IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 521

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them. Octavia Butler said, “SF doesn’t really mean anything at all, except that if you use science, you should use it correctly, and if you use your imagination to extend it beyond what we already know, you should do that intelligently.”

SF Trope: Aura Vision – The ability to perceive normally invisible Life Energy of others, often colour-coded for good/evil, emotions, amount of life, Power Level, etc. This can be presented as Functional Magic, Psychic Powers, related to spirituality, a biological gift, or even technological.
Current Event: (From my writer-niece’s blog: “This is because red was suddenly born in little jagged bursts along the horizon. Perhaps this is only something you can understand after months of upper Midwestern winter. The desaturated palettes of chickadee and snow shadow have a way of changing the mode of sight. Color might exist, but it is lost to us for a time. In March, first thaw we begin to retrain the eye. Light comes in bursts, gives way to miles of camel colored grass, bursts of red– barn, flag, brick. The braided intestines of road kill bloom in an eagle’s beak. There is still no green save for pine boughs dulled to rosemary gray.” https://lettersfromchurchofthetoastedcoconutdoughnut.wordpress.com/ )

Eyvindur Mjöll pursed his lips and looked down at the handheld scanner in his hand. “I can’t make this do what I want...”

Pich Dara Sophana, leaned over the scanner and shook her head. He couldn’t see it as both of them wore surface suits. “It’s impossible because it’s so cold out.”

“I calibrated it for that,” he said. “Besides, it’s supposed to be warm enough now.”

“Original Humans were homeotherms – they’re going to still be.”

“We’re broad-spectrum eurytherms. But if I point the scanner at you,” he did. “Your aura is peculiar.”

Pich Dara sniffed. “Your aura is always peculiar. But I don’t blame your temperature regulation on that. You’re just weird.”

“Takes one to know one,” Eyvindur said. She started to speak, but he cut her off, “This isn’t about auras, anyway. I’m trying to find a way we can screen the people that are evolving on the surface to see if they can be reintroduced to the gene pool.”

“We don’t want to pollute the pool, either! It’s small enough as it is.”

Eyvindur headed up a trail that had been worn into the dusty surface. Since Earth had frozen nearly solid after the climate had gone into wild gyrations under pressure of Humans, the Sun, and geologic cycles. The evacuation to Mars – even using the massive instantaneous matter transmission gates that gave anyone a chance to move to the tiny, rusty, cold world of HG Wells’ imagination –was traumatic and over two billion stayed behind to take their chances on an planet attempting to find a balance again.

But Humanity changed. Something happened to both populations. There was talk that Humans had split into two new species...

Names: ♀ Khmer; ♂ Iceland
Image: https://www.carthage.edu/live/image/gid/169/width/600/height/800/22601_BlueOrigin_NewShepard_NS10_Launch.rev.1548431292.jpg