Anastasia the Super Dog in Space

By Alicia Paintner

It was bad enough that human's killed the Earth and had to flee in a caravan of spaceships in hopes of greener pastures, but as far as Hailey was concerned the fact that they left all the animals behind was unforgivable. Hailey's surprise discovery is going to change that.
More than five centuries after a mass exodus of human's left earth, our heroine is sick of her smothering Mother and judgmental noisy shipmates. In an attempt to spread her wings and get some alone time, she sets off on her maiden voyage to scavenge scrap and make her fortune. Her alone time is brought to an end by a momentous discovery.
What follows is a series of catastrophes and a strange cast of characters that lead her to more adventure and love than she ever thought possible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543960976

Book preview

92:

Chapter 1:

New Earth Resettlement Date: 8:22:512

Holy crap! Is that a puppy? On a spaceship?! My oxygen mix must be out of whack. There haven’t been any dogs alive in almost five hundred years. Said Hailey to her ship recorder, right before she passed out.

New Earth Resettlement Date: 7:8:512

Ship Log; The Independence:

Well, ship, I am your new captain Hailey, and it has been suggested to me by a smothering Mother that I keep a log to document what I am sure will be a momentous adventure. In truth, I am scared shitless I will be a giant failure. I try very hard to come off as this tough badass bitch, totally in control of her destiny. But the truth is I am a giant goob that trips over nothing, laughs at her own jokes, farts at just the wrong time and is a constant work in progress. I seem to give people the impression I am a lot cooler than I really am, but I think that is only because I don’t care too much what most people think of me. I can take a punch, and I have been known to give pretty good on that score too. That has helped my cool factor. I don’t have an advanced education but I loved to read by myself as a kid, and I picked up a lot of stuff on my own. I don’t think I am all that great looking, but I get a lot of attention from men and women, so maybe that is my insecurities talking.

Ship, halt recording. Make sure to change the encryption to the highest security level. No access to this file other than me unless I die and someone finds my floating corpse in a Ghost Ship. Restart recording.

I purchased this ship from one of the religious divisions of our Caravan about four ten days ago. The family that had owned it previously were not very tech savvy and had let the CO2 scrubbers go bad. Unfortunately for them, they all died in their sleep. Fortunately for me, that put a stigma on the ship. Something about it being haunted. Whatever! Because of their silly superstition, I was able to buy this baby for a song.

It has taken me about four ten days to get it ship-shape as it were, but now I am ready for my maiden voyage. I am going to spend a few ten days hoping back and forth between the different ships in our caravan, but once I am confident I won’t die of something fixable I am off to my first adventure. My Mom doesn’t know I plan on leaving the caravan for 6-8 ten days; she is going to have a shit fit when I tell her. But, I need to break away from her and everyone for a while. I pretty much hate all humans. Well I love my Mom of course, and I like Joe, and I have some conflicting feelings about Chastity…but you don’t want to hear that. Let’s leave it with…I can’t wait to be alone, and I need to prove myself.

I am changing your name to The Independence. This ship is going to be a scavenger ship. I have done some buying and selling of scrap on the down low, but we don’t want to share that with everyone. Ok? Remember encrypted unless I am dead! We will pick up any piece of trash we come across, fix it up and sell it to whoever has the most credits. All the ships are so good at recycling any biologic debris that we never had to worry about picking up a bag of poop. I am thankful about that part of human evolution; humans finally learned to clean up their crap. But, there is an endless amount of space. We will find all kinds of good stuff, and I am determined to discover it and make my fortune.

Wish us luck ship!

Sept 3, 2097

Dear Diary.

This is Zarah Black, and I am going to start writing my story in hopes I can pass it on to the person I am putting all my hopes and dreams into this crusade. This person won’t be born for hundreds of years, but I have great faith that my Warren is going to guide them from Heaven to the road that will bring all animals back to life. I wish I had family that I could explain this all too, in hopes of them keeping my history and legacy alive. But all I have is are my beloved dogs, and they can’t tell a story worth shit! Ha ha.

I like to pretend everyone alive today knows who I am. However, I am just a silly old lady. I know this, but I try to put up a good front. A few facts are that I was, in my day, a movie star. I was in several nonsensical movies about a pretty party girl having all kinds of fun with boys and music with me in very little clothes. I had quite the figure in the day. I had lots of fun and made what I thought was a lot of money. I didn’t know what real money was though. I found out what REAL money was when I met the love of my life, the Wonderful Warren. Warren was much older than I and lots of people thought I married him because he was one of the wealthiest men on the planet. But hand to God, he was the love of my life. We turned our love towards our dogs and trying to preserve the animals of the world against a dying planet.

