Entropy--Chapter Three
Chapter three
When I was a girl, I had a coloring book of different types of mutations, human, plant, and animal. The book said calling genetic deviation “mutation” was an oversimplification, since mutation is a natural part of life that even happened on the Old World.
The book said a more proper term could be called idiosyncratic aberration, since these mutations stopped making complete sense when the colonists realized Tartarus was burning itself out. It was like the star itself was resigned to its fate, as all ancient things eventually do, and had given up trying to keep itself lit. As the last known star had given up, so too, it seemed, did reality itself.
When I was a bit older, I took an anthropaleontology class, and they showed archival pictures of things known about the Old World. Actual visual images of what the Old World looked like were very scarce and none were used in the class, favoring the stories and folklore the colonists brought with them when they came to Discordia.
Their birds were mostly toothless, as I recall, with hard beaks and no claws on their wings. The domesticated meat fowl were considered especially harmless, bred to be no smarter than a vegetable. The teacher made a joke about how these soft, round people from a soft, round world with their soft, round, thin-skinned livestock would be afraid of our meat fowl, and would consider our milkers dangerous animals that shouldn’t be approached.
Of course, when mankind took to the stars looking for a habitable planet they could terraform, they brought with them their fears and anxieties.
I’m told the Old World was very bright, even before Great Sol saw fit to eat his most exceptional child. The atmosphere was clear of debris and phytoplankton and the day was separated by night by more than a few lumen. The diurnal humans, even in their soft, round, thin-skilled world, feared things that prowled at night with teeth and claws.
The evolutionary spikefruit does not drop far from the genetic tree.
The days outside of the dome might be dim and smoky compared to what the colonists knew, but the night is absolute black without the city lights. The broken moon Hesperides is a pale shadow in the dark, a light gray smear against deep and formless black.
And there are things that know how to use the dark in a way that proper humans never do.
A scaly creature, long-legged and bright-eyed, prowls among the rubble, just barely visible by moonlight, and then mostly by its eyes. I can hear its ragged breathing and sniffing, and its soft clack clack clack of the claws against the pavement.
I think back to the coloring books and textbooks and try to remember what it might be, and how to fend it off. I don’t want to get to close if it’s poisonous, and it might grab my club/walking stick if it has tentacles.
Ehnzo moans in his sleep, lightly aware of the looming threat even in his stupor.
I tighten my hands around my club, waiting, counting its steps and watching its eyes. To my horror, three other pairs of eyes light up in the dark.
So this is how it ends, not with a bang, but a whimper. It could be just as well, there’s no telling where the evac trains would take us, or if they would take us at this point. For Ehnzo, it will be quick and he will wake up dead, and may join his soft ancestors in the afterlife.
But I will feel the teeth.
There is a whizzing noise as something fast and sharp pierces the night. The first set of eyes makes a canid-like yelp, knocked sideways, and then close. The three others run whimpering into the shadows as something else leaps off the collapsed roof behind us.
Its eyes glow blue, not white. It moves with intelligent purpose as it approaches the carcass, scuffling and apparently lifting it. The eyes dim slightly, as if the person or creature or mutant is nodding to me, and then it’s gone.
When I was a girl, I had a coloring book of different types of mutations, human, plant, and animal. The book said calling genetic deviation “mutation” was an oversimplification, since mutation is a natural part of life that even happened on the Old World.
The book said a more proper term could be called idiosyncratic aberration, since these mutations stopped making complete sense when the colonists realized Tartarus was burning itself out. It was like the star itself was resigned to its fate, as all ancient things eventually do, and had given up trying to keep itself lit. As the last known star had given up, so too, it seemed, did reality itself.
When I was a bit older, I took an anthropaleontology class, and they showed archival pictures of things known about the Old World. Actual visual images of what the Old World looked like were very scarce and none were used in the class, favoring the stories and folklore the colonists brought with them when they came to Discordia.
Their birds were mostly toothless, as I recall, with hard beaks and no claws on their wings. The domesticated meat fowl were considered especially harmless, bred to be no smarter than a vegetable. The teacher made a joke about how these soft, round people from a soft, round world with their soft, round, thin-skinned livestock would be afraid of our meat fowl, and would consider our milkers dangerous animals that shouldn’t be approached.
Of course, when mankind took to the stars looking for a habitable planet they could terraform, they brought with them their fears and anxieties.
I’m told the Old World was very bright, even before Great Sol saw fit to eat his most exceptional child. The atmosphere was clear of debris and phytoplankton and the day was separated by night by more than a few lumen. The diurnal humans, even in their soft, round, thin-skilled world, feared things that prowled at night with teeth and claws.
The evolutionary spikefruit does not drop far from the genetic tree.
The days outside of the dome might be dim and smoky compared to what the colonists knew, but the night is absolute black without the city lights. The broken moon Hesperides is a pale shadow in the dark, a light gray smear against deep and formless black.
And there are things that know how to use the dark in a way that proper humans never do.
A scaly creature, long-legged and bright-eyed, prowls among the rubble, just barely visible by moonlight, and then mostly by its eyes. I can hear its ragged breathing and sniffing, and its soft clack clack clack of the claws against the pavement.
I think back to the coloring books and textbooks and try to remember what it might be, and how to fend it off. I don’t want to get to close if it’s poisonous, and it might grab my club/walking stick if it has tentacles.
Ehnzo moans in his sleep, lightly aware of the looming threat even in his stupor.
I tighten my hands around my club, waiting, counting its steps and watching its eyes. To my horror, three other pairs of eyes light up in the dark.
So this is how it ends, not with a bang, but a whimper. It could be just as well, there’s no telling where the evac trains would take us, or if they would take us at this point. For Ehnzo, it will be quick and he will wake up dead, and may join his soft ancestors in the afterlife.
But I will feel the teeth.
There is a whizzing noise as something fast and sharp pierces the night. The first set of eyes makes a canid-like yelp, knocked sideways, and then close. The three others run whimpering into the shadows as something else leaps off the collapsed roof behind us.
Its eyes glow blue, not white. It moves with intelligent purpose as it approaches the carcass, scuffling and apparently lifting it. The eyes dim slightly, as if the person or creature or mutant is nodding to me, and then it’s gone.
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