At the corner of the only two streets with a corner in town, a young chubby guy in a T-shirt and jeans, with round glasses, turned the sign to "Closed", and locked the door to clean up for the night.
"Yeah, right, clean up what? There were a grand total of two people in the store today, trule an all-out rave!"
Still, he mopped the floor and cleaned the bathrooms, because it's code.
"Pine tree, you are so stuck here. Really wish there was some way out of this town, but with what money? And what would my folks do, run the farm themselves at 82?" Pine tree was his nickname.
He wandered out lost in thought dreaming of escape, locked the door, and started walking towards home.
"What the..." He stopped a short time later realizing that something was very very wrong.
"Is that a truck? In town?"
A short while later he seemed to be groggily waking up to an alarm he had never used before.
"We have main booster ignition, T-10.."
"Stop" he shuts out loud thinking it would stop the alarm.
"Negative Starhopper, the launch abort window is closed. You ok? (9..) We had a weird glitch from your telemetry for a moment." This voice seemed to be coming from headphones he was wearing.
"8..7.."
His eyes sprung open, wide awake. "Pinecone, you are so...wait, Pinecone?" He said to himself.
"6.."
"Starhopper, this is mission control. We are advising an off-procedure task. (5..) Please strap your helmet on right now, rather than at the (4..) four minute window, we'd like to recheck the suit seal.
(3..)
"Yeah right, you're afraid I'm losing it and not going to be able to the the thing on in low (2..) gravity... Where did that thought come from!?" Pinecone thought to himself while putting on the helmet flawlessly.
(1..)
He did not hear the sigh of relief from mission control as they saw the helmet successfully attached.
A giant roar, like the sound of a six thousand ton dragon, but somehow still reminiscent of a Truck, triggered all noise cancellation as the behemoth ship began falling off the world into the deep blue sky.
In the silence of his thoughts again, through the audio blackout Pinecone... Pete Connoly that is, wondered how exactly he was going to find out how he got here, where here is... Well, was. And how in the world he was supposed to use the bathroom.
Static came from the headphones again. "Starhopper, this is mission control, do you read?"
"Uh.. yes, I read...what do you recommend?" Pete said, confused.
"Starhopper, perhaps a little refresher on communications protocol, like identifying yourself and confirming with Roger is in order!" Mission control did not sound one bit happy or like they were giving friendly reading suggestions.
"Oh, ok.. uh Roger.. this is Starhopper, Roger that!" Pete stumbled. "It's like walkie-talkie talk." He muttered, unaware that he has not closed the channel.
At mission control, the communications officer cut off the channel and shared an "oh no" look with the mission control officer.
The MCO shrugged: "well, he's there, we're here. We can fix all sorts of system issues remotely, but I've got a feeling it's gonna take doc a while to sort through this one. We might as well congratulate him!"
The CO then shrugged too, and opened the channel, nodding to the MCO
"Starhopper Pinecone, this is Mission Comman Officer Hemmings. We here at Mission Control would like to extend our sincere best wishes and congratulations to you, the world's first ..."
*Flick* the scene flickered away like a vivid fading dream.