If my hopes come true, you are on one of the ships in the fleet that has left Earth for a new home planet. If that isn’t true maybe you are an alien that has come across my Zoosicle and rescued all the animals. I just know in my heart that something beautiful is going to happen and they will be saved.

The planet is spiraling out of control much sooner then anyone thought. We have only about a year left before we are completely out of drinkable water and breathable air. They have moved the departure date up to August 8th. I am so scared, not for myself, but for the animals. It breaks my heart to think of all the species that have perished already and what is soon going to happen to the ones that are left. I don’t care so much about the people. I know that is terrible, but damn it, they killed earth. They deserve what they get. I am glad some humans are going to get off the planet, but it burns my ass they aren’t taking any animals with them. My money is going to fix that.

I am going to call it a night now. The babies and I have much to do in the next few months before the launch. I have to meet with the team from the Bronx Zoo and the Engineering team in charge of the Zoosicle. And the best news is that Ramsey came through and got us a meeting with that stupid general. I have to make him understand how vital our project is. He has to guarantee everything is going to be taken care of correctly.

New Earth Resettlement Date: 7:8:512

Sure enough, her Mom was having a fit about it.

What if something happens to you, how will we know?! How can we help you if you are in trouble? Hailey rolled her eyes and kept going on her plans.

I will send you messages back and forth from the vid pod I refinished. You can send me back messages. Send copies of the news vids too, ok? It will take a few days to get back and forth, but if you don’t hear from me in a Ten-day, then you can panic. Not until then Mom, promise!

Mom couldn’t promise but tried to pretend to be brave. Hailey wasn’t buying it for a second.

New Earth Resettlement Date: 7:9:512

Ship Log; The Independence:

After I pried my sobbing Mom off my neck, I hopped over to the military ship for a quick visit with Joe. I was hoping for a little wink wink nod nod from him before I left. After all, I was going to be gone for at least Six Ten-days.

Joe lives on the main Military Ship. It is an excellent place to live in the caravan. The military has gotten their act together enough to cover the three things they care about the most; guns, food, and sanitation. In the typical military fashion, they did it in that order. It was probably best considering what a cluster mess all the ships caused. The first ten years they used those weapons to keep all the travelers in check. A good thing they did, if we are being honest. Each spaceship should have had its own hydroponics to grow vegetable, fruit, soybeans for proteins but again in their race to get off planet, a lot of spacers, having very little to no experience with growing anything managed to kill their crops to the point of starvation within the first year. Luckily the bug food source was almost impossible to kill. But man cannot live by bugs alone and soon these spacers that couldn’t keep a plant alive were trying to break into the military stores to get their hands on an orange before they died of scurvy.

The military made short work of them and made it very public. It only took half a dozen instances of a few overly hungry and desperate travelers being shot dead on live vid new feeds for people to realize the military had them right where they wanted them, and they needed to play nice. The military maintained they weren’t going to be ugly about sharing what they had. You didn’t have to donate a kidney or sign up for a lifelong career in the military. If your food or ship failed, you only had to sign up for 5-year stints to get what you needed. Of course, it ended up being much more like a prison sentence than an army career. The Earthen Military Brigade would give you as many calories as your body required (just), enough clean water as your body needed (just), enough air…..you get the point. What they didn’t tell you until it was too late was that they weren’t actually going to pay you and in fact, they were going to charge you for the clothes on your back, the shoes on your feet, the cot you were going to sleep on….again you get the idea. And they most assuredly were not going to tell you that those expenses were going to cause you to owe them more than you could ever give back in exchange by the sweat of your own brow. Your five years enlistment quickly became what was appearing to be lifelong slavery.

If we were looking at the Caravan ORG chart, the Army would be top of the list, followed closely by the wealthiest top One% (as in Earth’s hay day) and then the Religious groups.

Although I hate humans, I like Joe on the Military Ship. He is an ensign in shipping and receiving. He bought scrap I had scavenged from the Marietta illegally a few ten days ago for more than market value. He isn’t terrible. He is tall and kinda cute. I think he is cute in that way 18-year-old boys who are desperate are cute. He is cute in the way boys are when they have been locked in Catholic Ship all their lives. I met him his first Ten-day out of the Big House and on his own in shipping. He was so scared of screwing up that I was able to convince him I always got 5% over market value for my stolen crap. Then I felt so bad I had to do something nice for him to look myself in the mirror that night. We bump uglies every once in a while. I mean a girl had needs even if I hate all humans, except Mom.

