The Near-Dimensions Traveller

PROLOGUE: Wasn't it gold?

THE ARENA WAS OVERCROWDED, the people gathered there impatient for the execution to start. It reminded Maissa of an old film her dad showed her when she was studying the Ancient Rome in fifth grade. Although it approached a religious theme, the martyrdom of christians during those times, the only thing that stuck to her mind as a child was a particular scene: all the romans are gathered in the Colosseum to witness the murder of those men and women, cheering like they were watching their favourite show. And perhaps public executions are indeed a kind of entertainment that never goes out of style.

Even thirty centuries later, people will still gather on an arena to watch live executions. If you watch everything from afar, it seems like humans didn't evolve as much as they want to believe they did.

The camera switched to the man awaiting his 'departure' and Maissa flinched for a moment, before she took a better look at him and sighed in relief. It's not her dad.

She should've realised it couldn't possible be him, since his execution was months ago, but she swears she can still see him. Mostly in the faces of the other people that are facing the same sentence as his: eternal exile from Earth and it's satellites. Or as Maissa likes to call it, taking out the garbage.

The man is being dressed in an out-of-date astronaut suit, the kind of which people were still using in the 21st century, which won't help the poor bastard too much in the endless void of the galaxy the Earth is currently passing through. Maissa thought it was a blessing that they were still in the Black Eye and the galaxy's own super vaccum, its dark band of absorbing dust will give the man a quick end and send his ancient ship directly into the galaxy's bright nucleus. He'll be dead within a mile away from the Earth's spatial borders and won't have to suffer the slowly, painful death other inmates go through from wandering for days in the ever-expanding universe in their own out-of-style, mettalic coffin.

The man's crimes were being listed as he was being equipped and readied for his last journey.

First-degree murder.

Aggravated robbery.

And attempted mass murder.

The three main reasons why Maissa couldn't feel a bit sorry for what the man on TV will go through. The supermarket he robbed was only a train-hop away from her mother's workplace at the time. She could've easily been there that day, if it wasn't Mexican week and her brother's severe intolerance to spicy foods. Also, the security guard the man murdered could've been her best friend's, Kirly's dad, who has taken the day off in order to take his pregnant wife to the hospital.

But even if hers and her friend's lives weren't changed by this man's actions, many other people are mourning because of the disaster the bastard brought in their life. And Maissa didn't think it was okay for him to live off the rest of his life in a cell, occupying precious space on their over-crowded planet and living off the tax money from the people whose lives he selfishly destroyed. No matter what pro-livers said, scumbags didn't have rights in Maissa's eyes.

She put down her empty bowl, getting the remote and switching to a music channel. It was a throwback show from the 1990s and Maissa turned the volume up. She hopped into her flippers and grabbed her laptop from its charging station, ready to finish her thesis today. But as soon as she saw the title of her project, her mind became a mess again and couldn't focus on a single document she tried to read. She didn't work on her thesis in weeks and she knew if she didn't finish her draft by the end of the week, she won't get her degree this year.

But she couldn't even think about 21st-century history without thinking of the former most-famous expert in this field: her dad. And she couldn't write a sentence without tears falling down her cheeks and a strange rage errupting at once. She was fighting the urge right now to rip her laptop to shreds, then rip the whole world apart. But she allowed herself to cry everytime she remembered, until she felt remotely better and wasn't in danger of turning into a garbage-criminal like her dad.