I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who I am. I woke up with these tubes all around me. Gas mask covering my mouth. Blind fold, slowing sliding off of my eyes. I’m confused. I feel tingly all over my body. The feeling of tiny needles pricking my delicate skin. Although, I have no clue where I am, I can tell I’m in a science lab. People are scrutinizing me. Every now and then a guy with a mask covering his mouth would walk over and sternly stare at me with his bloodshot eyes. I’m at a loss.

Suddenly, whatever I was lying on is slowly moving. Lifting me up. I gasp and looked around trying to break free from the tubes holding me back. I can hear my screams and grunts, pleading to be free. I feel my eyes water. A group of people in white coats run over to me. A woman who is wearing, clearly too much makeup steps ahead of them and turns to me with a needle in her hand. She practically shoves it into my arm and I suddenly feel…different. I slowly inhale and sit back and look around.

“Dr. I think the girl is okay. I believe we can take the mask off,” the woman with the needle says.

The bloodshot eyed man turns around and squint his eyes and stares at me, almost deep in my soul. I moaned uncomfortably and tried to turn my head away from him, but I can’t. My head is trapped in some kind of head gear, holding it in one place. “Sure, you can let Ms. Angie go. I believe she’s ready to…ah, listen,” the doctor smirked and turned his strong gaze away from me. I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping this is a dream.

A slow hissing noise comes from under me and I suddenly feel a gush of cold air hit my face. I open my eyes and I look around. I slowly moved my mouth around. I then glared at the people in the room watching me and said, “Where the heck am I?!” The lab coat clad people started chuckling under their masks.

Mr. Bloodshot, yeah that’s what I’m gonna call him, walked over to me. He pulled off his mask and smiled a surprisingly handsome smile. I growled. I already hated him. “Whoa now. Calm down Angie. If you shut that pretty little mouth of yours, we can tell you what’s going on.” I glared at him, but held my tongue. I wanted to hear this. He slowly smiled and said, “We are scientists apart of S.T.A.R. Successfully Trained Alternative Readers. See, we are scientists that work, travel, and read about the Alternative. The Alternative is a world beyond Earth, beyond the “usual” solar system. Alternative is in a different universe.” His eyes sparkled as he said that. I frowned.

“Well why am I here,” I asked.

“Well Ms. Sloan, you are here, because we wanted to test you. We wanted you see if we could bring a person from planet Earth to here, the Alternative. We wanted to see if an Earth native could survive and thrive here,” Mr. Bloodshot said.

“Um, you guys are humans. You are all from Earth too.”

Bloodshot chuckled and shook his head. “No we aren’t from Earth. We are from the Alternative, but on a different part from which we are studying. See, the Alternative is broken up into three sections. Begones, Legions, and Kingdom. Begone is where the usual Alternative citizens are from and this is where you are located now. Legions, is where the more intellectual, philosophers, and more powerful scientists are. And Kingdom, well Kingdom is exclusive. The only ones who live in Kingdom are…well they are unspecified. See, once a person walks into Kingdom, they don’t ever come back. But that rarely happens, because well, it is a hard journey to get to Kingdom. So most citizens live in Begone and we usually travel to Legion. Even our world’s greatest philosopher Aristitle never found it.”

“Aristitle? You mean Aristotle,” I asked, my eyebrows furrowing.

“No, Aristotle is an Earth philosopher. Aristitle is a philosopher in the Alternative. See you have to know these things,” Bloodshot chuckled.

“Well I still have no clue why I’m here. Why me?”

“Why you? Well for one, we needed someone that was pure to come here. We needed an intellectual virgin to come. The purer the person, the better the travel.” And besides, woman are easier to test on than men,” Bloodshot said sitting up.

“Well what now? Can I go home,” I asked, yelling.

“Nope. Sorry, can’t do that. Once you’re here in the Alternative, you have to train and live here, until you have graduated from our Alternative schools. Once you graduate you can teleport from Alternative to Earth in a matter of minutes. But no matter how intelligent you are on Earth, you are a mere idiot here on the Alternative,” Bloodshot said.

