Chapter 6: What’s Gone

I tear the tablet off the velcro holding it and rush my digit onto the green pick-up icon. Tap tap tap tap. A spinning loading icon pops in the middle of the screen and I pray to Arceus it connects. A few beeps emit and it turns black. The words “WCSEG ‘Gentle Cloud’ (XSG O2442-1) / T#741425 / ISOX-155523-4 1.5.253.222:999 PUBLIC” stretch across the screen.

I hold the tablet close to my face. “Hello?”

“Hello!” a woman’s soft voice replies.

My eyes roll up and I throw my head back. Finally!

“This is Vulpix. Space Station Gentle Cloud of the Wind Continent Space Exploration Guild. Which space station is this?”

I look back at the screen. “Oh, uh, we’re not the principle crew, I’ll have to dig out the station designator. Actually, one moment – there’s one more with me I should get involved.”

“Yes, absolutely. We need as many people as we can.”

 “Okay.” I push the tablet back into its velcro and turn around. Both my paws shake the big guy’s head around. “Hey!”

He stirs and mumbles. I jerk his head around even hard. “Hey! Kommo-o! Wake up!”

He clumsily wraps an arm around me. “Mmm, cutie, I know you want me…”

My cheeks go bright red knowing what Vulpix just heard. I pull his cheek. “We have a call!”

“Uh? What?” he says and absent-mindedly bats my arm away. His eyes blink until they’re open before his head drifts around. “What’s going on?”

“A call!” I shout. I grab his chin and force him to look at the tablet.

“Hello? Is everything alright?” she asks.

Kommo-o squints. He pulls the tablet close to his eyes and reads. “Oh! Oh, a call! I’m sorry, I just woke up. Are you nearby?”

“Yes!” she repeats her station’s name. “Who would you two be and which station?”

“I’m Kommo-o, information specialist,” he says while getting out of his straps. I back out of the room and hold myself against the doorframe as he recites the station designation from memory. “And the person with me is Lucario, engineer.”

I lean my head in. “We fled from the surface of the moon. Most of our guild got caught in whatever happened. We’ve been struggling to connect to many satellites. The station we’re on also been abandoned.”

“You were on the surface?” She asks. “What’s been going on there? We haven’t been able to reach any ground bases.”

Kommo-o stretches an arm out while stifling a yawn. “We were out doing light surveying when the moon broke. When we returned to our base, there were puddles of pinkish-purple fluid and splotches of black everywhere. No one else was there and the spacecraft didn’t work anymore. We walked to an abandoned lander and when we were just about to take off, we encountered, er, something.”

He turns the tablet towards me and looks at me. I get his cue. “Some sort of entity approached us. It had an aura like it was alive but neither of us could see it. Things put in its path would rise up, become black, and wouldn’t fall down. It also made a lot of noise, despite being in a vacuum. It nearly got us.”

“That’s, wow.” Her voice trails off. “Do you think it has anything to do with the moon cracking?”

“Likely,” I say. “The same kind of fluid draining from the debris also welled around ‘it’. I’m not sure what that fluid is but I think it’s safe.”

An eyebrow of Kommo-o rises, that’s news to him.

“Hmm,” she says. “Do you think it has anything to do with Earth?”

We looked at each other. I nudge my head to suggest my partner talks, but he shakes his head.

“Guys?” she says.

“A-Actually,” I say, “we haven’t been able to get in contact with the Earth.”

There’s a bit of silence. When she finally speaks, her voice is somber. “Do you not know what happened to the Earth?”

My eyes flick to Kommo-o’s. His own are wide open and the worry beneath them is clear. I don’t stop looking at them as I speak. “What happened to Earth?”

“It’s gone,” she says. “I and others were able to confirm it visually. It isn’t there nor any of its satellites. There still seems to be its gravity which is especially weird, but other than that…” She never finishes that sentence.

We both look down. I rub my hand against the doorframe.

Quite a bit of time passes. I’ve forgotten we are on a call until she resumes. “Hey, we can contact you again in a while if you need time to process. Mars is still there, so I and a few others are planning to go there. We can send you supplies or you can even join our station.”

“We’ll take some time. This is terrible news,” Kommo-o says.

“It’s been rough on all of us,” she says. “I wish I could tell you more.”

“It’s okay,” Kommo-o says. His claw hovers over the hang-up button. “Thank you. We can call again in two hours. I’ll at least have breakfast in me.”

“We’re not leaving for three days. Take the time you need. We have plenty of excess food, air, and water.”

“Alright. Thank you,” he says.

“Thank you too. I wish I could tell you more about the Moon” I add.

He taps the red circle and places the tablet onto the velcro all nice and aligned before pulling me right into him. I hug him and look up. He looks down; he’s tearing up. “It’s just you and me.”

I rest my cheek against him and sniff. His claw strokes my back. “We’ll figure something out. I promise,” I say.