The year was 2118 and civilization was advancing at its fastest rate ever. 100 years ago humans had never set foot on another planet in our solar system and now humans were travelling all over the galaxy at little expense. I owned a space travel business and took humans as far as they wanted and explored new planets daily. However, our rockets were never 100% safe so there were risks with landing in new places. One day, a group of four earthlings were looking to travel to the planet X-31. This was going to be a long journey for me but this offer would bring in too much money to deny it. I accepted it and began making preparations.
I recall never feeling great about this trip as I had never gone that far and planet X-31 had been observed briefly but never inhabited it by anything we knew of. I filled up a full tank of compressed fuel. I prepared the rocket carefully, and went through all the safety protocol. All of the engines had full power and we had enough fuel for over a year in space. I did not plan on using up even half of that tank. However, soon I would prove myself wrong.
I was very experienced and the fear of something going wrong wasn’t that strong but I knew everything had to go perfectly as one small error far out in space would be a disaster. I met up with the group of four earthlings, all young adults, probably aged 23-28. As they awaited boarding, I announced “The journey to planet x-31 should take approximately 28 days in both directions if we do not stop for breaks. There should be no reason to stop unless we have an emergency. Hop on board and enjoy the ride!” The passengers hopped on and we had an easy take off. I put the rocket in auto pilot and sat back and waited for work to be done.
“BEEP BEEP BEEP” the alarms sounded in the middle of my sleep. I had never had the alarms sound off before but quickly went to work to see what was wrong. I instantly knew I made a huge mistake. We were already out of the galaxy and in lands I never had been through before. I forgot to lock up the fuel tank and we were already very low on fuel. I yelled for the passengers to get their seat belts on and prepare for an emergency landing. They were angry but had no idea what exactly was going on and listened because it was best for their safety. We were headed onto a desolate planet which appeared uninhabited. As we got closer, the planet got much hotter. You could see the metal on the outside of rocket burning from re-entry.
We landed with a loud and hard thug. No one was injured however the ship was unflyable. As we got there was a sense of fear and weeping. I did not know if it was possible for us to ever going to be possible to get off of this planet. It was vast and very sandy. I was sweating just seconds later as the sun melted down on us. I tried to send distress signals into space from my rocket but the whole power supply was broken. I had no service on any devices. Not even on my iPhone 108 which was supposed to have service anywhere at anytime. The situation was not looking good for us at all. I decided it would be best to set up camp and salvage what we could from the rocket.
Over the next few days, I learned a lot about the people I thought I would spend the rest of my life with on a deserted planet. We were able to save most of the food and keep it cool by burying it under the sand. We saw very little signs of life. Mostly just smalls insects that looked like they could go years without eating. WIth little resources, it was going to be very hard to survive on this planet. I knew that we had to figure out a way to communicate to other where we were. I decided that within the next few days, we would have to explore the planet more in depth and see if we could find running water near us or any source of food. As I was walking I noticed a red stream of water. It had bubbles in it and had no clue what it could be. It had a weird smell also.
I walked up the stream in the hope of finding something. Suddenly, in the distance I noticed a rocket with little huts around it. I was tired and running low on water and I had no clue what my passengers were doing at our camp. I got close to the rocket and looked at the huts. They were built out of simple materials that were from the rocket and looked like they had been there for years. I heard voices from inside one of the huts. They were speaking english. I lifted up the door to the hut and saw three humans sitting in there.  They all yelled out of surprise and instantly began to question me.
“Where are you from? How did you find us? Can you get us home?” one of them asked.
I explained to them how I had a crash landing on this planet and that I was stuck, just like them. After a bit of discussion, I learned that the stream near their camp was basically water with a chalky taste to it. They couldn’t stand drinking it but they needed it to survive. They had been living off of rations that they brought with them for their journey for 2 years and only had a few months left. I told them about where my camp was set up and we began the hike back to it.
We arrived back at my camp when the sun was rising and my passengers were just as surprised to see other humans as the three males were surprised me yesterday. After they got to know each other a bit we started brainstorming ways to figure out how would we could leave this planet. When I trained to become a pilot, I learned many survival techniques and was pretty good at fixing things up. The whole exterior to my rocket was melted and not in great shape however, after inspection the majority of the rockets boosters and engines were in fine shape. We had no major issues besides lack of fuel and that we would burn up on entry into space. By using some parts of the other rocket we found, we would be possibly able to get off this planet.  I instructed the other seven people with me to help me carry parts back from rocket to rocket. It was a tiring journey to carry things back and forwards but was going to hopefully be worth it.
When we got back and I started to fix up the rockets, I remembered that there were only six seats on the rocket. I already knew that there were six seats but did not want to remind myself for a while. I should not have let it slip my mind for a while. Conflict was bound to occur because of this. This is where I first got a little bit nervous about my plan.There was no room for the other two to stand even due to some of the repairs I had made. I kept it to myself and decided to mention it at a later point. I knew this was going to be a big issue because two people were going to be stranded and probably die, but also because once they realized only five of them were going to join me going back there could be violence. I did not want anyone to have to suffer but this was the only way that some of us could survive and some of us was better than none of us.
A few days later, we had the whole rocket ready to go. It was not powerful enough to go back home but could at least take us to safety. I pulled my four originals passengers aside and explained to them we would have to leave two of the people met on the planet behind. They were upset but were happy at least they got to go. Later that day, I told the others that two of them would be left behind and they were beyond mad. They said that they would not let it happen and that they were not going to let me take off without them. I told them I was leaving in two days, which wasn’t true because I planned on leaving the next morning. I thought to myself “Maybe this might throw them off a bit. If we leave early in the morning they will never know what happened really. I will never have to see them again anyway. I need to worry about myself more than others.” After those quick thoughts, I went inside the rocket and fell asleep.
In the morning I got up and went for a walk by the stream. Suddenly, I heard a loud roar. I saw the rocket on and ready to go. I was not on it. My rocket was stolen. I rushed over to try and stop them but it was too late. Somehow they managed to fit seven people on it. Or maybe they didn’t. I had no clue what happened to my passengers or the others. I was alone on this planet.  Limited food and some chalky water was all I had. I was going to have to somehow try to survive off of these extreme elements alone.
I am writing this update around 80 days after being abandoned. I have slowly began to lose track of time. I have been experiencing hallucinations frequently and have little sanity left in me. The only thing I have left to comfort me is a picture of my family back home. Hopefully one day I can be found before I go completely insane.