Chapter 2:

She docked The Independence in one of the smaller bays and went looking for Joe and some food. Not necessarily in that order. She went to their mess hall and got a big plate of what looked like brown mud next to a pile of green slop. Yum! Their food never tasted good, but it was always very nutritional and filling. And for a girl starting her own scrap business and on a tight budget that was her kind of food. Right off she got lucky; Joe was there eating too. She sidled up to him and sat down next to him, bumping him on the arm.

Hey, tuff guy, she said to him. Are you going on duty next? Or do you have some time to kill?

Poor Joe blushed from the roots of his hair down to his toes. He stammered a little…Hey Hailey, um yes I think I am…um I mean I have to go on duty in about half an hour, but sure yeah.

His best buddy kicked him in the shins from across the table and gave him a Be cool dude! look. Dan had a lot more experience with girls than Joe did so he tried to straighten up and look cooler. Dan was the cutest trans guy Hailey had ever meet. If she had met him before Dan, she might be following that line instead of Joe’s. Hailey was glad most of the fleet had let go of horrible social mores of the religious ships. For most of the population, it was a non-issue. It was a good thing Dan had been born on a science ship and not the Catholic one, or he would still be Danielle and not Dan. He had all the best features of a girl, long thick eyelashes, beautifully colored skin with all the hard, masculine lines girls adored.

But, Joe made her laugh in general. He was such a goof, and it was so easy to have fun with him. He was not her forever guy. She thought he understood that, but he was so naive. She might have to have a talk with him about that soon. She was trying to be casual with Chastity and Joe, but she didn’t think any of them were built for that. Yet another sign she was not the badass she was striving to achieve.

So Joe, didn’t you say you had some new vid game you wanted to show me in your bunk room? She asked winking and making silly faces at him.

No, that wasn’t me. I don’t have any new games. Answered Joe confused, being a huge dork.

Dan kicked him under the table harder this time and said "If you don’t have anything to show her, I sure do. You want to come with me, Hailey?

It was then that Joe got it and said quickly…Oh no! That was me, I forgot. Yeah Hailey, why don’t you come to my bunk room and see. He stood up too quickly and knocked his plate all over Hailey and then in his hurry to grab it smacked his head into Hailey’s.

At that point, she was kind of past the old itch and said: How about we just go down to my ship, and you see what I have?

Joe nodded dejectedly and followed her out. She could see Dan shaking his head and thinking That poor guy, that is what happens when you grow up on the Catholic ship. He is clueless. Disgust was written all over his face.

The next group on the Org chart would be the massive spaceship for all the world religions that could get their act together in time to get their holy heinies off the Earth. So along with military ships, the fleet had massive spaceships for all the major religions. There was the Catholic ship that had scooped out the entire Vatican and placed it in what looked like a giant glass bottle with rockets. They had the whole Sistine Chapel. They had all the important Vatican’s museum contents. They had every piece of art, sculpture and every historical/spiritual document they could fit on board. They were not about to let any of God’s treasures be left behind. If it was God’s plan for them to find a new home, that meant the entire Church’s home was going with them.

And even though the church had relaxed in many of their long-held beliefs, one thing they did not relax on was Priests and Nuns marrying and having children. The church had realized women and men were equal and gone were the days of Priest being in the front and Nun’s in the background doing all the work. They were on equal footing at the time of the Exit. However, they weren’t going to succumb to bodily urges just because the world was dying. It worked out well for the Fleet that there was at least one massive spaceship that did not have humans breeding like rabbits. The Priests and Nuns realized they were not going to live forever and this was a multi-generational trip, so they did build in the equivalent of religious boarding schools. If you were a worker on a yacht and had a child at a time when a bed was not available you had the option of donating your child to The Church. This was not as bad as it sounds. You could still see your children occasionally, and they had it pretty good. The dorms on The Vatican were more spacious and the food tastier then a worker got on a yacht. The Vatican children took classes in primary education and religious training. They did chores such as cleaning their own spaces and the older children cooked food for the younger ones under the tutelage of the Nuns and Priests.

The Nuns and Priests knew that they needed the children happy and healthy so that they could take over not only the care of their ship when they grew too old but also to voluntarily choose to become Priest and Nuns themselves. They needed the younger generation to grow up feeling the calling so that the faith would not die. They required these children as much as the children needed them. It was a win-win for all of them. This is where Joe the Ensign grew up. It is why he was so sheltered and naive. He was an easy mark, but then those vast brown sad eyes could pour a bucket of guilt into anyone.

