Science Fiction short story

I should have mentioned last post that in our writing group we set up rules to go with our writing assignments. The rules from last meeting were:

1. Ghost story
2. Has to take place on a plane or at an airport.

For our next one, we got a bit more specific:

1. Sci-Fi
2. Opens in a forest
3. Written in first person
4. Develop at least one character besides the main one
5. You (main character) don't know one of the other characters

Now of course, we don't all follow the rules perfectly, but I really tried to meet all the criteria.

Here's my story from Tuesday night.



M.O.E.
May 11, 2010

Other than the fact that the Stratos now had a significant slash in her hull and the ion-fiber bundle that provided power to the thrusters had ruptured, we were all more or less okay. Through the rising steam and unsettling groans emanating from our downed machine, we found our way, one by one, through the side exit door and stood or sat in silence in the warm rain. Thomas and Belt, dazedly crawling from the cockpit, seemed entirely unscathed—probably because they were belted in—but Owen and I were less fortunate. Judging by the extent of the damage that could be seen near the engines and on the tail fins, the living quarters at the rear of the ship must have taken the brunt of the impact; and it was there I had been brushing my hair and looking for my copy of A Canticle for Leibowitz when I heard shouting from up front. There was no time to wonder about the cause of the alarm or to react before I was flung off my feet amid a cacophony of horrible tearing, grinding noises. I think Owen was just coming out of the can when we hit.

My ears were still ringing from the deafening noise of the ion bundle being ripped open, and my body had that all-over thick, numb feeling you get when you walk full-tilt into a glass door you didn't see. My glasses were gone. I didn't know whether I was okay or in too much shock to feel my injuries. Not daring to look down just yet, I hoped that I was still mostly intact.

All four of us were accounted for and outside now; Owen was sitting awkwardly against the curved side of the Stratos, his right arm hanging limply at his side, his face bruised and dirty. He looked more pissed than surprised. It was raining lightly, with warm steady drops. No one had said anything yet. We all stared at each other and at our now ominously silent means of transport, which lay canted a little to one side, buried in broken tree limbs and dank vegetation. The ship looked pretty bad from the outside, but we had no way of knowing the full extent of the damage at that point. All I knew for sure in those first few minutes was that we had veered too sharply to starboard in the canyon and lost airspeed. There was no chance of recovery at that altitude, and down we went, fast, slicing straight into the close, thick trees on the valley floor. Whether it was pilot error or something else was not certain. Surprisingly, we were still alive.

Starting suddenly to life, Belt plunged roughly through the damp undergrowth toward me, and called through the steady rain, “Natalie! Shit.” He was pointing the general area of my head “You're really bleeding.” Being the only girl in the group, I usually got the most attention.

“I'm okay, I think” I wanted to be confident, but my voice sounded weak and annoyingly squeaky. I didn't feel any pain yet, only stiff and bruised from being flung headlong down the aisle of the cabin; but touching the side of my head I felt my hair was matted and sticky, and I saw a bright red stain spreading steadily over my shoulder and down my left side.

He came up to me, looking grave. I put out a shaky hand. Belt was our navigator and probably the most reasonable and reliable of the whole crazy, radical bunch of us. He was the one who always made sure our plans stayed within the realm of reality; he was the organizer for the operation from day one; he had found the money; he found Thomas.

Belt took my arm, and we just stood there, quietly. The rain kept coming down, wet and warm, and blood was getting in my eye. All of a sudden, I wanted to cry.

The problem was, none of us really knew Thomas. The pilot was new to our group. He had joined us only a week before we set out on this fool's errand, though we hadn't thought it so foolish when we left—and now he had crashed our ship, our only way back, damn him...but I need to back up.

* * *

It was two years ago this Spring. We were in college then, so of course we were all filled with a sense of budding intellect and our own importance, and were tattooed and pierced and drank too much and smoked. These were the irresponsible, passionate days of unbridled dreams and grand ideas.

It was in the back room at Elroy's where we first started talking about it. Owen brought it up. It was always his idea, from the beginning, and I thought he was brilliant for it. We had know each other since he was a 9-year-old science whiz and I was a skinny tomboy with too-big glasses a couple of months younger than him, who wanted to know everything about everything too. Over the years our friendship cemented and became a deep and unalterable part of our lives; he was more of a real brother to me than those two idiots who called me their sister. But that is a another life and another story. Belt first turned up in our Freshman Philosophy class, and was just about as weird as we were, and just as much of an outsider. He was really damn smart, and was steadier somehow, less emotional baggage or something, and in time, the three of us became inseparable. That evening at Elroy's there was a sense of wildness and excitement in the air; it was magic: it was revolution. Owen talked with his hands in that animated way of his, rectangular glasses glinting in the red and black lights, hair falling over one eye, and convinced us all.

