HIGH ROLLER !

A Poor Girl's Gambit

"the fool"

only a fool thinks there's nothing left to lose.

-

A cold plunge.

Air bubbles float up to the surface. Everything is dark, the liquid isn't as cold as I thought it would be, or as hard on my skin. My eyes don't open. My hair floats. This is the only relief. Complete and utter darkness. It has always been the most welcoming, and yet, every time it threatens to overwhelm my being, I run away.

"Rika? Rika!" I can make out the dissonant sound of my name being called from under the water, each syllable and nuance familiar enough.

I lift my head out of the water. This simulated pool, a bathtub, unlike the toxic lakes I can no longer swim in. It may be a waste of water. Especially on someone who is dying. But it's exactly for that reason I don't care.

"It is time to go." My mother takes my hand after I towel off. My body still aches from the spinal tap, the cell shaving, the abuse and stitches on my body for the sake of science. My lips are completely chapped, dry. Why is that the telling for someone who is dying, that their skin, their every being has some implication of being totally sucked dry, until there's nothing left? Well, that's true of me. My passions, my ambitions, my happiness, my life, everything has been drawn out to its fullest. Somewhere in a contract, I wrote this into existence and handed myself over as a subject to my own project, unable to say no at any time. I signed away my rights to my own project, seemingly foreseeing a future where I would want to give up.

I was right, of course.

My "mother" dresses me, wheels me off, and puts me to sleep for hundreds of days, years, inside a ship with destination for any habitable planet out there. I can't perform any ship duties, barely able to walk, barely able to have a hand in my own designs now. I just sleep, without end. They could have just let me die instead.

Why did I have such firm beliefs at this age? That We would save humanity, that we would protect this precious thing called life, create new lives, a symbiosis, and I would willingly give my own to achieve such dreams. A weak, feeble human for some reason wanted to give the most. I should have stayed where I was— weak.

I was an orphan, orphaned by the disaster on earth. One of many climate refugees. For that reason, I was a child completely alone doing whatever necessary to survive. My country sank beneath tumultuous waves, so salty it peeled your skin off if you couldn't rinse properly. Things like honours, masters, thesis, phds, young prodigy, youngest graduate... all those labels that had been stuck to me mattered not when it sank. I survived. That was all.

My "mother" is not my real mother. My real parents— I didn't really get the chance to be connected to them. She's not someone who really loved me. I was a child they took in to their care... someone they could use for science. Now no one would ever know if I was gone. And Humanity was long beyond the time of moral values. But isn't it crazy? They wanted me for their research, and I gave my body, but I was the genius. We worked with the other doctors and had a breakthrough, thanks to the splice of elements and genetic makeups of various things, some engineering, computer science, everybody had a hand in creating plants. I wanted them to stop picking apart my body. But it was for Our saviours. Our angels.

It got fucked up when the ships crashed.

The first thing off the ship on planet No Man's Land is the fight for control, for authority. For wealth, prosperity, and scarce resources on burning ground. Humans can never let go of their greed.

This genius used for science, this sickly teen wasted and barely able to move, had to watch her "parents" get shot in the back of the head for access codes, relinquish plant control. Give up their science, their future forward, their new humanity. Not like it wasn't part my own idea. We were sinners. This was punishment.