There is a date that rings inside of my head day after day. I just cannot stop thinking about it, and there is no reason I shouldn't think about it. It was the day that my life completely changed. It was my birthday, and I had just turned 18. I was finally a man. I was still in high school, but it would be my last day. Instead of celebrating my birthday, I was on a long flight, which had felt a lot longer. I wasn't alone however; in fact that plane was packed. It was hardly first class, and I wasn't very comfortable. I had never been on a plane before, much less a government C5 Galaxy.

 

Taking a look around the plane, most of us were in civilian clothes, I could see maybe 50 of us at the most. The rest of the plane was an assortment of soldiers, ranging from marines to the navy, and even the air force. The rest of the plane was full of boxes. Some had different company names on them that I recognized, but some just had cryptic numerical codes. I was very nervous, and I had every reason to be.

 

I was taken out of school by a man in plain black suit. I could see the well-used Glock hanging on his hip. You could have confused him for a police officer, or maybe a detective, but he had no badge or cuffs. The school was placed on lock down, no one allowed in or out, and everyone was confined to the classroom for the time being. They told us it wouldn't take long, and we had nothing to worry about.

 

They lead me outside to the parking lot with about 10 other students. The only thing in the lot was an unmarked school bus, and 2 armed guards carrying AR15 rifles, loaded with all the bells and whistles like lasers and flash lights and scopes. It could easily be confused for a videogame in fact.

 

They told us to get find a seat and get comfortable, it would be about a 20 minute ride. They didn't however mention where we would be going yet. Once everyone was seated, we started out of the school parking lot. Finally, one of the 2 guards spoke up. He identified himself as "The Man with the Plan", and that right now names were not important and we would simply refer to him as sir.

 

We were finally told what was actually going on. I can remember those words in my mind as the man with a plan told us, rather unemotionally to say goodbye to civilian life. We should be proud! We were selected after years of intense research to become part of the most elite armed forces platoon ever formed. We would be the "Second Chance". I was not sure what he meant by that, I was far to nervous to think about anything. I wondered if I would ever see my family, or my friends, again.

 

The rest of the trip, while not very long, felt like hours. We all sat in silence, with only the sound of the bus engine running. When we finally arrived, it was then I noticed just where we were going. I seen a large plane, the C5 Galaxy I mentioned. This was also when I noticed a few other buses.

 

Mr. Plan told us to get off the bus and get onto the plane, and soon all would be explained when everyone was present. I had many thoughts racing through my mind, such as what my family would think I didn't get off the school bus and sit down for supper. I still remember that day I would be getting one of my favorite foods. I could smell my mom's oven roasted chicken cooking now, and it made me very hungry but I quickly shook the feeling off.

 

Once everyone was onboard of the plane, Mr. Plan grabbed the microphone for the PA system and introduced himself. His name was General David Smith. He said we would still refer to him as Sir, this was the armed forces after all! This was not the army or marines, but a joint task force known only as Second Chance, and it was on the need to know. This was absolute secretive.

 

General Smith informed us that we were currently on route to Area 51, and you could hear the giggles in the crowd. One stern look from Smith and everyone was silent again. We were told that once there we would be fully briefed on our mission, but for now, we would get a small idea of what was to come.

 

We had been selected for certain traits that we had possessed when in school. For example, if we were good at math or thinking on our feet. Some were selected based on physical traits such as being able to lift heavy things or run long distances. No one would be told why they had been selected but it wasn't very hard to figure that much out.

 

General Smith took a seat and the plane started its take off check list. The sound of the 4 turbofan engines spooling up was an amazing sound I would have had a tingle down my spine to hear this close under normal circumstances but I couldn't focus. I tried to close my eyes and pretend this was just a nightmare and I would wake up in my bed any minute, but it never happened, and I became more and more terrified as I thought about my family.

 

It was a long flight to Nevada but it felt even longer to me, and I am sure it probably felt the same way to the other kids with me on the flight. It would be hard, if not impossible, to remain calm with all that was going on, let alone with many armed guards on the flight.

 

We finally landed, in the place that was always said to simply not exist, 90 miles north of Las Vegas. This was it, Area 51. It was extremely hot when we exited the plane, and we were lead into a building marked "Lab 3" in simple black paint. It was not exactly a building you would expect to have much going on inside actually.

