Wonder JenLisa AU

Chapter 1 ✓

Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are

But the thing is, we don't anymore. Wonder, that is. We haven't for a while because science had figured out all that there is to figure out. Mankind has come too far, too too far, crossed too many points-of-no-return and kept on barreling through till the last bits and pieces of wonder were shattered. People don't wonder anymore. People don't dream. People just know.

We know that there are 42, not 48, other civilizations in our galaxy; Douglas Adams must be so damn proud (and the Drake Equation was always more of a guestimate anyway, nowhere near as accurate as Science Fiction). Then again, reality has always been stranger than the mind has the capacity to imagine. Maybe that's why it stopped imagining. It got tired of being outdone.

"Lisa! C'mon! You're gonna miss the game!"

"Shut the fuck your face, I'm coming!" Lisa takes the steps by bounds and leaps, jumping up to tap the wooden doorframe even as she zooms through it to crash onto the old, worn couch in front of a holographic projector. Jennie was perched right next to it, chewing on her nails. Lisa swats at her.

"Stop that."

"You're not my mom."

Lisa quirks an eyebrow, fixing Jennie with a look. "Really? You wanna go there?"

"Alright, alright, I'll stop. Wait, wait, it's starting--I swear to every single galaxy in the entire universe that if Russia takes another Championship--I'm gonna stuff an entire shuttle up my ass."

Lisa lets out a bark of a laugh and elbow Jennie in the side, "You sure you'd be able to fit that shuttle in? Your head's already taking up so much space in there."

Jennie shoves Lisa face through the hologram and it looks like the opening shot goes right through her forehead.

Zero-gravity football (soccer some people used to call it) is kind of outdated, but still a crowd favorite. Well, as much of a crowd as there is left. Most people have already left Earth and they can't get signals beyond Jupiter so there's literally no chance of the Higher Classes catching this game. Not that the Higher Classes still watch zero-grav football. They've probably come up with something classier and indefinitely more expensive by now.

"I used to want to be a football player," Lisa says, settling into the couch, reaching across Jennie for a bag of fries.

"I thought you wanted to be a pilot." Jennie doesn't even take her eyes off the game, but her fingers dig through the fry bag and she shoves a handful in her mouth. Lisa shrugs. They both hoot as Korea takes a shot.

"No you wanted to be a pilot," Lisa corrects. Jennie pauses with another handful of fries halfway to her mouth, a tiny frown creasing her forehead.

"Oh, right, I did." Then she shoves the entire handful in her mouth and chews. Lisa licked her fingers clean, of the salt, smacking her lips.

"Goal!" Jennie punches the air and Lisa crumples up the empty fry-bag and lops it over the hologram straight into the garbage disposal. It hisses as the bag disintegrates and lets out a small puff of oxygen mist.

In 22010, there isn't much that humans haven't achieved, not much that we have not conquered or destroyed. No last frontier of science because that was ages ago, literally. But one thing hasn't changed--things live, and things die. And well, if the Earth is a living body, then humans were the cancer that it couldn't find a cure for. And so, it's dying.

But not before the universe put up a pretty good fight. How do you fight cancer? Well, radiation of course.

When the first wave of gamma rays hit from Eta Carinae, people weren't ready, though they thought they were. Billions died, millions more were diagnosed with diseases that all culminated in fatalities. Plants withered, birds and animals littered the streets by the hundred thousands, what few scientists remained not so much as crossed off species from the list but ripped out entire pages and burned them. The world population was cut down by more than half, almost overnight, and the results were nothing short of devastating. In the years that followed, that half was once again halved by the aftershocks of the radiation, and then halved again by the fallout, reducing the world population to barely an eighth of what it used to be.

Everyone thought it was finally time for humans to go.

But cancer isn't that easily cured. And neither is humanity.

We might call it resilience, the world might call it pestilence. Either way, the people who did survive came up with plans, answers, ways, as we always have, and life carried on, under clothes made to deflect gamma rays. Mechanics and scientists even developed a way to turn that radiation into usable energy and civilization thrived again.