Part One
After almost thirty years, Lola sat in her living room beside someone she never thought would be sitting there again—her brother, Tobias.
If someone had told her years ago that this moment would ever become a reality, she wouldn’t have believed them. Yet there they were, sitting side by side after nearly three decades.
And the sibling rivalry was already in full force.
Why?
Because Lola and Tobias were competing for the highest score on their all-time favorite game, Cosmic Crash.
Neither one of them cared that they were older now. The moment the game started, they were kids again. Every point mattered, and neither of them was willing to admit that the other might actually be the better player.
After thirty years apart, some things apparently hadn’t changed at all.
It was Tobias’s turn, and he was determined to beat his sister’s high score.
Lola sat back and watched him play. For a moment, she forgot about all the years that had passed between them. She couldn’t believe this was actually happening. She was sitting in her own living room, enjoying her favorite childhood game with her brother again.
Then something happened.
Something neither Lola nor Tobias could have imagined.
Something that would change the trajectory of their lives forever.
All of a sudden, a brilliant flash of light burst from the television, followed by a deafening bang.
Before either of them had a chance to react, Lola and Tobias were knocked unconscious.
When Lola opened her eyes, she thought she had to be dreaming.
She was in space.
Lola looked around in disbelief. She was strapped into the seat of a spacecraft, buckled in tightly and suited up like Air Force personnel preparing to go to war.
“What the hell?” she whispered.
Her heart began pounding as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. One minute she had been sitting comfortably in her living room watching Tobias play Cosmic Crash. Now she was sitting in the cockpit of what appeared to be a real spaceship.
She quickly pinched herself.
“Ouch!”
Okay. She wasn’t dreaming.
“Tobias!”
Lola turned to her left, expecting to find her brother beside her.
He wasn’t there.
Instead, through the window of her spacecraft, she saw another ship flying alongside hers.
And sitting inside it was Tobias.
Lola suddenly realized she was wearing a headset. Attached to it was a small microphone positioned near her mouth.
Lola hesitated for a moment before speaking into the microphone.
“Hello?”
Almost immediately, a voice came through her headset. She knew that voice anywhere. It was Tobias.
“Just tell me I’m dreaming.”
Lola couldn’t help but smile.
“Pinch yourself.”
There was a brief silence.
“Ouch!”
Lola laughed.
“I guess that answers your question.”
Lola looked around the cockpit again, still trying to make sense of everything.
“You know, usually we dream about the last thing we were doing,” she said. “But this doesn’t seem like a dream. We both pinched ourselves, and we both felt it.”
There was a moment of silence between them.
Lola stared through the window at the endless darkness of space and then at Tobias’s ship flying beside hers.
“But if we’re not dreaming,” she continued, “why are we in the game Cosmic Crash?”
Before Tobias could answer, alarms suddenly blared inside both cockpits. Red lights flashed across the control panels.
Then, all of a sudden, meteors came flying in their direction.
Tobias’s voice came through Lola’s headset.
“I guess all that game time has prepared us for this day.”
He grabbed the control stick in the cockpit, pressed the button, aimed, and fired.
A blast shot from his spacecraft and struck one of the meteors, blowing it into pieces.
Lola didn’t hesitate.
She grabbed her control stick and followed suit, aiming at another meteor and firing.
The meteor exploded in front of her, scattering pieces into the darkness.
Lola spoke into her headset.
“Tobias, if this is anything like the game, remember, we can’t let those meteors hit us.”
She kept one hand tightly wrapped around the control stick as she watched more meteors moving through the darkness ahead.
“And I wonder if we’re going to see the tracker bombs and the spinning bombs,” she continued. “If we do, we have to destroy them immediately.”
Tobias’s voice came through the headset.
“Do you think there’s a mother ship?”
Lola looked out into the darkness surrounding them.
“I sure hope not.”
She paused for a moment as the reality of their situation began to sink in.
“Tobias, I think we’re in some kind of alternate reality. And I seriously doubt that if something hits us and blows us up, we’re going to get extra lives like we did in the game.”