 

We entered the building, single file, and were lead into the main auditorium of the laboratory. It was there that I saw some other people, who I assumed were probably all 18 or maybe a little older. We were seated, with about 200 other kids, and then General Smith went up onto the stage, and turned on a projector system.

 

He grabbed the remote and the clipped on a headset, much like you would use for a cell phone. On the screen, it showed a planet, much like Earth in appearance, and one could easily think it was our own home planet. He cleared his throat, and asked if anyone knew what planet this was, but before anyone could even answer, he made sure we all knew it wasn't actually a question.

 

"This is X200-1597, a planet that was 15 light years away from Earth", he said as he pointed at the planet with a cheap laser pointer. This planet was also double the size of Earth, had an orbit nearly three times as long, and a day that lasted for 48 hours. It was, as he put it, "Earth's fat sister planet." He went through several more slides, telling us the various details of the planet, which had been named Renascentia, or "Rebirth" in Latin.

 

He went into some details, like how the gravity on the planet, even though it was twice the size of Earth, had been around the same. I sort of zoned out so I can't remember most of what he said. What amazed me was when he went to the final slide, a live feed of the planet sent by a probe. He explained that a probe was sent to the planet, using some sort of hyper propulsion, in around a year instead of the 15 it would take going at the speed of light. The feed, which was only delayed by a few minutes was sent through subspace.

 

When I saw the planet it was no wonder why they had chosen a name like Rebirth. It was a dense and lush forest planet, and it was downright beautiful. Because of all the plant life, the air had far more oxygen than Earth's atmosphere. The planet was paradise in a nutshell. He even explained that it was almost always around 70 degrees.

 

This is where we were told what the plan actually was. We would have 6 months of training, standard boot camp pretty much. After the 6 months were over, we would leave Earth, for good.

 

2: Chapter 2

Boot camp, as it was so called, turned out to be a lot like calling a used and horribly broken down tractor a super car like a Lamborghini. It could only be described as hell on Earth, but I think I might be exaggerating a little but it did get a lot worse towards the end of the 6 months.

 

The first half of these 6 long months was your traditional boot camp, and it came complete with the screaming drill sergeant. After all, without a drill sergeant screaming at you about how his grandmother could do 100 pushups in the time it took you to do 10, it just wouldn't be boot camp! There was however something very different about this boot camp that was missing from traditional boot camp.

 

We were given no luxury what so ever. This was purely survival training, and that meant we were living off the grid. We had no running water or electricity, and what supplies we did have were very limited. We didn't even have any real shelter except for a tent that we had to learn to assemble in even the worst conditions.

 

After the 3 months of physical training we were taught the survival skills we lacked and would need if we intended to survive on the alien world. We needed to learn to forage for food, such as plants, and more importantly, we needed to learn if they could be eaten. If we ate something poisonous, there would be no hospital to go to. The training that we had received was far beyond that of even all those people who prepare for the end of the world with cases of water and military rations in a homemade bunker.

 

What we had gone through I could only describe as extreme camping. If I could have survived that then I guess I would be able to survive almost anything right? That was the plan though, and I knew that it would be best to try and not get too cocky since this training was on Earth after all. After all was said and done, our training was over and we were to proceed with the next phase of the massive plan to continue the existence of humanity.

 

3: Chapter 3

After the six months were up, we had been taken back to a real military base. Much to my surprise, we got a chance to say goodbye to our families. Sadly, what that had meant was we were allowed to record a short video for them to watch after we were long gone. This mission was still top secret and on a very strict need to know basis.

 

I did not want to worry my parents with what might happen to me, and I had no idea what they had been told when I never got off the bus from school that one day. In fact, I really had stopped thinking about home after the first week of extreme boot camp. It never even occurred me to until they handed me the camera that I would never see them again. This was the final good bye and it was one sided. All I could think of to say was that I would miss them and maybe, perhaps if by some chance, that I would be able to see them again.

 

After recording my message goodbye, I had laid down on my cot to rest my eyes for a minute. I didn't expect to fall asleep but I guess after sleeping for 6 months in nothing but a small tent and a sleeping bag, I had needed some time to sleep without needing to be up before the sun rose.

