CMM
04-17-2010, 02:57 PM
Hi all,
This is my first attempt at science fiction, but as usual all comments and criticisms are welcome. I haven't revised or even read over what I've written more than once, so this is pretty much a first draft you're seeing.
Hope you all enjoy it! It's a fairly lengthy one - clocks in at around 2000 words.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
This new world, the landscape, wilderness, beauty, it was astounding. Daniel had a hard time taking it all in. Green fields of grass flowed across rolling hills, with clusters of dense jungle playing host to an unseen army of wildlife. It was marvellous – an emulation of earth, right down the sticky sap leaking from the twisted braches of the enormous trees.
Daniel forgot the official name of the planet – a combination of letters and numbers – but he preferred to refer to it as Earth II. Not an original name, but it fit so well. It was a follow-up to Earth; a new beginning, somewhere to start fresh. The planet was huge, much larger than the original Earth, but still possessed similar gravity and an atmosphere humans could live off. It had taken a few days for the computers in the scout ship to adjust the inhabitants to the higher levels of oxygen, but eventually Daniel and his companions were able to walk out into this new, unexplored world without spacesuits. What a feeling; to walk where no man had walked before, to breath sweet, dewy air no man had breathed before.
Well, no human may have breathed the air or walked the land before, but something else certainly had. That’s why Daniel was there.
Daniel was an archaeologist of sorts; he specialised in uncovering the secrets ancient civilisations left behind in the forms of buildings. He had been a key researcher in the discovery of the small outlook town frozen under the ice on Pluto’s moon Charon and since then had been highly regarded in the space exploration commune as an off-earth archaeological expert.
The time had come for humans to evacuate Earth and government officials had made the decision to relocate a proportion of the population to Earth II. It had been on scientist’s radar for a few decades by this point, but due to technological limitations the only information that could be gathered was relayed through satellites and unmanned probes fired off towards the planet, located a hundred light years or so from the solar system.
Technology had finally caught up with the scientist’s aspirations and preparations were made to move a population to the new, lush planet. Satellites had already informed officials the new haven was safe to inhabit, but it was still necessary to send through a scout crew t make sure there would be no hiccups when humanity arrived at its new home.
What the satellites also indicated, which was also the reason for Daniel’s presence on the new planet, was the fact that humans would not be the only intelligent life forms to have ever graced the planet’s surface.
Scans, unmanned landings and a range of geographical scans indicated an array of buildings – or at least remnants of buildings – scattered across the planet’s massive landscape. This intrigued Daniel to no end, a curiosity that was heightened even further when the scout ship landed on the planet’s surface. It was clear, even from walking around the areas that could have once been considered cities, that nothing intelligent had inhabited the planet for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
Vines and trees and assorted mosses and grasses had crept over any sort of monument to civilisation left standing. Most buildings had collapsed, leaving behind piles of rubble that eventually formed grassy knolls, peppered with colourful and exotic flowers and bushes. Outlines of streets were barely visible under layers of rock and silt and grass, and underground creeks ran through what must have been old sewage or subway lines. On one heart-pounding occasion a soldier assigned to guard the exploration crew had to jump as the ground crumbled and fell through into an underground river. It was a truly exhilarating experience for a young archaeologist, with a new discovery or surprise awaiting Daniel at each turn.
So far there seemed nothing dangerous or foreboding about the planet. A previous civilisation had lived and flourished across the landscape, but the only trace that remained was rubble and foundations of buildings and occasionally the odd fossilized relic or two – usually a sort of pot or wheel of sorts; nothing that helped define the culture of the beings who once existed, but interesting finds nonetheless.
Daniel loved every minute he spent exploring the new terra firma, and wished it would never end. It was a reassuring thought that even after humans moved into their new abode, he would still have plenty to discover on the planet. Who knew what lay ahead? Maybe there were still primitive tribes lurking in the jungles, surviving in a way humans had not known to do for thousands upon thousands of years. It was thoughts like that which also made Daniel more appreciative of his security escorts; two burly soldiers who were as accurate with improvised and melee weapons as they were with their powerful rifles and sidearms.
Daniel would prefer to spend nights drinking with the two guards. They would sit outside the ship, sipping at the rations of whiskey and gazing out into the alien wilderness, their faces lit by a crackling fire. More often than not the topic would turn to the subject that tore the old Earth to shreds, dividing nations and resulting in the deaths of thousands upon millions of people; religion.
