Orbit: Keshari and Liara's Intergalactic Tale of Friendship and Dreams

"This is a joke, right?"

"I wish it was."

"But this is your dream. You wanted to be the first human to walk on Mars." Liara said.

"Yeah, but... I don't want to die doing it. Especially not like this." Keshari replied.

Liara tried to think of something witty to say but all she could manage was "You'll be fine." She didn't believe it herself but she had to encourage her friend. She glanced at the oxygen gauge which was slowly creeping closer and closer to E. A few more hours and they would both suffocate. Her heart ached with sadness for her friend and fear for herself. But she knew if she were going to survive she had to stay strong. "That's my girl," Keshari thought as he heard Liara's words of encouragement. He wasn't sure how much longer he could keep his spirits up, but he knew that he had to try for her sake. "Maybe we can fix it? Maybe there's some sort of manual override or secondary power source that we can use..." he thought as he lifted himself off the floor and began rummaging through the ship's storage compartments looking for anything that could help them out of their current situation.

"What are you doing?" Liara asked once she noticed Keshari getting up from the floor. Keshari replied with a shrug, he honestly wasn't sure what he was hoping to find in the storage compartment but he felt like it couldn't hurt to look so he did just that. Looking through over several dozen drawers filled with various tools and emergency supplies, Keshari found nothing. "Oh c'mon! They're an advanced space crew! There must be something!" He shouted in frustration as he kicked one of the drawers shut only for another one underneath it to open due to the kickback from his foot. Picking up the drawer, Keshari opened it only for his eyes to widen in shock at what was inside that drawer: a small box about half the size of a deck of cards with a button on top of it shaped like a smiley face with two dots for eyes and a long curved line coming from the bottom of its mouth curving upwards towards its two dots for eyes and ending in a rounded tip at the top of its head where its hair would have been if this wasn't a box made entirely out of metal and plastic with no hair on its head or anywhere else on its body other than where its skin would be if it actually had skin instead of being made out of metal and plastic which is what most people would assume so they wouldn't even bother taking into consideration that this box might not even really exist in physical form nor does it need any sort of mind behind it because it's simply just... well... a box made out of metal and plastic without any sort of skin or blood or bones inside of it other than whatever wires and bits make stuff work inside... which is why I should probably stop talking about this box because I don't even know what I'm trying to say anymore because this isn't exactly a good place for me to be rambling about boxes when my friend is about to suffocate.

Keshari shook his head in an attempt to regain focus before examining the box in his hand more closely. It appeared completely undamaged so there was no reason why the power supply should be low causing the ship's oxygen generator system malfunction. The only logical conclusion that could explain their current situation was some kind of error in their programming language causing a bug during their last software update which caused an exception error resulting in their oxygen generator system malfunctioning which also explained why there was nothing they could do now while they waited for help from Earth... wait... Earth!? They were supposed to have reached Mars by now! How did they end up so far away from Mars? Where are they? Are they still on their way towards Mars? Or are they somewhere else entirely? And what time is it? They never set their clocks back before leaving Earth so they wouldn't drift away from Earth's timezone while traveling through space towards Mars! They didn't want anyone worrying about them while they were out here exploring deep space! Wait... deep space!? There shouldn't be any deep space near Mars! So then what happened!? What went wrong!? When did everything go wrong!? Was there ever anything right?!