I scoffed and said, “So what are you trying to say? I have to live here? I have to become one of you?! I have no clue what kind of society this is! I have no idea what type of monsters are behind these doors. I--.” I got cut off because I almost choked on a tube wrapped around my neck, trying to climb out of my seat.

“Hold it. Let us free you ourselves before you screw up anything,” Bloodshot said running over to a giant computer and quickly pressing the keys. While he was typing madly he then said,” And besides there aren’t any monsters here. This is a normal society just like you conceited Earth people have. Ours is just better and cleaner…and more intellect. You Earth people have no clue. The rest of the universe is a hundred years ahead of you Earthlings…you guys are still living in the past.”

“What, the past?! We just got this new phone out called an Android and it has internet that goes almost faster than the speed of light! We even are creating and testing robots! We have the ability to--.”

“Save it. We don’t use cell phones anymore. We actually have holograms that appear in front of us if we want to talk to a certain person. And testing robots? How about use them everyday? They walk around like normal citizens here. See, like I said…you people are clueless.”

Suddenly my body was loose and I could sit up and stretch around. The scientists all took their masks off and stared at me. I have no clue why I was such a hit. To be honest, these Alternatives look the same as any other Earth person. I stood up and my legs felt like jello. “Um, so exactly what am I supposed to do now,” I asked. Feeling the eyes of the scientists looking at me. Practically burning holes into my body with their eyes. Bloodshot turned around and smiled.

“Oh we have a lot of things planned. Marsha, go get the family! Steve, go get the diagrams from my office,” he yelled.

“What? Family,” I asked. A group of four people came in looking around the lab. There was a bald man with glasses, and woman with curly blonde hair and two kids. One girl with blonde hair pulled into pigtails and a boy who had straight brown hair, with wandering eyes.

“Angie, this is the family who will cover you. You will live with them, be apart of their family. Consider yourself a new member to their family,” Bloodshot said.

“Um…what,” I asked, staring at the family. They were standing in a little tallest to shortest kind of order and were smiling all happily, well except for the boy; he kept a frown on his face.

“Hi, love. My name is Amanda, this is my husband Carl. My daughter Libby and my son Harvey. We are very happy to let you join our family. It is an honor to have an alien join us.”

Alien?!

“Sure,” I said, holding back a groan.

“Here’s the diagram sir,” Steve said running back into the room.

“Hand it to Angie. She will have to study it to learn the basics of the Alternative.”

Steve walked over to me and handed the diagram. I snatched it. The diagram suddenly folded into a small square on its own. I muttered a few swear words and shoved it in my pocket. I was not going to adjust to a society where I wasn’t even from. “What about my real family? You know I was born with a real mother. I didn’t pop out from the sky.”

“Oh your family is fine. Right now, on planet Earth, you don’t exist. Once we took you out of the universe, you were never born. So therefore, since you are here in the Alternative you are a native here. You just don’t have any idea what’s going on,” a man said who was sitting at a table making sketches.

Bloodshot nodded his head and turned back toward his computer. As I looked closer there weren’t any keys, the whole computer was touch screen and followed some of his voice commands. “Well you can go with your new family now. I have given you a little…welcoming present. It’s in that box over there. Don’t open it, until you are at your home.”

I stood up from my seat and grabbed the box. I looked at the family standing in the corner smiling at me, well except for that boy, and sighed. I walked over to Bloodshot and said,” Well what’ll happen if this all fails? What if I die in the process?”

“Then you shall awake in a hospital bed on Earth and you won’t remember anything. No one will come back for you and you won’t have any idea what went on,” Bloodshot said. “See we have this all figured out. It’s just a matter, if you want to go along with it.”

I sighed and nodded my head. I walked over to the family and said, “Well it seems like I have no choice. So…let’s go.”

