2023 SCIENCE FICTION CHALLENGE WINNER

Prize: £1,000

Finalists:

Hannah Greer, B. C. Brewer, Caroline Ashley, Helen Catt, Eugenia Holland, Christie Davies, Elijah Y, Robert H. Smith, Ed McConnell, Laura Cox, Alex Sultan, Tom Bagstevold, E.D.Human, Lindsay Virgilio, Julie Dron, Rachel Swabey, Adeline Henderson, Wendy Markel, Alyssa Beatty, Joel O'Flaherty, Gary Malone, David Klotzkin, David Haworth, MM Schreier, Malcolm Todd, Sue Dawes, K. L. Vincent, James Hancock.

and the winner is…

Harry Taverner

The History of Us

The rain on Nuwedon tastes sweet today. Mists of it sweep slowly down from out of huge blue clouds, dancing in the steel breeze until landing on my stuck-out tongue. I get looked at different by Thake for this. So bluely she looks. Bluely, like water and cloud. Not happy, not like red sun and laughter. Like happy is absent. I stand, her looking, rain flaking. Turning to pink snow now, and I laugh. She mutters something and walks away, scanning leaves and bugs with her right hand, pulling her hood down tightly with her left. And so day goes. Big red sun, the size of a transport wheel in the sky, warms my face some. But not enough. I shuffle after Thake, red and happy inside from sweet iron and calcium rich rain. The two of us walk lazy in the cold, scanning this, scanning that, always hoping for no abnormalities. No mutations. Deister says to be on the look out more nowadays. More teams are finding things, something about the radiation from the emptying sun. It’s been emptying all my life though, and it never gets bigger, nor smaller… nor hotter nor colder. All my life Deister tells me about duty to protect. Conserve. Maintain. Report all abnormalities. Take samples back for Deister. As long as I remember it’s the same. How much do I remember? I do not remember my start. I do remember the education. The history of all of us, of how we few survive, live now in an Eden, millions of miles from Earth. The few thousand remaining humans, caretakers of what is here. What remains. Always this way. Forever the same.

Thake is a few meters ahead of me, and I see her scanner flash pink. Abnormality. Bad DNA. Something wrong in the code of a fern, a Dicksonia antarctica, by the looks of it. As I catch up I get a glimpse of what she found. On the underneath of the giant green fern, a tiny a red Coccinella septempunctata.

‘What you got?’ I ask.

‘Seven-spot ladybird. This one got nine.’

‘Cute’ I whisper, peering over for a better look.

‘Not cute, Melinoe, irregular. Dangerous. We get it back to Deister for analysis. And I do not know why you think it cute.’ She tapped the tiny red insect into a small vial. ‘Between this fascination with drinking rain and approach to work, I would say Melinoe needs a scan for abnormalities.’ 

‘Deister scans me every day, you would know if something was wrong with me because I would be in quarantine with the other irregulars. I just think that sometimes it’s a bit too strict.’

‘You think. That’s problematic, isn’t it.’

She pocketed the ladybird and walked on through the bushes, sweeping mechanically for more pink flashes. I stand silent. I take off my glove, see my smooth dark skin shining slightly under the bright blue clouds, and sweep my scanner over it. No pink flashes. A perfect specimen of human DNA. Zero manifestations or traces of anything other than. This makes me smile red inside again. I catch up to Thake and we walk and scan our section. Meticulously. 

*

Nine more hours until sundown, halfway through the slow, prolonged day, and we clock off job, done. Samples in the lab for processing, food in the canteen, time for headspace, and then sleep. Will be night when next shift picks up, long cold night. Slightly more than Earth DNA is used to, so habitats keep us regulated. Fixed. Total sensory compliancy. Remember your education. Meditate, sleep, and eat. Next quarter cycle Thake and I will switch to working the food labs, and I will miss the rain. She’s in the pod next to me now, meditating. I do not know if she sees what I see in the absolute darkness. I do not know if she thinks like me. How so focused she keeps, among the beauty of the tiny planet we guard. The colours of the dance, of the lights at night, high above us, and in the day, morphing forms of clouds, and the large sun, imperceptibly burning itself empty. The last star for unthinkable distances, the last piece of energy. Deister says we will soon leave in search of another planet, another star to call our sun. Another place to continue our guardianship. And we all play an important part. Sometimes I do not see it.

