The Rift

By

Ahmed Hany

Saudi Arabian International School (SAIS)

Teacher Niecey Woodall

Submission date unknown

 The Rift

The alarm rings and Michael wakes up to get ready for work. Tired, he takes a shower,

brushes his teeth, dresses up, and goes to his car. Upon his arrival, he notices something strange.

There were no cars parked outside of the office building, is it Friday, or am I dreaming? I might

as well go check inside. As he steps out of the car, suddenly the ground rumbles, startled he tries

to drive away, but before he can act it all goes dark.

He wakes up, dressed up in an orange hazard suit in a spaceship. Upon inspection, he

finds a clock, two screens, a speaker, a keyboard, and three other people. He stands up and walks

towards them, and before he can speak, a disembodied voice starts speaking and says, “Welcome

to your first day on the job, this is your autopilot ship, you can use the ship's terminal to navigate

through different moons, your service is greatly appreciated.” As the voice finishes, he says

“Who are you,” while still examining the room, “Where am I?’

“Calm down,” says one of them, “we are all new to this, I'm Sigurd by the way.” “This is James,

and this is William.”

“I’m Michael,” he says and they proceed to shake hands.

“There is a screen up there that says profit quota… which says we need 375.”

“375 of what?” William says

“I don’t know but we will find out sooner or later”

James then walks down the ship finding an open-door button, but when he presses it did nothing.

“How do we open the door the door,” James asks

“I think we need to land the ship first, and it looks like we are on a planet called

experimentation,” Sigurd replies

“There is a lever here, I think I should pull it.”

He then proceeds to pull the lever and the ship lands. After landing, they look around and find

they are on a small sandy planet with a large facility which they enter and find scrap materials.

Michael discovers a built-in scanner in their suits which tells them each item’s value. They bring

each item found back to the ship without experiencing difficulties. But when it was night, a giant

dog-like creature appeared outside the ship growling. Suddenly on the screen, it displayed an

image of the creature and its details. It appeared to be blind and only used its hearing to find

prey. Michael then told them to keep quiet without actually realizing how loud his voice was.

The dog let out a howl, and then ran towards him! He quickly moved out of the way and it

seemed lost. Hence, he rushed to the ship careful not to make a noise and they pulled the lever

immediately leaving the planet.

On the second day, they decided to go to a planet called Offense. Upon their arrival, they

found it was a rocky planet with large mountains. After a short amount of time, they started

looking for a facility which is supposed to be similar to the last one. As they entered, they heard

a sound like duck feet and didn’t pay much attention to it. Michael then chose to roam around

alone and after some time, he hears the same sound again, but this time it was getting faster and

closer. Startled, he looked in all directions to discover a mannequin with no limbs, nails

punctured to its body, and instead of a neck, it had a spring that kept rocking back and forth. It

looked straight out of a horror movie, and to his surprise it wasn’t moving so he decided to look

away and continue his journey. But the second he looked away, he heard the sound again, only

this time when he looked back at it, it had gotten closer. It was like the weeping angels from a
movie he had watched before but couldn’t recall what the movie was called. He decided to close

the door on it to see if it could not open doors, and to his surprise, it could not open it, hence he

continued his search.

Later, William was outside bringing stuff back to the ship when he spotted Sigurd. As he

got closer, he discovered it wasn’t Sigurd but another human with the same suit. Maybe he was

lost here he thought to himself. But as soon as he turned around, he appeared to be wearing a

mask and kept staring at William. soon his eyes turned red and he started chasing him. William

could not run quickly as he was too heavy from the items, but he found a shovel on the ground

which he used to beat the creature to death. They all soon went back to the ship and left the

planet.

On the third day, they kept discussing their discoveries and Sigurd wrote journals on

everything that had happened on the terminal. Soon James chose a planet called Vow which had

the word eclipsed next to it. “What could it mean,” asked William

“I don’t know but I’m sure it's not anything special,” Sigurd replied

Soon the ship landed, and it had not even been a minute in and they heard loud thuds from the

distance, and growling similar to the blind dogs Michael had encountered before. “what is that,”

James said while looking at the creature, “It looks like a giant.” The screen then again provided

details about the creature stating it was a forest keeper, a giant that roamed the area. It was deaf

but could see extremely long distances, dangerous when paired with the eyeless dog. They were

all too distracted that it got dangerously close to the ship. They had no choice but to leave the

planet.
 As the ship got into orbit, a red light flashed and the disembodied voice said, “You can

sell your scrap materials at the company, use the terminal to route the autopilot ship there.”

Michael then proceeded to route the ship there. Hence after the ship landed, The place seemed to

be manmade and there were no creatures in sight, but there was a small window and a bell next

to it, there was also a sign that said ‘Place your scrap here and press the bell to sell, but be

warned don’t it press too much.’ hence they proceeded to get all the scrap onto the platform to

sell them, but when Sigurd pressed the bell nothing happened. He had gotten too impatient and

kept pressing, and a loud growl could be heard, but before he could react a tentacle latched out,

and took Sigurd, and all the items with it. James who had gotten very close to Sigurd lashed out

in anger over his friend hitting the wall with his hands which angered the beast and he was

devoured as well. The two could not stand this much longer and left the planet. On the screen,

the profit quota was 375 and they had less, hence after a minute or two a warning light on the

ship kept flashing and the disembodied voice once again spoke and said, “Since you have not

met the profit quota we will have to remove you from the ship, welcome to the disciplinary

process.” The ship door opened, their oxygen tanks we removed, and they were sent into space!

‘beep beep,’ the alarm rang, and Michael woke up from a startle realizing it was all a nightmare,

or was it?