[Earth, Year 2080]
A huge crowd of children, old people, boys and girls could be seen in the launch site of Pacific Scape. It's again that time of the year. A new batch of young men and woman are riding the rocket to Mars. After humans started colonizing Mars a long ago, people are dying to go there.
The work is going very smoothly, nobody could have imagined it will go this smooth, with zero 'funding problem'. This was mostly because many private organisations are interested in colonizing Mars, of course business opportunity is pretty huge.
Moreover space research and geology is huge hit there, so it became kind of internship to go to Mars and get experience. From last few years youngsters started going there after finishing school. Some decide to return after few years, but some decide to stay there forever. Of course communication is a bit problematic, but not many minds it.
Rumours have it that students from last year batch decided to stay there forever, they loved Mars so much that they don't wanna return. So this year it was a tough competition to go to Mars, but nobody could even get closer to the elites of International School, so most of the Mars goers are students are from INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL, only 4-5 students from other schools got the chance. There is rush all over the launch pad, the rocket will launch in a few hours.
[Ladies and Gentlemen, please listen carefully, specially Team Martians. All Mars goers please follow the giant map on the roof and locate to the luggage centre and submit your luggage and scan your hand bag, you can take the hand bag with you after scanning. After that please form a line in platform no 10, buses will come and pick you up to the spaceship. Thank you.]
The crowd had a mixed reaction, some were sad to leave Earth, some were excited for Mars, and of course some of them had both feelings. After all, a long journey of one month awaits for them, that's not a small time. Though they will be put to sleep once they reach outer space to reduce usage of food and water, it will still be tiring. Rick was the part of excited team of the crowd. He was not quite the dense boy, but still lacked the power to read the room. He always had above average grades and now pursuing a career in defence system, he was too happy. He threw a punch into the air and proceeded into the line.
While everyone was busy noticing Rick and doubting if their life had became an anime, Ravi calmly tried to understand people while standing behind him. It was clear that Rick got his attention. Although he had poker face, it could be felt that he was kind of jealous of the over excited boy, but also kind of relieved to found him. Of course Rick was too busy thinking about his fictional future harem and didn't notice Ravi.
if you were present there at that time, you surely would have seen two unique faces, iq was glittering and shining from their faces, although they both seemed worried, it was a weird scene. First one is a beautiful young girl named Emma Fischer. You can say she's on the pinnacle of perfection as a human, but she lacked power of socialization. Clearly she isn't used to large crowd and like this and feeling uncomfortable.
But she didn't lose her composure thanks to her personality. She had the power of keeping herself calm in stressful situations (or maybe she just can't express herself like you!).
The second one is Alex Brown. His situation was weirder. He is actually fond of crowd, because it's easy to blend in. But in this case, he knew nobody in the crowd, so it's hard for him to function properly. For the first time in his life, he prayed to God and wished someone would approach him. He didn't want to force himself into the tiring social mode. He proceeded into the line with a miserable face.
[THE INSIDE SPACE]
"ATTENTION PLEASE PASSENGERS, THIS IS YOUR PILOT. THE TIME IS 1:00 P.M. PLEASE TAKE YOUR SEAT AND LAY WITH SPECIAL BELT. WE WILL BE LAUNCHING VERY SOON. WE WILL REACH OUTER SPACE BY 4 P.M., AFTER THAT, PLEASE COME TO DINING HALL AND EAT YOUR SPECIAL DINNER BEFORE 8 P.M." a calm male voice announced.
Alex, with his unchanged miserable face, went towards his seat cum bed. As expected from his personality, he didn't make any friends. Despite this, he was still wishing that he at least makes a few friends, because it would be kinda difficult with zero friends.
When he was near his seat he heard a loud voice that he happened to hear at the line a while ago.
"Looks like I got one hell of a good luck, Window Seat! Yahoo! What are the odds!"
Rick was so happy and proud that he couldn't control his emotions. Well he like he ever does...
"20%" a gentle female voice came from his next bed. It was Emma, she really thought Rick was asking for the odds. There was an awkward pause. After a quic moment, Emma understood her mistake and had a sudden urge to kill herself by whatever means.
"Ah sorry, it's my bad, I was lost in thoughts, so I said something meaningless. Don't mind me"
Rick noticed her and got quite flustered, he understood how loud he was, and she was beautiful too...
After reaching his seat, Alex's miserable face became sadder. His most hated thing was bestowed upon him.
"Ah yes, good old bad luck!"
It was window seat! There were 100 seats distributed equally in 10 rows. So only 2 window seats in every row, it takes a lotta good luck to get a window seat, but he was probably the only one who was not happy getting one.
His friends used to tease him by saying 'With Great Brain, Comes Motion Sickness!'
"Damm you jealous pieces of shits..." Alex whispered. Suddenly he saw someone and suddenly he was bit relieved. He noticed a black haired boy lost in his own thoughts with dreamy eyes. Suddenly he thought he had seen the boy boy somewhere but couldn't really remember correctly.
"Well here goes nothing" He said to himself and approached Ravi, "Umm excuse me, I am Alex, nice to meet you. Are you free? Actually I have a favor to ask you if you don't mind", Alex just rapped out those words, he might be intelligent, but he was socially awkward on a whole different level. His words startled Ravi normally, if someone suddenly appears out of the blue and talks about request in a rude but wierd tone, anyone would be surprised.
"Oh Alex, it's my pleasure to meet you, I am Ravi, you don't need to introduce yourself. You are pretty famous. I'm really lucky to get seat beside you. Yeah please tell your request, I'll gladly try to accept it."
Ravi told this in his usual soft voice with a smile, although he wasn't the talkative type, he wasn't shy. Apparently Ravi recognised him. Alex was confused and flustered. He actually couldn't find any reason why he said Alex is famous. Seeing his confusion Ravi tried to make things clear.
"Well you are the pro-gram competition winner of 2078? You just killed it there."
Hearing this Alex was relaxed. "Ah yes, it's not a big deal, I didn't know people outside international school cared about that. Well please exclude the formalities, I'm a kid going to Mars just like you. Hope we get along."
"The pleasure is all mine. Well you were saying something about a favor"
"Oh I was gonna forget, umm do want to exchange seats with me? I got the window seat"
"You want to leave the window seat?"
"Actually I have motion sickness, so it won't be a good ride for me"
"Well looks like I'm blessed to say goodbye to Mother Earth with my own eyes."
After laughing an awkward laugh, Alex exchanged seats with Ravi.