SciFi Files

Repeat

The human visitors edged closer to the inhabited, rocky new world, not brave, but not afraid. They had no way of knowing that this was not their end, but their beginning, that they would fall before surviving.

Their new home was a carbon-based world, a story still in progress. Mr.Saien, the lead scientist on board the Entrepreneur, had announced that in three years the planet's volcanic activity would slow enough for habitation. For now the starship swung lazy circles around the world's young sun, inching closer each minute until one day the ship would land, and a new life could be started. A new life on this newborn planet. A humble fresh beginning for this mighty society.

The scientists knew that their new home planet was already teeming with life. This was why it would make a good start for the humans who lived there- plankton, one-celled organisms, and bacteria filled the planet's rough, warm waters. Cities would be built into the cliffs, saltwater farms by the sea, trees planted in rock that would, they hoped, and science proved would, give way to fertile soil. The humans waited on their ship and waited for when the time was ripe to explore their small new home.

What had brought them here? Some of the youngest ones couldn't remember a time before the simulated gravity and bright solar lights of Entrepreneur. They never knew the comforting brightness of the old sun, the vast prairies and blue rivers, the metropolitan cities sprawling, filled with bright screens, pure oxygen and sprawling leafy trees. Then the sun, their main source of life, had turned against them. Flinging heat and flares through their already weakened ozone layer, melting the last ice, drowning all who tried to remain in their Utopias. The heat had scorched the land, the water rose, until all that was left was a barren wasteland of sand and salt.

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Anyly watched the planet grow closer.

Standing by one of the Entrepreneur's main portholes, she saw the thing approach. It was an almost imperceptible growth, until you noticed that the rest of the blackness was gone, blocked by grey rocks and dark waters and red cracks, which were lava. Each month as the planet grew visible Anyly was here, watching. She had been doing this for all her life, as far as she could remember. No, Anyly was not born in the white, 100% robot hospital of the ship, but the old planet was beyond the young girl's memory. She felt things, sometimes, the burn of the old sun or the taste of salt on her lips, but like the many other orphaned children aboard Entrepreneur, that was all.

Anyly enjoyed watching the blue-grey planet grow closer then shrink back. It wasn't ready for us humans yet, she thought, two years and we will be there. Anyly couldn't wait for their landing. The ship was a home, but only a temporary one. Only on the new planet could she really live.

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The humans edged closer still to the inhabited, rocky new world. A world full of promise, full of adventure, full of potential. It was quite similar to their old world, in its chemical makeup, just billions of years younger. Billions of years stronger, too, the scientists hoped. Mr.Saien said that the world's sun had a good 10-billion year lifespan. It wouldn't betray the humans as the old sun had. The sun would foster new, great civilizations. It wouldn't coat the world in dust and sand and salt.

In only a year, the Entrepreneur would enter the new planet's atmosphere. Mr.Saien already had a hundred and one scientists, mathematicians and rocketry experts on the job predicting the best way, angle, speed, at which to arrive at the new planet. The atmosphere was finicky, they said, if not done right they would be incinerated, but they would make it.

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Anyly watched her new home approach ever so slowly. She knew that today it would not recess into the inky, star speckled black but grow closer still, until she could touch the rocky cliffs and feel the warm water. Today the Entrepreneur would reach its final destination. Anyly couldn't wait, and skipped through the wide halls to her pod. Upon reaching the scientists' control center, Amyly couldn't help but pause and peer. In

Something wasn't right.

There was too much clatter, too much commotion, too much red flashing on the screen. Had one of the calculations been off?

Then a chair smashed into the ceiling. Quickly Anyly jumped, flipping herself over on a whim as the reversed gravity took hold. Anyly knew that the ship's gravity was maintained by rotation. Had the entrance to the planet's atmosphere interfered with the ship's inertia? The ceiling was a cold white. Anyly could do nothing but hope. Hope that someone in the control room could do it. Hope that they would make it through.

The ceiling vibrated under her. It felt horribly hot.

I wish, Anyly thought, I wish to feel the ground under me. I wish to make it down to my home, I wish to hear the waves, to live on the earth.

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A tongue of flame stretches across the sky. A hunk of metal perhaps a yard cubed blasts into the planet. A wish upon it, a wish that spans science, that spans life, that spans time.

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July 20, 1969

Millions, billions of years later, humans edge towards a rocky, uninhabited new world. They are Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. They have no idea that what they do is but an echo of what had been done millions, billions of years before, and that it is but a predecessor to what will need to be done millions, billions of years after them. The sun will escape the humans' grasp, the humans will fail to earn their world. Humanity will repeat and wish. 

But maybe one day the cycle will break.