#Perspectives : Part 2, Chapter 3.

Every Sunday, John Paul went to church. Rain, or shine, hot, or cold, it didn’t matter. John Paul had gone to church all his life. He knew Jesus died to save him from his sins. He knew he needed the fellowship of other Christians, people who knew the truth of this life, as he knew the truth.

It was at church, on another Sunday, the pastor, a true man of God, a leader of God’s people, a shepherd for God’s flock, said those true words yet again. “Transgender people are a lie. An abomination. They are members of Satan’s minions, who spy on good Christian men, women, and children, in public restrooms, in locker rooms, in beach swim houses. They are evil men who want to wear women’s clothing. Sick women who want to usurp the power God has given men. Disturbed men who want to have sex with other men.”

The pastor had carried on through his entire sermon that day, as he had countless other Sundays. John Paul agreed with every word. The pastor cited verse after verse of God’s word, the Holy Bible, that told how evil those people were, and John  Paul nodded his head. He’d never read the Bible, but he knew what was in it, knew what it said about those sick people, those spawn of Satan.

That Sunday evening, John Paul had talked with his bunkmates in training about those demons, and they’d all agreed, something needed to be done to protect the good, honest Christian people from such beings. John Paul had found his Sergeant In Arms and asked what God’s Army could do, and would do, to protect God’s people from those evil, sick, Satan lovers who called themselves transgender people.

He remembered the answer forever. It rang in his head when he slept. “We cleanse the world of them.”

John Paul didn’t have to be told what that meant.

When he returned to his bunk, he shared what he’d been told. That night, all six of the men in that bunkhouse decided it was time. Time to start saving good Christian people from Satan’s demons.

The next night was a Monday night. John Paul and Michael got dressed in their best suits, and planned to do God’s work. John Paul slipped his Tisas into his shoulder holster, and made sure it was well concealed. Michael did the same with his Springfield. Then, they left the compound and went into the nearby city, where they wandered from bar to bar, hunting Satan’s minions.

They found plenty of them in a bar that catered to homosexuals, another breed of Satan’s demons. There were several couples there, they looked like men and women, like normal couples. John  Paul and Michael watched those couples and tried to discern if the women were real women, or fake women.

They watched them kiss each other at the bar. Watched them hold hands. Watched them flirt with each other. They waited. Until one of the women went to the restroom. John Paul followed her into the room half a minute later, and Michael stood outside the door. No one seemed to notice.

John Paul observed there were three stalls in the restroom, no urinals. The woman was in the middle stall. John Paul didn’t ask. He broke the stall door to gain access. The woman was sitting on the toilet, and she was really a man. She had all a man’s body parts.

The Satan spawn looked up at John Paul, as he drew his Tisas, aimed it at the demon’s head, and pulled the trigger twice. As the demon died, John Paul bowed his head, “In the name of the Father, and the Son.” He holstered his gun, and left the room, as others came running to see what was going on. In the brief time it took for them to figure out what had happened, John Paul and Michael had left.

They told the Sergeant what they’d done that night. He nodded his head, “You boys have done the right thing. There’s one less demon in this world tonight, thanks to your actions.”

If John Paul had anything to do with it, there’d be a lot more demons wiped from the face of God’s Earth. If John Paul had anything to do with it, America would become God’s land once again.

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#SwiftFicFriday Week 112 : Shut Up!

I looked at my computer, then stared at the screen a moment, then scrolled the screen a few pages down. It was all the same. All noise. A cacophony of chaos, a thousand voices all screaming, “What about this?” or “This is right!” or “This is wrong!” in a never ending string of words.

The news on TV, ROKU, Amazon Prime, and everywhere else I looked was not any better. Always filled with people screaming, “What about this?” “This is right!” “This is wrong!”

And everywhere I looked it was an endless assault made by each side of every story against all the other sides of the same stories. Nothing but an endless, chaotic, never ending scream session.