 

I was awake by an announcement asking everyone to report to the mess hall for a briefing meeting in one hour. These messages had played every 5 minutes over the next hour so I knew that this had to be important or they would have just announced it once or twice at the most.

 

I stumbled out of bed, and started walking towards the mess hall at a slow walking pace as I still had a lot of time to make it to the mess hall. When I got to the mess hall, I was handed a backpack and told to find a seat and get ready for class. The guard in charge of handing these out was making jokes but careful to also make sure they had given us the right bag as they all had a name on it.

 

I sat down and opened the bag they handed me to find the first bit of technology since I left for the super fun camping trip! There was a very nice ThinkPad T440p with all the bells and whistles, a Google Nexus 5 phone, and even a Nexus 7 tablet with a case and Bluetooth keyboard! They had spared no expense because they had even included little extras such as a nice headset, and several batteries. 

 

As I looking through the bag, someone I had seen around a bit but didn't have a chance to really talk to since we had been in different camps during boot camp. I assume there had to be separate camps in order to keep the training groups smaller to be more effective. After all, being alone or in small groups was something that we had to train for to be able to survive on the planet.

 

He introduced himself as Jason Shaw, a self-trained civilian extract specialist. We still had some time to spare before the meeting started so he told me how he had come to be an extraction specialist. He was working on a school project away from home on a contract for a programming job for an insurance company and he had become friends with a girl named Vanessa.

 

They had cut his contract short and he never had a chance to say good bye or even learn her last name. He had tried to contact her many times but not knowing a last name made that horribly difficult to do. He was on a family reunion, watching the news while waiting for him family to get up. There was a hostage situation in New York and when they showed the hostages, he had noticed Vanessa in the crowd.

 

To make a long story short, he never really told me the exact details of how he did it, or what happened after, but he managed to overtake the guards and rescue his friend. That was one of the reasons he had been selected for Second Chance. The other reason was his skills as a programmer. If you can do all of the needed work in half the time they thought it would take, you had to have some real skills after all.

 

Just then, the final announcement came over the loud speakers and General Smith walked into the crowded mess hall and picked up a microphone. He surveyed the crowd and waited a short few seconds for silence. He tapped the microphone to make sure it was on and began talking.

 

"You have survived training that would make even the most seasoned survivalist jealous, so you cadets deserve a pat on the back. Now is when the real fun starts though! You are going to be assigned to a 5 person team. On this team will be another 5 marines. So really I guess its more of a 10 person squad. You will be making a journey to spot go well guarded that Area 51 would seem like a grocery store!"

 

"We decided that best way to remain unknown is an old fashioned army convoy! The army always does various training exercises so a convoy of marines won't seem so out of place. You however, will be in civilian cars to help maintain cover. You will stay near the convoy, but not be part of it. This is quite important as we do not want to draw any onlookers during this phase of the mission."

 

"Now, you might wonder where you are going. You are going to an unmarked island, in the middle of the Pacific ocean. Under the surface of the ocean is the next step on your journey. Of course you knew you had to be taking some form of spacecraft! Well to keep it unknown, we built it under the ocean. Sure we ripped off that new Star Trek movie where they hide the Enterprise under water, but technically we did it first!"

 

"You will find out your bunkmates tomorrow morning, so everyone should go prepare and get all they wish to take packed up and ready to go. Make sure you bring the backpacks we gave you. When you get to the island, I will give you a final briefing, and you are off on your journey to start your new life! DISMISSED!"

4: Chapter 4

After the meeting, I went to start packing for the trip. Lucky for me, if you want to call it that, I had very little things to pack. They didn't quite allow us to have a lot of personal effects other than stuff like clothes. They claimed that it was for the safety of the mission, but I am not so sure that was the case.

 

To me, it seemed to be more of an excuse to wean us off the toys that we carried all the time. After all, where we had been assigned to go would be nothing like life as we know it. We would never see the likes of Facebook or YouTube again. This was something that I had learned to live with. What I didn't expect was this bag of goodies.

 

I suppose I did see the point of the laptop and tablet, but I didn't seen why we would have a smartphone, unless it was used as a small tablet. I guess in the old days we would have some form of radio so maybe we would have a way to use these phones after all. I suppose that I should have actually played with the stuff more and noticed how different this stuff was compared to what other people had.

