Sci Fi Contest Entries

Blue, Green, and In Between

I'm consolidating all my old standalone contest entries into my current collections. This was written for a Blue Man Group contest!

PROLOGUE

It was, Marie concluded, a positively boring day.

The most exciting thing that had happened so far was an escaped chicken, and as it was the one with a deformed leg, it hadn't even been that difficult to catch. Sure, Mark had accidentally killed it and got a whipping from Father, but she hated when he got whipped, so that hadn't been interesting, either.

Sighing, she grabbed the water bucket from its hook on the barn wall and headed toward the woods. While the family had a well out by the cow pasture, Mother loved the clear water of the nearby spring.

Marie hummed to herself as she entered the woods, swinging the bucket back and forth. "Going to fetch some water, water, water," she sang quietly to herself, jumping as a small squirrel ran in front of her. Smiling at her skittishness, she continued on her way.

The stream was babbling quietly, as always. Marie was getting an uneasy feeling, though, as she looked through the trees to the meadow beyond where the wolf pits were dug.

Marie hated the wolf traps that had earned the village of Woolpit its name. She usually avoided looking at them as she filled the water pail, but this morning was different. People were by the pits.

Marie narrowed her eyes and looked harder. She could have sworn they were green.

Lifting her skirts so they didn't hinder her, Marie followed the stream quickly until it thinned to a crossable width. She hopped over, hitched her skirts higher (who was around to see her undergarments besides the strangers?) and dashed through the woods toward them. Midway, she realized that she probably should have walked so as not to attract very much attention, but it was too late now. She had already been as loud as a pregnant buffalo. However, she would be fine, she knew. As she could now see through the thin trees, they were children. Green children. A little girl and a little boy. And they were watching her approach.

She broke through the trees, dropping her skirts and panting. "Why, hello," she said, putting on the voice that she usually reserved for small children and animals. "I'm Marie. What are your names?"

The little girl blinked once, twice. Tears rolled silently down her cheeks. The little boy swayed slightly and then hacked horribly onto his hands. When he pulled them away from his face, Marie saw, to her horror, flecks of blood on them.

"Wait here," she said, and ran toward the village nearby.

The little girl turned to the little boy and made a series of clicking sounds that no human would be capable of. "I told them. I told them you were too weak for this."

The boy coughed again. More speckles of blood dotted his hands. "I will be fine, Sister."

The boy was dead within the week.

*

Thousands of lightyears away, a green man turned from his position at the supercomputer. His wife approached him, picking at her blue skin nervously.

"Our son is going to die," her husband told her, sorrow in his voice.

The woman put a hand over her mouth. "She told us," she remembered, clicks muffled by her hand. "Our daughter told us he could not do this."

"We will have to send more," her husband pointed out. "We cannot collect enough data about the human race with one little girl."

"No, of course not. The blue ones will be ready in a few thousand years. We can deliver them then."