Wicked Prompts

HOMESTEAD

This story was selected by the ABCTales.com story website editors for Pick of the Day.  https://www.abctales.com/story/mitchell-jamal-franco/homestead

"Is this safe?" asked Loraine. "It looks kind of creepy."

"It's perfectly safe," said Jered. "I tested it on Sammy, see over there?"

Sammy was the three year old German Shepherd, the only non-human life form on Mars. What he'd become was rolling around in the cavern habitat, scraping at rocks and digging random holes, and then pushing lonely stones into them.

She watched with a kind of false amusement. The robotic silver creature moved awkwardly and without the playfulness of Sammy's four legs and wagging tail. He looked sad. Or it looked sad. She didn't know which, but it seemed soon enough she would be an it  too.

"Are you ready?" asked Jered. He looked down at her affectionately. She could tell from his gaze that he still found her attractive and was maybe still in love with her. He was putting a brave face on but she wasn't convinced.

"You're going to do it too?"

"Of course," he said. "After the rest of the colonists. The one's who haven't euthanized anyway. I've already assembled my rig."

The woman, once called the "First Lady of Mars" by their fellow colonists, wondered for a moment what her husband's 'rig' would look like. She remembered wondering what Jered would look like twenty years earlier while rushing to meet him for a first date. Despite the apprehension it had turned out well, she reminded herself. So much so, that they had married and then agreed to start a new life together on the Red Planet. A new adventure to begin a new thread of humanity. All of that seemed a distant dream in this moment. Now all she could think about was survival.

Her last hope, a newly built and indestructible body, her 'rig,' was stationed a few feet away from the surgical chair she was leaning back in now. The robotic surgeon hovered a foot above her and the robotic body that promised to save her life sat on a combination of wheels and clawed limbs like a lifeless corpse. Soon the roles would be reversed. The flesh torso, arms, and legs she inhabited now would be the corpse, and the hulk of metal and bolts would be what was alive.

She recalled that it hadn't been long ago after leaving University that she dawned black suits and started working in an office. Then a wedding dress for her marriage to Jered. A dog, two cars and a house came soon afterward. Children were up next, but the offer to start a new mining colony before that would cement their place in the future of civilization. Children could come later and they could even bring Sammy. Together they were fitted with space suits for their hundred and sixty million kilometer voyage across the solar system.

"Yes, I'm ready," she said.

Jered nodded. He placed a bowllike contraption over her head and attached the wires. Then he went over to the control panel and input some instructions.

"Jered?" Loraine called out, muffled through the helmet now covering most of her face. Her hands were grabbing the arm rests of the chair so tightly they were almost blue.

"Yes, what is it? I'm here." He put his hand on her arm.

She felt the warmth from it and calmed a bit. "What will we feel for each other when its done?"

He thought for a moment. Looked over at Sammy, moving about aimlessly to the next hole. "We'll feel the same," he said, though he didn't really know. "We'll still be us. Just different bodies."