[Kaimee]: 5.Short stories.Contact

This is a work in progress - very slow progress - and is no where near complete. As I think of them I will add further sections, as is, it is not a complete story, merely the laying out of ideas :)

© Kate-Aimee Conrick. All rights reserved!

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In any species, there sometimes must be evolution. And I suppose that once a species gets to a certain stage, that evolution – or extinction – may be a conscious choice on their behalf.
There is a group of humans, those who the commonly acclaimed scientists and staff of the popular space stations decided were too crackpot to employ. There is a group, of scientists, ecologists, engineers, chefs, scutters, families - every branch of employ that could possibly be wanted in a society, and they made the decision to be ignored by their counterparts on earth. There is a group of colonists who have progressed further than us, and they made the decision to let us continue down the wrong path to our own destruction, while they moved, and monitored us, and nursed us into our final hour.
There is a group who live in absolute secrecy. None but themselves know they exist.

There is a group who watch and nurse our own destruction into fruition, knowing that when we wipe ourselves out they will have made certain that we harm only ourselves, and have not made it off this planet to war on others. There is a group who will be gone when that time comes, all but the few who sacrifice themselves on our world to ensure that it comes about.
There is an entire other world of humans, those geniuses who stepped back into the shadows and let others further their careers instead, who were contacted by the people of our settlement, and so chose a life of watching.
Until Terrans destroy themselves we will not be free to settle our colony elsewhere. We lead lives of watching, we are in key positions all over Earth. Our young ones take courses in blending in, in quiet sabotage of the minds and hearts and the miracle leaps of ideas that might destroy all our plans, we watch against the realisation of the human species, that it has come to this.

And sometimes one of us get's lonely.



He stared out the window at those far distant clouds, slowly drifting across the blue… turning back to the glowing screen he tapped out “Different time zone, It’s only 0800 hours here.” Slowly the bright words formed on his screen in reply, letter by letter.

<sapphy> But what country are you in? I thought you said Australia, but that’s the wrong time zone.
<colony_boy> My parents are Australian, but we live on a small… island now, called Labadaz, not many people even realise it exists.
<sapphy> …
<sapphy> Google doesn’t recognise it, I think you’re bullshitting –

The blue glow receded in a second and the screen clicked off. The expected hand reached down over his shoulder to type the locking mechanism and then came to rest on his shoulder. “You know you aren’t meant to tell people on the internet where you come from…” his tute started, trailing off as the boy twisted and spun himself weightlessly out the lock.

Blue. Blue, blue and blue, and black. He had heard all his life that on earth sometimes children watched the clouds, picked shapes in them. Not weather patterns, or projection models, just shapes; an elephant, a seamonster, a rocking horse. He'd never even seen a real rocking horse.
When he sat with his parents at mess, sometimes they'd laugh and tell him about cloud watching, about the ovals full of prickly grass. He imagined a great big pod shaped room, bigger than the drives engine, covered all over in a type of matting. In his mind he saw the great big viewer covering the roof, picking out ghosts in the clouds. They'd tell him about this great big space, all empty but for the prickly dried grass and the lines left making patterns when it was mown. Piles and piles of cut grass that you could roll in, that got down your collar and spiked into your ankles.
Then they'd get to talking about the smell, trying to find some chemical to compare it to so that their son, their only offspring could experience just one little bit of their world, their cause.
The guilty silence always lapped at his skin then, prickling him like their grass.
"Oh Adam..." his mother would sigh, gripping his father's hand as they looked like parents at each other, as they silently promised themselves that it would all be worth it. Their eyes reminded each other that after all, he had the Earth's greatest minds to tutor him, the universe's safest station to life in and his life would mean something.
Their child may not know the smell of mown grass but he would grow up to be someone. He watched them think it.

He always got up and left then, and battered his mind away on the simulators for hours afterwards, jamming the set hard against the bulkhead with each furious move.

<sapphy>Missed you the past few weeks, you ok?
<Colony_boy> Yeah, just started training for my first mission to save the world, you know how it is.
<sapphy> lol

He ran his hand over the close cropped hair; prickly, and battled his expression. His lungs screamed choke! Suffocate, retch, die.
The air was foul, a sweet, rotting taste.
"Are you ok?" He glanced up at the World Senator, smiled and drawled out "Yeah sure, just waiting for Evy to come down, we're sure like to miss the movie she takes any longer".
She looked at him for a moment and he felt his shoulders tense uncomfortably. The drawl, the clothes, the hair; anyone could tell he didn't belong. Any one would guess he was here for the Senator, not her daughter, anyone who watched his eyes widen at the bristle of hair and grass alike had to know he wasn't from around here, had to realise something was wrong.
The Senator watched his eyes widen, and leaned forwards with a sigh. He struggled to breathe, struggled to suck in enough air and not to bolt out of the chair and through the open garden door.
She picked up her tea cup and hands on knees, hefted herself to her feet, padding in her stockings across across to the edge of the paving outside.
She breathed in deep, he felt the cloying sweetness creep to the back of his throat again, stifled the retching.
"I've always loved the smell of fresh mown grass" her murmuring reached him, sounding far off as if it reached him from down a turning ship's corridor.
The Senator gazed out into the evening, aware of the boy struggling for breath, this tiny teenaged boy.
She watched the late lit clouds and let the grass prickle her feet, aware that he was her enemy.
Oh dear Lord, have pity on us.
She sighed and closed the glass doors behind her as she came back inside.