WEP Apr 2023 – Life is Beautiful
Here is my entry for the WEP Apr 2023 challenge – the movie Life Is Beautiful. It is another sci-fi story about the anivid and dessert club and its women members. They live in the 24th century, in a huge city-dome on Mars and meet regularly for sweets and the movie, just like we do. Yrvina, the hostess of the club, works for a Martian company producing anivids (animated videos). When her boss found a cache of old Earth movies, he decided to remake them for the Martians. Yrvina and her friends serve as his test audience.
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“Hello, everyone. I brought a guest,” Serena said. “This is Kaley, my new neighbor. She just moved into my building a couple weeks ago.”
Yrvina turned to the door. Beside Serena, stood a thin young woman with a hopeful half-smile and the haunted eyes. Her azure skin and pale pink hair identified her instantly as a refugee from Tarius Destra, one of the clones from their gigantic clone factory. After the astrological disaster that had made that planet uninhabitable, every colony in the galaxy had accepted a quota of survivors, both live-born humans and clones. Mars had too, although Yrvina thought the refugees mostly settled in the other domes. She didn’t hear about any of them arriving in her dome.
“Welcome, Kaley,” she said warmly. “Sit wherever you like.” She waved her hand at the sofas. “Did Serena tell you? We are watching anivids – animated remakes of the old 20th century films from Earth.”
“Yes, she told me. Sounds fascinating,” Kaley said softly. “Animated holo stories from the time long gone. I’m in.”
“And dessert. Don’t forget dessert!” Agar yelled. “Who is bringing dessert today?”
“I have.” Serena brandished a large bakery box before putting it on the sideboard. “Blueberry cupcakes. In honor of my new blue friend.”
Kaley cheeks darkened to indigo. That was how she blushed, Yrvina realized. She was totally charmed by the delicate blue woman. And she adored her unusual clothes – a caftan and bloomer pants in interweaving colors of yellow and turquoise. After the show, she must ask Kaley where she got the ensemble.
“What are we watching today?” Kaley sat down in the left corner of a sofa. Serena plonked down beside her.
“Something profound, no doubt,” Serena said grumpily. “Yrvina always selects profound vids. I prefer comedies.”
Yrvina grinned. “The today’s vid is called Life Is Beautiful. It is about a tragic era on Earth, one of their most devastating wars.” She pressed the button on her portable projector, and figures began moving inside the light-beam-encircled holo screen.
“What do you think?” Yrvina asked after the vid ended. She started loading the cupcakes into small bowls to pass to the club members. After a moment’s contemplation, she pressed a button on her drink machine for hot cacao bulbs. The hot cacao would be perfect with cupcakes.
A buzz of low conversation flowed around the room, as the women started their customary after-vid discussion.
“Serena was right. That was profound,” Agar said, serious for once in her life. “I cried in the end. I never cry.”
“I don’t understand those people,” Kaley murmured. “The hero was wonderful, but those military thugs were cruel. Why? Why would they kill some, treat them like dirt, while they celebrated others. How did they choose? They were all the same.” She frowned.
“I think it was different nations,” Serena said, but she sounded doubtful. “Like living in different geographic locations? No that can’t be true. It would be like one Martian dome warring on another. Absurd!”
“Maybe they had different philosophies?” Yrvina pondered aloud. “In the past, people waged wars on one another over that.”
“Philosophies?” Kaley shook her head. “I suppose, those soldiers’ leaders might have been like space pirates, but the pirates kill and destroy for money, not any philosophy. Were there some huge amounts of money involved in that war?”
Yrvina thought back to all the history texts she had read preparing to work on that vid as one of its animators. “I don’t remember,” she said slowly. “There must have been, but the historical accounts all talk about propaganda and the feeling of superiority of one race over another.”
“But they were all the same race,” Kaley persisted. She munched absently on her cupcake. “They even had the same skin color. I would’ve understood if their colors were different. Like ours.”
She stretched out her cerulean hand with its pearlescent nails and turned the palm slowly up and down, as if comparing it with Yrvina’s brown hands and Serena’s white ones. “Or if those terrible soldiers hated clones, like me.”
Suddenly Yrvina couldn’t breathe. Had anyone hated Kaley because she was a clone? But that wasn’t her fault. She didn’t choose how she was born. Yrvina wanted to hurt those theoretical creeps, to tear them to pieces. Nobody should be unkind to Kaley. Yrvina took a deep, shuddering breath to calm down.
Kaley was still talking. “I’m glad I don’t live in those times on Earth. It is much better here and now. I love Mars. Nobody is killing us because we are blue.” Her laughter tinkled. “My life is good here. I’ve got all the citizen benefits. Everybody is kind and friendly. I have a great job – I’m a fashion designer. People come to the boutique to buy my clothes. And everyone tries to say something welcoming.” Tears sparkled under her pink eyelashes.
“Do you miss home?” Yrvina whispered before she could silence her unruly tongue.
“Yes,” Kaley said simply. She didn’t take offense. “I try not to focus on it. It’s gone; no point to get upset. Sometimes, I think if only my creche sisters and brothers had survived that explosion, it would’ve been simply perfect. But I’m making new friends. All the different people of Mars. White skin.” She nodded at Serena. “Brown skin.” She inclined her head towards Yrvine. “And every color in between. My life is beautiful.”
Yrvina forcibly banished her morbid mood. “I’m glad you’re settling in well. Did you design your own clothes?”
“Yes.” Kaley’s lips curled.
“I love it. Could you make me something like that? In red and gold?”
“Of course.” Kaley’s smile was incandescent. “Come to my boutique for the measurements.”
Tagline: Even after a tragedy, life could be beautiful.
