Part 10 - Where did the trees go?
December 29th 2006 12:10
Two thousand years later, approximately, Re was wandering about the space ship. He’d made about two hundred thousand visits to the pool and about two hundred thousand visits to the heavy gravity sand pit. He’d been to the singing room more times than he could remember. It was horrible; it sang the same old songs over and over. There were no more tactics he could use against himself to make the games room seem like fun and he’d read all titles of all of the books in the data library.
Je and La had patched up their differences pretty quickly after the crash and the stresses that had shown during the long space flight didn’t resurface. They spent long hours every day cooking and eating, apart from when they were at spiritual meetings and having noisy sex.
Ru and Hu, the perfect match, were happy as ever. They seemed to spend all of their time, apart from spiritual meetings and meals, locked in their cabin having noisy sex.
Re felt like he was missing out on something. He couldn’t put his finger on it. Then early one morning, while he was still under the covers of his bed he was playing about and he did put his finger on it. A few minutes later and he had his fingers all over it and that was when he realised what was wrong.
“I’m bored!” he said to the pillow. He had developed a pretty good relationship with his pillow. After all, it had been his only bed-time companion for around twenty centuries. Not that he expected his pillow to answer back, it was a pillow. He hadn’t forgotten the fundamental difference between bedding and people. People snored and farted.
After several hours of contemplation he decided, “I’m going to go outside, acidic substances or not, and have a look around. Those trees were fairly interesting and I’m sure there’s lots of wildlife to observe. It’s got to be better than hanging about here talking to you my pillow lover.”
Dressed for a long day’s hiking, Re packed a lunch of re-integrated dried fruit, powdered nuts and protein water and stepped through the outer hatch for the first time in millennia.
He was looking forward to following the insect-like animals that had crawled on his boot on his last visit. He wanted to go back to their nest to see how they lived, what they ate and if they were oligarchic or democratic.
He was a little dismayed to see that he was not greeted by the blue skies, green leafed plants and red soil of his first visit. Instead the ground was green and soft, overgrown with some sort of weed. Where the green weed ended there was a mesh like barrier all around that formed a square. This was obviously not a natural occurrence. The barrier had a gate that was chained but the chain was broken. Re opened the gate and stepped from the fenced in green square to the space beyond.
On the other side of the barrier he turned to close the gate and noticed a sign attached to it. The sign said, “Sydney Water emergency water tower. Keep Out!” This didn’t make any sense at all.
The external hatch of their ship, the one that remained unburied after the crash, was halfway down a reverse thruster arm. It rose from the ground and into the air to a height of about twenty metres. Looking around Re could not see any other evidence of the ship.
He searched for the enormous tree that was the marker for Bo’s grave site. There were no trees. Stretching out before him, as far as they eye could see, was building after building after building. Rows and rows of squat little buildings and things moving around that looked like ancient cars. There were wide black and flashing lights and signs and advertising billboards.
“A city has grown up around us,” he said to himself and turned around to see what else he might find. As his eye scanned the horizon, Re saw massive grey towers that scraped at the sky. “An enormous city has grown up around us! The others will be interested, I must tell them.”
That was when I hit him on the head with my handbag and knocked him to the ground, unconscious.
Je and La had patched up their differences pretty quickly after the crash and the stresses that had shown during the long space flight didn’t resurface. They spent long hours every day cooking and eating, apart from when they were at spiritual meetings and having noisy sex.
Ru and Hu, the perfect match, were happy as ever. They seemed to spend all of their time, apart from spiritual meetings and meals, locked in their cabin having noisy sex.
Re felt like he was missing out on something. He couldn’t put his finger on it. Then early one morning, while he was still under the covers of his bed he was playing about and he did put his finger on it. A few minutes later and he had his fingers all over it and that was when he realised what was wrong.
“I’m bored!” he said to the pillow. He had developed a pretty good relationship with his pillow. After all, it had been his only bed-time companion for around twenty centuries. Not that he expected his pillow to answer back, it was a pillow. He hadn’t forgotten the fundamental difference between bedding and people. People snored and farted.
After several hours of contemplation he decided, “I’m going to go outside, acidic substances or not, and have a look around. Those trees were fairly interesting and I’m sure there’s lots of wildlife to observe. It’s got to be better than hanging about here talking to you my pillow lover.”
-o0o-
Dressed for a long day’s hiking, Re packed a lunch of re-integrated dried fruit, powdered nuts and protein water and stepped through the outer hatch for the first time in millennia.
He was looking forward to following the insect-like animals that had crawled on his boot on his last visit. He wanted to go back to their nest to see how they lived, what they ate and if they were oligarchic or democratic.
He was a little dismayed to see that he was not greeted by the blue skies, green leafed plants and red soil of his first visit. Instead the ground was green and soft, overgrown with some sort of weed. Where the green weed ended there was a mesh like barrier all around that formed a square. This was obviously not a natural occurrence. The barrier had a gate that was chained but the chain was broken. Re opened the gate and stepped from the fenced in green square to the space beyond.
On the other side of the barrier he turned to close the gate and noticed a sign attached to it. The sign said, “Sydney Water emergency water tower. Keep Out!” This didn’t make any sense at all.
The external hatch of their ship, the one that remained unburied after the crash, was halfway down a reverse thruster arm. It rose from the ground and into the air to a height of about twenty metres. Looking around Re could not see any other evidence of the ship.
He searched for the enormous tree that was the marker for Bo’s grave site. There were no trees. Stretching out before him, as far as they eye could see, was building after building after building. Rows and rows of squat little buildings and things moving around that looked like ancient cars. There were wide black and flashing lights and signs and advertising billboards.
“A city has grown up around us,” he said to himself and turned around to see what else he might find. As his eye scanned the horizon, Re saw massive grey towers that scraped at the sky. “An enormous city has grown up around us! The others will be interested, I must tell them.”
That was when I hit him on the head with my handbag and knocked him to the ground, unconscious.
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