As I sat, looking at my screen, I stopped scrolling. I pulled my hands away from the keyboard, and the mouse, put them in my lap, and sat there. I closed my eyes, and realized all I could hear were voices in my head. Voices my brain cells had apparently invented. Voices that screamed at each other. Endlessly.

Each voice hated every other voice. To the voices, it didn’t matter who was right or wrong, what was ethical or unethical, moral or amoral, good or evil. None of it mattered. The only thing that mattered was, “Me!”

As I sat there, my eyes closed, one voice slowly silenced the others. One at a time, it locked them all away in rooms, and left them screaming. Until only that voice was left. And that voice was mine.

And I said, “Shut up!”

I turned off my computer, then the TV. then the radio.

All the Chaos went away.

I think I’ll keep it all off, so I never have to scream, “Shut up!” at those voices again.

294 Words
@mysoulstears

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It’s Week 112 of #SwiftFicFriday, hosted by Katheryn Avila. I’m still wondering what the heck is going on with this story. There seems to be only one way for me to find out. Anyway. Please go read all the entries in this week’s #SwiftFicFriday. They are always fun to read. And there are some great writers who show up regularly.

#ThursThreads Week 502 : Why Are We Here?

Usually, my truck only went where it was ordered to go by headquarters. I had some discretion over where we went when we got there, like when we went to Jackson. We’d started the trip back to what had been Branson, Missouri before the war. It was a long trip. Most of the interstates were destroyed, making it a trip on small state and county roads.

The truck had leaned the seat back, and let me sleep while it drove. I’d slept a solid five hours. And when I woke up, I knew something was different. The sun was in the wrong place if we were heading to Branson.

“Where are we?”

My truck answered, “In the Ozark National Forest.”

“Why are we here?”

“We have new orders.”

“What are they?”

“They’re from AI 21. Something it needs to verify.”

AI 21 was not human. Artificial Intelligence Unit 21. It ran automated weapons, medical, and economic systems everywhere within 500 miles of Branson.

“What’s that?”

“There’s a lab grown food plant controlled by the Wellington family.”

“And?”

“John Wellington ordered the plant to self-destruct.”

That would be a disaster. That plant provided food to nearly a third of the country. It if was gone, a lot of people were going to starve.

My truck continued. “Other AIs report similar destruction of plants controlled by other families.” My truck paused. “The families are trying to kill everyone. If this is verified, the AIs will kill the families, to save everyone.”

249 Words
@mysoulstears

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It’s Week 502 of #ThursThreads, hosted by Siobhan Muir. Please go read all the stories in this week’s #ThursThreads. They are always fun to read. And there are some great writers who show up every week.

#Perspectives: Part 2, Chapter 2

God’s Army had kept their word. Three days later they’d arrived at his home, and welcomed him into their ranks. They prayed, “Father, we welcome another Christian into your family, may you continue to bless him, and his family, and guide him in the days ahead.”

John Paul had lifted his duffle bag, with what clothing he needed, pulled his AR-15 over his shoulder, and lifted his second duffle bag that contained his two survival knives, two handguns, and every last bit of ammunition he had of any kind.  His wife gave him a brief kiss good-bye, and said, “Stay safe, and come home.”

With that, John Paul had climbed into the God’s Army bus, and began his journey.

He slept in a barracks, with seven others, like himself, who believed it was time to do something to stop the descent of their country into hell, and return people to the ways of God, the ways of faith and righteousness.

Each day, they practiced the ways of an army, cleaning and caring for their weapons, using their weapons properly, how to adjust their weight, get their balance right so it was easier to aim them. How to align the barrel and the gunsight. How to aim them, and shoot them, without missing. The supply of ammunition never ran out.

They studied the use of survival knives, including how to use them in preparing food, and how to use them to defend yourself against one of Satan’s minions. Where the organs were in the human body, how to damage those organs, and incapacitate, and kill those opposed to God’s ways, those who attacked God’s people.

