"Okay. Diary entry, whatever. Day... I don't even know anymore. We're not even at Alpha Prime yet and I already want to go home. Not that there's a home to go back to—Mom and Dad made sure of that when they signed us up for this without asking me. Ten years. TEN. I'll be twenty-five when we get back. I'll have spent my entire teenage life on a spaceship with my parents and my perfect sister and my genius little brother. Do you know what I gave up? My friends. School. The mall. Everything. And for what? So Dad can plant a flag and Mom can name a crater after herself?

And everyone keeps saying 'Penny, be grateful, you're part of history.' I don't WANT to be part of history. I want to be a normal fifteen-year-old. I want to go to the mall and complain about homework and NOT be trapped in a flying tin can with a robot that keeps trying to talk to me.

Nobody asked me. That's the part that gets me. Nobody ever asks me anything. They just tell me where to sit, what to do, when to sleep. I'm not a colonist, I'm a hostage. And the worst part? Space is exactly what I always thought it would be. Darker than dark. Colder than cold. And empty.

I always thought space was darker than dark and colder than cold, and worst of all, empty. And now I'm living in it.

Anyway. End of entry. Or whatever. Penny out."