Her heart sank.

She saw people quite like herself and some organisms that made her look twice and stare. Some looked like straight out of a Hollywood science-fiction movie, others could be barely recognized as living things. She saw what looked like a normal human male, six feet tall, lean, shabby long dark hair, muttering to himself in something resembling English. He looked at her as he passed her by, he stopped for just a second before following his arrow towards a scootie stand.

Anna went the same way, getting an alien scootie to get to a space shuttle would've been a thrilling experience if her daughter and mother's lives weren't on the line as well as the fact that her planet had exploded.

The guy didn't pay her any mind and before she could approach him, he climbed on and drove towards his shuttle. She had no choice but to do the same. In no time, she had reached her space shuttle and the arrow turned into the subtitles in the air that said, 'Climb inside, don't touch anything. Your location is preselected.'

"What about my daughter and mother?" She didn't know if she could get a reply from a hologram, but she had to try. Surprisingly it answered, "They will stay here until you pass or fail your mission." Before she could say more, it simply dissipated into thin air.

She took a deep breath and decided it was time to get the things done. She couldn't fight for her daughter from higher beings that she just found out were real. She was a believer but she never expected to meet them, let alone be saved by them.

A mother would do anything for her child, and that was all that was going through the twenty-nine years old Anna Richard's mind. She gathered courage and climbed in. It was surprisingly spacious for one person and quite comfy too. Just as she got seated another Hologram appeared on the front screen it said, 'Welcome Miss Richards. Put your bag inside the blinking drawer.'

Indeed there was a huge drawer blinking black-and-white. Once that was done, she was instructed to sit back as a bunch of belts buckled themselves around her from her seat. Once she was secured, it was take-off time. The countdown began and Anna realized her fear of space, which she didn't have time to focus on before. It had scared her a bit earlier when she had entered the hangar but the desperation for reality and finding her daughter had pushed that to her subconscious, now it was all there was.

The engine ignited itself and soon her space shuttle had launched itself into the infinite dark void of space. She closed her eyes. The speed added to her space-phobia wouldn’t let her do much else. Many thoughts crossed her mind.

She didn't get to see her daughter or mother, so she had no idea if they were alive or just a story told to her. She didn't even believe that she would reach any habitable planet either. The thought of dying in a space shuttle, alone in space, brought tears to her eyes, especially when she felt like if she had put enough fight, she could've at least seen her daughter one last time.

But regret wasn't going to help her.

After a few hours, Anna had gotten a little comfortable in her seat.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

She still hadn't seen outside the screen but she had tried to relax, who knows how long was this space shuttle going to fly at the speed of sound through space towards her destination.

It took nearly twelve hours Earth-time but when Anna gathered enough courage to look at space through her only window, she saw a sun, possibly the main star of the solar system her destination planet was in. She knew because another count down had begun telling how much time was left before contact.

If she tried to put her fear of space aside, she could see the natural beauty of the universe, raw and open scattered in space, yet so organized. Her space shuttle got closer to one particular planet and she was surprised to see it look like her Earth from this distance. Looking just like the little globe she had bought for her little daughter a week ago.

The announcement blared, 'Prepare for impact! Prepare for impact! Entering the atmosphere of the planet-' The A.I., spoke of the identity of the planet, the name of its star, and their constellation but Anna couldn't understand the terms being announced. She just braced herself as the space shuttle began to jerk as they entered the atmosphere and the A.I. announced, "Trajectory distorted. Changing direction. Mapping system malfunction. Thrusters malfunction. The cloaking system decreased to 80% efficiency. Prepare for impact. Impact in T-minus ten, nine,-" It got cut off as the lights of the shuttle turned off.

Fear settled in Anna, she knew she was going to die without seeing her daughter but she hadn't expected to go in such a horrible way. Exploding to bits due to crash landing on an alien planet under the cloaked space shuttle so no one might even find her ashes.

The impact was indeed strong and violent. If she wasn't so tightly buckled, she might've lost her life after the first impact. But the landing crash continued. The shuttle hit the ground three times bouncing due to impact, before settling down steaming and dysfunctional. Anna couldn't believe that the shuttle didn't explode, that she was still alive.

She sat still for a few minutes, regaining her senses after such a bad landing and also waiting for further instructions from the higher beings who had led her there.

Nothing!

The machine didn't wake up. The A.I. was quite possibly damaged along with the rest of the machine's systems. After a couple of minutes, Anna decided it was time to step outside into the alien terrain and devise her plan of action.

The buckles had come loose and without the shuttle's power, they opened easily, allowing Anna to scoot over to the drawer where her duffle bag was kept. It was stuck, without the shuttle's power, there seemed no way to get to her things. The higher beings had not foreseen this set of circumstances. But she needed her stuff, most importantly she needed to get that black box which was called TSRS, her ticket to her family back.

She applied force by hand, then kicked the drawer with all her might. When that didn't do much, she searched for broken parts of the shuttle to break it with its material. That seemed to do the trick. Finally, she got her bag and kicked open the door that she had entered. Everything in the broken shuttle was barely on its hinges.

She could see it was either evening or early morning, given the position of the Sun. She jumped out of the dead shuttle and took a deep breath. The higher beings had said the conditions would be to her optimal biology. Indeed she didn't feel any different than she did back on her planet biologically.

She could see she had landed on a cliff near a huge water body, quite possibly an ocean.

She was just standing there, looking at the horizon, trying to wrap her mind around her situation and the past forty-eight hours in which she had gotten divorced, seen her planet explode, been saved by higher alien species, sent to another alien planet with a mission, and nearly died during the crash landing.

She wanted to collect her thoughts and then decided where to begin and how.

That is, until she heard someone call from behind her, "Are you an alien? Or an astronaut who lost direction?"