 

This phone would later be one of the most important tools I could ever ask for. Even with all of the training I had, there was no substitute for technology in the end. That is what separated us from the apes way back at the beginning of humanity. Survival may be human nature but without tools we probably wouldn't be anywhere near advanced by now. It was strange to think that soon I would being going in the longest journey of my life.

 

After a good night's rest, I awoke to the usual 0600 wakeup call and went to check the crew list. I was thrilled to see Jason had been assigned to the same team that I had! In the little bit of time I had talked to Jason I had known that we would be good friends. He was very kind and seemed to act far more humble than other people considering what he had done. He didn't brag at all, even though he was offered a high level position in the FBI.

 

I walked down to the mess hall and got some breakfast, and joined Jason at his table. He had not checked the crew list so I was able to tell him the good news. He was very happy to hear that we would be on the same team. After breakfast, we grabbed our gear and left to meet the rest of the convoy.

 

I got into one of the army trucks with Jason and a few marines. One of the marines was driving and told us that it would be around a 30 minute trip the air strip that we would take off from. We sat in silence, which made the trip feel a little longer than it was since we had been very anxious to leave!

 

Once we got to the air strip we went into a huge hanger full of various planes, including both government and civilian planes. My only guess was to avoid suspicion of a dozen or more government planes taking off in a line. Staying under the radar was key on this mission as we had been told many times. Everything was happening so fast that I had to wonder what the urgency was.

 

After getting into the hanger, we spotted a bunch of chairs and a podium in front. I didn't expect anything like this since General Smith told us that he would give us our final briefing on the island. General Smith was nowhere to be seen so I could only assume that he was already on the island preparing for our arrival. That was when I noticed the screen on the wall displaying crew numbers and aircraft tail numbers.

 

A man came up the podium and started to look at his computer. After a few minutes he started to announce flights as they became ready. Since Jason and I had been down the list towards the bottom, we have some time to wait for our flight to be ready. We had been assigned to a small commuter plane, one that I had seen quite often flying around my home town, a Dash-8.

 

Normally this would be a small turboprop commuter plane that could hold around 70 people. This one, was like everything else, heavily modified. We needed to be able to hold extra fuel to get to the remote island so this on could only hold around 12 people including the crew members. In other words it could hold our small team of 10 people, a pilot, and copilot.

 

As Jason and I talked, I learned more about his life. He had lived in Michigan, in an area he referred to as Hoth, the icy planet from Star Wars. He had told me that they didn't measure snow in inches but rather feet. Once it snowed, it wouldn't melt again until the spring. Living in the northeast, specifically in rural Pennsylvania. I was no stranger to snow, but it often melted in a few days to a week or two at most.

 

Weather was always something that had interested me. I enjoyed a good storm, and would often sit on the computer tracking it until it either hit my area, broke up, or simply avoided us. My favorite, as well as Jason's was thunder storms though. I was one of those idiots that have to be told NOT to be outside during a storm! I loved to sit on the front porch and watch the storm with my parents.

 

Time always flies when you are having fun, and not just because it was in what you could almost call an airport. We boarded the flight, sat down and hoped for an inflight movie and meal. I was getting hungry but I knew they would never have food or a movie for us since this wasn't really a civilian flight after all.

 

5: Chapter 5

It was a long flight, so I had decided to learn a bit more about the people I would be living with for the rest of my life. I already knew a good bit about Jason so far, but the other 3 people were still unfamiliar to me. By reading the crew list at least I knew their names. The first person on the list was Sarah Hawkins, a computer science major at a very prestigious university.

 

She had gotten into Harvard when she was only 14 due to being a child prodigy. She had the most beautiful ruby red hair I had ever seen. She had told us that growing up in rural Maine was tough for her since she had to go out of state for her education. She had told us that before all this had happened so was considering taking a job working for Microsoft since they had been hounding her for months to take the job they were offering her.

 

She had been clear to make sure that although she had liked the name Sarah a lot, since it was her mother's name. Every first born girl in her family had been named Sarah for generations and she intended to keep that tradition alive even if it was no longer an Earth based tradition. During her stay at Harvard, she had be fond of being called Ruby, something her boyfriend at the time had started.