*

The night is cold, but we work through it. Thake keeps her eyes on the scanner. My eyes look up to the dancing colours. So many shifting colours. The changes hold me there, and I am still. Everything around me is still, perfect, frozen in the dark. But above, something new happens every moment. My vision is caught by something to my right, a small rodent, maybe. No, an ocelot, hunting. I watch it, as I have watched a thousand times before. Its movements are strategic, but predictable. I know exactly how it works, every infinite detail of its body. Leopardus pardalis, a perfect specimen. Each cell within it a perfect system. And for millions of years it has hunted in the night. I wonder if any before had ever seen what happens high above when the right conditions are met. If any ever knew about the brilliance that was taking place. What would the ocelot do differently in other conditions? Would it dance the way the sky does, if I took it to another part of this planet? Or would it break itself? Or even realise? What about Thake? How would she react? Her eyes always on her scanner, never caring for change. Patrol duty, rotation to food labs, rotation to tech labs, and then rotation back to patrol. Our cycles always the same, over and over again. Predictable patterns, strategic, because Deister says so, to give order and routine. I know the same happens all over the planet. We all are educated. We all are working. And then when it is time, we all retire. The same humans as us, each caring for a different habitat. Do they see what I see? Or do they see what Thake sees? Undergrowth, canopy, geography, life cycles on repeat. And out of all the beauty and life I have seen, nothing would compare to the way the night sky moves. 

And then Thake is by my side, looking up with me. 

“Melinoe, I do not know why you do this. You know it is radiation from the emptying sun, yes? It happens almost every night.”

“But almost every night the lights are different. Do you not notice? Look at the red over there” as I point out a swirl that merges with another into something even more strange. 

“Yes, I’ve seen it before.”

“But this one is new, and it moves into something else new. All the possible combinations, and every time it’s something I haven’t seen before.”

“Maybe you just don’t remember seeing it before.”

I turn to her, her perfect face, the same as mine except a little younger. Identical to mine, but for ten years’ fewer lines. Yet somehow she sees this world so differently from me. Which of us is right? Is beauty in perfection, or in chaos? 

“Hold out your arm” she says flatly, her eyes still pointed up at the burning lights. 

“Thake, I – ”

She turns to me, and in her eyes I see the lights play more, but her face is set. She raises her own arm straight, between us, and degloves. I do the same. The pair of us, mirror images of each other. She takes her scanner and passes it gently over my hand. I do the same to hers. The world is still.

“Perfect DNA.”

I nod. 

“Come. Not everything out here is as perfect as us. We need to make sure there aren’t more deviations. And remember, do not speak of this to the others at the Hold… They might not appreciate such lapses in protocol.”

I nod, and put my glove back on, being obvious to keep my head down and my eyes off the sky. 

“And another thing” as she walks on ahead, “I heard they were making Takoyaki in the canteen” her voice now seeming lighter, “if we are fast, we will be back in time to-” 

“Thake, stop, what’s that?” and across the sky I see it – a new light, far different from anything before, shooting a straight line through the swirls of the red and purple lights, fast, way over-head and coming towards us, over us, burning bright white and orange gold, a fire in the sky. I spin, Thake screams get down, get to cover, but I freeze and watch, watch as it burns a clear line through the night, speeding towards the ground, over the next ridge line, behind the canopy, into the next valley, and shakes the ground in a flash of burnt orange. The treeline is lit from behind, a silhouette, and against the eddying lights is a stack of dark smoke. I run towards it as Thake screams at me to stop, to stay away, need to call it in, need to get the fire transport from the Hold, need to wait. I run. Something in me wants to see more, more than the ocelot hunting its quarry, more than even the nine-spot ladybird, more than any beautiful colour in the night sky. I run until my body burns, up and over the ridge line, through the trees and the bushes, until it’s not my body that burns but the world around me itself is ablaze. The whole valley is on fire, and over on the other side I see a hole, like a giant hand just scooped up a fistful of the planet and threw it aside. In the middle, amidst the flames, something shines. I run through the burning trees, clumps of ash and parts of tree falling all around me, and I’m choking but I can’t bring myself to stop until I’m there and in front of me is the hole. The heat here is hotter than the inside of a sun, but I see it, I see it in the middle of the hole, the shining thing, a massive machine of twisted parts, folding in on each other, and burning. Pieces of it are all around me, some black, some silver, some white. Some with blue and white patterns of stars. Some with words. Words I have never seen before. I slide down into the hole, the air around me too hot to breathe, but I need to see what it is. And there, a piece of the machine, sticking out slightly, a box with a handle. I reach for it, choking, dizzy from the heat, the air like poison, and pull it towards me. The box has a name. S.O. Eloy Jenkins. I crawl out of the hole, set the box on the burnt ground, and open it. My eyes are crying through the smoke and ash but I see inside, I see, I see dust. The whole box is full of it. I dig through it, clumps of fine mist spore up out of the box, but something, something is inside, small, hard. I pull it out of the dust and look at it. Some metal, rectangular, thin. More words cut into the back of it, but I do not know them. I turn it over and a face looks back at me. A human face. But not us human. Something else. Whiter skin. Rounder. Fatter. Hairy. Humans do not look like this. Humans look like me, like Thake, like the others back at the Hold. We all look the same, yet this human does not. The machine behind me explodes again, knocking me over, and I land hard on the floor, burning air in my lungs. I roll and I crawl back down the side of the valley, everything around me burns, every part of me hurts. I hear a crack and I spin, looking up to see a part of tree falling, crashing onto my legs, pinning me down. I cannot move, cannot breathe. 

