Beautiful Bonnie

“Oi Bill!” June lay stomach to the sky on the side of the hill. Her voice slightly echoing off of her space pod, followed by silence. “So much for being my bloody secretary. Looks like he’s only gunna help me when it’s directly beneficial to em. Wee bit selfish don’t ya think-” June pauses as she realizes she hasn’t named her home yet.

Hours pass of time spent as June stares up into the sky. Softly from her mouth she says, “Beautiful. Absolutely stunning. You’re rather Bonnie ya know that right?” In that moment June's eyes shine over as she makes a sudden realization that the perfect name has just aligned itself in front of her for ZX7. One much more fitting for such a wonderful place.

“Bonnie. I‘ll call ya Bonnie. That's better than what the ballons at HQ called ya,” In a mocking tone, “ZX7, blah blah blah,” She laughs and lets out, “Lovely to make your acquaintance Bonnie,”

Some more time goes by and June starts to look around, “Now what's the deal with this sun? Feels like it’s been hours but it’s barely moved, how long are the days and nights here anyway?” June makes a motion to look down at a watch on her wrist. “Oh yeah that's right, I don’t have a watch yet. Wait, I don't have any sense of time here anyways. Looks like I gotta improvise,”

June's slightly devious presence steps up with her onto the ramp of her pod, kicking up bits of gravel and dust as she excitedly rushes inside to look for something “I’m sure if i just-” The main terminal lights up as she turns it on. Her rapid fingers gliding away at the surface of the touch sensitive holographic screens projected in front of her.

“Oh bloody hell, how hard is it to find something in the files of my own space pod?” Several minutes pass as she continues looking through files in her computer. “I knew it! Ah ha ha, couldn’t hide from me ya lil’ bugger,” A file opens and she pinches the hologram, lifting it into the air in front of her. The file reads TIME DIAL: EARTH.

June pushes herself from the terminal and smacks her head off of a shelf behind her, “Oh, bloody-” She rubs her head as the dull pain slowly subsides.

She then looks towards the floating file in the middle of the room that she let go of after smacking her head. “Git back here damn it,” June mutters as she scooches over to it, pinching it again and dragging it in front of her EVA suit.

Emitting from the left shoulder of the suit, a Download? message pops up in front of her. June pressing yes causes the file to disappear as the suit starts downloading the information from the “Time Dial: Earth” folder.

Some time passes, the sound of the electricity in the pod runs throughout the systems, buzzing, as June begins looking through some of the files on the terminal. She finds a few more files and begins to drag the files into the EVA suit to be downloaded.

June steps back outside onto the soil, with a snap of her fingers, a hologram appears in front of her, giving her a hud of various tools and apps she downloaded to upgrade her suit. “Much better now, let's seeeee. Since I landed, it's been,” She begins to swipe through different tabs and finds one labeled “Zx7 Data”.

“Well that’s a wee bit off, let's fix that name,” June says, side-eyeing the sky as if she were looking at someone. She begins to mess with the folder and changes the name of the app to “Bonnie’s Data”. “Now then, that's better, don't ya agree?” Again, looking to the sky.

“According to this, it’s already been several hours back on Earth. But Sunny up there hasn’t hardly moved at all from what I can tell. I’m gonna have to monitor the days and see how Bonnie sees days and nights. I wonder if the moons ever disappear from view or if they always stay? I hope they stick around, I like their style!”

June walks up to the side of the pod and presses a button labeled “Tethers”. From inside the pocket, June pulls out seven metal rods with some kind of hardened crystal bulbs at the top. Each bulb shines a green light when pulled from the pocket.

“Now, the air here is thicker and full of several non-breathable junk. Gotta take some measures to make sure I don’t croak on my first day here,” She presses the button a second time and sticks one of the rods into the ground in front of the hatch.

She looks in her files to find something about the tethers. “Alright, I think I get it, place them within a hundred feet from the pod and something should happen,” She then looks up and starts walking with one of the rods in her hand.

As June’s walking, she looks at the light and utters, “I wonder if I’m right with this,” A couple moments later the light shifts to a dull red hue. June’s eyes light up a bit as she blurts out, “Called it!” The red light indicates that it's too far away and green shows that it’s within range.

She starts to go around and place these tethers around the area surrounding the pod. When she finishes, she returns to the button, swipes through some more information about the tethers, and presses the button again.

