[Kaimee]: 5.Short stories.The Next Amendment

The Next Amendment

© Kate-Aimee Conrick. All rights reserved!


Please excuse this if you stumble across it, its not polished, not finished and barely edited... because Im not really a writer, but shh, dont tell anyone! :P
This was written for school, with the only specification being that this was to be 'sci fi', and while the rest of my class went future, i stayed back here....

Suggestions to fix the dialogue ARE WELCOME!!

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Looking up through the dust Rafe stared at the face of a man who had been boring him all morning.
“What the hell are you?”
Pale eyes gazed calmly back at him, the expression unusually intelligent in a face more often seen full of customary ineffectual panic. The man had begun the trip with steady complaining, and had barely altered course since then, his pursed lips finding fault in every aspect of their surroundings, his whining avoided by his travelling companions. They were here because the Company wanted to extend its monopoly, and while it was providing your income you didn’t argue with the Company. They, along with Rafe’s junior partner Tompkins, had been sent out to this useless bit of dust and rock to evaluate the suitability for Company mineral farming. In Rafe’s opinion that was all the place was good for, becoming another rung on the Company ladder instead of this desert wasteland. But the executive wished to be ‘properly thorough’ and complete an accurate survey, although complaining every step of the way. Until, that is, he had somehow prevented a rockslide from crushing Rafe and killing Tompkins. The man had managed to do this with barely a flick of his hand, although with a great change in demeanour. Instead of the blustering fool the man had seemed earlier, Rafe found himself faced with this sensible steady figure. The man… man?


“Dear God” breathed Rafe, not breaking eye contact. His heart came loud in his ears and he realised he hadn’t blinked and did so, discovering himself unable to look again at the… thing. He studied the rubble he was sprawled in, and stared at the slowly sifting dust. His eyes darted to the unconscious body of his friend and then back to the loose stones at his feet, anywhere but that pale steady gaze. A chuckle surprised him and involuntarily his eyes jumped back to the stranger’s as he startled himself by asking again “W-what are you?” He got a long steady look in answer, and then the man began to speak. “I am not like you.”


“I am not like you. I'm similar enough in most ways,’ the man grinned, noting his doubtful look.
‘Did you like my executive act today?” He was met with another stare of incredulity and began to look slightly uneasy in such company.
“Yes, well,’ he cleared his throat.
“My people live among yours, usually, and for the most part you’d never be able to tell them apart. Except of course when one of us slips up in front of one of you. Or,’ he said, with a grin directed at the tumbled rocks, ‘when one of you slips up in front of us.”
“But… who are you?”
A shrug, “We are… the people. We are wiser than your race, older.’ This was said with a trace of contempt, and a certain arrogance.
‘Some of us believe we originated on this planet, an earlier evolution of your kind. Some maintain that we are the same kind, but your branch was led astray sometime in the past. Christianity has a lot to answer for,’ again that grin ‘black magic indeed. That’s why I was sent here. That is why we are all here. To correct you, if it is possible.”


Later, Rafe drew in his breath and watched as the alien repaired his friend. It couldn’t be possible. The man simply couldn’t be possible. Aliens could not, did not live among them, and they certainly could not make up the majority of people working for the Company, which controlled the entire worldwide economy. And what for? To ‘correct us’ he’d said?
“Correct us?’ Rafe murmured aloud. “But why? Just because our path has gone differently from yours, doesn’t make ours wrong.” He spoke not in argument, but confusion, trying to understand the viewpoint of these People. He was not prepared for the result.
“Differently?’ that man demanded, his new friendliness entirely gone. ‘Differently! You are a stunted, mentally deformed people! It disgraces us to share your likeness, and so we will fix you!”
“But what of our ways? What about what we want?”
“You cannot know what you want, you are incomplete!” a few loose stones skittered down the slope, unnoticed.
“But we have our freedom! We had that freedom to choose how we lived our lives, and we chose this way! Who are you to decide how we should have been, how can you be so incredibly egotistical as to think that your civilisation is better than ours, merely because ours is different?!”
Rafe's shouts echoed and he stared at the alien, panting, waiting for a reply. It never came. The alien only grinned and shrugged, and turned and walked away as half the mountain came tumbling down.