 

Lucky for her, when they started to draft people for Second Chance, they also chose her boyfriend by sheer coincidence. He was taking chemistry classes to get his degree in pharmaceuticals. James Norris was also a child prodigy, something I think had been a reason a lot of us were chosen. I was probably one of the few people that were not a child prodigy in college instead of high school.

 

James was needed on this mission for his skills making medicine, and Ruby was also important for programming the computers, and he was glad to have her with him but he said that most of all he was going to miss his chinchilla, Captain Harlock. Ruby slapped James so hard that you even heard it over the plane engines!

 

The other person on the crew list that wasn't a marine was a Japanese student named Yoshimasa Miyamoto. He too preferred to have people call him by his nickname, Yoshi, which made it easier to remember his name for me. He had been a normal student like me, so I am not why either of us had been chosen yet, but I am sure there had to be some reason after all. Yoshi had remained more quiet and secluded than the others, but I am sure he would open up more once he got to know the rest of us.

 

I had introduced myself, Michael Bradford, to the others. I was nothing special really but I could fix almost anything, which was probably the reason I had been chosen now that I think about it a bit more. I had wanted to get into a field like engineering, but Yoshi had filled that gap.  It was funny to think that when my parent's had been furious whenever I took stuff apart, that I was actually doing myself a major favor. Funny how taking off the kitchen cabinets with a power drill when you are 3 can lead to you being sent across the galaxy to start a new civilization.

 

It was a long flight, so we had decided that we would tell stories to pass the time. It was kind of funny that we had been on this mission together, but really, we didn't know much about each other, let alone any of the other people that would be joining us on the planet soon enough. I would have never thought that I would be leaving the planet, since I also wanted to stick to one of my hobbies after school. I had a passion for landscaping, and dreamed of making it big by doing the landscaping for celebrities.

 

A man has to have dreams, and I loved the work involved with lawn care and landscaping. I guess you can almost consider landscaping to be architecture, which I did also enjoy the thought of designing buildings. Now, I had an alien landscape to create and form to my desires.

 

James had started telling the first story. He had Captain Harlock, as well as a few other chinchillas, because his parents had been trying to breed them.  At a young age, he had become fascinated by them, and how soft they had been. One day, he went into the room with all the cages that held the breeding pairs. He was 7 at the time, and decided that they shouldn't be in the cages. He let all of them, around 28 chinchillas, out into the living room. They had been running around the room when his parents came down from upstairs and seen all the chinchillas running around the room! He had been grounded for a month for that and they then decided it would be a good idea to lock the cages instead.

 

Ruby had decided to go next with her story. She had always enjoyed playing her clarinet, and she would often head down to the park to play when the weather was nice. She had often seen a boy at the park, who would always sit down with her and make up songs with her. Ruby had started to develop a little crush on him, and one day when they were discussing movies, they found a common ground to bond tighter together with.

 

His favorite movie had been original Star Wars trilogy, which just so happened to be her favorite as well. As a surprise to him for his birthday, Ruby had learned all of his favorite musical scores from the movie on her clarinet completely by ear. Sadly he had moved away before he could ever hear them and Ruby had not seen him again since. He didn't have a chance to even give her his new address or a phone number.

 

Jason had of course told us about how he had taken out several terrorists to save the life of the girl he had met on his internship. He didn't spare any details of how he had landed in New York, found the school and snuck into it from a back entrance. He didn't have a gun or anything but he managed to take out one of the terrorists and get his gun. Jason's story had taken up a lot of time but it was by far the most interesting.

 

Yoshi had decided to keep his story short, perhaps not his intentional plan since they had announced that we would be landing soon. He had grown up in Tokyo, only moving here recently as his father had been offered a job working as a translator for the military. He had a passion for old computers and the like. This was much like my own passion. He had told us of the stores in Japan that had almost anything you could imagine. Just then the plane had landed.

 

I didn't have time for my story sadly but time would come quite soon I was sure. The next leg of the journey would not be short and we would have plenty of time to talk and tell more stories soon enough but for now, we had yet another meeting to get to. We landed and stepped off the plane into another large hangar yet again. This seemed to be a common theme for this journey. One bland building after another.