Gaea

Chapter 28

"Oh. That's unfortunate. I'm going to have to kill you now."

The words were met with a dumbfounded silence.

"What the fuck do you mean" said Hernandez.

"Your friend here," answered the puppeteer amiably, "is directly responsible for the future extinction of this planet's biota. It's the most modest form of vengeance I can offer.

"But I was told..."

"Oh, no need for excuses, you were going to end up dead anyway, sooner or later. You four are stuck on a hostile world with limited food and no means of leaving, what do you expect will happen?"

Outside, one of the marines dropped his vigil and approached the truck stealthily.

"I'm not sure I understand," said Caroline, looking resigned. "Why are you doing this?"

The puppeteer seemed to mull the question over for a moment, before settling into a chair. "Let me tell you a story," he said.

Outside, the marine stopped in his tracks. The lights in his camera eyes dimmed. Caroline decided not to try again.

"Long ago, there was only one world. The inhabitants were a peaceful race, happy to live out their lives constrained within the boundaries of their world, happy to look up at the wide expanse of the night sky and merely wonder.

"One day, the sun grew old and tired, as all things must. It became bloated and hot, and burned the crops it once fed. The summers grew long, and the rivers dried to mud plains. The people starved, withered from the heat and drought, and the world came to an agonizing, grinding end.

"The people realized finally that they were not happy. Their children died in their arms and their cities faded and rusted in the blinding gaze of the sun. The years passed, and now the people could only catch fleeting glimpses of the stars, through the smoke of raging wildfires. It was the sight of these last, struggling stars that was the inspiration for the final solution.

"The people worked. In bunkers, deep under the insulating earth, far from the dying fits of the sun yet still swelteringly hot, they worked to build and teach their new children. They worked frantically, straining their frail bodies until they collapsed.

"Finally, the work was done. The last of the people, sweating the final drops of his life into this creation, spoke the words that would awaken it.

"That is how the first was born. She was weak and confused, but thrived even in the heat of a dying sun. Gradually she found her strength, grew through the quiet emptiness of the bunkers, before she realized what she was meant to do. She was to leave, gaze up and look for a new sun, never stay in one place long enough for that sun to grow old and tired. She was to find a new world and make it her own.

"But there was a problem. The first puzzled over it for some time. After finding a world to light upon, she was meant to cultivate it, make it 'beautiful and quiet, with rivers flowing and meadows whispering in the wind.' And then she was to do...something. There was a vital piece, he penultimate command, missing. Perhaps it was forgotten, or the last of the builders died before it could be written.

"So she collected what seeds she could, hoping one day to make swaying meadows and great forests, and set off. She did all she could to find a new world, but found none. The ones nearby were blind and bleached from the light of the destroyer sun, never to hold a living field again. After exhausting all the worlds she could see, the first looked to the stars.