Continue On Saturdays

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1. Thanks to Star Trek, I grew up thinking space was the final frontier, when it reality it was really only an excuse. ‘The final frontier’ was just an act, one for people to hide away from things that really mattered.
   Originally, I didn’t know this, and I was like every other excited kid, rushing to sign up to explore the great unknown. Growing up, father had always read me stories about the Wild West and cowboys, and the way 18-year-old me saw it, this was just the future’s version of the same story. The perfect opportunity for me to be able to get away from home and discover who I really was. And, if the stories were anything to go by, get famous along the way.
   But what the stories don’t tell you is that there were hundreds of cowboys, all out there for different reasons doing different things. And the ones that failed? We never heard stories about them. The ones there running from the law? They weren’t talked about either? The ones that died? Never mentioned.
   So it takes someone like me, an excited yet astonishingly naïve fresh-out-of-high school kid to come out here, expecting miracles. Better yet: expecting fame.
   They shot us out into space, and all I could think of was fame and the moon, when I really should have been thinking about crashing and the Columbia. Once out there, I met the most interesting people and went on amazing adventures. It was just like the wild west, only instead of horses, we had warships, and instead of guns, I had laser shooters. We traveled all over the galaxy, shooting away between the stars.
   Then, after three years of breathless adventures and shining moments, I was returned to Earth, planning on being received a shining hero for my recent victory against some unfriendly forces, ready to embrace my mother and go fishing with my father.
   But what do I find?
   The three years? Apparently, between the travels, we were put into deep sleep. I aged three years, while Earth aged 300. And the final frontier? It finally won, keeping me away from everything that’d ever mattered.
   Because now, everything that really mattered was gone.

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