“We'll reclaim it,” he said expressively.


It had been a statement with no preamble, but we knew exactly what he was talking about. In 2043 a powerful group of prominent, self-proclaimed environmentalists, under the guidance of the IPCC had succeeded in actually outlawing the use of fossil fuels for any purpose. In had been a very long time coming, but the world was still unprepared for the ramifications of such a ruling. If that was not feat enough, they also ordered the destruction of all oil-producing facilities, refineries and applicable infrastructure. Driving was made illegal almost overnight, and that left a whole hell of a lot of cars in the world to suddenly have to get rid of, and a lot of angry people to pacify. A mire of dangerous politics ensued; there were protests and riots, and people got killed. But the bill passed, and several companies were hastily formed in a few different countries and set to the task of eradicating nearly two centuries worth of what now amounted to so much industrial waste.


Belt was talking now.

“How can it be done? I mean, the clouds must be miles thick by now, it's always raining, and the polar caps are basically gone. The ocean has risen 27 feet since Exodus. And 200 degrees Fahrenheit at the Equator! People just can't live there anymore. They say that nothing can be done about it at this point, and it's hard not to believe them.”

“The trend can be reversed, I'm certain. I've been thinking about this for years.” Owen folded his hands in front of him. “Nothing is impossible, especially if they say it is. Imagine if an event could be created that is so large it could tear through the troposphere...an escape route for the clouds and gasses could be opened...”

“Um, that's a pretty big 'event',” grinned Belt, making quotations with his fingers.

“How would you keep it open?” I broke in. “Even if you could rip a big enough hole in the sky, that's not enough; it would have to stay open for a very long time—years, even. If you expect to really make anything happen.”

The truth is, every human person since Exodus had thought at least once in their lives about how things could be undone, how things could be made right again. Owen's ideas were not entirely new, nor were my objections. A dead subject with no resolution. No one was supposed to talk about it; they had determined there was no solution long ago, and outlawed it's discussion. Maybe we were smarter than everyone else, or maybe we just had less fear or guilt or bigger balls, I don't know. But in secret we kept talking.

“You're right, of course. There are some big if's, I know; but just think... ” Owen let his words hang in the smokey air of the bar, drifting through our eager imaginations and lighting a fire that would grow and grow and not go out until the day I stood bleeding beside a broken spacecraft, cringing in anticipation of what was to come.

In the semi-dark room, the three of us sat back in our chairs, drank our beers and pondered the future and all its wild possibilities. My thoughts drifted to ancient history. Not a single school kid in the last 87 years had not heard the official account:

After the legislation was firmly in place, and public outcry had died down a little, the government controlled and sponsored demolition crews went to work. In the tumble and frenzy to get through a very distasteful set of tasks as quickly as possible, things got messy. Really messy. The lack of planning and poor execution of 'Operation Earth Scrub' started a domino effect, and within a few short months it became apparent that the amount of pollution in the atmosphere, caused by the steam and toxic chemicals released in the hurried destruction of so much, far outweighed all previous levels. By the time enough of the important people were forced to admit a grave mistake had been made, it was too late. The world over was covered by thick clouds that refused to go away, and things began to warm up. Then it began to rain. A lot of scientists and engineers tried a lot of different things, but the situation was not getting better. The rain got warmer, and so did the air. Fear was rising fast, and blame being cast freely in every direction.

Pulling out a cigarette, I listened as Belt and Owen quietly dreamed and speculated. The smoke curled slowly up from the end of the perfectly proportioned paper-and-tobacco cylinder, balanced gently between my fingertips, and spread out lazily against the dim ceiling. Elsewhere in the building music was thudding softly and people were dancing. Drinks flowed pretty freely on the moon, and bars were plentiful. You needed something to distract you when there was no sunlight, and 'outside' to go to. They were out there, hundreds—millions of them, all over the Dark Side on this Friday night, kicking up their heels and making noise and getting drunk—but here in the soft glow of a back room, lost in the heart of the city, we were alone and thoughtful. I chewed on the sliver ring in my lower lip and pushed short brown hair back over the earpiece of my glasses. “What about Thrak?” I said. “What about the oil?”

* * *

Owen was on his feet now, and the four of us struggled to get far enough under the trees to be out of the rain. His arm didn't appear to be broken after all, just badly bruised and maybe sprained. Belt wrapped a strip of cloth he retrieved from the ship around my head to slow the blood, and Thomas stood with his hands jammed in his pockets and looked miserable. The arguments and accusations had not lasted long. He had encountered a flock of gulls, stirred up by our noise, and in the confusion and mass of wings and feathers that obscured his vision he had lost control. We wanted to be angry at him, we wanted to scream at him and blame him and hate him—but we knew that it really wasn't his fault. Thomas was a good pilot and a good guy, and he didn't want to be stuck in this valley with what was about to happen any more than we did...what did it matter we had only started to get know him in the last week or two? He believed in us, found us a ship, and could fly it too. He had been around campus and Elroy's for all those years the same as us. Everyone knew Thomas, or had at least heard his name. When things go wrong, people just want someone or something to blame, and in these serious circumstances, he was the new guy, the odd one out.

