The Gateway

She had no idea how long she had been falling. Time, even on her watch, had stopped. As soon as the light from the tube had been lost in the darkness, she gave up hope of ever returning to her world. All she cared for was light and companionship. She was stuck, exiled in oblivion. Nothing she knew could do any good here. She wasn't even sure if she was still falling! She could not see, smell, hear, taste or feel anything. This left time for only one thing: Thoughts. At first, all she could think about what how she would never see her friends again, or how her family would worry. Now, she occupied herself with remembering the fun times she had over the years. She found that if she could do nothing else, she might as well try to be positive. It didn't take long before she gave up on thinking and decided to use her imagination.
Elsteba had heard that imagination was the tool of the future from old, cheezy movies like Barney and Mr. Rodger's Neighborhood, but she had never tried to use it before. For the tool of the future, it's odd that no one here knows what it is. She imagined stars in the sky. She had once heard of stars. They had been visible before the great astrodome was built. She had been told that they were beautiful pinpricks of light that dotted the skies when darkness came. She had no trouble seeing darkness, but when she opened her eyes, she was amazed to find herself surrounded by billions and billions of pinpricks of light. At least I can see now. Reaching out a hand, Elsteba touched one of the pinpricks. As suddenly as they had appeared, all the stars dissapeared, swallowed up by the darkness once more. Only one remained; the one she had touched. She looked around in sadness at the void, wishing she still had the light of all the stars. She turned to face the solitary point of light, but it, too, was vanishing. In desperation, Elsteba reached out to catch the star before it died out completely, but this simple action seemed to cast the void into chaos.
Elsteba was surrounded in intense light, causing her eyes to burn and her head to throb in pain. A high-pitched ring ripped through the void, and Elsteba passed out.

Exile

Elsteba leaned against the frozen wall, scanning her memory for the procedures of escaping a frozen space-time tube. As far as she knew, it was impossible to have this happen in the first place, but here it was. Her first thoughts consisted of having a legitiment excuse for being absent from class, but she soon realized that if the tube didn't start moving her soon, she would be stuck forever between parallel dementions. Being locked in her locker for a prank was one thing. At least she had been audible. Now she was trapped between physical and unknown worlds. She pressed her face against the fogged glass in the hopes of seeing someone, or at least something that could help her.
Suddenly, Elsteba saw a flicker of light in the distance. It looked almost like a comet that was only visable for a moment before the darkness swallowed it. She pressed her hands to the glass to push out the light behind her and fell through the glass into the void. Screaming, but not hearing anything, Elsteba fell, gaining speed rapidly and unable to see anything but the cylinder that had been her temporary exile only a few seconds ago. At least there had been light in there, even if it was cramped.

Getting to Class...

With a smooth, sighing whirrr, the glass doors opened, and Elsteba entered the pure glass sphere known as the main transportation room. There were many glowing openings in the sides of the sphere, all color coded. The main desk floated like a balloon in the center of the sphere with thousands of courtesy hoverboards orbiting it. When summoned, these boards take off to assist the less-than-wealthy students travel to their next classes. Elsteba began scanning the sphere for a green portal, which would take her to her next class. Soon, here eyes fell on the portal and she zoomed through the opening and into the selection chamber. Green meant science, and Elsteba had biology. I hate that class...

First thing she noticed was the panel had been 'upgraded'. By this, it meant she did not have to select her destination as usual. She merely stepped it to the transparent cylindrical room and the computer did the rest. It programmed her path of travel and destination based on her school schedule. She had quickly realized that this new update was going to make it much harder to skip class or hang out with her friends at the library. Of COURSE the Board of Education would do this. Their goal this year was, after all, 100% attendance. I hate school...

-->A lot of students thought it was a dumb idea, but since when did the Board of Education ever listen to the lowly students? They only ever care about students if the parents start getting involved.

I punched my name into the terminal and stepped into the tube. Usually there is a line for the tubes because of everyone trying to get to class, but since I was late, most everybody was already in class. Score one for the tardy student.

I went off like a rocket, catching glimpses of other tube users every now and then. For the most part, though, I had my eyes closed. I had long since learned that it wasn't beneficial to classroom performance to be dizzy off of vertigo.

Eventually I stopped moving. I opened my eyes to see the tube completely fogged on the inside and frosted on the inside. When I touched the tube, it was freezing. Strange...