Better Than a Goldilocks (11/6/15)
“We’ve got
a couple visitors,” John said, peering through his binoculars and checking his
pistol. Peter grabbed the
binoculars. His breath caught in his
throat. “A couple” was the understatement (1) of the millennium (hyperbole, 2). An armada
of at least one hundred ships hovered at the edge of the horizon, black dots
silhouetted against the white light of a sun (antagonists, 3). John rubbed
his eyes to make sure he wasn’t just hallucinating a scene from Independence Day (allusion, 4).
“Those are
not friendlies,” Peter said. He ran to
the communications tent and found Mary fiddling with some equipment. “Any new contact?”
“No,
sir. This is day five (symbol, 5) and still nothing.”
“Well, we
have something. Alert the others.”
Wide-eyed,
Mary summoned the team with her short-distance radio. They rushed to their base clearing and saw the
silhouettes moving closer, clearly distinguishable without binoculars at this
point. “Oh my god. Oh my
god!” one of the crew members gasped (anaphora,
6).
“Grab your
gear, stand position on the edge of the crash site crater,” Peter ordered. We’re
screwed, he thought.
“Our
Father, who art in heaven…” someone muttered (apostrophe, 7).
They all
scrambled to their places. Peter was
about to yell another command when he saw a rocket headed toward them. “TAKE COVER!”
The blast
threw him back against what looked like a tree.
The haze and smoke reminded him of their crash onto this planet, just
five days in the past. What went wrong? Why is this happening? Every sense he felt at the crash came back
immediately.
-----------------
Some light had trickled past his
eyelids, breaking the astronaut’s forced and pained slumber. How
long have I been out? Commander Peter Bishop (protagonist, 8) had thought as he gathered his surroundings. He blinked hard and wiped a black film of sweat,
blood, and ash from his forehead on the sleeve of his space suit. More expensive than a luxury car, his suit
was made from the most scientifically advanced material on earth. It was designed to withstand cuts by diamonds
and still be as flexible as nylon (simile,
9). The crash shredded it (simple sentence, 10). Peter wiped his face again. He stared at his forearm. Wait,
wiping my face? How— he
thought. He spun around, looking for his
helmet. I can’t breathe (contraction,
11). He clawed at his throat and
leapt up with a grimace, too panicked to notice or care about his fractured
right leg. Peter saw nothing but dirt
and rocks scattered in the hundred-meter crater in which he found himself. He scrambled to the top, gasping for oxygen.
A low
shining light just over the horizon, a
sun, hit Peter’s eyes as he climbed over the lip of the crater, momentarily
blinding him (appositive, 12). He blinked rapidly, and then noticed ten
people gathered in a lazy half-circle near him.
His shipmates. Peter rushed them,
pointing to his neck and wheezing. Several
of them jumped up and ran to his side.
Peter felt as though he were about to pass out, but then the youngest member
of the team, John Zeb, said, “Commander Bishop, there is oxygen here.” Peter locked eyes with him and inhaled.
It was a god-forsaken panic attack,
Peter thought. “We thought you kicked the bucket, Pete,” Andy said (euphemism, 13). He sat down on what he thought was a rock
before it yelped and scurried away. It
turned out to be a giant rodent, almost exactly like the kind Peter saw in
those stupid sci-fi movies his older brother got addicted to. Muttering the cleverest string of curse words
that came to mind, the commander sat on the red and blue-speckled terrain, put
his head in his palms, and gathered his thoughts (parallelism, 14). His team
watched him. His stream of thoughts, a
high-speed train showing no sign of slowing (metaphor, 15), was running wild ever since he gained
consciousness. It could have been his
imagination, but the chunks of red and blue in the otherwise black soil beneath
started to move, too. Peter jumped up
and started to stroll around the lip of the crater, taking in his surroundings,
preparing for worse apparitions (asyndeton,
16). Now, his thoughts started to slow
and process coherently.
So we’ve made it…wherever this is… His thoughts trailed off as he
watched something that looked like a palm tree with spiky yellow leaves swoop
down over a sneaking rodent. It squealed
for a moment before there was a loud SNAP
and the leaves rustled to their original quiet position (onomatopoeia, 17). Everything
on this strange planet was still. There
was no wind, but there was light. An orb about twice the size of the earth’s
sun appeared to be setting, and another star about a quarter of the size of the
first on almost the directly opposite side broke through the horizon line on
Peter’s right, murdering his shadow in the moments before the big star
set. Even without wind, the planet still
had a certain life to it; its landscape breathed and shifted, as if it were an
alien being itself (figurative language,
18). The sky was the vibrant blue of
the water at a Caribbean vacation spot.
And everywhere surrounding the crater were trees and plants of different
shapes and sizes and effervescent colors, some of them similar in appearance to
earthen flora but most completely strange and foreign (setting, 19).
Peter
completed his path around the crater and made it back to the crew of the USS Synthesis. They all stared at him. He said, “Anything left from the ship?” He hadn’t seen any parts.
His
second-in-command, Lucas Evans, said, “Just the back capsule. We have a little food, enough clothes, and
some electronics.”
“Comm
system?”
Lucas
nodded. “Mary’s working on it in a
quieter clearing with Andy. It’s got a
shot.”
“Where?”
Lucas
pointed over Peter’s left shoulder.
“About a quarter of a mile in.”
“Is it
safe?”
John spoke up
again. “We haven’t seen any animals that
have tried to prey on us. The plants
don’t seem to like us either. Commander,
I think we found a Goldilocks planet. It
has air and it has to have food and—“
“Water?”
“Yeah,”
Lucas said. “It’s in the ground, and we
found a river not much farther than Mary’s position. It’s pure.”
