment with crack houses on either side. He was driving a brand new Ford F-150, with money to blow at the casino. He must not be doing too bad, even with the ex.

Every high roller and slot machine junkie that came through wanted to talk about it. At the end of my shift a guy slid through in a Ferrari, told me he would drop several million for a chance to go, or kill the winner out of pure spite. That got me thinking about what they said when they announced the lottery — non-transferable, but don’t tell anyone anyhow because you might be dead before your name hits the airwaves.

There were a lot of crazies alongside the jealous types. New religions had formed at a record breaking pace. Suicide bombings were on the rise. The anarchists thought we were going to trade one authority for another. That was my favorite. If aliens wanted to rule us, they would have sent an armada, not a message in a bottle.

Then there were the doomsayers, determined to make sure the trip didn’t happen. It was a waste of money and manpower to them. We can’t solve world hunger and we’re still going to fly across the universe, they complained. Somebody or something called anonymously from deep space, provided plans for a ship and a map, and we followed along like sheep… to slaughter, or so they thought.

The kicker was that the destination wasn’t a planet. It was a rendezvous near a black hole. Not anyone’s first choice to visit, but I don’t care where they drop us. My first real vacation was a trip three hours West to see a girl I met online. Turned out to be a catfish. Whatever is waiting can’t be much worse.

“Hi, this is Randall Lewis. Is this the number for the lottery?” I asked.

“Yes, it is, Mr. Lewis,” a woman said. “If you would, please read me the ticket verification value.”

I read the numbers off, which tied directly back to me through DNA or some blockchain that I didn’t care to understand.

“Congratulations, Mr. Lewis! My name is Leslie Krieger, director of space flight operations. We’re so happy you’ll be joining the chosen flight crew,” the woman said.

I had forgotten about the rest of the crew. The instructions from the aliens gave specific names, locations and details of people on Earth that were required to go. It was obvious they wanted the cream of the crop — scientists, engineers, professors and the like—but there were a few oddballs thrown in for good measure. The strangest was a seventy-year-old Chinese lady from a farming village who had never left her hometown. Now she was going to leave her solar system. Including me, there were a total of sixty passengers.

Leslie babbled on for thirty minutes about what would happen next. I caught half the details since I was on such an adrenaline high. Picked up by an escort… no luggage… flown out by military chopper from Detroit Metro… Kennedy Space Center… call loved ones on the way.

“Got it, Leslie. Nobody is waiting on me here. I can leave any time,” I said.

“That’s fine, Mr. Lewis. In about fifteen minutes our men will be there. Don’t expect a lot of fanfare. They’ll be dressed in civilian clothes. They’ll ask for a code word. It’s ‘tippy toe’. Can you remember that, Mr. Lewis? It’s very important.”

“I might not be the sharpest tool, but you can count on me,” I said.

Leslie didn’t seem too convinced, but that didn’t matter much. I was the one going, not her.

When I got seated with the other crew in the massive ship, two days had passed, filled with a flurry of meetings. Diplomats, senators and a few celebrities sworn to secrecy all wanted a peek at the chosen few. My name wouldn’t be broadcast until we were out of the stratosphere. There was no training because the aliens could simulate gravity and the navigation controls were set on autopilot. There wasn’t much to do other than wait for takeoff.

A few of the crew were communicating back to the command center, spouting words of inspiration and offering praise for how hard all the governments had worked together to make this happen. As if following instructions required praise.

I kept thinking how nobody asked about using the bathroom, or if there even was one. Maybe there was a memo sitting in my spam folder back home with the subject line “Bathroom Protocol”. That made me smile, and when I turned to my left the Chinese lady was smiling, too.

Getting out of orbit was a smooth ride. Those aliens had done their homework. Most of the crew were clapping when we entered cold, dark space. The window in front of us was big enough to see what amounted to a lot of black. Where were all the stars and galaxies, like on those NASA telescope photos? I must have missed that science lesson.

We started picking up speed fast, a force barely felt, but understood because the window, which turned out to be a screen, was now showing an image of earth fading into the background. It was a lot better than looking into an empty void.

I lived with 8 billion people my whole life and I didn’t feel the least bit homesick. Hope wasn’t a word in my vocabulary, but if I were to describe anything I was feeling, I suppose that’s what I would call it.

When the planet was the size of a golf ball, a bright glowing light surrounded it, followed by shooting flames. Suddenly, a massive explosion of ash and debris spread out far and wide across the whole window. After that we were faced again with darkness. Whatever tranquility the picture offered had degenerated into crying and wailing.

It was an awesome sight, in the kind of way a tsunami rips through a beach town in videos of natural disasters, except on a much bigger scale.

“I guess we know now. We’re on a lifeboat,” I said.

Something in the peaceful look on the Chinese lady’s face told me she wasn’t too surprised by what just happened. Turning my way, leaning over, she put her hand gently on my arm. Lowering her voice down to a whisper, she said, “I call. They answer.”

I kept my mouth shut, happy to be sitting next to our new ambassador.