Leaving Home

• Charlie Melrose, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2019

This was it. Neal Armstrong stepping on the moon. Justin Soft flying at the speed of light … it had all come down to this.
I was about to press the button that would launch us into the next age. The age of time. That button would I was going to press was supposed to de-atomise this station (destroy its atoms for transport somewhere else) orbiting the earth and guide it to sometime in the 19th century.
I took a deep breath, whispered “Onward,” (a phrase that will go down in history no doubt) then pressed the button…
It worked perfectly. There was a brief flash of amber light then a flash of deep blue and then… we were there.
The computer did a quick scan then informed me that all 502 crew members were alive (this was completely unexpected!) and healthy. This crew was specialised in all sorts of areas from the workings of the strange land we were entering, to the workings of the great machine that got us there. The crew; we all had expertise to aid us in our pioneering journey through time.
There was still the silence that had hung in the air since we’d arrived. The crew were still coming to terms with time travel. It’s not something you do every day and it can be a strange experience. It took some time getting used to being thrown into the past. I had now captained three trips through time, each with many strange moments. So I decided to break that silence with a, “Welcome to the past.” The entire crew cheered and it was amidst this that I wondered how my name would look in all those history books. Captain Lisa Jones; the woman who led the first journey back to rediscover humanity.