Resigned to her self-diagnosed incompetence, Sam shuffled up the door and began retracing her steps back outside, not once bothering to look up from the tablet in her hands.
She found the first available transporter alcove and ascended back onto the Galileo station, coming in just in time to catch the very same ship she came to Earth on, now headed back to Ganymede. Sam took one of the remaining free seats and leaned against the thick window, her unfocused eyes trying their best to look past the stars, but failing miserably.
Several minutes after departing, the raspy voice of an older man came through the intercom. "Please remain calm, this is your navigator speaking. Due to an unfortunate flare-up of dust in the inner asteroid belt, we are forced to take time to recalculate the route. The process is ongoing as I speak, but we will be forced to remain docked at the Phobos station for an extra 10 minutes. We apologize for the inconvenience."
Sam finally unglued her eyes from the unchanging view outside and looked around the cabin: most of the passengers were human, almost all dressed in gaudy outfits and wild, almost sculpted hair. She never quite followed all the fashion trends of Earth, but from what she could see, it seems that split high heels, purple tiger striped vests and facial stickers were popular once again. She glanced at a young couple sitting one row ahead of her, looking at a digital map of Mars while exchanging jokes, the silver star-shaped stickers dotting their cheeks reflecting light around the cabin like tiny disco balls. It seemed that most of the passengers here were headed for one destination: Elysium.
As the compression seals around the docking ports let out a satisfying sigh, most of the people around Sam began to leave the ship, leaving only her and a family of slug-like, pale-skinned aliens. While she watched the youngest of the group grow eight feet from their squishy orifices on their sides and scuttle around the empty cabin, she contemplated how she would spend the rest of her day.
By the time she'd be back home, it'd be almost eight hours since she left her friends in-game, so it's unlikely they'd be up to play with her now. Besides, she'd probably just bring the mood down with of how her day went... No, that wouldn't do. Her gaze instead turned to the giant brownish-green planet outside the window, with large, dark patches of water surrounding several continents. Elysium being among them.
In a flash of confidence, she tightly grabbed her bag and ran out the airlock, just in time to hop on a transport shuttle to the surface, headed for Isle Phobos.
If she is to make mistakes today, might as well make them big.