“We’ll see you soon Ms. Sloan,” Bloodshot called. I followed the family out of the room. We were soon walking down a long hallway with white walls. I looked out of the windows and my eyes went wide. They weren’t kidding. I know this will sound cliché, but they really did have flying cars and some of the buildings were floating off the ground. If I were to paint a picture of my prediction of the future, this would be what it would look like.

“See Angie! You were missing out! This place is wonderful,” Libby said grabbing my hand and jumping up and down. I felt uneasy and laughed nervously.

“Libby, stop creeping out the Earth parasite,” Harvey said muttered.

“Parasite,” I asked, through grit teeth.

“Yeah that’s what you are. A parasite. You have no right to be here! Your earthly ways are already contaminating our air right now. We read about you Earth people at school. Polluting the airs, killing harmless animals, your crazy terrorism! What kind of life were you living,” Harvey said glaring at me.

“I was living a good one actually! I’d much rather be there than with a crazy person like you,” I growled.

“Now, now you guys. Calm down. Angie is here because she is a pure sweetheart. She is one of the good people who live on Earth. Not one of those psycho killers. Don would never bring a person like that to test on, now would he,” Amanda said smiling knowingly at her kids.
Carl led us to a floating van and pulled out some keys and a button. He pressed the button and the doors opened. Libby skipped over to the car and jumped in. I walked over to the car and Harvey stopped and slid over to the side. “After you, you Earthly Parasite.”

“No how about you, you racist jerk,” I said.

He rolled his eyes and cleared his throat letting his hand wave over and over. I finally gave in and stepped into the car before him. As I sat down, I tugged at my straight brown hair and looked around the car. It was hi-tech alright. There were televisions in the car, but instead of a picture there was a hologram showing up. Libby was in the further back seat playing with…robotic dolls? They looked like Barbie dolls but they were walking around and had a mind of their own. Libby was simply having a conversation with them and they were speaking right back.

I turned around and saw Amanda smiling at me. “You’re gonna love it here. I know it’s different from planet Earth, but I guarantee it will be a cool experience.”

“Not before she ruins our planet with her Earth germs,” Harvey muttered with his arms crossed.

“Harvey! I have about done it with you! Why don’t you shut up and be nice to our guest, ya hear,” Carl yelled, driving the car. Harvey shrugged and looked out the window.

I did the same. I looked out the window and the sight was beautiful. The plants were bright. There were plenty of people and robots interacting with each other and there were floating cars, buses and scooters everywhere! A few minutes later we appeared in front of a floating round shaped house. Carl pulled out the same button and the garage to the house slowly opened. A robotic looking dog ran out and started barking. “Darn dog, always barking all the time,” Carl muttered.

We hovered--I guess that’s what you would say—into the garage. Once we were firmly on the ground, Harvey practically jumped out of the car and ran inside the house. I sighed and slowly stepped out. I felt Libby grab my hand and pull me inside. “Come on! Let’s go make your room,” she exclaimed. Make?

I looked around and almost gasped when we stepped inside the house. The ceilings were so high and the rooms were so big and spacious. The television in the living room was huge. It wasn’t a hologram but the screen had to be over a hundred inches! Libby pulled me up the stairs, the dog trailing behind us. We walked past a room with a door covered in posters and caution tape. Probably Harvey’s. And a room with a door wide open. The room had pink walls that sparkled, literally sparkled. There was a unicorn hologram in the room. It looked over at me and neighed. I jumped back a little and kept following Libby. Suddenly we appeared in a white room with no furniture in it. Nor lights or windows.

“Okay, well just say what you want and it will appear,” Libby said, leaving me in the empty room and walking back down the hall. Um what?!

“Uhhh…a round water bed with splatter paint covers,” I asked slowly. I probably sounded like a lunatic. But suddenly an architectural sketch appeared. A round circle. There were then a few colors appearing on the sketch. Then some wood, and other materials appeared underneath the colors and suddenly the bed was there. With splatter paint sheets and all. I gasped, and stared wide eyed at the bed. The Alternative is too crazy.