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Robinson and Crusoe, The Blue Lagoon, Castaway—I'd read the books and seen the movies. Never thought I'd have my own story to tell, and anyway, you'd think an astronaut would be prepared such an eventuality, wouldn't you? We're trained over months, years, in fact. We're picked especially for our strong mental state. But we're human just like you. We have emotions just like you. We have fears just like you. The only difference is we learn to control them.
Our mission was going well. There were just three of us. Bodie, Matt and myself, Jenny and we were all on our way to the first manned mission outside the solar system. To a planet that was similar to Earth in size and makeup.
To say we were excited was an understatement!
We flew in our respective spacepods, leaving the mother ship in orbit around Eden, and took our first steps on a planet untouched by humans. Oh my God, I can't begin to tell you how I felt! I wanted to cry, laugh, scream. I guess, my more basic emotions overtook my training that day.
Our mission was to imbed probes at various premarked sites, and collect samples such as rocks, plants, water, you know the mundane, astronauty things.
But, how can I explain? No training can prepare you for the momentous feelings we'd feel. A sky with two suns, a perpetual twilight with eight moons, a wondrous alien terrain. It was surreal.
On our way to insert the probes, we found an alien spaceship; deserves its own sentence really: We found an alien spaceship. It was easy to tell it had been there a long time because vegetation had started to grow over it, some of it was covered completely.
It was an unspoken agreement when we decided abandoned our duties to explore it further. That's when it all went wrong. We'd let our human emotions take over. A fatal error.
I found a gap that was big enough for me to crawl into. Bodie was lacklustre in disallowing it, I think he wanted to find out what it was like inside, just as much as me. I found bodies. Countless alien bodies. Most were decapitated. But one, one, was very much alive.
It was a bit of a blank after that. I was dragged back outside, and I remember my throat being constricted and lights dancing behind my eyes. Then I woke to Bodie and Matt not being there and I was on my own.
Alone on an unknown planet.
The alien and my so-called colleagues had gone. I guessed the alien had killed them and had travelled back to Taurus in one of the buggies. Taurus would have killed it instantly, so its attempt to flee home ended then and there.
So I was alone. Completely alone.
And this is my story in Eden. But before you go—can I just say please, please don't judge me. You'd do the same.
Jenny Daykin (protagonist)