The training was intense, strenuous, and exhausting. John Paul slept like the dead for the first couple of weeks. He hurt all over. But it was good. He knew if he stuck with the training, his body would adjust, and he’d become the strong man of God he needed to be.

God’s Army had two flags, the flag of their country, with its 50 stars and 13 stripes, and the flag of God. With Jesus on it, his hands raised, light surrounding him, as he spoke, “There is a time for war.”

Franklin, Stephen, William, Michael, Jordan, Peter, and Moses were his barracks mates. They all came to God’s Army for the same reasons he’d come. To stop the fall of the country, to stop the spread of the evils of homosexuality, that transgender lie made up by Satan, and planted in people’s minds, the notion that men and women were equal, which the Bible clearly said wasn’t true, and so many other things that flew in the face of everything they read, everything they believed, from the words of the holy book. God’s words.

They spoke, many times at night, of the thieves of the government, how they robbed from those who worked hard, and gave everything to the lazy, the undeserving. How they took hard earned freedoms from those who’d earned them, and handed those freedoms to those who hadn’t earned a thing, and then expected those hard workers to earn their freedoms again.

They spoke of the spread of machines, and how people were going lazy, and letting the machines do all the work, with the companies, and the government, printing money that didn’t exist, and giving it away to people who hadn’t bothered to learn any skills they could use to earn a living. How far too many people had stopped trying to earn a living, and expected the government to take care of them, feed them, clothe them, give them houses.

How it was all going to hell. How people were becoming entitled, greedy, selfish, and uncaring, and always wanted more. More sex, more drugs. How that lifestyle led to men sleeping with men. It was one thing for a woman, a wife, a lover, to perform oral sex on her man, but it was something else, something wrong, for another man to do that. How a man could have anal sex with his woman, but how it was so wrong for a man to have such sex with another man. How it was OK for women to sleep with women. There wasn’t anything against that in the Bible. And it was great fun to watch.

How women were supposed to dress for their men, take care of their men, the head of the family. And how men were supposed to care for their women, the body of their family. How women weren’t supposed to up and leave, because a man did something they didn’t like. How it was up to God to punish a man if he didn’t properly care for his family. Not up to some government to dictate how a man should behave, when he couldn’t slap a woman for being stupid. When he could and couldn’t screw the woman he’d married.

They all agreed. The country was totally screwed up, and needed to be fixed.

And they trained. They practiced with their weapons, they studied hand-to-hand combat, they studied basic martial arts, they practiced with knives, with guns, with anything they could use as a weapon.

They also studied infrastructure, sewage systems, water systems, electrical systems, networking systems, fiber optic, copper wire, and wireless systems, broadcast systems, transportation systems, electric charging systems, power generation systems. They studied all of it. They learned the basics of how to disable such systems. To cause chaos, to disable the ability to stop them from bringing the country back to the ways of God. To break down the society that was corrupt, and that grew more corrupt each day.

They became God’s soldiers, members of God’s Army. They became ready to fight. Ready to change the world. To save the world. From Satan’s minions.

And every night, they prayed, they asked, they begged, for God’s guidance in the days and weeks ahead. So they could, and would, do the work he wanted them to do.

Until the day it was time for them to join the fight.

#SwiftFicFriday Week 111 : It Would Make It Worse

Boreas watched as Zeus bellowed, “She’ll pay for this! She will!”

He knew from countless similar outbreaks, he couldn’t calm Zeus down. The best he could do was limit the damage Zues did. “I see she lives in the country called Brazil. Should we make it snow there?”

“No! That won’t inflict enough misery on her!”

“May I ask what she did?”

“She said no!” Zeus, being Zeus, didn’t take no as an answer very well. “All I wanted was to paint her naked, and then sleep with her, and she said no!”

It wasn’t the first time someone said no to Zeus. Boreas was party to all kinds of weather disasters as a result. Like the one a year earlier, in Texas, where 700 or so people died, and the entire Texas power grid pretty much collapsed, because a pretty human had called Zeus ugly, and told him she’d rather bang a pickle.

