Sleeping Jenny by Aubrie Dionne

Author:Aubrie Dionne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sleeping Jenny
ISBN: 9781939392404
Publisher: Spencer Hill Press
Published: 2014-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Just Like Me

People of all ages, social classes, shapes, and sizes filled the room, some standing, some sitting on the dusty floor. A wallscreen, lit by an energy cell hung at the room’s center, showed an unknown galaxy of stars. I recognized the blue-haired man across the room. He nodded as I came in, his nose rings glinting in the light from the wallscreen. I took a seat on the floor in the first row, next to two young women dressed in upper-level tunics like mine.

I breathed in clean air and noticed an air purifier connected to their battery cell in the center of the room. If they took that much care of their people, then they couldn’t be that bad, right?

The guard stuck his head inside and nodded to the blue-haired man. “That’s it, Jax. They’re all here.”

Had they been waiting for me? My cheeks flamed, and I leaned over until my hair fell on either side of my face. I practiced my art of blending into the wall. How good I was at it, I had no idea, but teachers never called on me in “wall mode.”

“Excellent.” Jax stood at the room’s center in front of the wallscreen. He wore a black jumpsuit over his lean body, reminding me of a ninja. An animal-rights ninja. Pretty darn cool.

“My name is Jax Upton. I’m the president of the Timesurfers, and I welcome you to our recruiting meeting tonight.” His eyes skimmed the crowd, remaining on mine for a little longer than the rest.

He extended what looked like a lipstick container into a long, silver baton and pointed to the screen. “This is the Aquarius Dwarf galaxy, the home of a newly found Earthlike planet orbiting in its sun’s habitable zone.”

I squinted my eyes, but all I saw was a cluster of shiny stars.

The tip of his baton tapped one of the glowing spots. “Paradise 15. It’s roughly earth-size with an orbital period of two hundred and ninety days, a little shorter than ours. This planet is twelve percent closer than we are to its sun, but the star is dimmer, lower in temperature, and smaller than our sun. This means the greenhouse warming is similar to Earth’s. Surface temperature would be seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit.”

Audible gasps rang out around me. The young woman next to me jumped up. “When was it found?”

Jax crossed his arms and met her gaze. “Our scientists found it two days ago. Which gives us some time.” He addressed the rest of the room. “Due to the recently established planetary laws, the first to walk on the planet claims it. This means we’ll need a mission set in place—a ship and a team of cryosleepers—by the end of this year.”

“Do you think you can beat the government to it?” An older man with a white beard spoke as he typed wildly into his miniscreen.

“We have to. Out of all of the planets we’ve scanned, this one seems the most promising for our mammal regrowth program. It’s too far away for the government to consider mining operations— only for colonizing.

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