Earthbound (Short story)

Part 1

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

If they knew what i’d been doing i’d be locked up right now. It’s nothing earth-shattering or anything, that’s just how it is nowadays.

When the elders arrived they worked for days, rationing their resources, fighting for the good of us all -trust me, they never let us hear the end of it- so that we could be where we are today. My great grandmother was one of the elders, and as her descendent, I was to one day be elected by the eleven Posteris to help govern the colony. But I know that will never happen, they don’t trust me. They’ve never trusted my grandmother, they’ve never trusted my mother, and they will never trust me.

Originally, we were to keep all contact with the others, we were to notify them of any issues, needs, and the overall progress to know that we were adapting well to the new environment. Many died here before getting a chance to adapt; it wasn’t until the Novaespes spacecraft made its way some 54.6 million kilometers to reach its first successful landing onto the surface of our planet. But the elders decided it was best for us to isolate ourselves from them. They believed that the self-destructive nature they possessed would be detrimental to those who would live in their new oasis. They were no longer under the laws that had controlled them before, so they became the law. My great-grandmother, Alyssa Charles, could never come to terms with what she had become. She admitted that, in the moment, it seemed that they had an opportunity to right what they had done wrong. Still, that innate nature, what they call human nature, remains no matter where you go. She tried for years to indirectly defy the tyranny of the new world, defiance that would not go unnoticed. She became a recluse among the people, and as the populace expanded, she attempted to open their eyes to the reality of which no escape was possible. Very few fought by her side. I am told this is how she met her husband, with whom she would eventually bear my grandmother.

In the final weeks of my great-grandmother's life, she spent most of her days alone in her room, sitting at the desk that faced the thick pressure pane, only leaving it to visit the planetarium. In her final days, she had asked her daughter, as she had done for many years: “Do you know what I fear more than dying, Amira?” As my grandmother awaited the answer, the answer to the question that her mother had never bothered to answer before; she held her mother’s hands to her face. She felt a sudden push on them. Shocked by the sudden gesture she turned her attention back to her mother’s now solemn stare: “Dying for nothing” she said to her.

End Of Part 1