Doomsday Terzetto

The Never-ending Long Nights

Kuzhu has been a watcher of the never-ending winter nights for 110 years.

Living in a peak top rising high from the ice-capped mountains, he lights up an ever-burning flame to confront the endless bitter coldness and the radiation alarm that could go off at any time.

110 years ago, on the planet earth 4 light years away, immortality had been universalized among the human race. For humankind, this is a technology of Pandora's box that could never be retreated - the earth started facing a severe population explosion and resource crisis since then. For the sake of survival, they had to begin outer space expansion.

Since the era of the enormous expansion, the human race had been completely segregated - politicians and governors are living on the earth, Mars became a gathering place for the retired upper crust, business people stay on TOI 700 d, artists gather on Titan, Europa is developed into a private resort, and the diamond planet V886 is now the mineral estate of jewelers...

In the end, Proxima Centauri b became the only habitable planet left unoccupied.

No one is willing to go to Proxima Centauri b, and sending anyone up there by force would be considered immoral, therefore, a surefire plan was brought up: sending all the earth prisoners to Proxima Centauri b.

This is how Proxima Centauri b was transformed into a prison of the earth.

Approximately 100 million prisoners were sent to this planet of 1.3 times the size of the earth. Within a short time frame of 100 years, numerous cosmic rays and 3 big species cleansing have left the planet with only 10 million survivors, who have no clue of when the next random extinction would be.

Upon their arrival, humans experienced a thorough circadian rhythm disorder. Due to the tidal locking, Proxima Centauri b has a locked rotation, which brings it invariable days and nights with indistinctive season changes. This is a planet of half ice and half fire. One side of it is permanently facing the sun, with eternal days of extreme heat, and another side is the eternal darkness of freezing winters. Wrapped in the middle is the shadow line of a habitable ring, on which you will see the never-rising or never-setting sun.

When people gradually got used to the never-changing sky colors, they divided themselves into 3 different zones and blended into the permanent segregation.

The Evernight Zone that Kuzhu lives in is the home for ordinary prisoners, who are now considered the secondary class on this planet. The zone is overlaid with unmelting glaciers and mountain groups of tough cryosols. Kids growing up in arduous and brutal environments here are no different from wolves habituating in the barren snow mountains. The 110-year-old Kuzhu is the only indigenous earth human who survived all extinctions, and this has crowned him the ruler of the Evernight race.

Every week, Kuzhu will visit the kids he chose in the isolated region.

----------------------------------------------------

"Geyin...!"

"Sh!" Geyin stopped Duanyi under his breath.

When Duanyi found his elder brother Geyin, he was right hiding behind a thick shrubbery spying on his target.

"Geyin," Duanyi holds his breath like Geyin did and lowers his voice, "I've found where the food is..."

"Now, there is something much more important than food." Geyin fixed his eyes on something hanging on a close tree, his gaze resembles that of a ravenous wolf on the hunt.

"Ah! You've found..." Duanyi was shut up by Geyin's hands over his mouth. They started waiting quietly behind the shrubbery for a right timing.

What is hanging on the tree is a hand-size homo-thermal heater, which is an old earth technology.