Like Daniel, and many others raised in the collection of countries formerly known as ‘the West’, one of the soldiers, Joseph, was an atheist. The new world was that of disbelief, as with the advance of technology came the decline of faith. Religious nations warred, not with atheistic nations, but with each other, fighting intense battles over quibbles concerning the finer points and details of worship and belief. It got to the stage where religion proved to be the downfall of nations, and only those who shed their faith managed to break free of the sub-par quality of life provided by corrupt governments of believing countries.
The other soldier, Mikhail, was born and raised Catholic. And not any old Catholic, but extreme, devout, fundamental. He was a bitter, scowling hulk of a man now, sourly spitting on anything religious or even closely linked to faith. Daniel and Joseph managed to permeate his personal shield one night, allowing an insight into what created the Mikhail they knew today.
Mikhail had grown up in what was once Russia, or Serbia – who knew these days? Joining the military at a young age, he had witnessed a shocking act of brutality which he said could not have been allowed by any God, kind, just or impartial.
“I was deployed to a village one winter,” he growled.
“We stormed the buildings, pulling everyone out and demanding they proved their faith to us.
“My commander approached a family and asked for proof they believed in the Almighty and when they could not, he beat them, kicked them and stomped on their heads.”
Mikhail’s face grew darker, even by the light of the fire, as his mind rushed back to the events that took place all those years ago.
“He took aim with his rifle and shot them – shot them all – a f***ing family of five!
“All because they did not agree with what we thought was right…” Mikhail’s voice wavered.
“The commander assumed that since the one family was lying, then they all must be – he ordered us to massacre the whole village.
“I refused and took aim and before I knew it I had shot my commander down and had taken out the other members of my unit.
“I ran to the border into the allied atheist nations that night and I never looked back.”
Daniel didn’t know what to say. Mikhail knew he had made the right choice, and Daniel and Joseph definitely didn’t dispute it with him. Daniel felt the bitterness he experienced rise in him – the same bitterness he always felt when he heard stories about religion. The practices and beliefs of so few had torn the world to shreds, and now those who couldn’t stand the dogmatic quests of the ‘righteous’ were pushed to the point where they had to evacuate their planet to live on another. Daniel hoped the evils of religion would not follow them to this new utopia.
The team spent months clearing what used to be cities, hacking away at the advances of nature over the technological and architectural achievements of the previous civilisation. With each new day brought a new discovery – a new relic or artefact or a new building that wasn’t completely worn down to its foundations. It wasn’t until the fifth month of exploration that Daniel discovered a building still fully erect.
He knew it was still standing in its entirety because of scans and assessments completed on the mass of dirt and grass and plant matter surrounding it. No hill developed this way or was shaped this uniquely – it was a truly breathtaking discovery.
All energies were focused on uncovering what was beneath the mass of silt and vine, as despite how accurate and conclusive the scans were, they still didn’t show exactly what lay underneath the protective layer time had constructed.
Daniel hacked away at vines with a machete, trading the crude tool with a shovel and later a fine brush when the team moved closer to the archaic structure. All care must be taken, as if the structure were as old as they assumed, then the slightest jolt with a pickaxe or drill would reduce a wall or even the whole structure to rubble. For a month, the team worked endlessly to reveal the building, hoping the discovery would also reveal an insight into the culture and history of the civilisation that abandoned the planet so long ago.
Daniel was working on the building late one night. His energy and enthusiasm surpassed any of the others and even the burly soldiers – supposedly endurance specialists – were stretched out on benches and in hammocks, fast asleep.
He was slaving away at what was believed to be the main entrance to the structure; a grand archway with doors that towered over fifteen feet high. He had uncovered a large portion of the doors, noting the seam down the middle and the peculiar materials used to construct the entrance. It was around midnight – Earth time – when Daniel finished the centre of the structure.
It was a strange mix of emotions he felt; a grin was pulled subconsciously across Daniel’s face and he fell back to sit on a rock, dropping his tools and simply gawking in amazement at the massive breakthrough he had just made. The first insight into this new, ancient culture; this was it.
But at the same time he felt sad. What he had uncovered depressed him.
Daniel couldn’t help chuckle at the irony however; it was truly an uncanny revelation. The statue once displayed so valiantly on the entrance of the building had been worn away, smoothed over by the ravages of time and weather, yet the symbol it was fixed to remained firmly intact.
Daniel couldn’t believe it, maybe he didn’t want to believe it, but he just couldn’t understand how or why it was there.
The symbol responsible for the deaths of millions, responsible for the downfall of human civilisation on Earth, was the same as that proudly mounted on the only monument left standing – completely unharmed – on an abandoned planet light years’ across the galaxy. A monument to belief, to dogmatic order, to everything Daniel and the rest of the expedition were attempting to flee.
Daniel never thought of himself as a man of faith, but this was the first time of his thirty-three years alive that he wondered if maybe the atheists were wrong.
