Chapter One: The Clearing

[A Truck driver stops at a rest area and walks into the woods unnoticed.]

Terry stood there on his knees in the sleeper of his truck, praying and crying; crying more than praying. In despair he laid down with exhaustion. All the images of his sad life flashed through his mind. He went over them, one by one, trying to understand where he went wrong in his life. Or, why did everything in his life seem so wrong.

When he thought back on his life, it seemed as though his life had been taken away from him. He felt as though he had a body – but not a soul. Where was his soul? What had happened to him and when?

“This is not my life, it can’t be. It’s like a nightmare that never ends – on and on and on …..

“It’s like the quote that I memorized from “Mac Beth:”

‘Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

and is heard no more. Tis a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’

“My life seems so far away when I bring back the images of my childhood. It seems like a dream that happened a long time ago, but not my own dream, but somebody else’s dream.

[A young girl walks along at a brisk pace and enters her craft.]

Anja Jia was late. She had never been late before; not to a class, not to anything. But she was late today. She moved along quickly, and, stepping up the walk into her craft, she settled into her seat. She waved her hand over the panel and the craft took off.

As the craft went into a normal orbit around the super-planet it suddenly hit some strange turbulence, which jolted the craft, causing Anja to bolt forward in her seat, bumping her head against the control panel and knocking her unconscious.

This was not an experience that a twelve-year-old would normally experience in a typical Mindakan day. Life was almost perfect, “especially” for a twelve-year-old.

The craft left its orbit around Mindaka and darted straight out of the gravitational pull of the planet and into the deep of space at many times the speed of light.

If the craft had not been equipped with a self-preserving guidance system it would have gone- who knows where!