8 May 2012
Today was the day! Today was the day Malcolm had spent 10 years preparing for. 10 years of scrounging up the required funds to pay for the journey of a lifetime: A return trip to Jupiter.
Malcolm had always been fascinated with the solar system. Not surprising, with a physicist as a father and astronomer as a mother, but it never crossed his mind that he would be one of the 500 passengers on the Virgin Galactic liner "Alexandres."
After a quick breakfast and a browse of the daily news on his phone, Malcolm took the Toshiba express lift down to the ground floor of the 150-floor London apartment block which he called home.
Words could not describe Malcolm's feelings, so I'll just describe his appearance. He was in his early thirties, short but slim, had a messy head of brown hair and an air of quiet intelligence about him.
Malcolm boarded the Fleet Street PodTrain and headed towards the Holland Park space station.
PodTrains were London's new transport system after the underground tunnel disasters of 2146 and 2150. Neglected tracks in the London underground had derailed several trains, causing mass panic, and mass panic in a tunnel with no lights isn't the most cheerful thing in the world. Naturally the London council stepped in immediately, and after six months of debates and strikes, the London underground was closed to the public.
PodTrains were a cheap, driverless, permanent replacement for the underground. Pods seating a maximum of eight people could be called to stations across the city on rails, and the destination was selected inside. If several pods were travelling along the same line, they would link up and all the power would come from the front pod, saving fuel.
After a short journey, Malcolm departed from the PodTrain and looked up at the vast transport vessel that was to take him and 200 other passengers up to the orbiting "Alexandres" it was a great ugly hunk of metal, with windows and hatches scattered over the hull like holes in Swiss cheese. This didn't bother Malcolm. Virgin had long since gave up on making their ships look cool, focusing on functionality.
Malcolm entered the lobby, beginning the first day of his 2 year holiday into space...
Malcolm's Journey - Part 1 • Opuss № I