Hailey was pretty sure Joe was so embarrassed over his lack of cool, he made sure Hailey got an extra lucrative deal that day. He did make a point of telling her he was determined to get his shit together. He told her next time Hailey showed up on his ship; he would be ready for a little alone time. As she walked away, she saw him hitting his head against the bulkhead for a while. She couldn’t help but think he was such a poor dork.

March 20, 2097:

Dear Diary,

It was a hard day today. And I was so mean to Ramsey again. I am just so scared. Our fight started out after he told me the General wouldn’t see me when we tried to schedule an appointment with him.

What the hell do you mean the General won’t see me! I screamed at poor Ramsey. I knew I was being an ass to him. I wanted to scream at the General, but he wasn’t an option right now.

I am sure it was not a pretty picture, a short, plump woman with bleached hair teased to its limits screaming at a small man trembling in his Gucci’s.

Please Zarah, try to calm down… he said to me in a meek voice.

Calm down?! CALM DOWN! Has that phrase ever in the history of humanity ever calmed a woman down?

My four little white puffball dogs were jumping around my feet barking in a highly agitated timber. I could see that look go across his face, the one that said it was enough to make a grown man want to kick them across the room. But he knew who buttered his bread, and he really loved them too, so he just let me go until I ran out of steam. He also knew where he stood in the house compared to my little ankle biters, so he kept quiet and took his tongue lashing.

He tried to answer me, but before the words could leave his lips, I was yelling back at him.

NO! Of course not! All that does is piss us off even more. Have you learned nothing in the forty some odd years you have been my personal assistant?!

He thought I didn’t hear him say quietly under his breath 55, but of course, I did.

My screaming ended abruptly, and the dogs instantly shut up and went running for their gold and diamond encrusted beds. He flinched knowing what was coming.

I said in a deadly quiet voice Ramsey; we have been over this a million times. You became my assistant when I was 14 and starring in my first movie Sissy Hits the Sand. Fourteen plus forty equals fifty-four, my current age. If you were right and it was fifty-five, I would be sixty-two, and we can plainly see I most certainly do not look sixty-two. Isn’t that right Ramsey?

He answered me in an automatic monotone Of course, not Ms. Zarah.

I took a deep breath to calm myself, fluffed my hair and smoothed down my dress. Then I turned in a circle looking for my little dogs. Within a minute I was in full panic mode again.

Ramsey! Where are the babies?! I screeched and started running in my gimpy, waddling sway of a run through the gilt-covered mansion. I had been in the great room, and I tore out of it and went bouncing off the walls to the library. The dogs were not there so I started running as fast as my fat little ankles could get me up the grand staircase and into my room. I crashed through the half-open door and fell to the floor in relief when I saw all four dogs curled up in their bed. Ramsey came puffing in after me saying, I was trying to tell you I thought they had come up to bed.

The dogs came running to me and jumped all over me, licking my face and hands and barking in their loudest voices.

Oh Ramsey, I was so scared! I thought someone had taken them! Ramsey thought I was overly silly about it, but then again given the times I had room to worry.

We lived in horrifying times, with starvation and disease spreading over the planet at an alarming rate. Ramsey and the dogs and I lived in a grand old home that had been swallowed up by the ever-encroaching tent cities. We had the best security system that money could buy, but given the desperation of most of the people on the planet nowadays that was no guarantee of safety. He had begged me for years to move to a safe military compound, but I refused to leave the beloved home Warren, and I had built.

Once I finally settled down, I asked him again. What do you mean the General won’t see me?

He heaved a giant sigh and replied. Things are getting crazy. They have moved up the date for the launch. You know all this. No one has time to talk about animals they don’t care about anymore.

They would not have a way off this dying planet if it wasn’t for the gifts Warren and I have given humankind. You tell them I still have a few inventions they will want in my back pocket. If they don’t make time for me, I will not come with them, and I will take those schematics to the grave with me. You tell them that Ramsey. I am done playing nice with these people. I know they think I am a stupid, crazy old lady but I still have value. Got it?

He nodded. He knew I was right on all counts. I could see he was worried about making them understand. I do love my dogs more than my own life, and I valued animals in general over humans, and they needed what I have.

Chapter 3:

New Earth Resettlement Date: 7:9:512

Ship Log; The Independence:

Hailey docked her ship, locked it down and went looking for Quesh. He knew she was always up for a free meal and the Vatican had amazing food compared to the Military ship. He had told her to message him when she got docked, and he would meet her in the cafeteria. She strode down the corridor with her shoulders back and a purposeful attitude. She wanted to give off an aura of a person in charge. She didn’t think it was working, but she lived by the motto fake it until you make it.

She