In the distance I hear Thake, calling my name, screaming into the fires. I cannot call back. The branch is too heavy. Ficus insipida. Of course I know its name. I know all the names, even as they burn around me. But I do not know the names of the metal machine that fell from space. Why does Deister not tell us these things? Thake will come. I just have to hold on…

Thake is telling me to wake up. I must stay awake. I feel her under me, carrying me, stumbling through the broken forest. I must stay awake…

Thake tells me everything will be okay. Her arms have been replaced by the back seat of the transport now, much smoother going. Much more difficult to stay awake. I’m sorry, Thake…

We’re here, I’m told. Through half-opened eyes I see the giant pyramid of the Hold in the distance, lights on all sides, and a line of lights coming to meet us, fire transports, I’m sure. And in the sky, the reds and purples have changed again to greens and blues, calming, just like I see when I sleep. I must not sleep…

*

Deister wakes me up. I’m in a white room in front of her, lying on a bed with every part of me strapped down. Our Maker. She tells me there has been an accident. That I am safe, in quarantine. My head feels heavy. The bed tilts up automatically so I can see her, standing there behind the glass wall with a pristine look. She must be the same age as me. She has the same lines on her face. Except when I look down I see I am missing the lower parts of both my legs. I feel sick. I am sick. Panic builds in my heart as I try to stop myself from both crying and vomiting. 

“Don’t be alarmed” her smile betrayed her “You will be transferred back to the Medical Section once you are strong enough. The quarantine is just a safety precaution. At Medical, you will of course receive new, prosthetic legs, and then you can carry out your duties just like before. You are a very valuable part of our world, Melinoe. And you only have ten more cycles until you retire to the East Vale Sanctum. But while we’re here together, I just wanted to ask some questions about what you might have seen. Do you understand, Melinoe?” 

I try to nod, but my head is still strapped down to the bed, so I offer a simple ‘yes’. 

“Very good. Your partner, Thake, has already given her statement, but I want to double check with you, that’s all” she took out a small lightpad and pen from a pocket “two days ago”

two days? 

“Thake and yourself were scanning for abnormalities in Sector F63. Precisely where were you at the time of your accident?”

“In the second valley, about a quarter of the way down.”

“Very good. The second valley, however, technically sits in Sector F64. Why were you not in your own sector?”

“I saw something fall from the sky, so I went to investigate.”

“Okay. So, the meteorite. Yes, that caused quite a bit of damage unfortunately. Good news is the fire crews have it under control and we pla-”

“Not a meteorite.” I say without thinking.

“I’m sorry?”

“It wasn’t a meteorite. It was metal, a machine or transport or something. I went to investigate it but I didn’t know what it was when I saw it. It had letters and words on it, and, and something else but I can’t remember wha- ” 

“Oh dear. And I really was hoping you were smarter than that, Melinoe.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m afraid you might not make it out of quarantine unless you very clearly and unequivocally conform to the report that Thake gave. She told me that you ran to see if you could deal with the fire from the meteorite while she went to the transport to call for fire teams. That is what happened, correct? However, upon realising the scale of the event you turned back and that is when the tree branch fell on you, crushing both your legs. Let us resolve this, Melinoe. That is what happened, correct?”

I stare at her in disbelief. How can Deister not know the truth? 

“I saw metal” I state firmly “and polymers and parts of mechanisms. No rock except what had been thrown out by the impact. There were letters on the metal, scratched and destroyed a little, but letters, and words, and patterns. And there was a box, and it had a name, and – ” and as I look at her face, smooth, soft, I remember the other face “There was something in the box. It was really old, full of dust, but there was something metal inside, and it had a face, but not an us face. Not like ours. It was fat and full of hair on the lower part, and the eyes were green, not brown like ours. Have you not been there? Did no one bring anything back for analyses? We need to know what this is!”

She stands there, frozen. Behind her a door slides open. Standing there is a small girl, no more than ten years old. A new Deister-in-training. She walks up slowly behind her mentor, tugs on her sleeve and pulls her aside. I can’t hear what they whisper about, but I know it can’t be good. 

Now the older Deister steps back towards me, the younger one moves off to the side. I see her step into another room beside mine as the older starts to speak again. 