A bright, green laser shoots from inside the small pocket and connects with the bulb on top of the rod next to it. The green light then bursts from the first tether, refracting to the set of tethers closest to it. Then moments later, those two tethers shoot the laser out, The laser continues connecting the tethers until they form a perimeter around the pod.

June looks around in awe as the green light begins to prism upwards and form a peculiar yet mesmerizing light show of patterns geometrically connecting and weaving together until a solid green light bubbles around the perimeter before disappearing.

June's eyes gleam with excitement. These tethers were something she found while waiting on the suit to download everything she was finding. What these are meant to do is provide protection from various environmental things. This includes Oxygen, stabilizing gravity, moderate temperature regulation, and several other functions as well. June wasn’t bothered much by the gravity but what she was eager to experience was the rest of her senses besides just sights and muddled sounds.

“Well now, there's only one thing left to do,” June remarks with a grin as she takes an overly exaggerated deep breath in and clicks her helmet to unlock it. The suit hisses as pressurized pure oxygen she was breathing mixes with the atmosphere. . June flares her nostrils, cheeks still puffed up with air, as she takes an experimental sniff.

“Phaaaaahh,” June exhales loudly and inhales with complete trust that the atmosphere within the perimeter is breathable. “Whew wee, ye know what Bonnie, you smell awfully familiar,” She breathes in again, “Sorry, that sounds a wee bit odd now that it’s left my mouth. Now what is that sme-” June gasps with the realization, “Tatties! Fresh Tatties. How wonderful, my home naturally smells like my favorite food!”

“Oooo I’ve been waiting for this, whats everything feel like?” She starts tearing off the EVA suit and immediately steps on a big rock trying to dash towards a tree nearby. “Ooo damn it. Owie owie. That's worse than a Lego,” She yelps as she wobbles back and forth on the graveled soil, holding her foot.

Realizing going barefoot on gravel is not the smart idea, she tip-toes back inside and throws on a pair of sandals. Afterward, she walks over to examine the tree. The thin, yet hard bark breaks away into flakes as June picks at the tree with her nails. “Scuse’ me Bonnie,” She apologizes as she pulls away a chunk of bark from the tree revealing an off-white, almost bone-stiff inner section of the wood, lined with thousands of tiny little cracks jolting vertically up and down the wood.

The texture resembled that of a bone but was less hard. It felt more spongy in the way wood from a wet tree would, but the wood felt cold and dry. The leaves felt relatively the same as they would on earth. The smooth texture and the plentiful amount of veins are noteworthy aspects though.

June's mind trails off as she pockets the sample of the tree and takes in the moment. Feeling things, touching them, collecting samples. Even putting her tongue on some things that are probably not toxic. She has tools to help her determine these things ahead of time but she's too caught up in the moment to consider that.

She eventually heads back to the pod, a smile plastered to her face, and looks across the picture painted in front of her of the landscape. The incredible valleys, hills, trees. The sky and the moons and the sun's light. A Desolate stage set for a deserted one-woman show. Blaring silence seems to have a habit of swallowing this place. The land was reminiscent of that of a savanna with scattered hills. Robust trees dotted through the vast landscape. Grey soil and short and lightly patchy greyish-pink grass and foliage coat the terrain. The sky reflects in orange and yellow hues, hugging the scenery foreground to the world around her.

As she turns her head she begins to blink. She sees behind a tree just inside her tether radius, a shadowed human silhouette. But it was at that exact moment that she blinked which left her unsure of what she had thought she had seen because when she opened them again, her eyes saw no silhouette standing there. Simply the shadows of the trees beckoning below their own rigid figure.

June's Eyes widened and her smile disappeared “What was that? Bloody hell what did that cryo sleep do to me-” her muttering, cut off by a robotic voice followed by her suit projecting an alert message while still lying on the ground next to her, displays a beating heart and “165” next to it. The voice alerts “Warning, Blood pressure and heart rate rapidly rising. Cortisol and adrenaline levels rapidly increasing

“How the- I’m not even wearing you, what are ya doing reading my vitals like that? I’m fine, just going loonie from lack of proper sleep. Speaking of which “June's normal upbeat demeanor starts to slowly come back to her, but her body and voice still shake with slightly confused fear. “I need to take a nap! Good night Bonnie! Let me know if ya see any weirdo’s peeping in around me!” June returns back into the pods, changes into her pajamas, tucks herself in, and falls asleep nearly instantly trying to think of nothing but her nap.