Beyond the Stars

Familiar Faces

Nothing could have prepared me for sight that greeted me as I shuffled forward with the last of the transport occupants. Twin suns sat low in a cloudless blue sky, light reflecting like diamonds on the small ripples in a virtually calm expanse of water. I had to shield my eyes against it so I could see where I stepped.

"Trixie! You made it!" Yelled a familiar voice from the bottom of the ramp, but I couldn't see their features as the sun was behind them casting their face in shadows. It couldn't be who I thought it was either, I was certain he died when the complex flooded.

Strong arms wrapped around me, lifted me from the ground, and swung me round in a circle. He laughed with unsuppressed joy as he set me down and took my face in his hands to study me.

"Doc!" I gasped when I finally got to see his features; I stared at him stupefied, "What the hell is going on?"

He stripped out of his crisp, white lab coat and wrapped it around my shoulders, blushing as he did. Taking my bundle, he ushered me into a smaller vehicle that sat to one side.

"I have so much to show you!" he cried excitedly, "Wait to you see the labs, they're even better than before. We have everything we need here to start over..."

"Alex," I interrupted his prattling, "Will you please tell me what the hell is going on! How did you get here? In fact, why are we here? What happened back on Earth? I heard these robots were working for aliens that wanted us for breeding and food!"

He looked at me shocked, "Food? Where do you get your mad ideas from?" he laughed, "We've talked about what would happen when the world ended, and most of this is your idea..."

I looked around properly for the first time since I stepped off the transport. Humans walked around freely, happy. I frowned.

"We hypothesized... I don't understand," I confessed, "The cells on the ship... we sat in our own shit for ten days... the robots treated us like prisoners..."

"Ah yeah, well we had to use the military's robots and prison ships when the quake hit sooner than we thought. Geology guys underestimated the timing and effect it would have on the icecaps, bloody fools. We knew it would flood Earth but they figured we'd have a month or so to evacuate."

The End

No, not the end but a new beginning...