Her voice became more serious.
“So we have to stay focused. This isn’t about getting the highest score anymore. We are literally fighting to stay alive and find a way back home.”
As Lola and Tobias continued shooting and dodging meteors, tracker bombs, and spinning bombs, something enormous suddenly appeared in the distance.
At first, Lola couldn’t tell what it was.
Then it moved closer.
It was a ship.
Not just any ship. It was massive, dwarfing both of their spacecraft.
“Lola!” Tobias yelled through the headset. “Look over there! That’s a mother ship!”
Lola stared at the enormous vessel.
“Maybe we’re at the end,” she said. “Maybe once we destroy the mother ship, we’ll be able to get home.”
Lola tightened her grip on the control stick, preparing herself for the fight.
But the attack never came.
The mother ship didn’t fire at them.
Instead, it stopped.
“What is it doing?” Tobias asked.
“I don’t know,” Lola replied.
Suddenly, a large door on the side of the mother ship began to open.
A ramp slowly lowered into place.
Lola and Tobias watched in confusion.
Then someone appeared at the top of the ramp.
A short man wearing a white doctor’s coat began walking down toward them.
Lola froze.
She was shocked when she realized who the man was.
The man looked directly at Tobias and smiled.
“Well done, Tobias. I knew you would bring her to me.”
Lola slowly turned toward her brother’s ship. Her shock quickly turned to hurt.
“How could you?” she said.
“Lola, I swear!” Tobias shouted through the headset. “I’m not responsible for this. I don’t know what he’s talking about!”
The man laughed as Lola turned her attention back toward him.
“Look at me now, Lola,” he said, spreading his arms. “I became a scientist. I even changed my name.”
He paused.
“You can call me Dr. Victor Hale.”
Lola stared at Tobias through the window of his spacecraft. She wanted to believe him, but the words Dr. Victor Hale had just spoken kept repeating in her mind.
I knew you would bring her to me.
“If you want me to believe you,” Lola said through the headset, “then you’ll help me destroy him.”
Tobias looked at his sister.
“You don’t even have to ask.”
Lola kept her eyes locked on Dr. Hale.
“On the count of three, we’re going to zap him so he can go meet his Creator.”
But before she began counting, Lola had something she needed to say.
She looked directly at the evil scientist.
“You thought you could brainwash Tobias. You saw him as weak, and you thought that meant you could control him.”
Then Lola turned toward her brother.
Tobias looked back at her.
Without another word, they both placed their hands firmly on the control sticks, their fingers hovering over the firing buttons.
Dr. Hale’s expression suddenly changed.
For the first time, the confidence disappeared from his face.
He stared at Tobias in disbelief.
“You would betray me?” Dr. Hale asked.
Tobias didn’t answer.
Lola smiled.
“One…”
Dr. Hale took a step backward.
“Two…”
His eyes widened.
“Three!”
Lola and Tobias simultaneously pushed their firing buttons.
Two powerful laser beams shot from their spacecrafts and struck Dr. Hale at the same time.
A brilliant flash of light surrounded him.
Lola shielded her eyes.
When the light disappeared, she slowly looked back toward the ramp.
Dr. Hale hadn’t evaporated.
He was still there.
Sort of.
Standing where the evil scientist had been moments earlier was now a hideous pig wearing what remained of Dr. Hale’s white laboratory coat.
Lola stared at him for a few seconds.
Then she burst out laughing.
“I knew I had a pig for a father.”
Tobias started laughing through the headset.
Lola looked toward her brother’s ship and smiled.
“Come on, Tobias. Let’s go home.”
But neither Lola nor Tobias knew exactly where home was anymore—or how they were supposed to get there.
They had defeated Dr. Victor Hale, but the questions were only beginning.
How had their father become Dr. Hale?
How had he created this strange alternate reality?
And most importantly, how had he managed to pull his own children into the world of Cosmic Crash?
Those answers had begun almost thirty years earlier.
To be continued…
Bio:
My name is Lilyan Ruiz born and raised in Brooklyn New York