“I may remind you of the consequences of your actions. Protocol dictates that all life is sacred, yet were we to release you, you may cause unknown stresses. We feel it is to the benefit of the world that yourself and those involved with the incident are placed in quarantine. This meteorite may have produced unknown mutations in your code, which as you know we cannot allow to spread.”

“It was not a meteorite” I spit.

“Agreed. It was a relic from an older time. We have consulted with the Hold, and they have confirmed it was a research transport, lost in space for four billion six hundred seventy million two hundred fifty-four thousand one hundred thirty-one years. It was the last transport to visit this world, and according to records, suffered a catastrophic systems failure shortly after launch. It has been on a highly-elliptical retrograde orbit of the sun ever since. Unfortunately it just happened to crash on Nuwedon 2 days ago. Such changes are likely to interrupt the focus of our program.”

And through the side door into my room comes the young Deister, dressed in a containment suit, carrying a small tray with a large needle and a D.N.A. scanner. 

“Unfortunately, there is no way to tell how far the damage will spread, so instead of waiting, the Hold’s decision is therefore for a hard reset of all human systems. We will start with you, but the others will all be summoned for quarantine as well. Myself included. Deister here will take command of the new personnel, who should be finishing their training in a few cycles. The Hold has decided the best course of action.”

I see the small girl, her face emotionless as she readies the needle. How she reminds me of myself, I think. Exactly how I was when I was ten. A frozen image of eternity, endless repetitive cycles. She injects me in my arm, but I do not wince. I just wish to see the night sky one more time. She checks the computer on her wrist. Minutes fly by in the stillness. Until she reaches for the scanner, passing it slowly over my now bruised arm. And I stare into her eyes for signs of hope. Yet there is nothing there except flashes of bright pink reflecting from the scanner.

“She is ready.” she whispers. 

* * *

“Hey, Sally! How’re you coming along with the final modifications? We about ready to upload our last encodings?” the gruff voice of Eloy crackled over the intercom.

“Nearly. Think it’s almost time to pop that champagne you’ve been holding” came Sally’s reply “Three years of your slack is an eternity too much.”

“Does it, now?”

“Don’t troll the troll” she snapped back. “Stevens, how’re you coming with your side?”

“Almost ready with the robotics. They’re set to get to working as soon as we take off. Should take a couple of years for them to build the habitats and infrastructure. After that its up to your guys.”

“My girls, Stevens. Nearly two years of honing and genetic engineering.”

Eloy gruffed. 

“I heard that, Eloy”

“I just… I still don’t see the point. Why spend years setting up a perfect system, a perfect memory of Earth, and then include the very damn things that screwed it up. Why not have the bots do the caretaking?”

“Seriously, Eloy, let it go, man” Stevens chipped in. 

“Because it has to have everything from Earth, Eloy” Sarah sighed “You know this – we’ve been over it countless times. And this way there won’t be any problems. Humanity will live on here, the only way for them to be fully included. And yes, I chose a female for the model, but only because out of the thousands that I examined, all the males showed traits prone to aggression, to violence. Some of the females did to, admittedly, but not nearly as much. And the last year of splicing D.N.A into her means that Eve is literally the best of the best. Resistant to all diseases bar ionizing radiation cancer and muscular atrophy via sarcopenia. But they’ll be retired early, like at 40, before any of these problems manifest, and they’ll get regular checks for any signs of cancer. The system will be perfect. No mess, no fuss. They’ll learn everything they need to know before their ten, from the central Hold, and then they’ll be like worker bees buzzing around, with the separately educated ‘queen’ running the show. She’ll be the Hold’s first point of command.”

“Sounds more like slaves than worker bees. And I still don’t get why there will only be one. No man, no reproduction, no fun”

“Says the man. At least they won’t suffer the nightmare of menstruation. Humans breeding will just create problems, the same as ever before. I know we’re going to try it differently on the next planet, but imagine if we fail? How many times have we almost wiped ourselves out – and everything else with us? Societies breed empires which collapse upon themselves. It’s a perpetual argument. No way. This will be our fail safe. A timeless reminder of everything that was beautiful on Earth”

“Won’t they realise they all look the same?”

“They will only know what we tell them. They’ll think that that is what humans just happen to look like. When one animal dies, the Hold will just produce another clone. Same with the humans. You finished the updates, Stevens?”

“Almost, Sally. The computer is debugging it one last time.”

“And just think, Eloy. Millions or even billions of years from now, when all around us is decayed and eroded by time, when the entropy of the universe is at its peak, this little corner of life might still be turning, exactly as it will be three or four years from now. A perfect snow globe, unchanging in the chaos, forever.”

“Computer says A-okay.”

“She is ready.”