This is my first attempt at science fiction, but as usual all comments and criticisms are welcome. I haven't revised or even read over what I've written more than once, so this is pretty much a first draft you're seeing.
Hope you all enjoy it! It's a fairly lengthy one - clocks in at around 2000 words.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
This new world, the landscape, wilderness, beauty, it was astounding. Daniel had a hard time taking it all in. Green fields of grass flowed across rolling hills, with clusters of dense jungle playing host to an unseen army of wildlife. It was marvellous – an emulation of earth, right down the sticky sap leaking from the twisted braches of the enormous trees.
Daniel forgot the official name of the planet – a combination of letters and numbers – but he preferred to refer to it as Earth II. Not an original name, but it fit so well. It was a follow-up to Earth; a new beginning, somewhere to start fresh. The planet was huge, much larger than the original Earth, but still possessed similar gravity and an atmosphere humans could live off. It had taken a few days for the computers in the scout ship to adjust the inhabitants to the higher levels of oxygen, but eventually Daniel and his companions were able to walk out into this new, unexplored world without spacesuits. What a feeling; to walk where no man had walked before, to breath sweet, dewy air no man had breathed before.
Well, no human may have breathed the air or walked the land before, but something else certainly had. That’s why Daniel was there.
Daniel was an archaeologist of sorts; he specialised in uncovering the secrets ancient civilisations left behind in the forms of buildings. He had been a key researcher in the discovery of the small outlook town frozen under the ice on Pluto’s moon Charon and since then had been highly regarded in the space exploration commune as an off-earth archaeological expert.
The time had come for humans to evacuate Earth and government officials had made the decision to relocate a proportion of the population to Earth II. It had been on scientist’s radar for a few decades by this point, but due to technological limitations the only information that could be gathered was relayed through satellites and unmanned probes fired off towards the planet, located a hundred light years or so from the solar system.
Technology had finally caught up with the scientist’s aspirations and preparations were made to move a population to the new, lush planet. Satellites had already informed officials the new haven was safe to inhabit, but it was still necessary to send through a scout crew t make sure there would be no hiccups when humanity arrived at its new home.
What the satellites also indicated, which was also the reason for Daniel’s presence on the new planet, was the fact that humans would not be the only intelligent life forms to have ever graced the planet’s surface.
Scans, unmanned landings and a range of geographical scans indicated an array of buildings – or at least remnants of buildings – scattered across the planet’s massive landscape. This intrigued Daniel to no end, a curiosity that was heightened even further when the scout ship landed on the planet’s surface. It was clear, even from walking around the areas that could have once been considered cities, that nothing intelligent had inhabited the planet for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
Vines and trees and assorted mosses and grasses had crept over any sort of monument to civilisation left standing. Most buildings had collapsed, leaving behind piles of rubble that eventually formed grassy knolls, peppered with colourful and exotic flowers and bushes. Outlines of streets were barely visible under layers of rock and silt and grass, and underground creeks ran through what must have been old sewage or subway lines. On one heart-pounding occasion a soldier assigned to guard the exploration crew had to jump as the ground crumbled and fell through into an underground river. It was a truly exhilarating experience for a young archaeologist, with a new discovery or surprise awaiting Daniel at each turn.
So far there seemed nothing dangerous or foreboding about the planet. A previous civilisation had lived and flourished across the landscape, but the only trace that remained was rubble and foundations of buildings and occasionally the odd fossilized relic or two – usually a sort of pot or wheel of sorts; nothing that helped define the culture of the beings who once existed, but interesting finds nonetheless.
Daniel loved every minute he spent exploring the new terra firma, and wished it would never end. It was a reassuring thought that even after humans moved into their new abode, he would still have plenty to discover on the planet. Who knew what lay ahead? Maybe there were still primitive tribes lurking in the jungles, surviving in a way humans had not known to do for thousands upon thousands of years. It was thoughts like that which also made Daniel more appreciative of his security escorts; two burly soldiers who were as accurate with improvised and melee weapons as they were with their powerful rifles and sidearms.
Daniel would prefer to spend nights drinking with the two guards. They would sit outside the ship, sipping at the rations of whiskey and gazing out into the alien wilderness, their faces lit by a crackling fire. More often than not the topic would turn to the subject that tore the old Earth to shreds, dividing nations and resulting in the deaths of thousands upon millions of people; religion.
Like Daniel, and many others raised in the collection of countries formerly known as ‘the West’, one of the soldiers, Joseph, was an atheist. The new world was that of disbelief, as with the advance of technology came the decline of faith. Religious nations warred, not with atheistic nations, but with each other, fighting intense battles over quibbles concerning the finer points and details of worship and belief. It got to the stage where religion proved to be the downfall of nations, and only those who shed their faith managed to break free of the sub-par quality of life provided by corrupt governments of believing countries.
