Cybertrip
By Ihsan, Year 10
Jhonothy Razerous, looking as if in deep thought (a rare sight from him), turned off the treadmill and trotted over to the beanbag where Eccle was purely focused on a book Murder on the Orient Express.
‘Hey Eccle, the universe is constantly expanding, right?’
‘Didn’t you graduate from the top university in your star system?’ an amused Eccle responded.
‘Yeah, but with a sports degree. Of course I would be great at that’, Jhonothy replied, gesturing to his equine backside.*
‘Yeah, yeah. The universe is always expanding. What about it?’
‘So, there’s empty space for the universe to expand into, right?’
‘Well, uh, um, uh, ahh,’ were the bewildered words that came out of Eccles’ mouth (Which with rough translation meant, How am I supposed to know, I have no clue. My degree is in bioengineering, for God’s sake.)
‘Hey, what if we went there?,’ Jhonothy replied. ‘Actually check for ourselves? Hey, we could invite some of the others to join!’
‘Jhonothy, who else would want to come? I don’t have friends, and all your friends wouldn’t be interested.’
‘What about you, Mimi?’
‘Absolutely not’, were the first words come out of Mimi’s mouth. ‘You’re too much to deal with on a regular basis, and there’s no way I could handle being on a road trip with you for even a week, let alone a month,’ Mimi responded. It was her gut reaction, and after flipping her auburn hair into their faces, she went back to her blueprint-covered desk. This would be a problem, as Jhonothy or Eccle couldn’t drive a spaceship, and they didn’t know anyone else who could either.
*Might be important for later, but Jhonothy is a centaur, and on the same note, Eccle is a humanoid species alien, quite separate from humanity, a species being British.
This piece is an excerpt from Cybertrip, a novella written by Ihsan in Story Factory’s Year of the Novella program. In this program, young people commit to attending workshops for a year and write their very own poetry collection, which is professionally edited, published and launched into the Sydney literary landscape.