Oneshots and Crazy Little Stories

* One Step *

(Adoptable!)

Plot idea from generator.

Character 1: A xenobiologist, who can be absent-minded.
Character 2: A mutant, who tends to get tongue-tied.
It's an apocalyptic story about what it means to be human. It kicks off inside a dream with a failed mission.
Earth has already died once in this story.
A parallel universe will play a big role in the plot.

This is based on The Long Earth (amazing book series)

You gaze at the dusty, burned remains of the land that was once the western end of Wales. You can remember how it used to be; wet, green, cloudy and sometimes blanketed with fog. Now all you could see was the blackened charcoal of long dead trees and the charred rocks that used to be a hill.
You wander through this desolation, the dry air scratching at the back of your throat and an itch nagging in the back of your mind. You know there was something you should be doing, something important, but you can't remember what it was.
You jerk your head up at a sudden sound, your eyes wide. Was there someone, or something, there?
'Y/N?' A voice calls softly, somewhere off to your left. 'Y/N?'
You stumbled towards the noise, your boots crunching through broken and burned gravel.
'Y/N?'
You clambered up a slope, hands becoming raw from the sharp stoned ground. You knew the voice calling you, but somehow you couldn't figure out who it was. You tried to call back, yet your voice, which was usually strong, would not come forth.
'Y/N? We're about to Step over to the Datum. Do you want to come and see?'
With a silent cry you slipped and fell, the gravel beneath you vanishing into a dark void. A scream jammed in your throat, choking you as you flailed your arms desperately. This felt like every nightmare you'd had, falling, endlessly falling.

***

'Y/N! Are you alright?'
You gasped and snapped your eyes open, your hearing ringing and your head fuzzy. A face swam into your blurry vision, concern edged into its lined skin, and you laughed shakily. A dream, the falling had only been a dream.
'Bad dream?' The person the face belonged to sat back, his joints cracking.
You nodded, struggling out from the blanket that had tied itself around you. The forty ish man watched you with blue eyes from beneath grey, bushy eyebrows, a frown on his thin lips. 'It was just a dream,' you said, smiling at him to show him everything was ok.
'Hmm,' he replied, his mind already wandering away.
You sighed and sat on the sofa you had been taking a nap on before you rolled off. You were used to him drifting off like this. Ever since he had picked you up from the burning Datum Earth and whisked you away in a stolen Twain, you had watched him as he drifted away into whatever dreamland he disappeared to. A couple of times you had had to take over the steering before he crashed the the airship, not entirely knowing what you were doing but still managing to keep it on course. Being a xenobiologist, he had (eventually) created a humanoid creature, a kind of mutant, that now steered the ship. You hadn't agreed with this action at the time, but there was nothing you could do.
Since that time you had been travelling through the Long Earth, Stepping from parallel world to parallel world, seeing the sights that were to be seen and avoiding official Twains. Once you had had to make a pit stop at a small farming encampment on Earth West 75,048 because a fan had packed up. The people had been kind and welcoming, even keeping Chade's, the xenobiologist's, airship as hidden as possible. You never knew when the Officials could appear.
Then you had heard that the Datum, the home Earth, had been consumed by fire, and you and Chade had rushed back the way you'd come. It had taken a month to get to Earth West 1, due to the airship being an older make and therefore slower, and anxiety had been building all that time.
Now you were finally here. Just one Step away.
You stood and made your way to the cabin, where the controls for the Twain were, leaving Chade kneeling on the floor. You slipped in through the door and greeted T1, the short humanoid mutant who could almost be a story book goblin if it weren't for the fact he was wearing a smart waistcoat and khaki shorts.
The xenobiologist came in after you. 'Ready, Y/N? T1?'
You and T1 nodded, you slightly nervously. The mutant flicked a switch so that a light on the control panel lit from red to green. The green, forest encrusted view outside of the airship blurred and and changed, shifting to a dull, smoky sky. You peered down at the land below and your heart skipped. The ground was dark with ash and small fires still burned here and there, flickering brightly in the dusky light. It looked just like your dream, even smelled like the scent you could faintly remember from it.
Tears crept to your eyes, but you blinked them back quickly. Chade and T1 weren't crying, so why should you?
But they came, eventually, to all of you. Silent tears tracked down cheeks at the sight of your home Earth, all burned like a log in a fireplace. None of you could believe it, even though it was right there in front of you, blistering away.
Your home.
Gone.