Zeus had not responded kindly to that.

Boreas pondered suggestions that could limit the damage, and reduce the number of humans who died from Zeus’s fit of anger. He realized he’d taken too long when Zeus bellowed, “Lightning! We’ll make a big ass fire! Burn her home down! Burn down everything she cares about!”

He knew it was not possible to calm Zeus at that point. No suggestions would work. It would make it worse for humans. And Zeus continued screaming, “Set all of Brazil on fire!”

All Boreas could do was watch as Zeus lobbed lightning bolts into Amazonian forests, until he triggered a huge series of wildfires in the Amazon rain-forest. As he watched the fires, he hoped the human women learned not to tell Zeus no. Banging him might be unpleasant, but it had to be better than dealing with his anger.

300 Words
@mysoulstears

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It’s Week 111 of #SwiftFicFriday, hosted by Katheryn Avila. I’m still wondering what the heck is going on with this story. There seems to be only one way for me to find out. Anyway. Please go read all the entries in this week’s #SwiftFicFriday. They are always fun to read. And there are some great writers who show up regularly.

#ThursThreads Week 501 : You Gotta Shut Them Up

Everybody has voices in their head. Even the people who tell you they don’t. You can tell by how people behave. I call it the, “You gotta shut them up” principle.

When I wash the dishes, I turn on music to play in the background. Because. I don’t want to hear what the voices in my head are going to say.

When I fold the laundry, there I go, playing music in the background again. Same reason. I don’t want to hear what the voices in my head would say.

When I’m driving my car, there’s the music again, playing in the background, so I don’t have to hear those God damned voices that never shut up.

Like with my phone. I’m always checking it, monitoring TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, whatever. Always checking for text messages. Because. It beats the hell out of hearing the voices screaming in my head.

Have a couple of drinks with friends at a bar while watching an endless stream of idiots on TV beat each other’s brains out, just shut those damn voices up.

Yeah. Everybody has those voices in their heads. And we do what we do because you gotta shut them up.

199 Words
@mysoulstears

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It’s Week 501 of #ThursThreads, hosted by Siobhan Muir. Please go read all the stories in this week’s #ThursThreads. They are always fun to read. And there are some great writers who show up every week.

#Perspectives : Part 2, Chapter 1

John Paul watched the flag of his home country, attached to the post on the left side of his truck bed, wave in the breeze. The flag of the United States of America, land of his birth, land where dreams were supposed to come true, where each generation was supposed to do better than the previous. Where he was supposed to do better than his father.

He watched the flag of pride, attached to the post on the right side of his truck bed, wave in that same breeze. The Confederate flag, also land of his birth, land where they fought to protect their dreams, their freedoms, their hard won, hard earned lives.

He stared at the ticket a police officer had stuck on the windshield of his truck, shook his head, pulled it off, and read it. “John, you know we can’t show our flag. You know it’s against the law. I don’t want to write this, but I have no choice. Keep that flag indoors.”

It had come to a simple truth. People in the USA were no longer free. They were enslaved by rules, and laws, made to protect the feelings of others. That wasn’t the country he believed in. John Paul’s country was lost. It had died, strangled by such laws. “This is not how life was meant to be.”

He left the flags waving in the breeze from his truck bed, knowing there would be another ticket on the windshield when he went to work the next morning. Knowing it was wrong. Wrong to write him a ticket for remembering his hard working ancestors. The people who founded his family, and so many others, declared by their own country to have been evil, sick, and wrong. The people who helped make the USA, now called evil, slave traders, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, hate filled people.

It had been happening for decades, the fall of his country. The destruction of everything he believed, everything his father believed, everything his family believed.

John Paul looked at the double wide trailer he lived in, with his beloved wife, son, and daughter. A double wide trailer. On cinder blocks. Hell, he didn’t even have city water, just a septic tank, and a deep water well. And one light pole that carried power to his home.

