1 Year Previously...

     The phone buzzed as the line rang on the other end. There was a click, and someone answered.

     "Sarah?" Ellie asked, tingling with excitement.

     "Hello?" Ellie's sister, Sarah, asked.

     "It's me," Ellie responded, shaking with excitement. "You'll never guess what just happened!"

     "Uh, did 'Doctor Who' get cancelled or something?" Sarah asked, seemingly preoccupied.

     Ellie rolled her eyes, smiling on the other end of the phone, "No! Sarah...I got accepted!"

     "Accepted?" Sarah repeated with a note of confusion in her voice. "Like, you got accepted into the program?"

     "Yes!" Ellie squealed into the phone. "I'm going to become an astronaut!"

     There was no reply from the other line.

     "Sarah?" Ellie asked. "Hello?"

     "Ellie..." Sarah sighed.

     "What?" questioned Ellie, confused.

     "You know how I feel about this whole...'going into space thing'," Sarah continued.

     Ellie slumped against the wall, her excitement suddenly dashed, "You can't be happy for me? Just for once?"

     "It's not that," Sarah answered. "It's just...space is..."

     "Dangerous?" Ellie completed. "Sarah, going into space is no more dangerous than driving a car on the freeway."

     "You have to understand Ellie..." Sarah said.

     "No," Ellie abruptly cut in, suddenly a little agitated. "Do you know what it took to get into the program? Only twenty individuals in history have been accepted into working on the A.O.S.S.!"

     "Ellie, please..." begged her sister.

     "I had to go through ten individualized tests before I was accepted!" Ellie continued. "The tests were based on intelligence, agility, endurance, and even a little luck!"

     "Ellie..." Sarah tried.

     "I'm making history!" Ellie eagerly exclaimed into the receiver.

     "I can't lose you!" Sarah abruptly sobbed. "You're my little sister! I'm supposed to look out for you!"

     There was a painful silence between the two sisters.

     "Listen," Ellie whispered, "I'll be fine. They have all kind of protective systems that keep the astronaut safe. They've got backups for their backups."

     "And what if those fail?" Sarah asked, clearly trying to stifle her emotions. "What if you...die?"

     "I'm not going to die," Ellie consoled as she hugged herself. "I'm doing what I was destined to do."

     Sarah was quiet for a long time before she finally responded, "We'll talk about this more later. I've got some work to do."

     "Okay," Ellie answered quietly, and then she hung up the phone.

     Her apartment was cold, dark, and isolated. Photos of famous people from all throughout history were hung up on the walls. In the corner was Albert Einstein, in another was Amelia Earhart, but her favorite was one of the protagonist Luke Skywalker from "Star Wars". The photos were a reminder of her solitary quest.

     For a moment she just stood there with the phone pressed up against her chest. Then, Ellie walked across her apartment floor and onto the small balcony overlooking New York City. All of the illuminated windows shimmered in the evening light, and Platinum Tower glowed like a luminescent star in the distance. The cold, winter wind tousled her hair as she looked out into the night. For as long as Ellie could remember she had always felt something within her. There was a calling, something inside her screaming that she was meant for something greater. She was meant to do more.

     Ever since Ellie had been a small girl she had dreamed of leaving behind the boring expectations she had been taught to expect from life. She'd always been told that all there was to do was grow up, get a decent job, and maybe even start a family. But Ellie had a desire, a craving, to achieve the impossible. She didn't just want to live in the world, she wanted to experience it.

     Life on Earth was so...ordinary. As Ellie gazed at the partially-covered moon she couldn't help but think that her place was among the stars.

     And one day, she was going to touch them.

**

Present Day

     The A.O.S.S. had been almost completely shattered in half. Debris floated around the damaged craft, twinkling with the reflection of the sun like miniature stars. The solar panels were badly cracked, lethal radiation was flooding the interior compartments, and life support systems had ultimately failed.

     There were no survivors.

     The shields had been severely damaged so the interior compartments were subjected to massive doses of deadly radiation from the outside. Ellie's body floated in the central chamber of the cylinder-shaped space station. Just as quickly as she had breathed her first breath at the very beginning, leading to a life full of a search for meaning, it had abruptly ended. Her hair billowed around her like a magnificent mural and her delicate face was touched with the cold hand of death.

    Life is enduring.

     It survives, prevails, and even thrives.

     But, it is still the most fragile thing in the Universe.

     Her story could have ended there. Elysia Jobs could have been the nameless astronaut who died aboard an obscure vessel. She could have been remembered as the dreamer, and how she had always been on a secret quest to find meaning. Ellie had wanted to be special, to know that she was different than the other billions of souls thriving on Earth. She wanted to apply meaning to a void-filled Universe that lacked any. It could have ended.

     But it didn't.

     There are times when life gives a select few another chance. There are times when, briefly, the laws of existence are bent to allow a singularity. There are times when life is able to completely triumph death in the darkest, most obsolete, hour.

     That time had arrived.

     The machines around Ellie's body began to shake, causing no sound but a simple stir in the vacuum that had become the interior of the craft. Inside her body, there was a change occurring due to a unique genetic reaction with the radiation emitted from the extraterrestrial objects that had destroyed the station. Some would call it science, yet others would attribute it to chance. A few could say it was fate.

     The machines pulled themselves off of the walls with an invisible hand. They surrounded Ellie's lifeless body and began to integrate themselves into her biological state. Wires, fiber optics, tiny microchips, and even minute pieces of computer-equipment recoded Ellie's DNA. They were controlled by an origin that existed at a state even deeper than the subconscious.

     Everything was controlled by the desire to live.

     Ellie's body jerked, her brain tissues were re-vitalized, and her heart began to pump blood throughout her system once more. Neurons were disconnected, reconnected, or discarded entirely as her entire Nervous System was re-wired. Muscles were upgraded with the foundation of nano-like technology, reflexes were enhanced with the use of computer processors, and the mind was made sharper by a combination of everything plus one. Her body wasn't simply upgrading, it was evolving. It was moving to a stage that humans back on Earth could only have dreamed possible.

     Her body convulsed backward as the hand of fate reached into her soul and instituted life once more. Ellie's eyes opened for the first time, a second time, and deep within her iris tiny bits of technology were being ordered to rewrite the very nature of the human eye. Within moments, the essence of vitality returned to its host.

     "I am," she whispered, her soul returning to the realm of light from the darkness. "I...am."

     She was alive.