It's the final frontier, or so they say. Your task here is to tell the story of a crew exploring a distant region of space. Making use of four of the eight pictures below and in no more than 4000 words, tell your story...

Pictures #3 #4 #7 #9 #10

"Zircon, I'm going to kill you!"

I yelled as the spaceship was uncontrolable passing through a colorful vortex. A spiral where we were traveling on space.

Sitting on the chair while shaking, I tried to move the control handle. But the flashing red points everywhere on the keyboard edge bothered me.

"Zircon!"

"Yeah, yeah, coming, stop yelling will you?"

I glared at him, but he didn't find it scary ; he wasn't even looking in my way.

Quietly, he attached himself to the chair next to mine. The alert sounds rang since ten minutes already, and he had found nothing better than to go into the engine room to see what could be wrong instead of helping me to put up the device out of the hyperspace.

Soon, Stan came and touched multiple buttons. We came next to a planet. Our destination. But there was always those red lights glaring at my face.

"We need to land there."

"I know that! That's our mission! But you could at least help me at not crashing there on the surface no?"

"It's fine, I put the automatic navigation when you were sleeping two hours ago."

"I know that, I said to him, frustated. I took the manual navigation when I saw these freaking red buttons!"

"Well, he said pulling out a sachet of Twinkies from below the control board. I knew that you would panick like hell, so only I can stop the automatic navigation."

"Wait... Why?! And those red buttons what do you do about them?"

"All these things are strictly normal, miss Amber. They were just informing passagers that we are near our destination."

I turned my head to Stan with confusion. He then came next to the board and pressed a button again. The bipping sound stopped right away. I was amazed at first, but anger overtook my mind.

"Zircon..." I began grinding my teeth. "I'm going to cut your head with an axe, then let your body for crocodile or worse."

"That's not really nice, miss Amber," said the android still looking at the planet in front of us.

A blue colored one like Earth but still different.

"Wow pretty nice..." I whispered after we landed in a desertic place.

Nothing seemed to be alive in that area. The brown color of the surface reminded me of the sand. I didn't know though if it was this material or something more dangerous.

Stan did some manipulations on the plateboard that displayed some statistics of the planet. Intrigued by the air's quality, I searched what its contained. And it was like our air. A gas mixture. Dry air that contains dinitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide and other gases to trace. Zircon clapped hand before jumping like a fool, apparently we could breath easily, which was incredible. But rapidly, things got shaken...

From nowhere, spaceships appeared in front of us. Stated in the air, they were like an army. We looked at each other with doubt. This planet wasn't as desertic as its seemed. The mission was compromised. Our superior never said that there could be life here. Drones were sent everyday on this planet and others next to this one, but not a sign of life was detected.

Suddendly, missiles were shown at us like a warning.

"I will talk to them. We need to stay here a little longer."

"And you think that they will kindly accept that ?" said Zircon with sepcitism.

"Stop arguing with me will you ?"

I sighed before nodding to Stan. I began walking to the back where I could step out of the engine. But before that, I put a space suit. Since I didn't know if particules in the air or the weird sand were toxic or not, I preferred being careful. Quite hermetic and with a gray color, it paste to the human skin like a second one. I weared some clothes, so only my face and hands weren't covered. The human eyes couldn't see it, but an android like Stan could do a scan to know this information.

Hand in air and with calm, I stayed in front of them. My lungs got immediatly accusmotated to the air while my shoes walked on the rigid surface with grain. The texture was really similar to sand. I felt like I was flying, but I knew it wasn't true. The gravity was less powerful here than on Earth. I didn't feel any hotness or coldness.

Suddenly, a planet appeared in the horizon. A blue one. Amazed by the event, I couldn't tear my eyes off the sky. Smiling, I sat down on the sand-like surface and watched the planet rising.

"Hey, what are you doing ?" asked Zircon's voice through the implant on my ear.

"Isn't that beautiful ? Why there isn't that on earth ? The moon is so gloomy with his grey and white surface."

"I want to kill you, chica. You are worse than me, you know ? Remember that you were supposed to negociate a way to not get shot."