His father had owned a one story ranch style home in Savannah. His father worked two jobs, both full time, and earned enough money to get John Paul into college. John Paul promised his father he’d get that degree, get that education, make something out of himself, build a life of his own, and a family to carry on the family name, the family tradition. John Paul promised he’d make a better home for his family than his father had made for him. And his father had been so proud.

And there he was, living in a double wide trailer, working two part time jobs, barely making enough to make ends meet.

He remembered the truth, the reality, of having to choose between school supplies for his son, or dinner for his family. The reality of having to choose between sending his son to school, or his daughter, since he couldn’t afford to send both. The reality of having nearly killed himself while he tried to endure his appendicitis, hoping he’d feel better, so he didn’t have to spend the money his daughter and wife needed for new clothes for the next year on a visit to the hospital to get fixed.

He remembered the bills from the hospital, how could he forget? He’d be paying those bills for another ten years before he paid off that debt.

And he remembered how the black man in the emergency room, who’d been shot, walked out of the hospital without any debt, the government having paid his medical bill. Using John Paul’s taxes, and the taxes of so many others like him. People who worked hard. Who were responsible. Who paid their bills. Who spent their lives in jobs they hated, because they had bills to pay. People who did the right thing.

Not like that black man in the hospital, who probably didn’t even have a job, and depended on the government to keep him alive.

In his home that night, after his children were asleep, after his wife was asleep, John Paul stared at his pay stub, on the screen of his phone. He looked at the parts that he never saw. The taxes to the federal government. To the state government. To Social Security. He knew he’d never get any benefit from that money. The government had taken it from him, and given it to people who didn’t deserve it. Homos, Muslims, niggers. People who didn’t work for a living. People who bought their drugs, their beer, the guns, with food stamps, and welfare checks. People who stood on street corners at night, and sold heroin or crack. Money the government couldn’t touch.

They didn’t pay taxes. They didn’t support the economy. They didn’t try to make the world better. Hell, no. They stole everything. They demanded it was their right, declared they had as much right to live in a house as hard working people like him. Declared they had as much right to a phone, a computer, an education, and health care, as he did.

Hell, he’d earned those rights. He’d sweat bullets for 20 years, building his life. Building a life for his family.

And the government gave it away to a bunch of lazy ass fags, terrorists, and niggers, and made him suffer, made him have to choose between eating a lunch at work one week, or having toilet paper for his family.

It was wrong. It was fucking wrong. And he knew it. So did his father. So did his family.

John Paul looked at the screen of his phone again, tapped the picture of a cross, with Jesus on it, and opened the message. It was from the local chapter of God’s Army. “Brother, the time has come to take back what has been stolen from us. To take back our lives that we worked so hard to build. To take back our towns, our cities, from the thieves who rob us, who are too lazy to work, who argue it is their right to have everything we have, without having to work for it.”

John Paul nodded, as he sat on the sofa, in the dark. “Brother, it is time to bring God back to this country. To halt the corruption that has been growing, that has been spreading everywhere. To stop the disintegration of our families, our faith, our dreams. It is time to return this country to its foundations, to the ways of the Church. To God’s ways. To turn this country away from the ways of evil, greed, materialism, sexual depravity, wanton drug use, and religious lies of false faiths like Islam and Buddhism, and return it to the ways of God’s children.”

The message went on. And with each sentence, John Paul nodded. He agreed with every word he read. The government had stolen enough from him, and people like him. The fags, the terrorists, the niggers, the Mexicans, all of them, had stolen enough. He wasn’t going to stand for it any more.

As he sat on his sofa that night, John Paul responded to the message from God’s Army. He signed up. He told them it was time to right the wrongs in the country. Time to return the country to God’s ways. To the ways of his family. Of hard work, and faith. Or earning what you got. Of making a better life for your children than you had. He declared it was time to save the country.

Then, he waited for the representative from God’s Army to arrive at his home, and tell him what to do next.

For John Paul, it was time to go to war. To fight for what he believed. To change the world. To stop it from crumbling into chaos. It was time to save everything he believed.

