Frank Cottrell Boyce - Cosmic

@latestnews : A rocket, launched yesterday from a private site in northern China , is missing. Yesterday the Internet was alive with rumors of a secret manned space mission. Today NASA and the Russian Federal Space Agency both confirmed that a rocket did take off but denied it was theirs. The rocket entered high orbit and then disappeared into deep space. No manned rocket has left Earths orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972.

Posted four hours ago from web

Mom, Dadif youre listeningyou know I said I was going to the South Lakeland Outdoor Activity Center with the school?

To be completely honest, Im not exactly in the Lake District.

To be completely honest, Im more sort of in space.

Im on this rocket, the Infinite Possibility . Im about two hundred thousand miles above the surface of the Earth. Im all rightish.

I know Ive got some explaining to do. This is me doing it.

I lied about my age.

I sort of gave the impression I was about thirty. Obviously Im more sort of thirteen-ish. On my next birthday.

To be fair, everyone lies about their age. Adults pretend to be younger. Teenagers pretend to be older. Children wish they were grown-ups. Grown-ups wish they were children.

Its not like I had to try very hard, is it? Everyone always thinks Im older than I really am, just because Im tall. In St. Joan of Arc Primary the teachers seemed to think that height and age were the same thing. If you were taller than someone, you must be older than them. If you were tall and you made a mistakeeven if it was only your first dayyou got, You should know better, big lad like you.

Why, by the way? Why should a big lad know better just because hes big? King Kongs a big lad. Would he know the way to the bathroom on his first day at school? When no one had told him? No, I dont think he would.

Anyway, a few hours back the Infinite Possibility was supposed to complete a routine maneuver and basically it didnt. It rolled out of orbit, wrecking all the communications equipment, and now Im very lost in space.

Ive brought this mobile phone with mebecause its got pictures of home on it. Its also got an audio-diary function. Thats what Im talking into now. Talking makes me feel less lonely. Unless you get this message you wont know about any of this because this is a secret mission. They said that if it goes wrong theyre going to deny all knowledge of it. And us. Theres five of us on board. The others are all asleep.

Can you believe that, by the way? Were in a rocket, spinning hopelessly out of control and into Forever, and what is their chosen course of action?

A nap.

When we got the maneuver just slightly wrongjust slightly enough to make us completely doomedthey all screamed for about an hour and then they dozed off.

I cant sleep. I cant get comfortable in sleeping bags because theyre always too small for me.

Plus I think if I stay awake I might have an idea. And save us all. Thats why Im recording this on my Draxphone. If I do get home, Im going to give it to you and then youll understand how I ended up in deep space when I said I was going pond dipping in the Lake District.

If you are listening to this though, and you are not my mom and dad, you are probably a pointy-headed, ninety-legged, sucker-footed alien, in which case, can I just say, Hello, I come in peace. And, if you happen to have the technology, please post this phone to:

Mr. and Mrs. Digby23 Glenarm Close, Bootle, Liverpool 22, England, The Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, et cetera. If its not too much trouble.

The slightly worrying thing is that I am sort of enjoying this. Being doomed is Not Good. But being weightless is Outstanding. Every time I lean forward I do a perfect somersault. When I stretch my arms in the air I levitate. Back on Earth my only special skills are being above average in math and height. Up here Ive got so many skills Im practically a Power Ranger.

Then theres the stars.

On Earth, our house is right next to the New Strand Shopping Center. The multistory parking lot blots out most of the sky. The only stars I ever really noticed were the ones on the Its Your Solar System glow-in-the-dark mobile I got when I was nine. And the only reason I noticed them was that they kept getting tangled in my hair. Mobiles do not make good presents for persons of above average height.

The stars look different from here. Theres a lot more of them, for one thing. Big swirls and knots and clouds of them, so bright they hurt to look at. When youre in it, space looks like the biggest firework display everexcept its on pause. It looks like freeze-frame fireworks. Even if youre Completely Doomed, youve got to be impressed.

The only bad thing about the view is that it doesnt include Earth. We havent seen it since we rolled out of orbit. I said to the others, Well, it must be somewhere. Were probably just facing the wrong way. Well find it. Definitely. But that didnt seem to calm them down. One of themSamson Twodrew me a diagram to prove that even if we were facing the wrong way we should still be able to see it. I said, So what are you saying? That weve fallen into some magic wormhole and come out on the other side of the universe?

Possibly.

That the whole Earth just vanished? That its gone?

Possibly.

They all screamed until they wore themselves out, and then they went to sleep.

At least sleep uses less oxygen.

I have tried to imagine that theres someone on the other end of this phone. Someone unusually quiet. Ive also tried to make actual phone calls. I sort of thought the signal might be better up here, being nearer to the satellites. But it doesnt seem to work like that.

I dont think the world has vanished. But it is worrying not being able to see it. After all, Earth is where I keep all my stuff. Thinking about all my favorite bitsmy mom, and my dad, my bedroom, my computermakes me feel a bit calmer. Theres my massive Playmobil Viking ship that takes up half the floor. Or used to take up half the floor. I put it back in its box the day I discovered Id grown facial hair. I just thought that anyone with a beardeven just a wispy oneis probably too old for Playmobil.

I say I discovered the facial hair. To be honest, I never noticed it, because weve got energy-saving lightbulbs in the bathroom. It was other people who pointed it out to me, during the Year Six graduation trip to Enchantment Land.

The most famous ride in Enchantment Land is the Cosmic. All the way there, on the bus, everyone kept on about how big it was and how scary. Everyone had a brother or a cousin who had been on it and Never Been the Same Again. In case you dont know, the Cosmic is a kind of metal cage with two seats in. Its attached to the top of a massive crane by kind of big elastic bands. They pull the cage down to the ground with a chain and fasten it with an electromagnet. You sit inside and then they switch off the magnet. The elastic catapults you into the air and then snaps you back toward the ground again. Then you bounce up and down for a while. Its only frightening for about ten seconds, but for those ten seconds it is so frightening that Bens cousins hair supposedly turned completely white. And it goes so fast that Joes next-door neighbors stomach came loose and ended up stuck in his own neck and he had to have an operation. Apparently hell show you the stitches if you ask him.

Despite these obvious drawbacks, everyone said they were going to go on it. Until we got there and discovered there was a height requirementnamely a wooden Martian holding his arm straight out and a speech bubble that said, If you can walk under my arm, you cant take the Cosmic. Everyone could easily walk under the arm. Except me. It only came up to my shoulder. Okay, said the man. Youre on.