Freezing on my place, I turned slowly my head to the army. I got up and waited some minutes. Long minutes. Three persons came out of the biggest spaceship. I checked the human form woman who was glaring at me. Like an amazon, she had braid her hair and wore minimum clothes that hugged her forms. She had that scary aura that made me gulped. Negociation aren't going to be as easy as I thought.

Behind her, some non human-like appearence came too. Three hands, pink colored skin, two heads attached to a body, all sort of monsters inhabited on this planet. They were wild, like animal but armed with a desintegrator in their hand. They followed their leader with a serious face. At least, what I was thinking as a serious face...

"Who are you ? You were not invited in this planet."

"Hum... I'm from the... Twinkies delegation. Our spaceship had some problems and we saw this planet, so we landed there. We mean no harm. Could we at least stay some days to repair our engine ?"

The woman looked skeptically at me.

"Our boss will talk to you, stranger."

Gracefully, she get back to her spaceship with her men. I sighed, then the girl signed me to follow her. Stan, Zircon and Agathe came out from our spaceship.

"You are fine ?" beamed the woman at me.

"I am, don't worry," I said while smiling.

She was Zircon's best friend and also a woman who came back to life like me. All humans that are now living on Earth were cryogenized for years. We were the lucky ones, because some people never woke up from their sleep.

"You are a dumbass, sitting while we were being attacked," chimed Zircon.

Before I could yell at him, Agathe pinched his back where he hurts. He hated that and she knows it. I shook my head and sighed.

"You could have woke me up ! I just slept for an hour and all that happened !"

"Not my fault, we were busy," said Zircon still grimacing.

Several minutes later, we were sitting on their little spaceship. One that were for the offensive attack. No one was talking as we were admiring the sky. Now mountains were pointing their peak toward us. Large and high, our spaceship were passing between them. The blue planet was still there, certainly with inhabitants that were looking at us like I was doing it.

I thought we would touch down when whe approach the surface of the planet, but we passed through a transparent barrier. Then, a city came in sight. Not a little one. Spaceships were playing around landscapes. Amazed, I kept looking through the glass. Soon something blowing came at the horizon.

People weren't scared of it. I so thought that it was a natural phenomenon that could appeared from time to time, but the sad faces of the captain of this ship made me confused.

"What is going on ?"

"We are sorry for you..." she said slowly, her eyes still at the light that came from the sky. "The Boss won't talk to you."

"Why and why are you sorry ?" I repeat coming next to her, but it was Stan who answered with a robotic voice.

"The mission will soon be complete."

"What are you talking about ?" asked Zircon, confused like me.

"Our mission was to came here to learn from those people right ?" asked Agathe.

"Yes your mission is right."

There was a silence where we were looking at each other eyes until mine got big.

"What is you mission Stan ?"

"My mission is to accompagny miss Amber, miss Agathe and sir Zircon to this planet before the stars explod in this area."

Agathe hissed in breath before putting her hand in front of her mouth. Water came up to her pretty green eyes. Zircon let out a rage fist to the face of Stan while I stood there dumbfounded.

"Who gave you this order ?" I asked the android when people of this planet separated him and Zircon.

"Sir Artur."

I let out a laugh. A laugh that made me cry. We were sent here to die because I and Agathe talked too much, because we tried to tell people that nature was nice, that wild is good, that earth was essential. I knew that Artur wasn't keen to our ideas to let grow up some trees next to the city or to have botanical classes in the education system. But I would never thought that he would order to sent us to our own death.

I stopped crying before watching Zircon and Agathe. Stan were apparently too damaged to move. I wasn't angry at him. He was just a material after all. Being with him since I woke up, I mingled him as a real person. But now I knew. He was not human, he was controled.

"Hey Zircon, wanna play with the balls that you took with you ?"

"How did you know that..."

I smiled and asked the girl if we could go outside. She was surprised but accepted. That's how Zircon's came out under the light shirtless and with two balloons. He gave us both while he took twinkies and ate them. I laughed at him before seeing Agathe's sad face.

"It's fine Agathe, we will see each other in our next life !"

We had just the time to teach to inhabitants of this planet how to pass a ball then the light covered us. Maybe this world where technology was dominant wasn't for us after all.