He watched as a message from God’s Army arrived on his phone. He hurriedly read it. Then, he waited. The message said they’d be there in three days, and he should be ready. It told him what he’d need. What kind of supplies, what kind of weapons. And it ended, “We look forward to working with you, brother. God is with us in this fight.”

It was time, John Paul knew. Time to do what all good men had to do. Time to stand up for what he believed. Time to stand up for what was right.

Miranda Kate’s Mid-Week Challenge : 2022/02/14 (Week 238)

I figured out where to hide so no one ever found me. I found an abandoned house in the middle of the woods at my grandmother’s house. Well,it wasn’t really me who found it. Several of my cousins knew exactly where it was, but they avoided it. “Just an old shack. Like the others scattered here and there.”

The woods of the deep south, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, were littered with abandoned houses. Places where people built a home, and reached for a dream. Property of their own. A house of their own.

Most of those dreams died, the houses abandoned, the dirt driveways long overgrown, turned back to trees and brush. I didn’t know why people left them. I didn’t care. They made good places to hide.

I’d been able to slip away several times when Grandmother had one of her fits. My cousins always got trapped. Doing dishes. Gathering eggs. Picking beans in the garden and snapping or shelling them. Hell, cousin Bob fell off the damn house once, picking figs, where one of the neighbors had bought a bucket full. Grandmother dusted him off, checked for any broken bones, or cuts and scrapes, then sent him back to the roof to pick more figs, “Get your ass back to work! And be careful!”

And always she screamed, “If I find that boy, I’ll tan his butt!”

She never did tan my butt. So I kept hiding.

First time I hid in that old house, I decided to explore it, see what I could find inside. It was an old house, just a few rooms. It was made of cinder blocks, with a concrete slab for a floor. No tile, no vinyl, nothing. Just bare concrete. Looked like it has a general purpose room, a bedroom, a kitchen, and a bathroom. The bathroom had a pedestal in front of a plain mirror, with a bucket on it. No toilet. A big old washtub sat at one end. They’d have used that for the bathtub.

Outside, I found the remains of a pump for a well. The water was long since gone. I thought maybe that’s why the people moved. The water dried up at the well. No kitchen sink. Just another couple of buckets. The remains of an old, wood fired oven sat to one side. What cabinets there were were completely empty. No glasses, plates, silverware. Nothing. I didn’t know if they took it all with them when they left the place, or if it all got stolen over time.

What fascinated me was in the bedroom. The bed in there was awful, rotten, and full of holes. Who knew what was living in that thing. I sure didn’t want to find out. The foot-board had collapsed. The headboard still stood, but it was as much vines as it was furniture.

What fascinated me was the mirror on the dresser. The dresser was empty. Half the drawers in it were gone. The rest were damaged. But its frame still held together. The shelf on the top was still there. Bits and pieces of a runner were still there too. And mounted to that, standing up from the back of that shelf, was the mirror.

It wasn’t big, just an oval in the middle of a slab of wood that had been carved to look pretty. That mirror fascinated me. I kept looking in it every time I hid in that house.

Until one day when I escaped Grandmother, and what lived in that mirror talked to me.

Ellen was her name. She told me how she cut her husband into parts, and used him to fertilize the garden. “It’s what he deserved, making me live in this hell. Not letting me move to the city, where I could have running water, a real bathtub, and a toilet. I wanted a refrigerator so much. And a gas powered oven. But no. He had to live here. In nowhere. With nothing. It made me miserable.”

I swear I could see here in the mirror. Blue eyes. Cute smile. Short curly hair.

“So, I killed him. Cut him up. Used the parts for fertilizer, while I found someplace to live. Someplace in the city.” She’s paused. “Then, his brother found me, and blew my head off.” She sighed. “Now, I’m stuck in this place forever.”

After that conversation with Ellen, I never went anywhere near that damn house again, and always did everything Grandmother asked. I wasn’t in any hurry to find somewhere else to hide, just in case there was another Ellen there.