I gazed out at the rain and trees, at the forlorn wrecked Stratos and found myself amazed that we were here at all. On the earth! A place not one of us had ever been, though it was the origin of all mankind. It was incredible to think of how far we had come from that night in the bar. We really believed in this, all of us, and we hadn't failed yet, despite everything.

* * *

With the first tsunami came the initial talk of Exodus. The stability of the earth's climate was deteriorating, and there was whispered talk of the end of the world. As the polar ice caps began to recede at a rapid pace and ocean levels rose, the clouds kept getting thicker, and the rain wouldn't stop even for a day. Less than a year after the catastrophe, there were men on the moon, building the solar panels that would eventually power the cities that covered the Dark Side. It took nearly 15 years to get every man, woman and child off planet earth, but they did it. Project Human Exodus, know by all of us who were born on the moon as simply: Exodus. The guilt people felt about what happened was probably the primary reason the project succeeded—like children of divorced parents, they blamed themselves for the destruction of the thing they wanted and loved most; but many of us felt there were too many dark undercurrents to take the stories at face value. Was it really so wholly accidental? So unforeseen and unpreventable? But ideas like these only came out in private, of course. We were careful. And we talked and talked about the issues and the injustice, about the tragedy. We wanted the earth back. It was ours, and it had been taken away before we even were born or had any say in the matter.

M.O.E. Belt came up with the name: Man On Earth. Things moved quickly at first. The oil really proved to be the answer, or at least it was our best working theory. Once there was hope for a way, a chance of success no matter how slim, our trio of nerdy friends went to work. The plan was pretty simple: build a huge fucking bomb, evade the moon perimeter patrol, fly to earth and set the bomb off on the site of the last and largest oil refinery in the world: Thrak. It was one of the few that escaped the wrath of the IPCC, and it stood on top of the largest oil reserve ever found. If the bomb was big enough, if the oil fires that resulted burned for long enough...well, maybe we could tip the environmental scale through pollution itself. I would have loved to see their faces at the mere thought...!

Two years later, everything was in place. Saying our private goodbyes to our dark home the night before, we wondered if we would make it back at all. I got a haircut and put on my best orange dress and boots. Belt and Owen got drunk and wished they could get laid.

The perimeter patrols were surprisingly easy to get through—people don't really try leaving the moon that often, and we slipped by undetected. The flight was swift and uneventful, and we set the bomb down in the predetermined location. All was well. Then we lifted off, frightened, as we should be, hurrying away from that somber black sphere of firepower that would have made the former U.S.S.R.'s H-bomb look like a firecracker. Cut though the valley in case it went off too soon. Fly low and fast. Get a few hundred miles clear before aiming for the atmosphere. Haste makes waste goes the old saying. We were wasted by gulls.

* * *

Owen was calm, but I wished he would speak. I wanted someone to say something, even though there was nothing to say. Time had run out for us. How far we were from the bomb hardly made any difference now, because surviving that blast, if we did, would only prolong the inevitable. With few tools, no spare parts and the fact that not one living soul in the universe could possibly guess where we were, our fate was clear enough.

Looking around at my friends, I searched their faces for emotion, and found little. I felt sad, but there was no panic as I faced the sobering reality. This was something each one of us knew could happen, but we chose to believe it would be otherwise. There was no room for regret here, just wistful resignation.

Belt stood near me, but not too near, staring fixedly through the clouds as if he could see the horizon. Thomas was standing just down from him, muddy and defeated. Owen's eyes were closed. He was waiting. His mouth was set but not bitter; he was content. Though we had been great friends for so many years, Owen did not come to me now. There were no arms around me to offer comfort, no noble words or jokes about glory. He was a brother, not a lover. There had never been a lover. I suddenly realized that I did not know what it was like to kiss someone, and oddly that seemed a far greater tragedy than my untimely death.

It had been long enough. Any minute now.

And then in an instant, it stopped raining. The clouds parted like Moses at the Red Sea, and in the eternal moment before the shock wave reached us, I could see out through the far end of our valley, a perfectly clear sky with the sun hanging low and golden over spreading forests. The earth was awash with light. Through the gap I saw an enormous dome of white and gold and purple rising majestically into the atmosphere, absorbing all it touched, paling the afternoon sun. And in that moment, I knew that I was witnessing the most beautiful thing I would ever see.