“It’s
better than a Goldilocks,” John said.
Peter
nodded. He realized he must have been
out for a few hours longer than the rest of them if they already knew so
much. Better than our Goldilocks?
he thought as he headed in the direction Lucas had pointed.
Mary and
Andy, two of the most intelligent communications operators on earth, were
huddled over the intergalactic radio (nothing more in appearance than a black
box a foot in diameter), cursing under their breaths (parentheses, 20). “Any
progress?” Peter said.
They both
flinched. “Jesus, Peter, why do you have
to scare us like that?” Andy said. “No
progress yet, but there’s no reason why this shouldn’t—”
Something
had worked. Something knew they were there.
*****CONTINUED 11/12/15*****
In the
middle of his sentence, the box whirred to life, projecting scrolling sets of
white 1’s and 0’s. Peter sighed. They would be saved, unlike the folks the
Earthen Government sent to HL-663, a barely inhabitable planet found a few
years back. Those with power sent people
with criminal records there to try to build a civilization. The reality is that they put them there to
rid them from precious earth and control the population. They will not succeed; they will not go back
home.
Peter went
back to the large group of the crew while Mary toyed with the communication
system. They set up the remainder of
their equipment, dividing up the surviving rations and clean clothes. After a few hours, Mary burst through the
tree line, yelling, “It went through!”
She had sent a message back to earth.
“We have
contact?” Peter said.
“Yes! Well, basically. I think I got a message to earth, but I
haven’t heard anything back yet.”
“Keep listening.”
----------------------------------
They had
never heard anything back. But now, five
days later, they heard something. The
whir of jet-like engines filled the air as the ships hovered over their
position. Alien soldiers in black space
suits with black headgear that resembled fighter jet helmets tumbled out of the
ships and scoured the area around the crater for targets like Peter. Their weapons looked like they were straight
from the classic Men in Black
movies. With their spaceships hovering above,
the black figures gathered twelve of the astronauts near the rim of the crash
crater. The humans watched in horror as
one of them dragged the body of Andy, ridden with holes and a red plasma-like
substance, out before them. ”He tried to
run,” Mary whispered to the group.
The ships
landed, crushing the vegetation flat for half a mile in every direction. Peter cringed at the site of all the
extraterrestrial life being murdered. After
the dust settled, one of the black figures moved toward the group of
astronauts. He spoke in muffled English
and his mask altered his voice heavily, making him sound like Darth Vader. “Identify yourselves.”
“I am
Commander Peter Bishop of the 3rd Shuttle Voyage Crew of NASA. This is my team.” Peer said.
The black
figure froze, seemingly staring straight at Commander Bishop. “I am Commander Chris Jade of the 112th
Ccrew. We come from earth. We received an old signal from this location
and left immediately.”
“Take off
your mask. There is oxygen here.” Peter still was not convinced he was human.
The figure
obliged, revealing a clean-shaven man in his forties. He handed his weapon to the grim reaper on
his left and signaled for the rest of the black figures to take off their
masks. In unison, like robots, they
obeyed.
“When did
you leave earth?” Peter said.
“December
20th, 2303,” Chris said.
“Your mission dates to more than a hundred fifty years before now.”
The crew
was silent. Their earth clock could not
have been incorrect. Only five days in
earth time had passed on this planet since they landed. “We’re in a time capsule,” Andy said.
“Time works
differently on all planets,” Chris said.
“Not this differently,” Peter said.
“That may
be so, but this just makes this place suit our purposes even better.”
“What
purposes?”
Chris shot
Peter a quizzical look. “Surely they
discussed it before your mission. The
goal of the Shuttle Voyage Crews has always been to find territory for
large-scale recolonization.”
Peter’s
bosses had never discussed that with him.
Yes, the earth faced growing overcrowding and uninhabitable pollution
issues by the outset of the 3rd Crew’s mission, but there were optimistic
signs of revolutionary technologies and policies on a global scale. He pulled Chris aside. “What has happened to earth?” Peter said.
“We’re
running out.”
“Of what?”
“Everything. There is no space, food, safety, anything.”
“Everything. There is no space, food, safety, anything.”
Peter let that sink in, picturing a
wasteland. It couldn’t be all bad—he
guessed some were living quite comfortably.
The disparity between the fortunate and less-fortunate was probably
huge. There must be people fighting for
their lives while others bask in the protection of their affluence. He asked a question he already knew the
answer to. “Is everyone coming?”
“No.”
After a long pause, Peter said, “Who
decides who goes?”
Chris said, “We have a very
reasonable process in place by the Earthen Parliament to determine who
comes.” Judging by Chris’s stony
expression, Peter decided not to find out which people got selected. Reading his mind, Chris added, “It has to
happen.”
Peter didn’t reply. He knew this resettlement wouldn’t fix
anything forever, as much as these people thought it would. “It’s perfect here,” Chris continued. “We already sent the passenger ships back to
earth to gather the settlers because of the time bend on this planet. The tests we’ve run are already very
optimistic. The atmosphere is immensely
thick, so we won’t have to worry about polluting it with any of our energy
waste for thousands of years. The planet
itself is the size of Jupiter. There’s
water here, and there are organisms similar in genetic makeup to consumable
plants and animals on earth. Peter, we
are never going to run out of anything here.
It’s better than a Goldilocks planet.
It’s a heaven for us.”
Peter watched as the large black
passenger space ships returned, bringing earthlings to their new paradise and
landing on huge tracts of alien flora and fauna, suffocating the organisms
there.
It
won’t be heaven for long, Peter thought.
(allegory, 21).
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