The Story of Zash Yen and Keppler - 22b | Christian Reis-Burke
The Story of Zash, Yen and Keppler - 22b by Christian Reis-Burke was the First Place Winner of the 2024 Murrumbidgee Short Story Competition in the Under 12 Category.
An astronaut named Zash-Yen and his robot assistant named Ceres stared out of the space shuttle window, as he thought about his two daughters. “I miss my two little ones back at home.” murmured Zash-Yen.
“Well, only two weeks until you get back to Earth.”
Zash-Yen looked down in sadness, hoping his two daughters were okay. He was almost crying because he really missed them.
“STORM DETECTED!” The space shuttle's system’s sirens blared and the loud alarms went off. Ceres quickly went to control the spaceship to anchor it because the solar storm incoming would push the ship so far, they would never reach their destination. Ceres eventually gained control of the ship and anchored it, big asteroids hit the ship a couple times, but the forcefield on the shuttle prevented damage. During the solar storm, a giant asteroid was on fire, and hit the ship. The ship shook and Ceres thought the forcefield stopped it, but what they didn’t know was it penetrated the magnetic shield and made a dent in the ship. Zash-Yen goes to the kitchen on the space shuttle to get a drink. But instead of it being a normal trip to the kitchen, he cuts his leg on a piece of rigid metal that was sticking out of one of the shelves. He yelps in pain and calls for Ceres to get the medical kit, but as soon as Ceres goes to the medical room, the shuttle goes through another solar storm, since the forcefield was down from earlier, all of the asteroids could easily hit the shuttle.
The dent gets larger because many asteroids the size of a golf ball crash into the same part, the back end of the ship was heavily damaged, some of the asteroids that hit the shuttle were seeping of purple vibrant liquid. Some of this liquid melts away the metal on the shuttle and opens a gap big enough for a 5 centimetre creature to enter. The solar storm kept on going, eventually the anchor for the shuttle malfunctioned and sent the ship flying across the vacuum of space. Zash-Yen and Ceres got flung around inside of the shuttle, which injured him even more. When the solar storm ended, Ceres lay on the floor spread out, his white and black head with a screen on it detached from the rest of his body. Under him, he had oil dripping out of his torso, which also smoked and smelt horrible. Zash-Yen’s ship was damaged so much the ship’s lights and interior electricity turned off. A group of black scorpion-like creatures entered from the back of the shuttle. They had crescent symbols on the sides of their iron forged skin. They were transparent in some parts of the body, and had wires underneath the skin. Zash-Yen heard their squeaks that sounded like mice. He thought to himself, “What in the Apollo 11 !? How did mice get on this ship?” The creatures ventured to the medical room, where Zash-Yen was. They crawled into the vents and broke critical electrical wires. The ship started losing control and whirling down to an Earth-like planet. The ship made contact with the surface of the planet, only minor damages were dealt to the shuttle’s hull. On impact, Zash-Yen got thrown around the ship and eventually landed near the emergency exit door. The door swung open and a mountain of dust and smoke emerged from under the ship.
It was hard for Zash-Yen to see because of the cloud of dust. When he stepped out of the shuttle, a sign was in front of him that said ‘WELCOME TO KEPLER-22B ENJOY YOUR STAY’ Surprisingly to Zash-Yen, it looked exactly like Earth, but with white and black metalish animals.
Zash-Yen turned around to get out, but the scorpions from earlier were fried and damaged from the ship’s crazy tumbling and turning. He got so scared that he ran into a forest on the planet, he got attacked by another group of scorpions and then was rammed into a pile of mud but the mud burnt his spacesuit a bit. Eventually, the ruler of the planet came. She exclaimed her name was Apophis and gave Zash-Yen a tour around the planet’s monuments. Soon enough, he was brung to a ‘statue’ of Apophis. Zash-Yen was led inside and jailed, but he demanded he get let out or he would call his robot security guards that were in his shuttle. After enough convincing, Apophis eventually let him out of the cage, and he also let the other captured astronauts out of the cells, they all got together to try and fix the shuttle so they could escape, but it was no use. They soon decided on a plan to create a new civilization on Kepler-22B and call it the ‘Second Earth’.
2 YEARS LATER...
Zash-Yen’s civilization was going really well. He had over 20 billion people on Kepler-22B, the planet was so advanced that they had robots picking up rubbish to laser lawn mowers. They also had an Earth To Kepler-22B travelling system, which was a REALLY fast train that travelled in between the two planets. Zash-Yen was thriving on Kepler, until Apophis’s army started attacking the civilization. Earth and Zash-Yen’s military allied and started to take out Apophis’s army, in enough time, the division between Earth and Zash-Yen’s army won the war, but Zash-Yen’s intelligent investigators researched why they waged war on Kepler-22B, because it used to be Apophis’s planet. The scientists were baffled when they actually found out why. Apophis was mind controlled by an unknown entity with the name ‘Gamma’. Gamma possessed many abilities like mind control, unbelievable strength, super speed, the ability to fly, and has telekinesis. Apophis wasn’t killed, but they used a device on her to undo the mind control.
While this device was reversing the mind control, a purple electricity channelled Apophis’s vanes. This unknown power is called the Andromeda, people say it comes from the depths of a galaxy called NikiBoo. This power is the one that Gamma possessed, not just Gamma has these abilities, other beings also have them. The full potential of this power is still not known to this day.