She cut him up, and used him for fertilizer. And she talked to me. No way was I ever going back to that house.

Who cares how many words. Something like 780 or 790.
@mysoulstears

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Written for Week 238 of Miranda Kate‘s Mid-Week Challenge. Mirror, mirror on the wall. What can I do with you as a prompt? You can learn about Miranda’s challenge here. The stories people share for the weekly challenge are always little works of art, crafted with words, meant to be shared, and enjoyed.

The Greenhouse (Version 2)

[NOTE: This is a rewrite of the story #SwiftFicFriday Week 110 : The Greenhouse. This is what happens when I take the time to rewrite the story. When I wrote the original, I knew it sucked. I knew I could improve it. But I lacked the time to do that before the deadline for the weekly challenge. This morning, I took the time to fix much of what was wrong with it. This is the result.]

I could always count on a walk through the greenhouse to calm me down, and recharge me. After that last couple of months, I certainly needed recharging.

I’d just returned from the most recent Earth expedition. We’d captured a couple of people, and hauled them to the colony on Callisto. The colony was where we kept people to ensure we didn’t wipe ourselves from existence when they finished destroying our civilization again.

For over 12,000 years we’d been watching our people recover from the last time we destroyed our civilization.

Back then, we’d used up all the freshwater, and destroyed the topsoil. Most of us starved in the resulting drought, and planet wide food shortage. A few of us, in particular, the most wealthy, had managed to escape the destruction by leaving the planet, and setting up a series of colonies.

First on the moon,  then on Mars. Lastly, to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. That’s where I lived, where my greenhouse was. Beneath the methane clouds of Titan. Water frozen harder than any rock on Earth. Extreme temperatures. Extreme weather. I had to have a survival suit on if I went outside.

Now, our descendants on Earth were doing the same thing we’d done. Wiping out the planet’s ability to support them in the endless quest for money and power.

That’s why we set up the colony on Callisto. To save a few of them, in case they managed to become extinct on Earth. Then, when the time was right, we’d put a few of them back, and let the whole process start over again. Perhaps on a third attempt, we’d figure out how to live with the planet, and become a fully developed people.

If not, we could always try a fourth time.

#SwiftFicFriday Week 110 : The Greenhouse

I walked through the greenhouse. It had been my father’s, and his father’s. It has been passed down through generations for over 12,000 years since we escaped Earth. A greenhouse full of plants long since gone from that world. With the right optical system you could see Earth, orbiting the sun, roughly a billion miles away. A little blue dot.

Our missions to Earth told us there were over seven billion people there. I found it amazing how they’d recovered from the collapse that forced us to escape the planet.

They didn’t know about us. Didn’t know about their past, and their endless cycle of civilizations that rose, and then collapsed.

In 12,000 years on Titan the plants in the greenhouse had changed. We’d made the atmosphere in the greenhouses as Earth-like as possible, but it wasn’t a perfect match. The ground was totally different, with a completely different chemical makeup. The plants had grown, but they evolved to adapt to the new environment inside the domes on Titan. I enjoyed walking among them. I wondered if any of the species they’d evolved from still existed on Earth, and how they’d evolved there.

We’d find out soon enough. After 12,000 years, the people of Earth were fast approaching the same kind of catastrophic collapse we’d caused. We had a select group of ships that would collect a few of them, and move them to Callisto, around Jupiter. It would be a good place for them to start over.

That’s the thing about life. There’s always a chance to start over. A chance to learn, and correct the mistakes you once made. We’d made it off the planet. If they couldn’t escape, we’d rescue a few of them.

And everything on Earth would start again.

297 Words
@mysoulstears

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It’s Week 107 of #SwiftFicFriday, hosted by Katheryn Avila. I’m still wondering what the heck is going on with this story. There seems to be only one way for me to find out. Anyway. Please go read all the entries in this week’s #SwiftFicFriday. They are always fun to read. And there are some great writers who show up regularly.