The other soldier, Mikhail, was born and raised Catholic. And not any old Catholic, but extreme, devout, fundamental. He was a bitter, scowling hulk of a man now, sourly spitting on anything religious or even closely linked to faith. Daniel and Joseph managed to permeate his personal shield one night, allowing an insight into what created the Mikhail they knew today.
Mikhail had grown up in what was once Russia, or Serbia – who knew these days? Joining the military at a young age, he had witnessed a shocking act of brutality which he said could not have been allowed by any God, kind, just or impartial.
“I was deployed to a village one winter,” he growled.
“We stormed the buildings, pulling everyone out and demanding they proved their faith to us.
“My commander approached a family and asked for proof they believed in the Almighty and when they could not, he beat them, kicked them and stomped on their heads.”
Mikhail’s face grew darker, even by the light of the fire, as his mind rushed back to the events that took place all those years ago.
“He took aim with his rifle and shot them – shot them all – a f***ing family of five!
“All because they did not agree with what we thought was right…” Mikhail’s voice wavered.
“The commander assumed that since the one family was lying, then they all must be – he ordered us to massacre the whole village.
“I refused and took aim and before I knew it I had shot my commander down and had taken out the other members of my unit.
“I ran to the border into the allied atheist nations that night and I never looked back.”
Daniel didn’t know what to say. Mikhail knew he had made the right choice, and Daniel and Joseph definitely didn’t dispute it with him. Daniel felt the bitterness he experienced rise in him – the same bitterness he always felt when he heard stories about religion. The practices and beliefs of so few had torn the world to shreds, and now those who couldn’t stand the dogmatic quests of the ‘righteous’ were pushed to the point where they had to evacuate their planet to live on another. Daniel hoped the evils of religion would not follow them to this new utopia.
The team spent months clearing what used to be cities, hacking away at the advances of nature over the technological and architectural achievements of the previous civilisation. With each new day brought a new discovery – a new relic or artefact or a new building that wasn’t completely worn down to its foundations. It wasn’t until the fifth month of exploration that Daniel discovered a building still fully erect.
He knew it was still standing in its entirety because of scans and assessments completed on the mass of dirt and grass and plant matter surrounding it. No hill developed this way or was shaped this uniquely – it was a truly breathtaking discovery.
All energies were focused on uncovering what was beneath the mass of silt and vine, as despite how accurate and conclusive the scans were, they still didn’t show exactly what lay underneath the protective layer time had constructed.
Daniel hacked away at vines with a machete, trading the crude tool with a shovel and later a fine brush when the team moved closer to the archaic structure. All care must be taken, as if the structure were as old as they assumed, then the slightest jolt with a pickaxe or drill would reduce a wall or even the whole structure to rubble. For a month, the team worked endlessly to reveal the building, hoping the discovery would also reveal an insight into the culture and history of the civilisation that abandoned the planet so long ago.
Daniel was working on the building late one night. His energy and enthusiasm surpassed any of the others and even the burly soldiers – supposedly endurance specialists – were stretched out on benches and in hammocks, fast asleep.
He was slaving away at what was believed to be the main entrance to the structure; a grand archway with doors that towered over fifteen feet high. He had uncovered a large portion of the doors, noting the seam down the middle and the peculiar materials used to construct the entrance. It was around midnight – Earth time – when Daniel finished the centre of the structure.
It was a strange mix of emotions he felt; a grin was pulled subconsciously across Daniel’s face and he fell back to sit on a rock, dropping his tools and simply gawking in amazement at the massive breakthrough he had just made. The first insight into this new, ancient culture; this was it.
But at the same time he felt sad. What he had uncovered depressed him.
Daniel couldn’t help chuckle at the irony however; it was truly an uncanny revelation. The statue once displayed so valiantly on the entrance of the building had been worn away, smoothed over by the ravages of time and weather, yet the symbol it was fixed to remained firmly intact.
Daniel couldn’t believe it, maybe he didn’t want to believe it, but he just couldn’t understand how or why it was there.
The symbol responsible for the deaths of millions, responsible for the downfall of human civilisation on Earth, was the same as that proudly mounted on the only monument left standing – completely unharmed – on an abandoned planet light years’ across the galaxy. A monument to belief, to dogmatic order, to everything Daniel and the rest of the expedition were attempting to flee.
Daniel never thought of himself as a man of faith, but this was the first time of his thirty-three years alive that he wondered if maybe the atheists were wrong.